`The Hill' survives in memories

Decades ago, Ridgeview was a thriving, bustling neighborhood

Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

HICKORY – Old photos show a red Coca-Cola sign hanging from the facade of the South Center Dinette, where teenagers in pressed slacks and starched shirts leaned against the diner's brick wall.

Women shopped for thick cuts of meat and fresh vegetables at local markets. Taxis owned by black businessmen drove along 12th and 13th streets, where dozens of other black-owned shops and offices catered to the community.

Those are the iconic images from the 1940s, 50s and early 60s that longtime Ridgeview residents remember of "the Hill."

Decades ago, Ridgeview was a thriving community with many names - Bob Town, Colored Town and Southside, said longtime resident and community historian Drucella Sudderth Hartsoe.

Because it sloped slightly upward from downtown Hickory, "the Hill" became the bustling neighborhood's best-known name.

In Ridgeview, residents say, black history is more than the civil rights movement or a month-long celebration each February.

Here, black history survives in memories of places like Horton's Cafe, The Spot Grocery, Ridgeview High School, and in old photographs and stories.

It lives on the corner of First Street and Fourth Avenue, where, in the 1950s, the Embassy Theater stood and beckoned hordes of children dressed in bandanas and oversized hats to Saturday screenings of the newest Western films.

"There were more cowboys than you could count on the Hill," recalled Hartsoe in her 2001 pictorial memoir of the community. "The kids would take an old worn out broom or a tree limb, which made a good horse by a cowboy."

Until the late 1960s, African Americans from as far as Morganton and Statesville traveled to this mile-wide and mile-long patch of southwest Hickory to visit the dentist, plan a funeral or grab a sandwich.

"All those places are gone," said 72-year-old Eloise Rose, who graduated from Ridgeview High School in 1952 and has worked as the community's library for 38 years.

"They had barber shops and pool halls, and a little soda shop," she said. "It was a fun place."

Blacks started to settle south of Hickory's train tracks in the 1870s, drawn to the area by railroad jobs. During segregation, the Hill supplied the new residents with just about everything they needed, while also serving as the region's African American hub.

But today, Ridgeview is a shadow of its old self, longtime residents say. The Embassy Theater and Horton's Cafe are long gone, while other buildings, such as the Talk of the Town club, sit empty.

Hartsoe's book, "The Hill: Memories of the Ridgeview Community," was published in 2001 is an anthology of the neighborhood.

It describes church gatherings, black business owners repairing shoes and high school students cheering and competing in basketball games in the high school gym.

"The place was packed," Hartsoe said. "Oh, the games were fun. They started selling sweaters with `Ridgeview' across the front and they had the big, black panther mascot on there."

Though Hartsoe recalls good memories from the Hill of the 1940s, '50s and early '60s, she said the dirt roads and rundown homes were a constant reminder that blacks in Hickory weren't treated equally.

"It was a pitiful sight. Little houses with no paint. No sidewalks," she said. "I would watch our kids walk to school in the mud."

In 1964, after reading an article about integration in Southern schools, Hartsoe decided to see if her youngest daughter, Mabel "Bunny" Sudderth, would be interested in attending Hickory High School.

Both blacks and white opposed the idea, Hartsoe said, but there was enough support that she and Bunny agreed that integrating Hickory High School would be worth the effort.

That fall, as an incoming freshman, Bunny became the school's first black student. In the months that followed, more black students began transferring from the Hill's high school to Hickory High.

"People got mad at me," Hartsoe said, "but then the next year everybody went."

Some residents believe that the community started to lose its vitality after Ridgeview High School closed in 1967. Integration, meant to help blacks achieve equality, led to the Hill's demise, they said, by giving blacks a choice of other places to shop or work.

In her book, Hartsoe describe modern-day Ridgeview as "a landscape of vacant lots." By her estimate, 128 of the community's homes and businesses were demolished from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The Hill was no more.

Rose said she treasures the memory of Saturday night dates with her high school boyfriend - dates that ultimately ended with swing dancing at Horton's Cafe on 12th Street.

"That was the favorite hangout," she said. "We'd go to the movies on Saturday afternoon and head over to Horton's Cafe and drink soda and have a sandwich. Then we'd dance."


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