George Real Estate Group Radio Broadcast

Preserving Black Hendersonville's Cultural Legacy

• George Real Estate Group

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Few people understand how vibrant and culturally rich Black Hendersonville once was. Documentarian David Weintraub's latest film, "Color Beyond the Lines," uncovers this hidden history and reveals a surprising truth: many Black residents didn't embrace school desegregation because they valued their own educational institutions where teachers looked like them and taught their history.

After working with the Black History Research Group for over a decade and conducting hundreds of oral histories, Weintraub felt compelled to tell this story. The film documents how institutions like the Ninth Avenue School and East Flat Rock Colored School formed the cultural backbone of the community despite having fewer resources. When integration came, something precious was lost - schools taught by people who understood the discrimination Black residents faced daily, from segregated water fountains to being forced to sit upstairs at theaters and get food from the backs of restaurants.

"There's gold in these hills," Weintraub explains, describing the rich tapestry of cultural connections he's discovered during his 25-year filmmaking journey. Through his Center for Cultural Preservation, he's created over 50 documentary films and recorded more than 500 oral histories, capturing voices that might otherwise be silenced by time. His work reveals how Appalachian traditions, from music to crafts, represent not just white culture but a beautiful blending of African-American, British Isles, and Indigenous influences.

Don't miss the premiere of "Color Beyond the Lines" on June 21st at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at Blue Ridge Community College, featuring post-film discussion with Black community leaders. Tickets are expected to sell out, so reserve yours now at saveculture.org and be part of preserving Henderson County's full, diverse history.

Speaker 1:

The George Real Estate Group radio broadcast is celebrating 10 years on WHKP. The George Real Estate Group is celebrating 10 years on the radio live every Thursday morning at 10.05 on WHKP 107.7 FM and AM 1450 and streaming online at WHkpcom. Each Friday morning at 845,. The George Real Estate Group presents the Hometown Hero Award to someone in our community who goes above and beyond to make our hometown a better place to live. Here's this week's Hometown Hero Show. It's 845, time for our George Real Estate Group Hometown Hero Show. It's 845, time for our George Real Estate Group Hometown Hero Series. And what a pleasure to welcome Noah George to the microphone with me every Friday morning to salute some of our community's finest. How you doing.

Speaker 2:

Good, so much to be thankful for and so grateful to be here every Friday morning sponsoring the Hometown Hero Series. We have incredible men and women that we bring to the mic every Friday and hear their incredible stories. We really do.

Speaker 1:

And, hey, I wanted to chat with you for a second before we introduce our guest, david Weintraub, about the real estate market here. I understand that you have connections with someone who can help people get into a new home affordably.

Speaker 2:

Well, yesterday we had the privilege of having the owner, barry, of Compact Cottages here on our show yesterday. But with the small lot changes in the zoning, we're able to get more affordable homes. I mean you can get new construction homes for $3,000 to $3,500, which is incredible in this area. I mean our average single-family home price is over $530,000. And so with the efficiency in the building and also in the increased density where we can use city water, city sewer lots through this new zoning allowance, it's bringing down the cost of land, bringing down the cost of construction and it's allowing us to have affordable housing in our community, which we desperately need, we absolutely need. So it's amazing there's solutions out there. I mean, maybe it's for yourself or a loved one or a friend or a grandchild. Looking for those options, we have options that you might not be aware of.

Speaker 1:

You at George Real Estate Group got all the details on this and can put everybody together with who needs to be.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and if you want to hear more about it, we had our show yesterday. You can listen to our podcast, which we podcast all of our radio shows, including the Hometown Hero, but the show yesterday would be worth listening to. And, of course, if you're thinking of buying or selling or investing in real estate, or even a 1031 exchange, we're helping with that, or even a career in real estate. We're growing. We have more agents joining our team. The market's still moving. I mean we're averaging some 126 single family homes a month selling in Henderson County. We still have low inventory. Yes, the market's softening but it's still moving. I mean homes are still moving. The demand is still there. 30 of our homes sold in henderson county are cash. So I mean we still can see strong.

Speaker 1:

We still see the the market moving yeah, interest rate is not a concern to those folks but I mean it's certainly impacting, but it's also the overall.

Speaker 2:

We have a very healthy market all right, all right, noah.

Speaker 1:

thank you very much for bringing us the George Real Estate Group Hometown Hero Show every Friday morning and welcome David Weintraub from the Center for Cultural Preservation. Good morning, david.

