Abstract
The focus of this paper is the social, economic, and political development of the black community once known as South Asheville in the city of Asheville, North Carolina. It spans the period of slavery, the Civil War, emancipation, Reconstruction and Fusion politics. From 1865 to 1900, Blacks in Asheville experienced much progress mostly because they felt far less racial discrimination than what was experienced in other parts of the South The mixed racial attitudes of the Whites in Asheville allowed them access to more of the positive things happening in the city so the newly emancipated became a significant part of the boom Asheville experienced after the Civil War. Since there were very few plantations , formerly enslaved people were not concentrated in small geographic areas of the city, Some, like Mr. William McDowell, who did, however, run a slave plantation, did much to help his former slaves and Blacks in general thrive by breaking up his former plantation into small pieces of land which he gave to them or allowed them to purchase at a small price. This created the suburb of Black South Asheville.
As the city’s popularity as a national tourist and health resort grew, especially after the arrival of the railroad in 1880, Blacks found jobs in the city’s growing service sector. Asheville’s importance rests in its role as the economic, social, and political center of western North Carolina. Although small when the Civil War ended, Asheville was more urban than any other area in western North Carolina and thus attracted Blacks from the surrounding countryside. Asheville offered Blacks more opportunities for advancement than elsewhere in the region, which allowed for the ‘success’ of the community of South Asheville.
When I first decided to become a resident of Asheville, North Carolina, and I began house-hunting in areas that fit my criteria for type of house and type of neighborhood, I was lucky enough to be pointed in the direction of a very unique neighborhood. It was called Kenilworth—a very unlikely name for a wooded, hilly, rustic residential area, notable for eclectic architecture, with nineteenth century wood cabins, 1920’s villas, Spanish-style villas, Craftsman bungalows, and Tudor Revival cottages spread over very winding, craggy streets.
What I was soon to learn was that it was one of the first ‘neighborhoods” in Asheville to be settled beyond the ‘downtown’ at the end of the eighteenth century. (Kenilworth Residents Association, Kenilworth Community, https://www.kenilworthresidentsassociation.org/history)
I was very lucky to have a neighbor across the street In his 90’s, George Gibson, long-time resident, was still very sharp and very verbose, and regaled me with stories about the ‘old times’ in his ‘neighborhood. And what a unique story it was!
I have since become part of his original group that is uncovering and researching a cemetery in our community that has headstones and markers dating from the 1820’s through 1943. It was founded in the early 1800s as a burial ground for people who had been enslaved by the Smith and McDowell families and was one of only a few cemeteries for Blacks in this part of North Carolina
1. It is located on the outskirts of the city on the wooded slopes of Beaucatcher Mountain. The rolling terrain and uneven ground of the cemetery is shaded by a tall canopy of mature trees and is the oldest public African American cemetery in Western North Carolina. (Ibid, History)
The first known caretaker was George Avery (1844-1938) who had been enslaved by William W. McDowell. In 1865 he was an enslaved 19-year-old blacksmith . Knowing the end of the Civil War was near, McDowell advised young George, as well as 40 others of his former slaves to join the Union Army so that they could claim a pension. On his return from the war one year later, the McDowells gave Avery land and lumber with which to build a house and the job as caretaker of the South Asheville Cemetery on Dalton Street. He looked after the site until his own death in 1938 at the age of 94. (Ibid, History)
The last person interred in the cemetery was Robert C. Watkins in 1943. After that, the cemetery was neglected until George Gibson, in the 1980s, began to clear the overgrowth. He was joined by George Taylor, a trustee of St John “A.Baptist Church next door. The task was overwhelming. Soon word got out and they were joined by community members, AmeriCorps volunteers and Warren Wilson College students. The South Asheville Cemetery Association was incorporated in the 1980s to continue cemetery preservation. (Ibid)
On Memorial Day in 2005 George, as well as neighbors,participated in a ceremony to give proper burial to the “forgotten souls” buried in the South Asheville Cemetery. (George Gibson interview, 2018). The South Asheville Cemetery was designated a Local Historic Landmark at that time and then added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2021. (South Asheville CemeteryNational Register of Historic Places Registration. – NPGallery. National Park Service (.gov). https://npgallery.nps.gov ›2021)
Mr. Gibson knew the cemetery was there (about four blocks from our houses) but had watched it change as did the surrounding neighborhood, overgrown with all kinds of foliage. In the 30’s and early 40’s, when he attended the Black school next door, Mr. Gibson and his friends were often called by those in charge of the cemetery to help dig the grave and help lower the coffin.
