Displaying items by tag: oconaluftee

CHEROKEE — Great Smoky Mountains National Park will host a free youth fishing clinic and an Old Time Music Jam at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center on Saturday, October 21, 2023. Both events are free and open to the public.

In collaboration with the International Game Fish Association, the park will hold the fishing clinic from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Try your hand casting a line for local trout and earn your Junior Ranger Angler badge. Learn about fish conservation and ethical angling practices at fun, interactive stations. All fishing equipment will be provided. The first 25 families will receive a free fishing pole to keep! A valid Tennessee or North Carolina fishing license is required for participants 16 or older. 

Charles Mingus, the descendant of slaves from the Smokies, is shown chomping a cigar and playing bass at the U.S. Bicentennial celebration in Lower Manhattan, July 4, 1976.  Tom Marcello 

Smokies African American studies trace a great musician with roots in Oconaluftee 

GATLINBURG ­— Black history, let alone jazz history, isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when most people think about the Smokies.

But famed jazz musician Charles Mingus Jr.’s family has roots in what is now Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

At the recent virtual Discover Life in America Colloquium, previously reported on by Hellbender Press, Appalachian Highlands Science Education Coordinator Antoine Fletcher was the sole presenter on social sciences. He went into the Mingus family history and Black history in the Southern Appalachian region.

Fletcher said the Mingus story derives from the African American Experiences in the Smokies Project, which he described as “a project that is focusing on the untold stories of African Americans in the park and the Southern Appalachian region.”

“There’s a huge story to tell,” he said of his research. “There are stories of the human vestiges that we have from 900-plus years.”