[gentle acoustic guitar music]
- Narrator: Junaluska is one of the earliest Black communities
in western North Carolina.
It began with a small population of individuals
who settled and farmed the hillside
between the town of Boone and Howard's Knob,
the mountain that rises
nearly a thousand feet above the county seat of Watauga.
The community began to coalesce by 1898, and by 1918,
following construction of a Black primary school,
numerous Black-owned residences,
and the Boone Mennonite Brethren Church,
Black people became a permanent part of the fabric
of Appalachia.
[upbeat bluegrass music]
Dating back 400 years, the church,
for many Black people, is more than a place of worship.
It is the heart and strength of the community.
For Junaluskans,
this was the Boone Mennonite Brethren Church,
pastored by Reverend Ronda Horton.
Known to some as the Moses of our North Carolina churches
for his leadership of the Black Mennonites
across the state,
his memories are some of the earliest on record
of day-to-day life in Junaluska.
- I was born in 1895.
In Boone, here.
Back in all these hills up here,
you can see these trees and bushes.
That at one time was all farms.
- Right up Junaluska Road up here?
- All up, all up.
That had always belonged to the Black people.
- It was completely Black when I was growing up.
Now it's more integrated, but it was divided
into two sections: the hill and the mountain.
The mountain was where the folks lived
that had gardens and raised hogs and pigs
and things like that.
And the hill was closer to town,
so we considered ourselves the city folks
and the mountain was the country folks.
- Growing up in Junaluska was great
and people loved each other.
We loved each other and we still do.
- We had our own ball team
and their name was the Boone Mountain Lions,
and we had our own Black school and Black teachers.
And we had our own barber shops
and there were ladies that did hair, did alterations.
We had a couple little grocery stores.
So we were privileged that we rarely ever
got out of the community.
We were pretty isolated here in Boone and we loved it.
- We didn't have to worry about going to town and seeing people.
So I don't know how old I really was
when I realized there were white people.
- But when schools integrated, there was a different story
and we had to go to the white school.
Integration was so traumatic for me
and several of my classmates that we just dropped out.
I can remember riding the bus
and sometimes, many days, we would get off at the school,
but we would sneak back home to the community
and hide until it was time for school to be out.
We just hated it that bad.
- She just did not like being treated
like she wasn't as good as anybody else.
And she went on, I don't know if she'll tell you
that she got her nursing degree.
She and my sister Louise did.
And then Sandy went on two more years.
They were RNs when they retired.
So it was there.
It's just that people didn't realize it
or they weren't used to the idea
of Black people being as smart as white people, I guess.
I don't know.
- Junaluska began as a segregated community
in the 19th century.
Their opportunities opened up certainly with integration
and after the civil rights movement.
But at the same time, there was outmigration
because there were more job opportunities
and more educational opportunities
outside the community.
- And over my lifetime, I've seen a lot of people
who are not here, who have died
or moved away from the community.
And I came to realize there were a lot of people
who didn't know that there was a Junaluska community.
And I thought, "Hey, we've been so much a part
"of the town of Boone.
We need to make sure people know we're out there."
One of the first projects that we did,
the largest one was to put the monument
at the old town cemetery
where there was over 70 or 80 Black people buried there
that people didn't even know that it was the cemetery.
So it was important to us to keep our history alive.
My daughter Lynn and I and other members
of the Junaluska Heritage Association
and even the community, Junaluska community,
who are always, always behind us.
We started getting together, having Jubilees,
Juneteenth meetings,
and our group is responsible for a new book
that we had published.
- African-Americans have been relatively invisible
in Appalachia.
So this book is one of the first to really describe
an African-American community that is still in existence
and is still vibrant today.
- I would like for people to know
that we are here and we've always been here.
We just want people to know we're proud of Boone.
[spoon playing] [upbeat bluegrass music]
- Announcer: Boonies is made possible
by the Watauga Economic Development Commission.
Also by First Security Insurance.