Black Mountain

But current politics, let me put it that way.

But we love that like Asheville Black Mountain

area of North Carolina.

I just

Yeah, there's some crazy stuff.

yeah um is there a place in the world anywhere in the world that you have visited or not visited that you consider like your heart home like just the place where your soul feels at rest um

yeah I was just up there it's Black Mountain North Carolina we went up to we love to hike And you can't hike in Florida.

I mean, yeah, you can, but it's flat and swampy.

I'm just thinking, I just got to get these things to the people that are doing the work up there.

And so I drive up and I'll never forget, you know, I hit outside of Black Mountain and I was like, this is terrible.

And it wasn't even bad yet.

And when I came over the hill into Swannanoa Black Mountain, oh, my God.

It just looked like you were in a set for a movie.

Like if I took a picture of this and showed it to you before Helene, you would say that's not real.

So I go down there.

I get them online.

You were talking about how businesses – take advantage of this, we as Explore Asheville created an idea called Play Through the Mountains.

It's a collaborative online hub that really presents a lot of deals and experiences and neighborhood discoveries online and gives you a chance to visit a lot of areas across Asheville and Buncombe County, places like Black Mountain, Woodfin, Weaverville.

So what we're really trying to do is make sure that if you're coming here this weekend or if you're paying attention to the area because you saw it on television, that Asheville is a place where you can do a lot of different things in a lot of different places in a lot of different ways.

And the Asheville area provides you not only the beautiful fall color that's on its way, but a lot of great and amazing outdoor adventures.

Mm-hmm.

And then we spent about three years in Black Mountain, North Carolina, which is just outside of Asheville.

And then Rebecca got her, um, got accepted to an MFA pr- uh, program, uh, at the University of Wisconsin.

And, and this is where all my family lives, like up in-

It's, it's felt like community building, you know? It, uh, whether it's these reels on Instagram or just, yeah, people weighing in on comments or just...

And, you know, just, "Oh, man, I wanna share this, I wanna share that." And I remember, yeah, one of the episodes, Mark reached out to me, and yeah, we'd kind of lost touch through the years.

In fact, the last time I saw you was at Black Mountain-

Mm-hmm

And then as you get into the weekend after that and then that following week, I think that would probably be your best shot there.

We're heading to some areas like Black Mountain closer to Asheville.

Asheville would be that third week of October typically into the fourth week.

So a little bit later, just because they're lower elevation where they are.

Yeah.

Well, there were several people, obviously, in my community in Swannanoa, North Carolina, Black Mountain, Swannanoa.

There were several Black nurses, female nurses in the church that we attended.

There was about three that I looked up to, and they were all LPNs, and they worked at the Black Mountain, at that time, was the home of a tuberculosis sanatorium.

And so they mostly worked there.

But I just admired who they were.

There's something about it that tempers the paper and that shapes the images that he's creating, and it's like a touchstone in, in so much of his work.

And it's also not coincidental that this is the same moment that Josef Albers discovers, quote-unquote, "discovers" Jacob Lawrence and decides to invite him to Black Mountain in western North Carolina despite the fact that, that Jacob Lawrence is an African American being brought to this era of segregation or this region of segregation in the South.

In other words, for, for Albers, color was on his mind, and Jacob's important use of color brings him into the fold.

Was there a moment at which you realized, "Oh my gosh, Lawrence is using this color a ton," 'cause [chuckles] 'cause it's there a lot.

One, I wanted to be back in North Carolina.

I was living in, um, Mountain Home, um, for a while, in Black Mountain, um, North Carolina for a while.

Mm.

There's not a lot of opportunities there.

Let us sink in.

There's a black woman singing from the Black Mountain, North Carolina, trained at Howard University, Singing spirituals before the song standards was told by a white critic that she wasn't soulful enough.

That artist we have here today is none other than the sultry singer, Roberta Flagg.

So, today on Women in Resistance, we recall and celebrate the brilliance that is Roberta Flagg.

the families that we're born into, and the manners in which maybe we're nurtured or not.

Whatever it is that you receive in your family does play an impact.

And so I, as you stated earlier, grew up in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Foothills.

And I was born in 1937.