Next door St. John ‘A’ Baptist Church is a one-story gable-front brick building rendered in a modest Gothic Revival style with square corner towers on the façade. The church and cemetery comprise a small historic district associated with the development of the South Asheville community, Black ethnic heritage, and the social history of burial practices. The primary contributing resources are the church building and the cemetery site, although additional contributing and noncontributing objects associated with the cemetery, typically grave markers, are also counted. Archaeological mapping activities have identified nearly 2,000 graves in the
South Asheville Cemetery. Important information has also been gained through archaeological analysis of cemetery features.( St. John A Baptist Church, National Register of Historic Places Registration … NPGallery. National Park Service.gov) https://npgallery.nps.gov, 2021)
It was brought back to the public’s attention over this time period when local historians began the task of conducting a series of oral interviews with Black residents, mainly of South Asheville, NC with knowledge of persons buried in the “South Asheville Colored Cemetery”. The interviews cover names of people buried in the cemetery, the history of the cemetery, and burial customs. When Mr. Gibson and his friends undertook the monumental task of clearing away all the vegetation engulfing the burial grounds and helping to restore it to its original condition, what they found were the valuable remains of people who had inhabited that neighborhood for almost 200 years. (South Asheville Cemetery Association,https://www.southashevillecemetery.net/)
There are many former slave cemeteries which have been found and are being restored all over this country (https://blackcemeterynetwork.org/) However, after learning about the uniqueness of Asheville and its history, the cemetery and next door church have brought to light a very uncommon neighborhood and city for, the South and North Carolina specifically.
Western North Carolina never was the picture we most often associate with ‘the Old South’. The topography of the area did not lend itself at all to the plantation culture found elsewhere around the South. Instead, Asheville and the surrounding county of Buncombe were primarily the domain of white yeomen farmers, whose views on issues such as slavery, and later secession, were different from those of lowland plantation owners. (John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, (Lexington, Kentucky: the University Press of Kentucky, 1921), 201) Only a small percentage of the White settlers, who had pushed out Indigenous Native Americans, owned slaves — about 2 percent of households, and of those, most owned only one or two. (Ibid)
Another and more prominent factor for the growth and expansion in places like Asheville and Buncombe County was the nonagricultural activity of the region’s slaveowners. In stark contrast to their counterparts in eastern North Carolina, for instance, mountain slaveowners were usually men who engaged in professions other than farming. (Katherine Calhoun Cutshall, collections manager, North Carolina Room, Pack Memorial Library)
In 1854, Frederick Law Olmsted, a northern journalist and social critic, and soon to become famous landscape architect, noted that white highlanders tended to be contemptuous of slaves, slavery, and slaveowners. Olmstead even discovered that many were proud that the region’s slave population was small and believed that the state and nation would have been better off without the institution of slavery. (Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country in the Winter of 1853-58, (New York, New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), 226)
Olmsted wrote that, instead, he found that in the mountains, the majority of those who did own slaves were “chiefly professional men, shop-keepers, and men of office, who give a divided attention to farming” (Ibid, 224)
According to historians William Turner and Edward Cabbell, 32 percent of slaveholders were professionals; mercantile or commercial, 68 percent; real estate and or mining, 24 percent; hotel management or other aspects of the tourist trade, 12 percent; and agriculture alone, only 3 percent.” (William H. Turner and Edward J. Cabbell, Blacks in Appalachia, Lexington, Kentucky: The University of Press of Kentucky, 1985, 5.).
