The shuttered paper mill at the heart of Canton is still there — for now. One day it won’t be, but a forthcoming monument will ensure the generations of papermakers that made Canton great won’t ever be forgotten.

Overcast skies didn’t deter a large crowd from coming out to witness the unveiling of the sculpture “Sowing Seeds of the Future,” on Saturday, March 23,­ in downtown Franklin. 

The state government complex in Raleigh is home to a new park. Constructed on Lane Street between the legislative building and the governor’s mansion, North Carolina Freedom Park was designed by the late Phil Freelon of the architecture firm Perkins + Will. 

On April 15, 2019, Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the world’s most beloved architectural landmarks, caught fire. The blaze started in the roof, incinerating the enormous ancient wooden beams located there and causing the collapse of the central spire, which “leaned sideways, snapped like a matchstick, and crashed through the flaming roof of the nave.”

While much of the nation is talking about removing monuments, the discussion in one Western North Carolina county is also about installing them — and that discussion is no less contentious. 

By the faculty of Western Carolina University’s Department of Anthropology and Sociology

Recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstrate the inability and unwillingness of the U.S. to deal with issues of race and racism. When neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups freely assemble to promote not free speech but violence in the face of a Confederate statue being removed, we must question the purpose of these monuments in our communities.

A sparsely attended town hall meeting hosted by Bryson City Republican Rep. Mike Clampitt took an unexpected turn Sept. 5 when a member of the crowd called him a racist.

Ever since an August protest over removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent, a nationwide debate has erupted over the part Confederate monuments play in glorifying racism and treason — and the metal-cast Confederate solider standing guard over downtown Sylva is no exception.

The town of Sylva now has new rules governing when and where parades and demonstrations can take place, with revisions taking place swiftly following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Aug. 11-12.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — Nobel prize winning author William Faulkner

This oft-trotted out line from William Faulkner’s novel Requiem for a Nun has perhaps never in recent decades seemed more apropos than at this very moment in our history.

The Civil War, slavery, the Jim Crow South, the Civil Rights era, racism, bigotry and the First Amendment are suddenly all part of a national conversation. The South — and in fact all of this nation — is struggling to deal with a tortured past that undoubtedly manifests itself in the Civil War statues and emblems that still adorn public places.