Barbara Ferguson, youth advocate with Asheville ties, remembered for grace and iron will
Barbara Ferguson was a shy, introverted 15-year-old when she did what even adults in her Asheville hometown were struggling to achieve. She and a band of other high schoolers, including the boy she would later marry, successfully desegregated lunch counters, libraries, and other public facilities in that city in the 1960s.
So began a life of fierce and unyielding advocacy for fairness and opportunity, which Barbara Turman Ferguson often did out of sight and with little fanfare. When she died of cancer at 78 on Aug. 16 in Charlotte, she left an enviable legacy of hard work to achieve those goals, especially opportunities for African American children. That concern for children led to her defining public legacy – founder and director of Charlotte’s Afro-American Children’s Theater (AACT), which thrived for more than 20 years and was emulated nationwide.
Those who knew her best use words like gracious, elegant, open-armed, supportive, compassionate and uplifting to describe her. Her gentle manner could be mistaken for weakness, some said. But she was firm and determined and had a will of iron to get things done.
It was that drive and commitment that caught the eye and admiration of the man who would become her husband, James E. “Fergie” Ferguson II.
Ferguson’s name will be familiar to many. He is the successful and celebrated Charlotte civil rights attorney whose clients included the Wilmington 10, plaintiffs in Charlotte’s and Asheville’s school desegregation cases and death-row inmates whose sentences he successfully got reduced to life.
Barbara’s support greatly enabled his success, many said.
Fergie was a senior at Asheville’s segregated Stephens-Lee High School when he met Barbara, a sophomore. They bonded as part of a determined group of students known as the Asheville Student Committee on Racial Equality (ASCORE).
“She was very committed to the movement,” Fergie recalls. “And she had considerable leadership qualities.”
Those leadership qualities were rewarded. She became the third president of ASCORE when she was a high school senior. Fergie was the first president.
Perhaps because she understood first-hand how young people could affect change, Barbara became a powerful advocate for providing youth opportunities.
She became a teacher, and her long-time best friend Carrietta Adkins said in the early ‘80s the two of them would do seminars “teaching parents to teach their children to read.” Barbara knew, she said, that children who learned to read early had the best chance of succeeding in life.
Barbara gave up teaching once she married and had children of her own.
Her husband and others count her parenting and the Fergusons’ three children – Jay, Taj and Kali – as her greatest legacy.
“We have three wonderful children,” Fergie said. “They are very socially conscious. They are continuing the work in achieving racial equality.”
“She was an incredible mother,” added Geraldine Sumter, a friend and partner in the Ferguson, Chambers and Sumter law firm. “Her children were never neglected. She started AACT because she saw what her children and other black children were being denied.”
That denial was a personal affront. Her son Jay was rejected for a role in Charlotte’s Children’s Theater. Other black children were experiencing similar rejections. So in 1981, she and a small group of youth advocates and artists founded AACT. It staged all-youth productions in various venues until 2002 - productions focusing on people, places and events rooted in the African Diaspora. In 2009, she founded Tomorrow’s R.O.A.D. (Roots of the African Diaspora) in collaboration with her daughter-in-law Reneisha Black and arts advocate Monica Pettiford. Programming included the CONNECTIONS Youth Leadership Program, an Underground Railroad Travel Camp, and a Black Nativity production.
Doris Frazier, a friend and creative director of AACT for 14 years, said the theater program did a lot more than put children on stage. “They were able to learn about themselves, learn about their history. She provided space where they could feel safe. … And she provided scholarships for those who could not afford it. Yes. She was a gem.”
Political strategist Aisha Dew, who was one of those AACT children, echoed that sentiment: “Mama B. She was such an amazing influence on my life and that of so many children… She created a place to learn, and grow and be nurtured.”
Added Janeen Bryant, executive director of the Community Building Initiative, a founding board member of Tomorrow’s R.O.A.D., and one of the many young people Barbara mentored: “She was open, welcoming and loving but also brave and fierce and always willing to stand up for what’s right. And she really believed that in order for children to succeed, all of us had to support them.”
Daughter Kali said her mother “was not aware of her gifts. … She was a beautiful woman and she never knew it. She was very genuine, very meticulous, very responsible from an early age. She was the breadwinner early in my parents’ marriage (when Fergie was in law school). … She was dedicated to mothering.”
“She was always bothered by the status quo,” Kali said. That’s why she did so much to sow change. “She realized she could make something out of nothing because that’s how she grew up.” Her family lived in an Asheville neighborhood she called Sugar Hill. Money was tight and Barbara learned to make all her own clothes.
“Her advocacy for children, and for seniors is quite notable,” said the Rev. Dr. Dwayne Walker, pastor of Little Rock AME Zion Church in Charlotte. Yet she was also active politically. Barbara worked with Rev. Walker to mobilize voters in the 2020 Get-Out-The-Vote Caravan. “She cared deeply about the election. Just to see someone with that kind of passion. … I have great respect and regard for her and for her family.” So do legions of others. Said Sumter: “She came, she made her mark, and is now singing among the angels.”
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Barbara Ferguson, AACT founder, remembered for grace and iron will
