Unseen Staunton: What we learned on our tour of the community
STAUNTON — With less than 20% of Staunton's population being people of color, two of our newer reporters wanted to connect with the lesser-heard voices in the city.
Chris Lassiter recently took us on a tour where we met some must-know people in the Black community and the stories that brought them together in Staunton.
Thrift shop and barber chops
The first stop of our tour was at the corner of North Central Avenue and West Frederick Street. We walked into D. Moats’ barber shop to the sound of music playing in the background, the buzz of clippers and conversation.
Lassiter said before the pandemic, people would beat the sunrise to get in line for Moats. The line would form at 4 a.m, and Lassiter even had a friend who stayed overnight to be first in line.
People come for the quality, cost and great conversation, but Lassiter likes to give him a hard time.
“He’s a much better barber than a comedian,” he said. “I tell him that all the time.”
Moments after entering the shop, we met Maurice Ellison, who Lassiter calls “Baltimore," the place where Ellison spent many of his years. He has lived up and down the coast along with family, including spending time in Raleigh until ending up in Staunton.
He has a shop, called Staunton Yard Sale which sits right next to D. Moats'. His shop is filled with clothing, household items, toys and collectibles. He even has machines that make all kinds of sweet and salty treats — popcorn, snow cones and cotton candy.
When you step outside, there may be a bike or a scooter leaned against the building. "Baltimore" is trying to give back to the community, specifically children. He takes donations like clothing and toys and once he hears about a family in need, he gives them what he has.
“I really want to start sending shoes, clothes and little toys to everywhere,” he said.
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West Johnson Street chats
Next on our list was the West Johnson Street neighborhood, where we met Cliff and Willie. Cliff is from Staunton. His grandfather was born in a house on Cochran Street and he spent his childhood running up and down West Johnson.
Cliff and Willie love company. Shortly after meeting, they offered us to sit with them on their front porch.
Cliff was born in Staunton, but once he got older he spent years up north. Once his children moved out of the house and he faced a harsh, sub-zero temperature winter in Minnesota, he was ready to come home.
How he and Willie met is pretty wild. He decided to head back to Connecticut just to visit family before he came back to Staunton. He went out one evening and saw Willie – but it wasn’t their first time meeting.
They had seen each other years prior one evening and had a great time, but they didn’t even get each other’s names. When they met again Cliff knew it was meant to be.
“That was it,” he said. “I didn’t even remember her name.”
Willie was planning on moving in with her daughter, but Cliff convinced her to come back to Virginia with him and start a life together.
They took a leap of faith, and 16 years later, they’re moving into their new home on Stafford Street.
Lassiter likes to call Cliff the gatekeeper of the West Johnson neighborhood. He knows everyone and he is who people go to for information on the neighborhood’s past and future plans.
When they moved to West Johnson together, it was nothing like the neighborhood Cliff left. There weren’t any kids playing outside. There was a serious drug problem. The streets were filled with litter.
Cliff recalls struggling to fall asleep at night because of the breaking of bottles and shouting late at night.
“My town was never like this,” he said.
One morning, Cliff and Willie did something no one else had. They grabbed trash bags and walked down Richardson Street picking up garbage. People noticed. They came out onto their porches and started helping.
“Do you need a rake?” Cliff remembers one person asking as they were walking down to help.
That’s when the neighborhood started to change for the better. As people would meet outside to help clean up, Cliff started asking people if they’d be interested in creating a community garden.
“Give everybody something to do,” he said.
And he was right. The neighborhood used the space where two houses currently sit across from their house for the garden. It was two lots filled with fresh vegetables and fruit grown by neighbors.
It brought people together, Cliff said.
Drug use in the neighborhood went down, people got to know each other again and Cliff started to recognize his neighborhood.
The garden is gone now. Habitat for Humanity has built several houses, two of which are now where the garden once was, but Cliff said it was the right thing to do. Instead of gentrifying the neighborhood – building houses that cost more than what those in the area can afford, forcing them to move out – Cliff and Willie have worked closely with Habitat for Humanity. That way, the neighborhood can get the attention it deserves without displacing its residents.
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Chicken stops in the West End
No tour of Staunton is complete without finding out about some good eats. As Lassiter drove us around, he pointed out the Krispy Krunchy Chicken at the Little Quick Mart on West Beverley Street as one of the best chicken spots in the city.
In our experience, convenience store food has been hit or miss, and Lassiter must've seen our eyes get wide at the declaration.
He quickly clarified to say the stop wasn't actually the best, and drove us over to Beverley Street Convenience, his actual top fried chicken in Staunton.
But in learning about the best fried chicken in the area, there was also a tinge of that communal feel that had made our tour so interesting. Lassiter specified to us that you had to go in and check to see who was cooking, specifically looking for a grandmother in the community that worked part-time at Beverley Street Convenience. The other trick was to check what side dishes were available.
It was yet another part of Staunton that we found where the closeness of the community impacted the knowledge of the locality. Most (perhaps just us) wouldn't think of a small convenience store as a fried chicken destination, but good eats are good eats, especially when it's a grandmother's cooking.
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What comes next?
We learned a lot on our tour throughout Staunton, including visiting the affordable housing communities that exist in Staunton. We'll have more to come in the days and weeks ahead as we learn more about the people who are often unseen and unheard in those neighborhoods.
We'll also be learning more from Lassiter about Waynesboro in the near future, and we'll be exploring more of Augusta County as well to learn more about life in the area that often flies under-the-radar in the area.
— Katelyn Waltemyer (she/her) is the government watchdog reporter for The News Leader. Have a news tip on local government? Or a good feature? You can reach Katelyn at kwaltemyer@newsleader.com. Follow her on Twitter @Kate_Waltemyer.
Akhil Ganesh is the Government Reporter at The News Leader. You can contact him at aganesh@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @akhildoesthings.
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Staunton tour takeaways: Community voices and lesser-known parts of the city
