Voices You Have Not Yet Heard

"Norfolk Southern is one of the few places here in the South that has unions. Just as soon as Daddy was eligible to join, he did."

"Tell us what Environmental Justice means to you."

And they went to every race they could get to in Asheville. Those were illegal races. That big long straightaway in front of where Sam's Club is now..

M signified Mulatto. The word "mulatto," while never precise, most often connoted a White father and Black mother.

"Everyone had to stay in their place. So that was the Asheville that Matthew Bacoate was born into in 1930."

What's next is still waiting to be defined. I want to find my own financial security, because honestly, I still feel like I'm in slavery.

When I got out at 31, April 28th, 2018, I came home with a plan this time. I was in Asheville, just out of prison.

From the time my parents lost their house in Shiloh, around the age of seven, until I got out of prison at the age of 31, those are all dark years.

I went to Asheville Middle from 6th to 8th grade. I was a quite, shy kid who had straight A's...Then I went to Asheville High, but I didn't graduate.

"So I looked around, I knew what was around me, and I saw that drug dealers had a lot of respect. They had what I felt like I wanted..."

"I was born May 25th, 1987, here in Asheville, North Carolina, I think at St. Joseph's Hospital. My parents were actual high school sweethearts..."

"I was born into a small, close-knit African American community of the Swannanoa Valley..."