Created by the Center For Diversity Education in partnership with the YMI Cultural Center and Building Bridges and underwritten by the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, the North Carolina Humanities Council and the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Research by students from Asheville, Reynolds, and Roberson High Schools and the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Student researchers:
Front row from left: Destiny Kindell, Keena Norris, Torie Leslie
Second row from left: Brian Burton, Ervin Hunter III, Ashland Thompson, Marcus White. Not pictured: Andre' Brown, Asheville High School, 2001, Christy Scott and Stacey Phillips, UNCA, 2002.
Photo courtesy of the Center for Diversity Education

 
An Unmarked Trail: Stories of African Americans in Buncombe County from 1850-1900 is a unique documentation project about our mountain home. Working with high school students, Dr. Dee James of UNCA and Deborah Miles of the Center for Diversity Education spent 2000-2001 uncovering stories. Students learned how to research documents at the court house, local archives, books, and the Internet along with conducting interviews with area residents. Based on their findings, the exhibit tells a dramatic story of the contributions the African-American community made and the struggles they triumphantly weathered.

The exhibit was created to travel to area schools for 8th and 11th graders who study North Carolina history. Using the Goals and Objectives of the NC Standard Course of Study, the exhibit is a powerful tool for classroom instruction. An Unmarked Trail is formatted using the model of Facing History and Ourselves which relies on primary source documents, eye witness accounts and individual student research to teach the past. Over one hundred pictures, documents, and eyewitness accounts reveal the poignant stories of slave labor, Stoneman's Raid, Voting Rights, development of educational and religious institutions, railroad construction, along with business development and the increased segregation of the Black Community during the rise of Jim Crow Laws.