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.

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.

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.