In Fitzgerald’s fields
In Fitzgerald’s fields they toiled, sun-dappled and rain-soaked, caked in mud and in blood and in sweat. They raised corn and peas and potatoes and children and they always had plenty of butter and honey and wool so long as with ceaseless toil they coaxed the stubborn mountainside into giving up its seasonal blessings.
They worked about as hard as, and had about as much as, any other poor white Reconstruction-era Waynesville farmer except for the rights expressed in that document which begins, “We the people” because they were still somehow less than that.
Summer camps help kids stay sharp
When the last bell rings and the doors fly open loosing schoolchildren across the nation out into the sunny summer streets, many of them will turn right back around and participate in a plethora of camps and activities designed to keep them off the couch and active in the world around them.
New book chronicles African American history in WNC
An oral history project documenting African American history in the far western reaches of North Carolina is now a book, thanks to Waynesville’s Pigeon Community Multicultural Development Center.
“I guess the motivation was because Haywood County just doesn’t have very much documented history of African Americans,” said Lyn Forney, the director of the Pigeon Center.
Every Day is Veterans Day at the Pigeon Center
Although honoring veterans each Nov. 11 is a substantial gesture by the grateful citizens of this country, a new program at the Pigeon Community Multicultural Development Center seeks to recognize that the rest of the year is just as important as well.
Forgotten Pigeon Street school has historic roots
More than a century ago, the state of African-American education in the antebellum South was so utterly deplorable that it took the combined forces of a civil rights pioneer and a department store magnate to make lasting improvements that continue to reverberate across the region, including in Western North Carolina.
Pigeon Street revival continues at community center
Things are happening in Waynesville’s historic African American community along the Pigeon Street corridor; the town is pursuing a grant to identify historic structures, has demolished a problematic former church and is planning a park of some sort for the site.