Speaker 3:

Good morning, so happy to be here.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for coming out to join us and talk with us about a new documentary that you have been spending a lot of time creating over the past years. I guess I know a little bit about what you're talking about. It's the new documentary called Color Beyond the Lines and it premieres next Saturday night at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at Blue Ridge Community College, and we'll remind you of that as the show goes on. But Tippy Cresswell here at Broadcast House is a part of this documentary, I guess.

Speaker 3:

He actually is. He gets to be on the other side of the camera or the microphone as it were.

Speaker 1:

Well, tell us about Color Beyond the Line.

Speaker 3:

Well, I've been working with the Black History Research Group now for a number of years. They had asked me to teach them how to start an oral history project about 10 years ago, and so I did some training with them and we started to do some oral histories maybe a half a dozen or so and I was really excited and intrigued by what I was learning and it became clear to me that it was so important that we make a film that focused on our black community, because so many, so few folks understand what went on, how vibrant and cultural rich Black Hendersonville was and what happened to it with the Great Society programs and with the desegregation of schools. And it probably will be surprising to a lot of folks that so many of our black residents did not embrace desegregation of schools, because they loved the Ninth Avenue School. They loved the East Flat Rock Colored School. These were institutions that were taught by people who looked like them about their history and about American history, and all of that was lost.

Speaker 1:

Gone and pretty much remains gone today.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we have a plaque at Hendersonville Middle School where the Ninth Avenue School was. But that richness, that identity, that heritage and that's sort of all my films and I'm on more than 50 now. All those films that I make are about community, about our connections, about this rich tapestry that we all play a role in and about how we affirm that cultural richness that our community has imbued for so long.

Speaker 2:

I mean storytelling is so important. I mean that's prior to film and radio and I mean storytelling was how the generations shared their history and you're continuing to do that now through this and and you're able to, to connect, tell. Let's go back to your connect. I mean, what brought you to this community? Can we talk about your story here in hendersonville and your, your connection here?

Speaker 3:

well, I've only been here 20 years, but I got here as quickly as I could um and I just fell in love with, with the nature here, um, but I also fell in love with the heritage and the culture here, because so many places you have to go to a museum, you know, stare at things under glass to be able to get in touch with that history.

Speaker 3:

And here there's just hundreds and hundreds, thousands of people who have seven, eight generation connections to these hills, to the music, to the culture, to the land, who knew how to actually do things, you know, grow fruit, from molasses makers to moonshiners and everything in between. And I was just so thrilled to be able to sit down. I always felt like I was meeting the richest person I ever met and they didn't often have more than you know two nickels to rub together for most of their life. But they have this rich richness of connection to the land, connection to each other, connection to their faith, and I felt like such a poor person when I left that interview realizing how little I have connect compared to them and I mean it's so compelling.

Speaker 2:

I mean, and you're like, you're like I cannot not document and share the story. Mean and you're like I cannot not do this and share the story?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, exactly, and you know I've done over 500 oral histories and almost all those folks are gone now, and so it gives me even more impetus. I have to keep this going because we're losing something precious. The digital age gives us technology and some faces on a screen, but real life, real people connected to real things, gives you something so much richer.

Speaker 2:

How long have you been involved in the documentary world? It's been over 25 years now. Was there some specific catalyst that got you into that?

Speaker 3:

I had no plans to be a filmmaker. I mean I always liked the idea of being a filmmaker. I had no plans to be a filmmaker, I mean I always liked the idea of being a filmmaker. But I moved to South Florida from New York and I knew that the place that I lived in had this Jewish connection and my grandmother from New York would come to Miami during the wintertime and I knew she wasn't the type to lie on the beach and slap herself with coconut oil. She was very culturally connected and I was trying to figure out what was that, why did she come? And so that unfolded in this amazing story of music and shows and and these connections with people and their culture, basically creating a shuttle byetl by the sea, a little town, little Jewish village by the sea, and that was the impetus in creating my first documentary film.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible. We mentioned knowing David Holt, both of us. Great musician and storyteller of western North Carolina Moved here from California when he was young and had much the same impression that you did. He musically took his love of the area back to the roots of Appalachian music and I can imagine that you and him working together, he probably turns you on to some of his connections that you went and got, got stories from, oh yeah, but david holt is an amazing preservationist.

Speaker 3:

Um, the stories that he could tell, the connections that he had with the music, um, I've leaned on him for so many years and, uh, the last film that I made about appalachian history, the, a great american tapestry, the many strands of mountain music, he was the key because I always thought mountain music was white music, that's what everyone was telling me. But he made it clear to me that I needed to dig a whole lot deeper and it turns out the African-American connection, the British Isles connection, the indigenous connection. That's what makes our music so beautiful, is it's a blended tradition. A blend, yeah, and that's what makes our music so beautiful is it's a blended blend.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah and that, and that's what he taught me and that that was such an invaluable lesson he and uh, rihanna giddens, uh, I think, are two of the people who have really held on to that, that culture, and passed it along in their musical abilities oh yeah, yeah, rhiannon Giddens is amazing.

Speaker 3:

She's my favorite musician Mine too.

Speaker 1:

Mine too. Well, back to Color Beyond the Lines. That premieres a week from tomorrow night At the Bo Thomas Arena 7 o'clock. Do we need? Is this a ticketed event?

Speaker 3:

It is a ticketed event and we do anticipate it will be sold out. So we highly recommend that people order their tickets online now, and you can do that by going to our website, savecultureorg S-A-V-E cultureorg, and you can pick up your tickets and the program's going to be great. There's going to be some music started off, we're going to show the film and then we'll have some discussion by some of the black leaders in the film afterwards so we can have that dialogue, and then the Black History Research Group will have some refreshments in the lobby afterwards so people can get more acquainted with our organizations the Center for Cultural Preservation, them buy a thousand or two DVDs and all that and this film was made possible through the Community Foundation.

Speaker 2:

Is that right?

Speaker 3:

Yes, the Community Foundation was an integral part of funding this program.

Speaker 2:

And then your organization is the Center for Cultural Preservation. Is that right? Is that its own nonprofit? It's a nonprofit organization.

Speaker 3:

We've been at this now for 20-plus years. 50-plus films, 500-plus oral histories, lots of public programs, and there's just so much. You know, there's so much cultural. There's gold in these Lar Hills. And so the more I dig, the more I find, that's incredible.

Speaker 2:

But the thing going back to you said, the most surprising thing you found from the film was there when you were talking about the integration was they were not. That was something that was slow to be embraced because of their own history and their rich education that they had within their own community.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we've been able to document. You know that the fight for quality education goes back to the 1870s. Because people understood to be truly free, they had to have an education and so they created these black schools and churches and homes outside. Eventually there was formal institutions. There was in the 1920s I think there was seven or eight black schools that got consolidated down to three and then finally, in 1951, it was just the Ninth Avenue School and although they had poor quality books, the facilities weren't top notch.

Speaker 3:

They borrowed a gym that you know, the leftover gym from Hendersonville High. It was taught by people who look like them, who understood what they went through, because our black community faced tremendous discrimination. You know black and white fountains. You had to go up to the Carolina Theater. You know the blacks had to sit upstairs. You had to go out back to get food from the restaurant. So when integration hit it took a lot of courage for the black community, for black students to sit in a white classroom, and you know we have a small black community, so it might be two or three black students with 30 white students and that took a lot to go through that.

Speaker 1:

Gosh. I'd like to talk about this for a lot longer than we have time to David Gosh. I'd like to talk about this for a lot longer than we have time to David. Thank you so much for creating this documentary that's called Color Beyond the Lines. It premieres at 7 o'clock Saturday night, june 21st, a week from tomorrow night at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at Blue Ridge Community College. It's presented by the Center for Cultural Preservation and, david, we've got a certificate or two uh for you. Noah's got to uh say thank you absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Again, thank you for what the work you're doing in the community and join us uh, each friday morning at 8 45 as we salute another george real estate group hometown hero. Have a great father's day everybody. It's nine o'clock.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 1:

The George Real Estate Group is located in Flat Rock, north Carolina, near Hendersonville in Henderson County. You can find them online at realestatebygregcom. The George Real Estate Group can be reached at 828-393-0134 or stop by their office at 2720 Greenville Highway, flat Rock, north Carolina. Tune in live each week on Thursdays at 10.05 am on WHKP 107.7 FM and 1450 am, or stream online at whkpcom or download these podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. The George Real Estate Group brings you the WHKP Hometown Hero Series every Friday morning at 845.