Anne Hartley’s brick home in Ebony, Va., overlooks windswept fields, a Methodist church, a basic retailer and the intersection of two nation roads, a pastoral setting that evokes an Edward Hopper portray or a pale postcard from the South.

Now this scene is being threatened, Ms. Hartley mentioned, by a plan to construct what each small American city appears to have: a Dollar General.

A descendant of one in every of Ebony’s founding households, Ms. Hartley says the low cost retailer — which might be constructed subsequent to her dwelling — will create site visitors issues within the space, with individuals drawn to the model’s signature yellow signal and its aisles crammed with cheap meals and family staples.

Beyond the shop itself, Ms. Hartley and plenty of others with ties to Ebony assume it would open the door to extra growth that can spoil the character of their tiny, rural neighborhood of about 230 individuals. The identify of their web site and the rallying cry for his or her marketing campaign in opposition to the Dollar General is “Keep Ebony Country.”

“We don’t want over-commercialization to destroy the integrity of the community,” Ms. Hartley mentioned.

Jerry Jones additionally has sturdy emotions about Dollar General. He, too, grew up in Ebony and, for a number of years, was Ms. Hartley’s classmate on the native public faculty. He went on to handle grocery shops round southern Virginia and later owned a gasoline station in Ebony that bought freshly baked biscuits and deep-fried baloney burgers.

Mostly retired now, Mr. Jones owns the land the place the Dollar General could be constructed. He mentioned the shop would offer the county’s residents a handy and reasonably priced place to buy, whereas additionally producing sorely wanted tax income.

“You still need to have that balance between the people with nicer things and the people who live paycheck to paycheck,” Mr. Jones mentioned. “To me, Dollar General fits right in with that.”

The dispute in Ebony, which has been happening for greater than three years, is about planning and zoning, however it additionally touches on a deeper situation simmering in lots of components of rural America, whether or not the disputes are about cellphone towers or snowmobile trails. What does “country” imply to totally different individuals in a small neighborhood?

In most locations, Dollar General is profitable. Across the United States, the corporate has made an aggressive push to permeate hundreds of far-flung or impoverished communities with shops that, together with low costs, are criticized for his or her unhealthy meals choices and low-paid employees.

An growing variety of these proposed greenback shops are resulting in disputes, producing opponents in small cities and struggling cities. The retailer has been assailed by a assume tank for the negative effects it has on small companies and by the Biden administration for the unkempt condition of its stores.

Yet, a overwhelming majority of the proposed greenback shops are being constructed. One in three shops that opened within the United States in 2022 was a greenback retailer.

Those who oppose the proposed Dollar General in Ebony try to buck the development.

About 90 miles south of Richmond, Ebony sits on the sting of Lake Gaston and is a haven for second houses that function an essential tax base. Ebony is a part of Brunswick County, as soon as a hub for tobacco farming, the place the median family revenue is about $49,600, far under the statewide median of $80,600. More than half the county’s inhabitants is Black.

The five-member Brunswick County Board of Supervisors permitted a zoning change that will permit the shop to be in-built a 3-to-2 vote.

The supervisors who voted to approve the shop declined to remark, citing a lawsuit that Ms. Hartley and different opponents filed difficult their choice.

In an announcement, Dollar General mentioned that it provided contemporary produces in hundreds of shops and offered a “safe work environment” and “competitive wages.”

“We regularly hear from communities, particularly in rural areas, asking us to bring a Dollar General to their hometown,” the corporate added. “We understand a Dollar General would be welcomed by many Ebony residents and hope to be able to serve that community.”

Many of the opponents of the shop are pushed by their appreciation for Ebony’s previous and what they hope may be preserved. And some relative newcomers to the neighborhood are sympathetic to their argument. Mohamed Abouemara moved to southern Virginia from New York to function comfort shops and has run the Ebony General Store for 9 years.

He mentioned his retailer, the place locals can socialize and purchase sizzling meals, performed an essential function in a rural neighborhood.

A greenback retailer, he mentioned, would considerably damage his enterprise. “Jerry is a friend of mine,” Mr. Abouemara mentioned of Mr. Jones. “I am not angry at him. But if he still owned his store, he would not let a Dollar General come here.”

A way of place.

Ms. Hartley is a meticulous keeper of household and Ebony historical past. Her household has owned land within the space for generations, and her great-grandfather named the neighborhood within the late 1800s after a black horse referred to as Ebony.

The household additionally ran a neighborhood retailer. When Ms. Hartley was rising up in Ebony within the Nineteen Sixties, her father operated a enterprise, which had a butcher store, a barbershop and a mill within the again. Ms. Hartley helped her mother and father within the retailer when she was nonetheless a baby, and she or he remembers her father working lengthy hours, from early within the morning till late within the night. “It was the center of our family life,” she mentioned of small-town retailing.

Ms. Hartley attended the University of North Carolina, the place she majored in math and later labored as a pc programmer, a uncommon place for a girl within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s and a degree of pleasure for her.

