W.E. Roland Jewelry Company stood at 24 South Market Street across from the YMI and was owned by William Ernest Roland and Georgia Evelyn Harling Roland. William Ernest Roland led the Asheville-Buncombe County Citizens Organization, working to protect voting rights and advocate for equal opportunities. Georgia Evelyn Harling Roland belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star and the League of Women Voters. In 1960, the Rolands provided strategy, training, and meeting space to Black teenagers who founded the Asheville Student Committee on Racial Equality and fought for equal rights. The YMI was a cultural institution and an anchor in the Black business district known as The Block, and over the past 131 years it housed many Black-owned businesses, including a candy store, as well as the Market Street Branch Library, where children gathered for Music Hour in 1955 and for Story Hour in 1959, a bimonthly event sponsored by the Asheville chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.