Effort in Hot Springs brings small piece of local black history back to life

Though a look at current voter rolls shows that just two of the 872 registered voters in Hot Springs identify as black, the French Broad River town once had a more visible African American community. Hear Hot Springs native and historian Jackie Burgin Painter tell it and black residents played a key role in the town's development beyond their modest numbers.

“There never were a lot,” Burgin Painter, the author of four books focused on history of the Hot Springs area, said in a phone interview. The development the Mountain Park Hotel in the 1880s, she said, would not have been possible without the contributions of black citizens. “They were an important part of the town when they worked at the hotel and did jobs nobody else would do.”

After the hotel burned in 1920, few black families stayed according to Burgin Painter. An all-black school on Conway Street educated young students during segregation, though that building, too, would succumb to flames. By the time Burgin Painter was growing up in the late 40s and 50s, she recalls just a handful of black residents.

“When I was a child, there were maybe a dozen families, at most," she said. "There were two black families on the street I lived on. They were just considered neighbors. By the same token, there was no mingling.”

Keeping the legacy of those families alive as a way to move beyond the culture that defined the era has grown in importance to Burgin Painter. After a 2016 commemoration marked 100 years since Germans were interred in Hot Springs, Burgin Painter saw an opportunity to highlight the place of black residents in the town's history. Commemorations of the World War I history included the restoration of a corner of Odd Fellow Cemetery, where Germans who died during internment were buried. Though the bodies of the Germans were exhumed after the war, the cemetery continued to serve Hot Springs black community for generations.

More than 50 years after the last burial at the site, a number of the graves of black Hot Springs residents had remained unmarked. Burgin Painter’s cousin, Elzie K. McCall, has tended to those gravesites for roughly 20 years. McCall owns and operates Creek Ridge Camping on Henderson Drive, which neighbors the Odd Fellows Cemetery property, and he fashioned crosses to lay over the final resting place of some of the town’s black citizens.

“They’re Hot Springs residents and they’re kind of forgotten,” McCall said, explaining why he worked to keep the sites clear. “A lot of people don’t know about this history.”

As McCall did work on the grounds, Burgin Painter helped coordinate research to find the names of some of the individuals buried at the site. Over three years, Burgin Painter and supporters of the project confirmed names of 11 African Americans with graves at Odd Fellows Cemetery. It’s likely the more lie within the cemetery grounds.

Ensuring that more residents and visitors learn about the graves is a focus for Taylor Barnhill. “These are just wonderful stories that are important for the county,” Barnhill said. “It's a piece of the county history that's getting lost as these cemeteries are abandon, especially African American graves, which if they were marked at all, are just rocks.”

Known for his research on Madison County barns, Barnhill has also explored countless cemeteries across the county. In the future, he hopes to offer tours visiting cemeteries that represent all of Madison County’s past. “They’re our founding fathers here in Western North Carolina and Madison County.”