In response to a public records request made by The Smoky Mountain News, Jackson County Manager Kevin King revealed that commissioners not only failed to discuss in any official meeting removing plaques placed on the controversial “Sylva Sam” Confederate statue at the old courthouse in 2020, they also failed to document any deliberations — likely violating state sunshine laws.  

On the morning of April 8, county employees removed commemorative plaques from the Confederate statue outside the Jackson County Library and placed them in the county’s storage facility. Few in the county, save the board of commissioners, knew the possibility of removal was even on the table. 

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.