by Anne Smith | Dec 5, 2022 | WNC History Column
“There are six places in Oak Lodge (one of the Highland Hospital patient buildings) I have picked out that could be set (on) fire. I have thought about it so much, I am afraid of what I might do and I want you to lock me up.” Willie Mae Hall, night supervisor at the...
by Anne Smith | Nov 18, 2022 | Virtual Programs
A special hybrid History Hour hosted live at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and livestreamed via Zoom. During the first half of the twentieth century, Carl Sandburg seemed to be everywhere and do everything: poet and political activist; investigative reporter,...
by Anne Smith | Nov 14, 2022 | WNC History Column
Carl Sandburg, the prolific and widely-admired poet, Lincoln biographer, reporter, singer, folklorist, critic, and champion of the working class, has largely fallen from public or scholarly attention over the decades since his death. Western North Carolina audiences...
by Anne Smith | Nov 7, 2022 | On this Day
On this day in WNC history: Amid the charged climate of the Reconstruction period, the Asheville Election Riot occurred on this day in 1868. After mounting tensions between Black and white voters erupted in a flurry of gunfire, one Black man—James Smith—soon died...
by Anne Smith | Nov 7, 2022 | WNC History Column
“I tried one out and wore it three days, cleaned the house, mopped, waxed the floors, washed five girls’ heads, bathed the dogs and did everything else necessary in a house with five bedrooms, two baths, ten people and two dogs and it was still in one piece,” wrote a...
