A Quick Take Beginning in April 1930 and continuing for some 40 years, the Enka Voice carried regular news of employee engagements and marriages, newborn babies, children’s schooling, fishing…
Read moreThe Enka Voice in White and (Rarely) Black
American Enka Corporation Was a Dutch Company: Did It Matter, and If So, How?: Part II
Black Workers at American Enka: Few and Mostly Invisible I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. . . . When they approach me they…
Read moreThe American Enka Corporation Was a Dutch Company: Did It Matter, and If So, How? Part I
My initial intention for this post (one in a series on Enka) was to investigate the presence of Black workers at the Dutch-owned American Enka plant in Buncombe County’s Hominy…
Read more“The Best and Most Prosperous City”: American Enka and the Imagined Transformation of Asheville
NOTE TO READERS: This is the second in a series of posts on the coming of the American Enka Corporation plant to Buncombe County’s Hominy Valley in 1928, and its…
Read moreThe Down Side of the Land of the Sky: The Whisnants and Rudisills in Asheville and West Asheville, 1922-1951
This post is lovingly and admiringly dedicated to my father-in-law Frank Joseph Mitchell (February 12, 1927 – July 25, 2017). Lifelong student, prodigious reader, indefatigable writer, fearless preacher and unforgettable…
Read moreOur Mountain Home: Asbury’s Encounter with a Changing Asheville, 1900-1907
A rapidly growing and changing Asheville, 1900-1907: Victor Talking Machines, a street railway workers’ union, black and Jewish professionals and entrepreneurs, bars and tourist hotels, and moving pictures at the Gayety Theater.
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