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Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community
Junaluska is one of the oldest African American communities in western North Carolina and one of the few surviving today. After Emancipation, many former slaves in Watauga County became sharecroppers, were allowed to clear land and to keep a portion, or bought property outright, all in the segregated neighborhood on the hill overlooking the town of Boone, North Carolina. Land and home ownership have been crucial to the survival of this community, whose residents are closely interconnected as extended families and neighbors. Missionized by white Krimmer Mennonites in the early twentieth century, their church is one of a handful of African American Mennonite Brethren churches in the United States, and it provides one of the few avenues for leadership in the local black community. Susan Keefe has worked closely with members of the community in editing this book, which is based on three decades of participatory research. These life history narratives adapted from interviews with residents (born between 1885 and 1993) offer a people's history of the black experience in the southern mountains. Their stories provide a unique glimpse into the lives of African Americans in Appalachia during the 20th century--and a community determined to survive through the next.
235 pages, Paperback
Published June 11, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 19, 2021
This book is about my family. I've learned so much.
August 13, 2022
Definitely interesting. Would probably have enjoyed it more if I didn't have to speed through it for class and also I imagine it would be an instant 5 stars for people who live in Boone or in junaluska and know these people, I feel like that would be really cool for them. And I think it was really well put together by the historians/anthropologists. 3 stars is just for my personal enjoyment but I think it was exceptionally well done from a social history standpoint.
February 10, 2021
I read this to learn more about the history of this area of Boone, NC where I live. It was fascinating and touching and gave me a real appreciation for the unique character and value in this community. The author and researcher has done a fine job collecting these life stories.
April 27, 2025
Enjoyed reading first hand accounts of every day life and stories of overcoming!
June 1, 2024
About a month ago, two women from California came into the library. They were taking a road trip across the South with no destinations or itinerary, simply stopping whenever somewhere struck their fancy. They had heard of Boone's historic Black community, Junaluska, and stopped by the library to get more information. I told them some things about the history of the community and gave them copies of the Junaluska Oral History book to page through. Then, one of them asked me, "is this town still segregated?"
It was such an unexpected question and so counter to my experience of my hometown that I immediately said "no, not for a very long time." But as I recovered from the shock of being asked this question by two slightly patronizing Californians, I quickly regretted my response. It's true that, in general, Southern Appalachia was considerably less loyal to the Confederacy or invested in upholding the institution of slavery than in the flatlands, where there was room for plantations and the population wasn't primarily the descendants of people who had hidden away from traditional labor relations. What I should have said, though - what would have been truer - is "no more than your own town." Because the historic toll of segregation is apparent anywhere in the United States, and that's also true of Southern Appalachia and of Boone. For our town, the impact of the Jim Crow era is reflected in our miniscule Black demographic, a mere three-and-a-half percent, as of last year's census. In 1934, two Black men were shot by police - and one was killed - after a manhunt in which the sheriff's posse ransacked every home in the Black community searching for them. This lynching led to a slow but steady trickle of Black flight from the county up through the 1980s.
So we're not segregated in the way these tourists were implying, but neither are we untainted by that history. There's a lot of history of Western North Carolina of which I'm very proud; we were so stubborn about who we'd vote for that we prevented the Dixiecrats from gaining a foothold in NC all through the Restoration period up until the Wilmington massacre, when they realized they could just send paramilitaries to beat people up at the polls. The Black Panthers ran the ambulance service for NASCAR before it got big. But I've pored over red-lined maps of Asheville, two hours south of us. Half an hour east, Wilkesboro's town seal prominently features their hanging tree, which was used by invaders from Richmond to hang many of the town's sizeable anti-Confederate population. This history can be hidden or muted, but its effects haven't been - and probably never fully will be - erased. But I tend to bristle when Northerners - by which I mean non-Southerners - imply that we are somehow uniquely afflicted by our racial history. New York City is about as segregated as Birmingham, Alabama. And Birmingham has nearly triple the Black population, per capita.