Prof. John Inscoe found that rather than farmers or plantation owners “almost a third of all mountain masters were doctors or lawyers . (.John Inscoe, Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation, (Lexington, Kentucky: the University Press of Kentucky, 2001, 2.)
Despite the absence of a large-scale plantation system, slavery did exist in Asheville and western North Carolina and was the primary reason that there were Blacks in the region at all. In Asheville many Blacks worked as servants in the town’s antebellum resort industry, and as staff in local business establishments, especially businesses that catered to the needs of livestock drovers who, during the early period, drove livestock through the region each year.
John Inscoe also noted that a close examination of mountain slavery revealed that the “direct moral evils of slavery . . . are less—even less proportionately to the number of slaves,” and argued that the more diverse nature of the economic activity of mountain slaveowners contributed to this fact. (Ibid, 4)
While passing through Asheville in the mid-1830s, British geologist George Featherstonhaugh was surprised to find his hotel “overrun with Black servants . . .” Featherstonhaugh found the unique status that blacks seemed to occupy in Asheville and the surrounding region to be a stark contrast to slaves he had encountered in other regions of the South. “What a merry race of people the Negroes are,” he wrote, “all were well dressed and well fed, and more merry, and noisy, and impudent than any servants I had ever seen.” (George W. Featherstonhaugh, A Canoe Voyage Up the Minnay Sotar, Minnesota Historical Society Press (December 16, 2003, 314.)
In plantation-driven economies, emancipation not only upset social and political relations, it also threatened to unravel local economic structures and did so in many cases. This was not the case in Asheville and western North Carolina. Unlike towns and counties of the lowland regions of the state, Asheville, for the most part, was able to continues the structures of the economy that were already in place. (“The Two Races,” Asheville News and Farmer, October 31, 1867.)
After 1865 and even earlier, Mr. William McDowell(1823-1893) supported the development of a settlement for their enslaved people as well as free people of color on their land,.. McDowell had 225 acres of land under cultivation, one of the most in the region. His land comprised roughly from his home (now the Asheville History Museum), plus all the land that today comprises the Mission Hospital campus and across Biltmore Avenue up to the greater part of Beaucatcher Mountain.
Beginning in 1857, the McDowells were designing a program that, after emancipation and until 1900, former slaves would be able to purchase or were given small tracts of the McDowells property where they built homes, shops, schools, and churches. Some worked for others and some opened their own businesses. Quite soon, they were joined by other emancipated Blacks, many of whom had only known plantations their whole lives and who had learned of the thriving settlement in the mountains.
The small village that grew up was named “South Asheville” because at that time it was south of Asheville. In South Asheville there were no building codes. Structures were built using any available materials. The city did not provide water, electricity, or garbage collection. Homes had no plumbing or electricity. Water for washing or drinking came from nearby springs or creeks. South Asheville was not laid out into streets. Homes were scattered along the hillside accessible only by unpaved roads and foot paths, yet it began to thrive along with the rest of Asheville. (Harrison, Lucy Mae. Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection, 1888-1972. D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville)
In the years following the war, South Asheville and also the rest of Asheville’s population grew substantially. By 1880, the town’s population exceeded 2,000, and by 1890, the population reached more than 10,000 people. The chief factor for this growth was Asheville and Western North Carolina’s re-emergence first as a popular health resort—especially for tuberculosis patients—and later as a primary destination for people who traveled for pleasure and relaxation. As these industries grew, Blacks, along with others, migrated to the area to fill the many services required.. Because of Asheville’s status as an economic center, Blacks from as far away as Georgia and Tennessee were drawn to it after the war, and after the city’s post-war economy stabilized and industry grew they continued to come. In the weeks and months following the end of the war, the town became a gathering place for many Blacks who were anxious to move away from the countryside, in all areas of the South. (Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, Buncombe County, North Carolina, Population Schedule, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (Microfilm, State Archives, North Carolina Division)
While there were some Black building artisans in Asheville during the late nineteenth century, the majority of them were not independent contractors or business owners. Most worked alongside white workers on construction projects throughout the city. In addition, a significant number worked as members of the construction crews that helped to construct the massive 250 room chateau that George Vanderbilt commissioned as his country estate just south of downtown Asheville in the 1890’s. The area where many of these Blacks had settled, South Asheville, happened to be in very close proximity to the construction of this massive project which led many more people to move to South Asheville since it was in walking distance to their work. (“Social Equality,” Asheville Daily Citizen, January 23, 1893)
Construction of Vanderbilt’s Asheville residence, which was situated on more than 100,000 acres of land and named Biltmore Estate, began in earnest in 1889. At the height of its construction, Vanderbilt employed more than 500 construction workers and craftsmen., both Blacks and Whites, were employed on the estate. During the period that Biltmore Estate was under construction, local Blacks, were even responsible for supervising some of the estate’s Black work crews.
