Voices (81)
She taught us to “fight with purpose, and love without constraint:” Nikki Giovanni, literary icon and civil rights activist, dies at 81 in Blacksburg
Written by Angela Dennis
Renowned poet, educator and civil rights activist Nikki Giovanni died Dec. 9 at 81. Jeanine Fuller/Social media
“Knoxville, Tennessee”
I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy's garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage
and lots of
barbecue
and buttermilk
and homemade ice-cream
at the church picnic
and listen to
gospel music
outside
at the church
homecoming
and you go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep
— Nikki Giovanni
BLACKSBURG — Knoxville native Nikki Giovanni, a poet, civil rights legend and educator who empowered generations with her fearless words and unwavering advocacy for Black America, died on Dec. 9 at the age of 81 after her third cancer diagnosis.
“The acclaimed poet, Black Arts Movement icon whose poems of wit, wonder and wisdom were celebrated in children’s books, on keynote stages and television shows, and in more than two dozen bestselling poetry collections, died peacefully on December 9, 2024, with her life-long partner, Virginia [Ginney] Fowler, by her side,” said friend and author Renee Watson in a statement.
In 2023, Knoxville’s Beck Cultural Exchange Center unveiled an exhibit dedicated to Giovanni, featuring her complete book collection and personal memorabilia. The center, a cherished space for Giovanni, was a must-visit whenever she returned to her hometown.
“Nikki was a gift to the world, generously sharing her talents with everyone around her,” said Rev. Reneé Kesler, President of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center. She loved deeply and expressed that love in countless ways.”
Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni was born on June 7, 1943, in the “Negro Wing” of Knoxville General Hospital to parents Yolande Cornelia Sr. and Jones “Gus” Giovanni. She graduated from Austin High School in 1961.
She enrolled at the historically Black Fisk University in Nashville in 1960. At Fisk, she joined the Writer’s Workshop, a space that fostered her creativity and connected her with other aspiring Black writers who later went on to become prominent Black literary figures such as Dudley Randall, Margaret Walker and Amiri Baraka.
“At Fisk, she found her voice — a voice that would go on to inspire the world to dream with courage, to fight with purpose and to love without constraint. Through her poetry, she wove stories of Black resilience, beauty and liberation. Her spirit is forever etched into the soul at Fisk, an eternal light guiding us toward justice, creativity and authenticity,” Fisk officials said in a statement.
Feds to restart “technical and design work” for Foothills Parkway extension
Written by Thomas Fraser
Conservation groups have cautioned against the zombie roadway between Wears Valley and Gatlinburg; EIS-level study uncertain
This story will be updated.
Concerns raised by the public over the decades range from impacts on domestic water supplies and endangered or threatened species to the fact the roadway might be a catalyst for excessive tourism infrastructure in Townsend and Wears Valley.
ORNL central to East Tennessee nuclear resurgence
Written by Leo Williams
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Demonstration reactor projects, alternative fuel among projects centered around Oak Ridge, an old-school nuclear town
Leo Williams is the editor of ORNL Review. UT-Battelle manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The full interactive article is available here.
Offer your perspective on this article and the new rise of nuclear technology in East Tennessee by contacting Hellbender Press Editor Thomas Fraser at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
OAK RIDGE — In fall 2020, California-based Kairos Power announced plans to build an advanced nuclear demonstration reactor within the site of the former K-25 uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge.
It was a good location for the company. The decommissioned K-25, now named Heritage Center Industrial Park, came with impressive infrastructure, including ample electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority, abundant water from the nearby Clinch River and more than 11 miles of rail line connected directly to the Norfolk Southern system. Interstate 40 was less than five miles away.
Perhaps more importantly, the location gave Kairos’ scientists and engineers close access to an unmatched pool of nuclear expertise. ORNL, which helped start the nuclear age more than 80 years ago and remains at the forefront of nuclear research, is all of five miles away. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which hosts a prestigious nuclear engineering department dating back to 1957, is just 30 miles down the road.
And the federally owned TVA, which has operated nuclear power plants since 1974, is developing its own next-generation nuclear reactor about three miles away.
