As part of the community efforts to help raise local consciousness of racial history Buncombe County Special Collections, in partnership with Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County and the Equal Justice Initiative, is preparing to mount a permanent exhibit about racial terror violence in Buncombe County. The central focus of the exhibit is soil
Buncombe County Special Collections is now accepting community member submissions to our HeardTell Blog! Since 2013 our blog, HeardTell, has engaged lovers of Buncombe County history by sharing stories about and found in our archive. Over the years, HeardTell has become a tremendous resource and outreach tool, reaching more than half a million views. The
Working in local history archives at UNCA Ramsey Library and at Pack Library’s North Carolina Room, I thought often about the many fascinating stories that remain hidden in the oral histories of both collections. Until the interview is transcribed, the story remains untold. Few people will have the time or the patience to listen to the
The Woodfin community, like many other Buncombe County communities is named for a man who enslaved human beings. If you’ve followed along in this series, you’ve probably recognized that to be a common theme among communities; they’re named for people of extravagant wealth. Wealth earned on the backs of enslaved black people. Indeed, our county
I remember “worst” Asheville. It’s the neighborhood where my Grandfather was born in a house with dirt floors, where I went to preschool (back when Crossroads Assembly was “West Asheville Assembly” located on Haywood Rd.), attended my first dance lessons (in the building where Asheville Greenworks is today), and went along with my mother to
Asheville’s real estate boom in the 1920’s fostered the growth of many neighborhoods: Lakeview Park, Malvern Hills, Horney Heights, and Kenilworth, just to name a few. Biltmore Avenue borders Kenilworth on the east and across the avenue, on a knoll overlooking Biltmore Village, is the pocket neighborhood of St. Dunstan’s Circle. A Mr. Roebling first
The Creation of a Public School System for the City of Asheville, 1887-1888 Setting Up the System and Hiring the Teachers Asheville Times, July 29, 1887: “Graded School Carried: Asheville Keeps to the Front By a Very Close Squeeze” “We need not multiply words to express pleasure at the result of the election yesterday on
Unlike most of the communities we’ve covered in this series, the community of Ramoth is in reality, no longer. Once a rather large, and even incorporated suburb of Asheville, most folks living in Buncombe County today have probably never heard of this North Asheville community. Indeed, at one time, Ramoth was so large, they intended