In addition to being employed as members of the estate’s grounds and construction crews, other Blacks—especially women—were employed as members of the estate’s domestic team. Once the home was completed, a permanent staff of more than 30 people worked to keep the mansion running smoothly. According to one source, the staff included housekeepers, parlor maids, chambermaids, ladies maids, laundresses, kitchen maids, butlers and under butlers, valets, houseboys, a chef, cooks, a coachman, and stable hands. The kitchen staff alone totaled more than a dozen people. Even after 1900 additional Black families from Georgia, South Carolina, and areas east of Buncombe County kept moving to Asheville, looking for better job opportunities, many settling in South Asheville. Rumors spread far and wide (Nan K. Chase, Asheville: A History, 142.)
Some local Black residents, especially of the South Asheville area, who worked on the estate in 1899, used the skills they gained while working there to start their own businesses. After working on the grounds crew at Biltmore from 1889 to 1895, a resident of South Asheville named Barnes started his own landscaping business and was later hired to help landscape the golf course that opened at the Biltmore Forest Country Club in 1920. (North Carolina, Biltmore Estate Archives, Asheville, North Carolina, Collection 1.1/1. H34, Box 10 Folder 2.)
Blacks in Asheville and in South Asheville came to understand that if they were to prosper, education was a key. The idea that education was important to the future of Blacks was not missed by the city’s White leaders. In many ways, this rather progressive attitude may have been a result of the increasing attraction that Asheville had for the outsiders—especially northerners who were coming to the city for rest and relaxation. As more people were drawn to the city, there were economic incentives to improve and maintain good city services, and to have some semblance of good relations among the city’s diverse population. If the city was to continue drawing tourists and their money, an uneducated, idle, and potentially disgruntled Black population was not in the city’s best interest. An educated and well-trained pool of workers was also vital to the economic wellbeing of the city and region. For these reasons, leading White residents in Asheville actively supported the efforts to provide educational opportunities for the city’s black residents . (Coxe, Frank, Southern Highlands Research Center Oral History Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville)
The young people of South Asheville, attended South Asheville Colored School (SACS), which was located on North Dalton Street behind St, John “A” and adjacent to the SA cemetery. The building had four rooms for first through seventh grades and was totally inadequate for the growing Black population. It was a remnant of earlier times and the South Asheville community wished to be able to build a better school but was unable to do so before the SAC closed in 1948 when a more suitable building was finally allocated for.
South Asheville wanted to have a secondary school in their vicinity. However budgetary restraints and some lingering conservative attitudes towards the Black population slowed these demands down. (Asheville from Beaucatcher,” Taylor & Jones, Land of the Sky, Beauties of Western North Carolina and Northeast Georgia) Finally, a secondary school called Stephens-Lee was built to service the Black citizens of the area in 1923.