In particular, though, the company wanted to be near a national lab, according to its co-founder Mike Laufer.
“The big decision for us was where we were going to put the Hermes reactor,” he said.
“For that, we pretty quickly narrowed down that we had a strong preference to be in close proximity to a national laboratory, with capabilities that could augment our own infrastructure.”
Hermes will be a 35-megawatt molten salt-cooled reactor that uses a new kind of uranium fuel called TRISO — short for tristructural isotropic particle fuel. The billiard ball-sized TRISO pebbles will consist of uranium, carbon and oxygen particles surrounded by carbon- and ceramic-based materials designed to prevent the release of radioactive fission products. The reactor will not produce electricity; rather, it will demonstrate the company’s technology before Kairos moves on to building much larger commercial reactors.
Architect’s rendering of the Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor facility under construction in Oak Ridge. Kairos Power
Helene: Governor faces pushback after using Tenncare money for disaster relief
Written by Anita Wadhwani
In East Tennessee on Tuesday, Gov. Bill Lee viewed a buckled road damaged by the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Brandon Hull/Office of the Governor via Tennessee Lookout
National health care groups warned in 2022 that the unusual Tenncare fund now being used for disaster relief would redirect dollars away from low-income enrollees
Anita Wadhwani is a senior reporter for Tennessee Lookout.
NASHVILLE — In the days after Hurricane Helene unleashed catastrophic floods across parts of East Tennessee — killing 17 and inflicting hundreds of millions of dollars in damage — Gov. Bill Lee convened a series of conference calls with his cabinet members to urge his team to “think outside the box” in how to get desperately needed capital to hard-hit rural counties.
TennCare Director Stephen Smith offered up a novel idea: tap into a special savings pool within Tennessee’s Medicaid program, which draws on a combination of state and federal funds to pay the health care bills for 1.5 million Tennesseans living in or near poverty — among them pregnant women, children, seniors and those with disabilities.
Lee, who later recounted the conversation at a news conference, went with it.
The Helene Emergency Assistance Loans (HEAL) program will direct $100 million in no-interest loans from TennCare to 13 disaster-struck Tennessee counties, tapping so-called “shared savings” funds that are unique to the state’s Medicaid program.
Nukes hit Oak Ridge airport: Plans on hold in favor of private science enterprise
Written by Ben Pounds
Illustrated photo from a presentation on the Oak Ridge Airport project to Roane County officials at the Roane County Courthouse in Kingston on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 soon after the state appropriated $15 million for use toward the now-paused airport project. Roane County via Oak Ridge Today
City: Airport ‘paused’ because of nearby planned uranium-enrichment facility
OAK RIDGE — The city paused its long-simmering and controversial project to build a general aviation airport in the western part of Oak Ridge.
Oak Ridge government announced it paused the plan to build the airport in part of East Tennessee Technology Park because another nearby project is going forward: Orano USA’s Project Ike. Orano announced its plans for that project, a large uranium enrichment facility, Wednesday, Sept. 4; the city of Oak Ridge announced its pause the following week, Wednesday Sept. 11.
The city stated it wanted to “re-evaluate the proposed location” for the airport due to the Orano plan. City communications specialist Lauren Gray declined to name any other locations the city might be considering, saying plans weren’t that definite yet.
(Hellbender Press won a first-place award from the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for its previous coverage of the proposed Oak Ridge airport).
Give peace a chance: Townsend, at the edge of the wild, wants your voice for land-use planning process
Written by Élan Young
The city of Townsend sits on the northwestern side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is one of the key gateways to the national park, which is the most visited in the country. A land-use planning process is underway at the behest of citizens to preserve the rural and peaceful nature of the town and Tuckaleechee Cove.
Plan organizers set open house to help preserve the Peaceful Side of the Smokies
TOWNSEND — The last 10-year land use and transportation plan for this key gateway to Great Smoky Mountain National Park expired in 2020. Residents and other stakeholders linked to the most-visited national park in the country are concerned about Townsend’s growth and development patterns; city leaders decided to pursue a new plan with a vision, at least, that could be used to help guide city ordinances well into the future.
