The concept of a mobile salon was developed by 21-year-old Angel Pittman as she considered methods to grow her hairstyle business. She claimed that she had never seen someone run a mobile salon in the US.
“I’ve never seen anybody driving around doing people’s hair,” she told the Guardian. “But not only did I want to get paid for doing hair, I wanted to drive around, do a couple of homeless people’s hair and maybe go to some prisons and help incarcerated people.”
She spent $10,000 on land in North Carolina to realize her ambition, and later she bought three school buses to operate her mobile salon business. She planned to live in one of the buses while using the other two as mobile hair salons.
Her desire, however, never came true because of the location of the land she purchased, which is just outside of Salisbury, a tiny community in Rowan County, North Carolina, known for racial segregation and having a preponderance of white residents.
She came across a white supremacist who did not feel at ease residing close by and grew more aggressive over time. One day, she recalled, she came back from her parents’ house to find her buses had been vandalized.
In addition to having broken glass windows with racial epithets inscribed on them, his yard was decorated with Confederate flags, swastikas, and KKK signs. Pittman attempted to contact the police but was unsuccessful.
The neighbor always had white supremacist signs on display, according to Mark McDaniel, one of the sheriff’s captains who was interviewed by The Guardian.
“It wasn’t like he put it there overnight,” McDaniel told the Guardian. “It’s nothing like that. So those items were not just put there after the buses were put there.”
Pittman disputed the police assessment of the attacks and fearing for her life, decided to move back home to Charlotte. She is also rebuilding from scratch.
“To have all of that ripped from under me was really hurtful,” she said. “I cried for a long time. For somebody to be hateful because of my skin color makes it even worse. It’s really heartbreaking.”
One of her actions is to start a fundraising campaign in order to make up for her losses and purchase land in Charlotte. She has so far been successful in towing two of her buses to Charlotte. Due to the severity of the vandalism, the third business is still operating in Salisbury.