Stephens-Lee’s soon enjoyed significant growth and influence as a leading center for Black education. High standards were demanded from students and faculty. Stephens-Lee emerged as the leading Black public education center for all of western North Carolina, a status that it retained until it was closed as integrated schools in North Carolina began to appear after 1965. (Chase, Asheville: A History, 53.). With much controversy, the city school board closed Stephens-Lee in 1965. For the next four years, black students attended the newly built South French Broad High School, where there was some integration of the faculty but none in the student body. In 1969, the formerly White Lee Edwards High School, which sits very close to South Asheville, was renamed Asheville High School, and students of both races began learning there, together in one school. (https://specialcollections.buncombecounty.org/2019/12/19/, ashevilles-first-city-schools-for-black-students-part-four)
There were two churches which arose in this area and provided cohesion for the South Ashvillian population . One was St John “A” Baptist church (St. John “A”) which was established in 1912 next to the former slave cemetery. The original church structure was constructed in 1912 but burned down. The current building was erected in 1929 with many additions and a renovation in the following years.and is still very active today. St. Marks was established in 1890.. Many South Ashevillians attended services at St. Marks and St. John “A” on alternate Sundays. In 1910 the first deed containing the name South Asheville was filed for the South Asheville AME Zion Church (St.Marks) at 104 Wyoming Road. The church closed in the early 1990’s and no longer houses the church, however, St. John A is still a thriving church (https://stjohna.org/)
(A History of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Black Highlanders Collections. D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville)
A plan of the neighborhood showing the proposed Lake Shore section published in the local newspaper in 1926 depicts a clearly demarcated line between Kenilworth and the area then known as South Asheville. Kenilworth Road was the boundary between White Kenilworth and Black South Asheville. This South Asheville had previously been called Clayton Town, Clayton Hill, Brackettville or Brackett Town. (see map of Kenilworth). Not being included in Kenilworth indicated a color line, a reality confirmed by George Gibson, who succinctly recalled: “Kenilworth was white; South Asheville was Black. ((Interview with George Gibson 2020)
.Many Kenilworth residents thought it was a good idea to annex South Asheville, mostly for tax revenue purposes. However, there were still lingering feelings among a few Kenilworth residents that “mixing the two was not “appropriate” since Blacks were second class citizens and would bring down the value of their property. (“Mapping Inequality, Ashevillle,” https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/ July 12, 2019 )
In 1927, however, South Asheville became part of Kenilworth and in 1929, Kenilworth became part of the City of Asheville. There was great controversy surrounding both annexations. Although South Asheville once existed adjacent to, but distinct from, the predominantly white Kenilworth neighborhood, municipal annexation and expansion of the residential section in the twentieth century eventually enveloped the church, cemetery, and remaining residents of the community. (Asheville, North Carolina. Pack Memorial Library. Robert Henry Papers )
The South Asheville community around the cemetery and St. John ‘A’ Baptist is briefly noted as a “Negro settlement” in the area. (Asheville Citizen, April 18, 1926; Clay Griffith, “Chiles, James Madison and Leah Arcouet, House”)
Until 1965, when the State of North Carolina was officially desegregated, the two parts of Kenilworth co-existed and there were very few problems like ones that existed in other parts of the South as they lawfully desegregated. Since residents of the South Asheville side often worked in the city at jobs that were frequented by both Blacks and Whites, there was a (guarded) respect among the residents. (Darin J. Waters. Life Beneath The Veneer: The Black Community in Asheville, North Carolina from 1793)
According to many people who we interviewed, Kenilworth Park, though officially located in the South Asheville part of town, became a frequent meeting place for Black and White children, especially playing football or soccer. (Gibson, George. Interview, 2022)
In large part, the cosmopolitan sophistication that Asheville’s White leaders projected to the outside world, allowed for the unusual oasis of Black South Asheville to develop and thrive, even within the strictures of a segregated North Carolina. It was within the framework of all these accounts that Asheville’s post-Civil War Black community allowed for the development of houses owned by Whites Today, while there is gentrification, many of the original South Asheville cottages remain, though they now may be situated directly next to a large five bedroom house. In fact, many of these new expensive homes are right next to or even sit on top of the graves in the cemetery. We are currently working with surveyors and, for the most part, cooperative owners to remedy these concerns. (GIS (Graphic Information System) grave map, archaeology crew and AmeriCorps teams, July 1, 2020)
Thus, even though the reality of life for Blacks was different from those of their White neighbors, peace and progress, most notably, in South Asheville, were able to prevail.
