African-American environmentalist to speak in Asheville

By Lola LaFey

The following are excerpts from an interview with MaVynee Betsch, the main character of American Beach: A Saga of Race, Wealth and Memory by Russ Rymer. She will be speaking at Issues Newsstand (32 Biltmore Ave.) on Thursday, April 19, at 7pm, and at Malaprop’s Bookstore (55 Haywood St.) on Friday, April 20, at 7pm.

Betsch will discuss her ongoing battle to preserve what is left of Florida’s first Black beach resort, called American Beach. Betsch’s great-grandfather, A. L. Lewis, founded American Beach in 1935; the beach is now in danger of being developed into an upscale golf resort. Betsch, a former opera diva who gave her inheritance to environmental organizations, is now fighting to reclaim American Beach as a historical resort.

AGR: You are the main character in American Beach. Can you tell us a little bit about this book?

Betsch: Russ Rymer was a reporter from the New Yorker Magazine, he spent at least eight years off and on here. His interviews were a wonderful experience. He got the substance of what American Beach is all about… It is out now along with the documentary. The book tells you about our struggle to try to get 80 acres saved. The book tells you all about that, it tells you about my singing in the opera, when I was just 20 years old. I danced the dance of the seven veils. It tells you all about my great-grandfather, A.L. Lewis, a man who must have been an absolute saint. He was one of the seven founders of an insurance company that started out as a burial society. Don’t forget 1901, the first insurance company in Florida. Here’s this man, Florida’s first black millionaire, so we can all be proud and get inspiration.

AGR: You were born into money, you had a promising opera career in Europe; how is it that you’ve become a pauper?

Betsch: It all goes back to my great-grandfather, and the way he would always tell us, what word is in the middle of business? We don’t know what it is? Sin. Think about it! and he’d say money is like manure; if you put a little bit on a plant it may not live, but if you put too much you’ll kill it, so spread it around. He lived the very philosophy that he talked, so I’m a free spirit also.

When I received all this money, I’m thinking I’m going to save the world, because having moved to the beach I was just taken aback by the birds. I sponsored biodiversity conferences in Brazil and of course my main thing was the butterflies… So who needs money? The food is the minimum that I need and I work as a housesitter. I’m a member of 60 environmental organizations. Here I am this free spirit, and I love it… I didn’t see money as a criteria to be happy.

AGR: American Beach has a rich and also a disgraceful history going back further than is chronicled in the book. Can you tell us a little about this history?

Betsch: It has a good and a bad side. The good side is that Florida was the underground railroad, oh yes. Slaves wanted to escape the horrors of the British from South Carolina and Georgia, they were coming south to Florida. The King said if you cross the border you’re free, not that he loved us, he saw us as a way to be a militia against the British.

Now the bad side is in 1808 when the United States said no more slaves coming in, guess who did it illegally? Little old stinking Fernindina. (Fernindina is a town in Amelia Island, the island where American Beach is located.) So this area supplied slaves for the entire south illegally And of course, if the slave traders were caught, the slaves were dumped overboard. So their spirits are still here.

In spring we have a ceremony for the African goddess Yemaja, the goddess of the sea, to appease these spirits, because burial is very formal. In many African cultures the funeral is more formal than the wedding. American Beach is historically a gem. You just can’t get enough of it. I’m bragging when I say I don’t know of another place with this much unusual Black history.

Bush urged to clean up TVA smog

By Lynn Bonner and James Eli Shiffer

Apr. 12— The entire North Carolina Senate has asked President Bush to clean up the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)’s coal-fired power plants, whose smokestacks pump out much of the pollution that is choking North Carolina’s mountains.

A letter hand-delivered to Bush during his North Carolina visit Wednesday carried signatures of all 35 Senate Democrats and 15 Senate Republicans and a plea for action on what has become one of the state’s most serious environmental problems.

“The time to correct this problem is now and the primary culprit is the TVA system of power plants owned and operated by the federal government,” the senators wrote.

The TVA’s power plants are located in Tennessee and other states upwind from North Carolina.

“TVA is a federally owned and operated facility and it ought to be the model of environmental excellence,” they wrote.

Instead, the senators cited graphic statistics about the decline of air quality in the mountains. More Western North Carolina residents reportedly die from lung-related illnesses than those in other parts of the state, while average visibility in parts of the region has dropped from 65 miles in 1980 to 15 miles today.

Robert Bruck, an NC State University scientist, estimated that 80 percent of the air pollution in the west comes from out of state, primarily from TVA smokestacks, the senators wrote.

The letter calls for installation of scrubbers and chemical filters known as selective catalytic reduction on the TVA plants.

The letter is a sign that the state plans to use its own clean air measures to pressure surrounding states to do the same.

Earlier this month, bills were introduced in the Senate and House that would impose the nation’s toughest pollution controls on 14 coal-burning plants in North Carolina.

With a North Raleigh mall construction site as a backdrop, professional planners Wednesday asked the General Assembly to push ahead with managed-growth legislation.

Census reports on the state’s 21 percent population growth underscore the need for a statewide program to encourage local planning goals, the planners say.

“We’re having an alarming rate of growth,” said Richard Hails, president of the North Carolina chapter of the American Planning Association and a member of the Planning Department in Durham.

“Planners are not against growth,” he said. “We’re also very aware that there are better ways and worse ways to be growing.”

Over the past few months, the association has made 50 presentations on managed growth in 30 counties as part of its “Smart Growth Challenge.”

Source: Raleigh News-Observer: www.newsobserver.com