A 21-year-old black hairstylist claims her dreams of opening a mobile salon have been cut short due to racism.
Angel Pittman said she spent $14,000 on three school buses and $10,000 for land in North Carolina to establish a base of operations.
In September, Pittman claimed that when she moved to Salisbury, an unfriendly white neighbor allegedly displayed Confederate flags, swastikas, and KKK signs in his yard, she also suspects that he is the one who damaged her buses.
Earlier this year, she took to TikTok to share a heated interaction with an unfriendly neighbor.
“When I scouted the land the first two times before buying the property, the neighbor was not around,” Pittman stated.
“Our first time seeing him was the day we brought the buses over to the land, and we had an awkward exchange. He asked us what we were doing there and if we were trying to get shade.”
Pittman claims she has been saving up for her dreams since she was 17 years old, mentioning that things changed once she moved to the area.
She told The Guardian her neighbor sat in his yard with his “gun out the whole time.”
She added: “He was like, ‘Get the f–k off my lawn. And [that] we need to get them f–king buses off his lawn. So basically saying, my land was his.”
As of 2022, nearly 54% of Salisbury’s residents were white, while 37% were black. Rowan County is about 80% white.
According to The Guardian, the county is a “sundown” town — a term from the Jim Crow used to describe overwhelmingly white neighborhoods known for racial segregation.
The police report states that Pittman informed the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office in late September that someone had smashed the glass and defaced her buses with racist slurs.
She further claimed someone “urinated and defecated all over one of the buses.”
Pittman claimed that police “took a very long time to arrive,” and sheriff’s deputies “did absolutely nothing” when they showed up.
She further stated police instructed her to obtain a “no trespassing sign/order” because the neighbor “was involved with the KKK and some local Nazi outfit.”
According to The Guardian, Captain Mark McDaniels said that responding officers knew the neighbor and did “observe the damage… the smashed windows [and] the material that was spray painted on.”
McDaniels told the outlet that the case was closed because there were no eyewitnesses or video of the vandalism.
Pittman started a GoFundMe after leaving Salisbury and returning to Charlotte to restart her business.
“I don’t feel comfortable at all to allow my buses to remain on the land for fear of further damages or even my life being endangered,” she wrote on her GoFundMe page.
As of Tuesday, Pittman has surpassed her goal, raising more than $88,000.
“The goal of the money raised is so I can fix the damages done to the buses and find unrestricted land in Charlotte so I can continue the work towards my dreams,” she said.
“I am planning on turning one bus [into] a mobile hair salon and the other two buses into tiny homes. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.”
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