Jessie H. Copeland

Jessie Highsmith Copeland

Jessie Copeland was a woman with community spirit who fought for the rights of tenants in housing communities.  A single mother of three, she moved into Chavis Heights in 1951, remembering it as a place where residents banded together and tended beautiful gardens.  It was a safe place to raise children and families looked out for one another. 

Considered “The Mother of Chavis Heights”, she was always looking out for children and young mothers, remembering when she had been one herself.  She raised many children other than her three, in the neighborhood as well as those she nurtured as a domestic worker.

Mrs. Copeland’s community activism helped to raise awareness in Raleigh of the issues of those living in public housing who seemed to have been forgotten.  She was on the Raleigh Housing Authority’s Board of Directors for eight years, after being the first public housing resident appointed in 1974 and rising through the ranks to become the Vice Chair. She helped birth the Raleigh Housing Authority’s Inter-Project Council, which was a group formed to give voice to residents through the presidents of the tenant associations at all of the city’s public housing complexes.

As an education advocate for young people, she also encouraged the establishment of the housing authority’s scholarship program. She was described in a newspaper article as a “griot, a West African storyteller who weaves tales of history about the community”.  She delighted in telling the children in the community about their past and legacy.  Mrs. Copeland (sometimes Miz Jessie) taught children to respect themselves, their elders and one another.

When the Chavis Heights Center was renovated in 1989, it was renamed the Copeland Center to honor her for all of the work that she had done.  And, she fed love from the Center just as she had done from her home for so many years.  The Center had multiple activities for children, including after school treats, one-on-one tutorials; arts and crafts projects, and field trips.  Often food would be brought to the Center for her to distribute to families in the neighborhood.

It was said that “she speaks and stands firm on her convictions….she pushes right to the hilt for what she thinks is right.”  One of her statements when the City of Raleigh was redefining the public housing policies was “I resent the idea that they don’t want us in their community because of crime.  I don’t care where we go, nobody wants us.  They want us to come into their homes to do their work, but they don’t want us to live in their neighborhoods.  I think if we were helped, we’d be better people and the police wouldn’t have to come in our neighborhood.”

Mrs. Copeland believed that “people need more than mortar and bricks.”  She included education in that belief.  That love she gave out was one of the reasons that she didn’t want to leave Chavis Heights.  After the Raleigh Housing Authority won a Hope VI grant to raze Chavis Heights, which meant moving 296 families and replacing it with 163, she said, “it sounds like we’re swapping the devil for the witch…That place needs a lot of work, but it’s not good to take it from 296 down to 90 (public housing units).  We need all the public housing we can get.”

She won numerous awards during the course of her lifetime including the Presidents Volunteer Action Award (1992); the Rosa Parks Award (1995); and was designated one of President Clinton’s Points of Light.  She also received the HUD Public Housing Recognition Award in 1984.

Mrs. Jessie H. Copeland died in 2011.