She now owns her household’s home in Ebony, the place household pictures, spanning many generations, cowl the partitions and facet tables.

Ms. Hartley’s major residence is in Chapel Hill, N.C., about 90 miles south, however she recurrently visits the home in Ebony.

Ms. Hartley says she is intent on defending a rural intersection from a field retailer for the great of a neighborhood and native economic system, which is searching for to spice up tourism

Her lawsuit argues that the county has violated its personal complete plan that calls out the significance of the world’s scenic landscapes. The county has mentioned in courtroom papers that the plan is merely meant as a information for growth.

Dozens of native residents and other people with roots in Ebony have mobilized in opposition to the event as a part of the Ebony Preservation Group. They have raised donations to help their authorized struggle and lobbied the state to have the neighborhood thought-about to be a part of the National Register of Historic Places.

Elizabeth Nash Horne, whose mother and father and grandparents are buried in a cemetery subsequent to the proposed retailer, mentioned a sequence retailer in Ebony was “just unnecessary.” There are already three current greenback shops only some miles from Ebony.

Some say they acknowledge that the county wants tax income. “But are we going to sell our soul for anything that comes along?” mentioned Bobby Conner, who grew up in Ebony and now works on tourism initiatives for Brunswick County.

The primary route into Ebony from the interstate is Route 903, a two-lane highway lined by billboards promoting actual property that ultimately opens up into farm fields and pine groves.

Route 903 involves an intersection in Ebony the place there’s a gasoline station on one facet of the highway and, on the opposite, the Ebony General Store, a dimly lit warren of canned greens and soda bottles the place the odor of fried catfish mingles with that of steaming sizzling canines.

Sid Cutts, a house builder who has developed properties on Lake Gaston, mentioned Ebony and different historic-looking crossroads had been changing into more and more uncommon within the South.

“I use the term rural elegance,” Mr. Cutts mentioned in describing Ebony.

Mr. Cutts mentioned his purchasers from bigger cities who had been constructing lake homes had been essential to the neighborhood as a result of they spent cash on the native companies. But they’re searching for the down-home allure they will discover on the long-running Ebony General Store, he mentioned, not one other Dollar General.

‘I am pure country.’

Mr. Jones says he, too, has Ebony’s finest curiosity at coronary heart in searching for to deliver a Dollar General to the neighborhood.

Mr. Jones’s father and grandfather purchased land in Ebony within the Nineteen Fifties and plenty of members of his household nonetheless dwell in Ebony. Several of them are neighbors of Ms. Hartley.

Mr. Jones didn’t go to varsity, however he labored his means up by A.&P., managing a number of shops in Virginia.

In the Nineties, Mr. Jones constructed a gasoline station and comfort retailer throughout from the Ebony General Store.

He bought his retailer in 2005 and now lives in a close-by city, although he recurrently farms land in Ebony. Mr. Jones mentioned he didn’t perceive how placing a 3rd enterprise in a well-trafficked intersection would destroy Ebony’s rural character.

“What character do they really want to save?” he mentioned. “I am still going to be out there on my tractor. None of that is going to change one iota. I just won’t have to drive as far to get a cold drink or a Pop-Tart.”

Mr. Jones’s aunt Betty Lett lives throughout the road from the place the shop could be constructed. She thinks a greenback retailer would deliver new pleasure to Ebony.

“I am pure country,” Ms. Lett mentioned one afternoon whereas sitting throughout from Mr. Jones in her front room. An vintage doll perched on a swing hung from the ceiling.

Mr. Jones shrugged off the criticisms of greenback shops — that their aisles and dumpsters outdoors are a multitude and that their staff underpaid. He identified that the hourly minimal wage in Virginia is $12.

“I never even made it to $10 an hour,” mentioned Ms. Lett, who retired in 2007, after 4 many years of manufacturing facility and distribution heart work. “I should go back to work,” she joked.

Shaunton Taylor, who stopped to refill on gasoline on the Ebony General Store one afternoon, mentioned she would nonetheless store there even when a greenback retailer got here alongside.

Ms. Taylor lives in a house on a household homestead, three miles from the positioning of the proposed Dollar General. The homestead was first inhabited by her great-grandparents, who had been farmers.

“I am open-minded about new things, especially in a rural area,” mentioned Ms Taylor, who works at a nursing dwelling and in addition writes poetry. “You have to accept anything new.”

This 12 months, Ms. Hartley requested for the Virginia Supreme Court to listen to the case, arguing that the problem of how a county interprets its complete plan would “affect all Virginians for years to come.” She is assured that her group will ultimately prevail.

In the meantime, Ms. Hartley reached out to Mr. Jones with a suggestion: She informed him {that a} supporter of her group would match regardless of the developer of the Dollar General retailer would pay Mr. Jones for the property — about $88,000, Mr. Jones mentioned.

But Mr. Jones declined. His thought and the preservation group’s thought for what ought to occur with the land, he mentioned, “just don’t match.”