That was a long, only somewhat related preamble to a short write-up on the Junaluska Heritage Association's book, Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community. Everyone should read this book, and it's fully available digitally to anyone with a North Carolina library card, so most interested folks have no excuse not to give it a read-through. Junaluska was a vibrant, historically unique community that is now being gentrified just like the rest of Boone. The stories the community members tell in this book vary from funny, to sad, to infuriating, to fascinating. It's legitimately a little heartbreaking to read these accounts and know that Junaluska isn't really a Black community anymore. We've lost something special to student housing in part because of actions taken by some sheriff no one remembers all the way back in the Great Depression. Still, there's a buttressing effect to just knowing that it was there, that some of the folks who lived there still do, and that the historical significance of the community might have gone unnoticed forever but didn't.
While the book is a collection of interviews, there is a story to be found among them, and it's one that is in the open and was published and that I have on my bookshelf because sometimes a narrative imbalance can be redressed.
A mural was painted this April on the side of a building owned by the Hortons, descendants of the family of the 1934 lynching victims. It depicts community members hanging out in a Black-only social club in Boone in the early 1950s, smiling and laughing. There was pain and there was love, and while we must fight to make sure the memories of the pain are never withheld, I like to think the mural and the book remind us that we should also make sure not to forget the love.
It was such an unexpected question and so counter to my experience of my hometown that I immediately said "no, not for a very long time." But as I recovered from the shock of being asked this question by two slightly patronizing Californians, I quickly regretted my response. It's true that, in general, Southern Appalachia was considerably less loyal to the Confederacy or invested in upholding the institution of slavery than in the flatlands, where there was room for plantations and the population wasn't primarily the descendants of people who had hidden away from traditional labor relations. What I should have said, though - what would have been truer - is "no more than your own town." Because the historic toll of segregation is apparent anywhere in the United States, and that's also true of Southern Appalachia and of Boone. For our town, the impact of the Jim Crow era is reflected in our miniscule Black demographic, a mere three-and-a-half percent, as of last year's census. In 1934, two Black men were shot by police - and one was killed - after a manhunt in which the sheriff's posse ransacked every home in the Black community searching for them. This lynching led to a slow but steady trickle of Black flight from the county up through the 1980s.
So we're not segregated in the way these tourists were implying, but neither are we untainted by that history. There's a lot of history of Western North Carolina of which I'm very proud; we were so stubborn about who we'd vote for that we prevented the Dixiecrats from gaining a foothold in NC all through the Restoration period up until the Wilmington massacre, when they realized they could just send paramilitaries to beat people up at the polls. The Black Panthers ran the ambulance service for NASCAR before it got big. But I've pored over red-lined maps of Asheville, two hours south of us. Half an hour east, Wilkesboro's town seal prominently features their hanging tree, which was used by invaders from Richmond to hang many of the town's sizeable anti-Confederate population. This history can be hidden or muted, but its effects haven't been - and probably never fully will be - erased. But I tend to bristle when Northerners - by which I mean non-Southerners - imply that we are somehow uniquely afflicted by our racial history. New York City is about as segregated as Birmingham, Alabama. And Birmingham has nearly triple the Black population, per capita.
That was a long, only somewhat related preamble to a short write-up on the Junaluska Heritage Association's book, Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community. Everyone should read this book, and it's fully available digitally to anyone with a North Carolina library card, so most interested folks have no excuse not to give it a read-through. Junaluska was a vibrant, historically unique community that is now being gentrified just like the rest of Boone. The stories the community members tell in this book vary from funny, to sad, to infuriating, to fascinating. It's legitimately a little heartbreaking to read these accounts and know that Junaluska isn't really a Black community anymore. We've lost something special to student housing in part because of actions taken by some sheriff no one remembers all the way back in the Great Depression. Still, there's a buttressing effect to just knowing that it was there, that some of the folks who lived there still do, and that the historical significance of the community might have gone unnoticed forever but didn't.
While the book is a collection of interviews, there is a story to be found among them, and it's one that is in the open and was published and that I have on my bookshelf because sometimes a narrative imbalance can be redressed.
A mural was painted this April on the side of a building owned by the Hortons, descendants of the family of the 1934 lynching victims. It depicts community members hanging out in a Black-only social club in Boone in the early 1950s, smiling and laughing. There was pain and there was love, and while we must fight to make sure the memories of the pain are never withheld, I like to think the mural and the book remind us that we should also make sure not to forget the love.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews