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 moreA New Vision for Old Hominy Valley: The Coming of the Enka Plant
The news on a late September Sunday morning in 1928 that the American Enka Corporation was going to build a $10 million plant in Buncombe County pleased virtually everyone.…
Read moreThe Several Lives of West Asheville, Part III: Edwin Carrier in West Asheville
Quick Take on the Early Years: Incorporation, De-/Re-incorporation, Annexation, and Mini-Boom, 1889-1925 When West Asheville–already on the way toward development and modernization–was incorporated on February 9, 1889, the language of…
Read moreThe Several Lives of West Asheville, Part II: Edwin G. Carrier Before West Asheville
The Story So Far Edwin Carrier was born in 1839, so he was in his late forties when he arrived in Western North Carolina (probably in 1885). Early discussions of…
Read moreThe Several Lives of West Asheville, Part I: Sulphur Springs as Proto-Land of the Sky, 1827-1861
This post arose initially from my effort to understand the West Asheville of the early 1920s, when both my Whisnant and Rudisill grandparents moved there–the Whisnants from fifteen years in…
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