Angel Pittman wanted to hit the road and style clients’ hair in a mobile salon — but she claims her journey has been cut short by racism.
The 21-year-old black stylist said she purchased unrestricted North Carolina land for $10,000 to set up home base and spent $14,000 on three school buses to fuel her dreams.
She says her plans were ruined by an unfriendly white neighbor who allegedly displayed Confederate flags, swastikas and KKK signs in his yard. She suspects he was behind destruction of her buses that she reported shortly after moving to Salisbury in September.
In January, she posted a TikTok of a heated interaction with a man she identified as the neighbor.
“When I scouted the land the first two times before buying the property, the neighbor was not around,” Pittman told The Post of the man, whose name she did not disclose.
“Our first time seeing him was the day we brought the buses over to the land and we had an awkward exchange. He asked us what we were doing there and if we were trying to get shade.”
Salisbury, which sits between Charlotte and Greensboro, has made headlines for racial incidents as recently as last year.
According to US Census data from 2022, nearly 54% of the city’s population is white — while 37% is black. Salisbury is the seat of Rowan County, which is nearly 80% white.
The Guardian reported the county is a “sundown” area, a term originating from the Jim Crow era that’s used to refer to segregated white communities.
Katherine Mellen Charron, a history professor at North Carolina State University, told the outlet that “sundown towns” limited homeownership for black Americans, “economically and politically” benefitting “white supremacists.”
“It’s a matter of economic insecurity and rising economic inequality, and the sense that white property values will go down if black people move into the neighborhood and real estate agents blockbusting and taking advantage of that,” she explained.
Pittman recalled saving since she was 17 to put her bus plans in motion, claiming things went south when she moved onto the land.
She told The Guardian her neighbor sat in his yard with his “gun out the whole time.”
She continued: “He was like, ‘Get the f–k off my lawn. And [that] we need to get them f–king buses off his lawn. So basically saying, my land was his.”
In late September, her family reported to the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office that someone had broken the glass and vandalized her buses with racial slurs, according to a police report obtained by The Post.
Videos she posted on TikTok show wrecked yellow buses, with windows smashed and vulgar words spray painted on the hoods and sides.
Pittman told The Post that the grill on one bus was also broken, two catalytic converters were stolen, several wires were cut, and the “transmission was purposely messed up in one of the buses.”
She further claimed someone “urinated and defecated all over one of the buses.”
“So, out of three working buses, only one is running properly now,” she added.
Pittman told The Post that law enforcement “took a very long time to arrive,” and sheriff’s deputies “did absolutely nothing” when they showed up.
Pittman alleges the police said the neighbor “was affiliated with the KKK and some local Nazi group” and advised her to get a “no trespassing sign/order.”
In a statement released Wednesday by the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office, and obtained by The Post, the deputy who took the vandalism complaint reported informing the family “that he routinely patrols that area and has first-hand knowledge” that the neighbor’s “racist statues and flags” “have been there months prior” to Pittman’s land purchase.
Pittman had told The Post the neighbor “didn’t have all of the Confederate flags erected, the KKK statues or the swastikas spray painted everywhere” before the incident.
The sheriff’s office said Pittman has not contacted deputies to report any threats made against her or her family, but the department says it has reached out to her family to see if she would like to “make any further comment or complaint.”
Pittman, meanwhile, said she has cut her losses and moved back to Charlotte, resorting to GoFundMe to raise money to re-start her business endeavors after spending the “bulk” of her savings.
“I don’t feel comfortable at all to allow my buses to remain on the land for fear of further damages or even my life being endangered,” she wrote on the fundraising page, which she created in November.
She has raised more than $88,000 as of Tuesday, surpassing her goal of $80,000.
“The goal of the money raised is so I can fix the damages done to the buses and find unrestricted land in Charlotte so I can continue the work towards my dreams,” she noted.
She told The Post: “I am planning on turning one bus [into] a mobile hair salon and the other two buses into tiny homes. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.”