Join the Team at the YMI Cultural Center

Since 1893 until Present day…

Our goal was and will always be the elevation of Black people

Consider making a tax deductible donation to our Capital Campaign this giving season

As one of America’s oldest Black cultural centers, we rely on community support. Donations will go toward elevating the look, reach, and abilities of our organization.

YMI is dedicated to blazing a new path forward while honoring our past achievements

  • Honor our history and legacy

  • Commitment to the Black community

  • Stewardship of all funds entrusted to us

  • Transparency in the way we communicate our actions

  • Accountability to honor our commitments

OUR VALUES

It was Mr. Issac Dickson and Dr. Edward Stephens’ vision that the building's users would buy the YMI building from profits earned by the stores and offices on the first floor. After much effort on the part of the African American community, the Vanderbilt estate was paid $10,000 for the building in 1906. The multi-use building was the center for social activity in the community where it supported professional offices, a public library and the YMI Orchestra.

While the YMI flourished during segregation, integration signaled a new era in the country and the YMI ceased to be the focal point of social life for Asheville's African Americans. Following a period of decline in the 1960s and 1970s, a coalition of nine black churches, with the support of both the black and white communities, bought the YMI in 1980.

The building was restored and reestablished as the YMI Cultural Center. Since 1981, the YMI Cultural Center has developed a variety of cultural programs and exhibitions of art and artifacts from Asheville to Africa preserving the heritage of African Americans in Buncombe County.

HISTORY

Through so-called Jim Crow laws (named after a derogatory term for Blacks), legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, asylums, jails and residential homes. Denied public educational resources, people of color strengthened their own schools and communities and fought for the resources that had been unjustly denied to their children. Parents’ demands for better schools became a crucial part of the larger struggle for civil rights.

While many African Americans, especially in the South, experienced continuing poverty and hardship in the 1950s, the decade was also to some extent an era of opportunities and the YMI Cultural Center stood as a beacon. Blacks in surrounding communities developed extensive networks and business organizations with the help from this thriving institution. The Black underclass continues to define Black America in the view of much of the public and here in Buncombe County the YMI will raise the bar even higher!

When we think about racial history, we often envision a linear path, one that begins in a shameful period but moves unerringly in a single direction towards equality. The narrative of racial progress starts with slavery, ascends to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, then segregation and Jim Crow to the victories of civil-rights, and then brings us to 2008 for Barack Obama’s election and many asserted at that time that America had finally turned a corner, not quite! We still haven’t seen what is yet to come, from the nation or the YMI!

Please consider donating to our Capital Campaign to help support our ongoing efforts to restore and uplift this important institution.