Photos from Asheville’s African American Community on Display at WCQS

A selection from the Isaiah Rice Photograph Collection, titled “The Way We Were,” will be on display at WCQS, western North Carolina’s public radio station, through the end of November.

The station is at 73 Broadway in Asheville; the exhibit will be available for public viewing from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The exhibit is curated by the photographer’s grandson Darin Waters, Assistant Professor of History at UNC Asheville, and Gene Hyde, head of Special Collections, and is on loan from UNC Asheville’s Special Collections in Ramsey Library. The photos were donated to Special Collections by Rice’s daughter, Marian R. Waters.

“We’re honored to work with Dr. Waters and the university to exhibit Isiah Rice’s vibrant photographs of everyday life in the African American community of Asheville before it experienced so much change,” said WCQS General Manager and CEO David Feingold.

The full collection contains more than 1,000 images taken by Rice which document Asheville’s African American community from the 1950s through the 1970s, with many on display for the first time.

The collection was unveiled on Oct. 23, 2015 at the second annual “African Americans in Western North Carolina” Conference at UNC Asheville. The 2016 exhibit is sponsored by The McClure Fund, Troy & Sons, and UNC Asheville.

To see more of the digitized photo collection, visit toto.lib.unca.edu/collections/photographs.htm.