Asheville Living Treasure: Lucille Flack Ray

Lucille Flack Ray collaborates with various organizations on historic preservation. Photo: Urban News

Staff Reports

 Lucille Flack Ray may best be honored as a Cultural Activist and Asheville’s Troubadour. Her artistry disseminates cultural themes by mesmerizing audiences with her soprano singing and vocal lyricism. Whether reciting poetry from Looking Back, and Moving Forward, her published book of poetry, collaborating with media outlets and organizations on the subject of historic preservation, or captivating audiences with her engaging public speaking about Asheville’s black historical heritage, Mrs. Ray personifies community leadership.

She is a woman of profound courage who has overcome life’s obstacles, tribulations, and challenges. Her deep reservoir of knowledge of life in segregated Asheville gives her a unique perspective on school days at the African-American Stephens Lee High School, descriptions of life on “The Block,” and accounts of social life during the era of urban revitalization that occurred during the late nineteen-fifties and -sixties.

Through her participation in projects such as “Listening for a Change: North Carolina Communities” sponsored by the Southern Oral History Program at UNC-Chapel Hill and “I Remember Jim Crow,” an award-winning roundtable of personal narratives of area African-American seniors coordinated by West Asheville librarian Karen Loughmiller, Mrs. Ray conveys an important piece of black cultural inheritance for the people of Asheville.

Lucille is a survivor of an abusive alcoholic marriage and two bouts of cancer. She is an active volunteer for the Cancer Society, often a featured speaker at Walk for Life, Relay for Life, and other related events. Proceeds from her poetry book are contributed to the Cancer Society.
Approaching life with determination, zest, and a sense of humor, Lucille Flack Ray reared six children and served as a caregiver to many family members. She enjoyed a successful career as a certified medical technician with the Department of Human Resources in Washington, DC and pursued a second career as an early childhood education teacher for Buncombe County.

In Looking Back, and Moving Forward, she narrates a journey on a reflective road from the heart. It is hopeful and heartwarming, just as the author may be described. Now 86, Lucille is tenacious and stays active with family, friends, church, and community activities. In her words, “I am living life hard, one day at a time, trying to get everything I can out of life before I go.”

“Memories of our lives, of our works, of our deeds will continue in others.”
~ Rosa Parks