CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Apartment buildings sometimes seem to overtake Charlotte, and the Genesis Park neighborhood is no exception. But, what is less visible is what these homes used to be.

• Brewton grew up in what was known as the Fairview Homes/Double Oaks community
• It struggled with violence, which hit Brewton’s family personally when her husband was murdered on the way home from work
• She received a calling to open a ministry and food pantry, rather than watch her neighborhood struggle

“You couldn’t come and go as you wanted to because of the gun battles and the drugs,” says Pastor Rosa Marion, who grew up in the neighborhood.

“Old people in the neighborhood were complaining that they couldn’t sleep at night,” Marion says. “They had to lay on the floor because of gun violence.”

Marion is the sister of the late Pastor Barbara Brewton-Cameron, who was in her sixties when she died more than a decade ago.

Brewton grew up in what was known as the Fairview Homes/Double Oaks community. It struggled with violence, which hit Brewton’s family personally when her husband was murdered on the way home from work. After that, she moved her family out of the area until she received a calling.

“God spoke to her and told her to go back, and you help the neighborhood,” Marion says.

She opened a ministry and food pantry, rather than watch her neighborhood’s struggles, and she took concerns directly to the top.

“She was a lady who you had to respect, and you had to listen to because she would come up and almost grab you by the collar and say ‘let me tell you something we need to do,’” says former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot.

Vinroot remembers a time when Brewton called him up after a murder and told him to come to the neighborhood.

“She said I want police officers here, I want this place patrolled, you need to change that and you need to be responsible for it,” Vinroot says. “I respected her enough…that I needed to respond.”

Brewton took her message to anyone who would listen. Decades later, the results speak for themselves.

“It had a great impact on the neighborhood,” says Genesis Park resident Lula Jones.

Jones says the neighborhood has become safer.

More than 10 years after Brewton’s death, Pastor Marion continues her sister’s legacy with a ministry that feeds people in the neighborhood.

Brewton’s name is also now a street, a reminder for the new residents who live in this old neighborhood.

“It’s so important that they know they come from a neighborhood that was transitioned by one woman that was so powerful,” Marion says.

The neighborhood is planning to paint a mural of Brewton on the wall being built beside I-77.