Deeeee-Luxe!
Now on our podcast feed, experience Salvation South Deluxe—a monthly longform story in audio form. In our first episode, we revisit Old Fort, North Carolina, where citizens crossed the old racial boundaries to rebuild their small town's economy.
Back in 2022, our trusted Asheville contributor, Jay Moye, gave Salvation South a story called “Old Fort’s New Start,” about how a town of 815 people in western North Carolina had begun rebuilding its economy.
Like hundreds of small towns across the South that once depended on manufacturing plants to keep their people employed, Old Fort, in the words of community activist Lavita Logan, “was about two seconds away from seeing tumbleweeds rolling down the street.”
Jay’s story outlined how this diverse community, whose Black and white citizens had rarely collaborated, decided that rebuilding their economy required them to work together. The result was a plan to build a forty-two-mile network of mountain biking and hiking trails that would like Old Fort, through the Pisgah National Forest, to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
After Jay’s piece ran, Salvation South followed the Old Fort story throughout 2023, visiting the little mountain town, meeting and interviewing its people, in the hope of pulling it together in audio form. And now, thanks to our partnership with the extraordinarily good people of Georgia Public Broadcasting, Old Fort’s story has become the first episode of something we're calling Salvation South Deluxe.
Once a month throughout 2024, we'll be adding a new Deluxe longform audio story to the Salvation South Podcast feed, which we produce in collaboration with GPB.
Listen to Episode 1 of Salvation South Deluxe: “How Racial Unity Brought Back a Small Town”
You can subscribe to the Salvation South Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and you can listen to Episode One of Salvation South Deluxe right here.
Stay tuned throughout the year as Salvation South Deluxe host Chuck Reece does deep dives into Southern music, food, history, and culture.