Today Liz and I had our first meeting to discuss the project. She isn’t as familiar with the history of this area as I am, but I had a few suggestions as to groups of migrants that we could focus on. We also thought it prudent to visit UNCA’s Special Collections and the Western Regional Archives, the western branch of the state archives. It may be that the archivists at these locations will have the perfect collection for us to explore. If not, I am hopeful that they will be able to point us in the right direction of another institution that can help us. I am sure we will get these meetings nailed down within the next week.

As far as ideas that I had for groups that we can research, perhaps one of the biggest groups of people to settle in Western North Carolina is the Scotch-Irish. There is an annual event that takes place in WNC called the Highland Games, where descendants of these families gather. As luck would have it, the organizers of this event have kept records of the families and games, so this could potentially be a very large collection to work with. There is also a sizable Latin American population around Asheville, but I am not sure if a collection exists that would give us the evidence we need to create a robust site. There is also the possibility of working with the Black Mountain College collection. This particular school was active from 1933-1957 and was revolutionary, to say the least. During World War II it took in many refugees from Nazi occupied countries as well as many other countries from Europe, Asia, and South America. We thought that there may be a story here as well.

Liz and I were also curious about how far out in North Carolina was considered local enough. Would Charlotte be suitable? Or somewhere equally as far?

Finally, I wanted to reflect a little on the reading for tonight. Reading about the struggles that immigrants faced when trying to gain U.S. citizenship was… astounding. The ways that our government created to discriminate against others is amazing to me. Taking away a woman’s citizenship because she married a non-citizen? Deciding that Indians weren’t white enough and revoking their citizenship? As bad as attitudes toward immigration may seem today (and there is no denying that blatant xenophobia fuel the views of many on this topic), it is still apparent the progress that has been made. I’m sure I will keep this reading in mind when we finally decide on a topic. Was it hard for our migrants to gain citizenship? Were they ever in danger of having their citizenship stripped away? Regardless, I am looking forward to telling their story, whatever that story may be.