*St. John A Baptist Church as well as the South Asheville Cemetery were placed on the list of National Historic Places in 2021.
*Mr. George Gibson celebrated his 96th birthday on May 19, 2024.
Before 1865 South Asheville was settled by free people of color and enslaved people owned by the Smith and McDowell families where they built homes, schools, and churches. 
Houses were scattered up and down and all around Beaucatcher Mountain
~ Pack Memorial Library. specialcollections.buncombecounty /photo-exhibits/pack-library-through-the-years
Bibliography
Books
Campbell, John C. The Southern Highlander and His Homeland. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1921.
Chase, Nan. Asheville: A History. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2007.
Featherstonhaugh, George W. A Canoe Voyage Up the Minay Sotar; with an account of the lead and copper deposits in Wisconsin; of the gold region in the Cherokee country; and sketches of popular manners. St. Paul, Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society, 1970.
Foner, Eric. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)
Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000
Hamilton, J. G. de Roulhac. Reconstruction in North Carolina. New York: Columbia University Press, 1914.
Inscoe, John. Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation. Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 2001.
Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey in the Back Country in the Winter of 1853-54. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907.
Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States. New York: Dix and Edwards Publishers, 1856.
Oral Histories
Gibson, George. Interviewed by Barbara Weitz South Asheville. May, June 2018., 2020, 2021, 2023.
Harrison, Lucy Mae. Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection, 1888-1972. D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Other Source Materials
Asheville City Directory. R. L. Polk and Company. 1886-1916.
“Social Equality,” Asheville Daily Citizen, January 23, 1893
Asheville City School Board. Superintendents Record Books.
Asheville, North Carolina. Pack Memorial Library. Robert Henry Papers
Asheville from Beaucatcher,” Taylor & Jones, Land of the Sky, Beauties of Western North Carolina and Northeast Georgia https://blackcemeterynetwork.org, Biltmore Estate Archives, Asheville, North Carolina, Collection 1.1/1. H34, Box 10 Folder 2
Census of the United States, (Eighth ) 1860, Buncombe County, North Carolina, Population Schedule, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (Microfilm, State Archives, North Carolina Division) Katherine Calhoun Cutshall, collections manager, North Carolina Room, Pack Memorial Library
South Asheville Cemetery Association, https://www.southashevillecemetery.net
Coxe, Frank, Southern Highlands Research Center Oral History Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville
GIS (Graphic Information System) grave map, archaeology crew and AmeriCorps teams, July 1, 2020
“A History of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church”, Black Highlanders Collections. D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville
Kenilworth Residents Association, Kenilworth Community, https://www.kenilworthresidentsassociation.org/history)
“Mapping Inequality, Ashevillle,” https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/ July 12, 2019
Perdue, Theda. “Red and Black in the Southern Appalachians.” Southern Exposure, vol. 12 (November/December, 1984).
Ready, Milton. “A History of Pride, Black Asheville A Blend of Traditions: Schools, Church, Community Involvement,” The Asheville Citizen Times. Asheville
St. John A Baptist Church, National Register of Historic Places Registration … – NPGallery. National Park Service (.gov) https://npgallery.nps.gov, 2021
https://specialcollections.buncombecounty.org/2019/12/19/, ashevilles-first-city-schools-for-black-students-part-four)
- South Asheville Black Community– by Barbara Weitz - September 17, 2024
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