Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Affrilachian Asheville: Exploring 130 years of the African American experience in Asheville, NC.
Session Abstract or Summary
This panel features three papers that collectively examine the African American experience in Asheville, NC, from 1892 to the present. Darin Waters, Assistant Professor of History at UNC Asheville, will examine the development of the Young Men’s Institute in 1892 in the context of black racial uplift ideology, and describing the YMI’s impact on Asheville’s African American community. Gene Hyde, Head of Special Collections at UNC Asheville, will discuss the Isaiah Rice Photograph Collection, a recently discovered collection of over 1,000 photographs of Asheville’s African American Community taken by Rice from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. Rice was an “insider” photographer, and his candid photographs of his community offer new insights into the African American experience in Appalachia. Heidi Kelley and Kenneth Betsalel will discuss their current fieldwork with elderly African Americans in Asheville, using anthropological observations and political theory to examine how local history in the Appalachian region is constructed and the place of lived experience in social theory. Fred J. Hay, Librarian of the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University, will serve as respondent.
Presentation #1 Title
Philanthropic Experimentation: George Vanderbilt, the YMI, and Racial Uplift Ideology in Asheville, North Carolina, 1892-1906
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
After the Civil War the African American population in the southern Appalachia city of Asheville experienced significant growth. Drawn by the city’s tourism and hospitality industry, African Americans became important to the city’s service sector economy. Nevertheless, racism ensured their continued isolation from the city’s mainstream. Even before the advent of de facto segregation, African Americans were pushed to the margins, especially politically. This political marginalization made challenging the economic and social status quo difficult, and thus African Americans turned inward, focusing on the development of such key institutions as their churches and schools. Another organization that was important to the development of Asheville’s African American community was the Young Men’s Institute (YMI) in 1892. Central to the YMI’s mission was the development of the “social, moral, and Christian character” of young black men. As a key component of the black racial uplift ideology of the late nineteenth century, this paper will explore the creation of the YMI and the use of uplift ideology as a tool of resistance and protest in urban Appalachia. The paper will also examine how this ideology, which was really a project of the elite, unwittingly contributed to class divisions within the African American community itself.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Darin Waters is Assistant Professor of History and Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Outreach and Engagement at UNC Asheville. HIs current research focuses on the African American community in Asheville, NC, and he wrote his dissertation at UNC Chapel Hill on Asheville’s black community in the nineteenth century.
Presentation #2 Title
The Urban Folk Photography of Isaiah Rice
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
Asheville native Isaiah Rice (1917-80) was born into a time marked by racial segregation, when the general perception was that African American presence in Appalachia was lacking “any great significance,” as sociologist John C. Belcher put it in 1961. And while there is increased interest in studying the Appalachian African American experience, one of the most significant challenges to understanding that experience is the paucity of sources, especially sources that depict that experience from the perspectives of African Americans. The recent donation of Isaiah Rice’s photographs to UNC Asheville’s Special Collections adds a significant resource to our understanding of African American life in Appalachia. Rice was a talented amateur photographer who documented his Asheville African American community from a trusted, well-known insider’s perspective. His community was a significant part of Asheville’s population - in the era from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, when Rice was taking photos, the African American community counted for nearly 20% of the city’s overall population. The Rice Collection contains over 1,000 photographs, many candid photos taken with his Minox subminiature “spy camera.” This paper will explore Rice’s photographs of his community, focusing on photos of friends, neighbors and urban Asheville, and place these photos within the context of Asheville’s history during Rice’s lifetime, and in the larger context of the history of Appalachian photography.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Gene Hyde is Head of Special Collections at UNC Asheville. He has an MA in Appalachian Studies from Appalachian State University and an MS in Information Sciences from the University of Tennessee. He recently co-curated an exhibit on the Isaiah Rice Photography Collection with Darin Waters of UNC Asheville.
Presentation #3 Title
“Get off Your Do Nothing:” Becoming Public in an Affrilachian Elder Gathering Space
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in one urban African American community in Asheville, North Carolina, this paper brings together anthropological observations and political theory to examine how local history in the Appalachian region is constructed and the place of lived experience in social theory. Scholars of social history and political theory have often assumed a sharp distinction between public (civic) space and private (family) space. In this view, politics is defined by “big events” and public policy. What is missing from this perspective is vernacular citizenship, the way civic life is practiced in everyday life. This is particularly true in Appalachia where people have been stereotyped as not being civic minded, and especially true of African Americans in the region who have gone until relatively recently invisible altogether. By focusing on one Affrilachian elder gathering space-- the Burton Street Elite Senior Club--this paper documents and analyzes in detail the way becoming public is woven into the narrative history of a community and its people. In so doing, the paper recounts the political history of the community as told by its elders from its founding in 1912 by Mr. E.W. Pearson as a residential development in racially segregated city through the subsequent decades of neighborhood sociability, displacement, and renewal. The paper makes use of residential data, maps, newspaper accounts, photographs, public documents, as well as interviews, oral histories, and ethnographic observations to argue that being political and becoming public has always been central to the African American experience, no less true in Appalachia or on Burton Street.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Heidi Kelley is Professor of Anthropology at UNC Asheville, and is a cultural anthropologist with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Washington. Her research specializes in the anthropology of Europe, gender, disability studies and social suffering.
Ken Betsalel is Professor of Political Science at UNC Asheviile, and is a political theorist specializing in civic engagement and community service learning. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1986. Betsalel is also a award winning documentary photographer. He and Heidi Kelley’s recent forthcoming article is entitled "Teaching Galicia in Appalachia. Lessons from Anthropology, Ethnographic Poetry, Documentary Photography and Political Theory.”
Philanthropic Experimentation: George Vanderbilt, the YMI, and Racial Uplift Ideology in Asheville, North Carolina, 1892-1906
After the Civil War the African American population in the southern Appalachia city of Asheville experienced significant growth. Drawn by the city’s tourism and hospitality industry, African Americans became important to the city’s service sector economy. Nevertheless, racism ensured their continued isolation from the city’s mainstream. Even before the advent of de facto segregation, African Americans were pushed to the margins, especially politically. This political marginalization made challenging the economic and social status quo difficult, and thus African Americans turned inward, focusing on the development of such key institutions as their churches and schools. Another organization that was important to the development of Asheville’s African American community was the Young Men’s Institute (YMI) in 1892. Central to the YMI’s mission was the development of the “social, moral, and Christian character” of young black men. As a key component of the black racial uplift ideology of the late nineteenth century, this paper will explore the creation of the YMI and the use of uplift ideology as a tool of resistance and protest in urban Appalachia. The paper will also examine how this ideology, which was really a project of the elite, unwittingly contributed to class divisions within the African American community itself.
