Browse Items (475 total)

This newspaper article focuses on the Lowery family and their achievements, including Alice Lowery's bold act of attending a white-only movie theater with her daughter. For Alice Lowery, it was a risk to her safety and an almost unthinkable action.…

Alice Lowery is a large part of desegregation in Haywood County. Her notable community changes include the desegregation of the local theater. Her family includes Nat the Cat, a prominent local DJ, as well as her daughter, Natalie, who was one of the…

List of Haywood County African-American veterans

Ronnie Carr is originally from South Carolina and was born in the town of Orangeburg in 1961 and moved to New York where he grew up as a child and eventually returned to Orangeburg to graduate high school. He played Basketball for Western Carolina…

This newspaper article from the Waynesville Mountaineer highlights Jones Temple AME Zion Church and its history in Haywood County. Despite dropping membership over the past decade, the spirits of the congregation are high. In the article, Rev.…

Video of the History of Bryson City United Methodist Church

Levern Hamlin of Mecklenburg County was the first African American student to be admitted to Western Carolina College in 1957. Hamlin was already a public school teacher, and applied to the college to qualify for an advanced teaching certificate. Her…

Western Carolina University accepted the school’s first African American student in 1957. Levern Hamlin was the first black student to be admitted and enrolled in a predominantly white state-supported college in North Carolina, according to…

Cleve Miller (right) with first cousin William Bowens

William Cleveland Miller or “Cleve” was born December 10, 1884. “His mother Kate Bowens often told him that he was born in a cotton patch while she was picking cotton on a plantation in…