The Townsend Community Plan process launched in July and is now in its second phase. It was initiated by the planning and city commissions to help guide land use and other decisions while seeking to preserve Townsend’s unique character and its reputation as the “peaceful side of the Smokies.”
A Planning Commission steering committee established the nine-member Townsend Community Plan Advisory Committee (CPAC), comprising a mix of city officials and community volunteers who have diverse backgrounds. At CPAC’s recommendation, the city is now under contract with two consultants, the East Tennessee Development District and the SE Group, which are splitting the work of guiding the community engagement process.
Now, on the heels of the devastation from Hurricane Helene in river towns throughout the Southern Appalachians, the community can provide their visions for the future of this tourist town along Little River during the second phase of the timeline, which focuses on community engagement.
The consultants will host an open house on Friday, October 18, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. at Heritage Center Amphitheater. Residents, visitors, national park lovers and other stakeholders are invited to engage in hands-on planning activities to share their vision for Townsend and the greater Tuckaleechee Cove area.
Highlander Folk School, training ground for civil rights leaders, fights to regain land
Written by Cari Wade Gervin
An example of anti-civil rights fearmongering and slander directed at the Highlander Folk School. Civil Rights Heritage Museum
A dispute over a pending land sale raises new questions about whom historic preservation is for.
This article was originally published by Tennessee Lookout. Cari Wade Gervin is a freelance journalist based in Chattanooga. You can find more of her writing on social media @carigervin or at carigervin.substack.com.
MONTEAGLE — This much is not in dispute: In 1961, the state of Tennessee took 200 acres of land from Highlander Folk School on Monteagle Mountain in Grundy County. Took, as in confiscated on bogus charges of alcohol sales without a license.
But the real reason for the confiscation stemmed from fears of civil rights and union activism after two decades of training now-icons such as Rosa Parks and Diane Nash at Highlander.
This much is also not in dispute: Five plots of that now subdivided land are owned by a nonprofit called the Tennessee Preservation Trust (TPT). The sale of those plots to Todd Mayo, the for-profit owner of The Caverns, a rural concert venue, is pending. And the current Highlander administration, which had its offer to buy the land rejected, is furious.
Everything else — what happened to TPT, whether they ever had plans to sell the land back to Highlander, what might happen to those plots now and the land next to them that TPT doesn’t own — well, the answers vary depending on whom you ask.
On the one hand, TPT preserved some historic buildings that might very well have been lost. On the other hand, the original (and some would say, still rightful) owner of those buildings has been shut out from determining what happens to them.
Still others question whether a group of white men are the right ones to tell the story of the storied civil rights training ground.
Editorial: Fight legislation that rolls back environmental protections
Written by Dan Ritzman
“Freedom of Speech.” Norman Rockwell/Library of Congress
Stand up for wildlands, wildlife and water — all threatened by proposed Congressional bills
Dan Ritzman is director of the Sierra Club Conservation Campaign.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Our public lands are facing unprecedented threats, and time is running out to protect them. Scientists tell us we need to double the amount of protected lands and waters in America by 2030 to fight the climate and extinction crisis. Congress is pushing through several dangerous bills that could dismantle essential safeguards and open up our natural treasures to devastating exploitation.
Here’s the urgent situation and what we’re fighting against:
- Fix Our Forests Act (HR 8790): This bill could weaken environmental protections, promote excessive logging and bypass crucial reviews, risking the health of our forests and worsening climate change.
- Save Our Sequoias Act (HR 2989): While claiming to protect Giant Sequoias, this legislation could actually harm these iconic trees by speeding up logging projects and removing key environmental protections.
- Forest Information Reform Act (FIR Act) (HR 200) & Senate Bill S 1540: These bills would exempt the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management from critical environmental consultations and reviews, ignoring new information and putting endangered species at risk.
- Cottonwood S1540: This bill aims to undermine important environmental checks established by previous court decisions, threatening sensitive habitats and wildlife.
- Wyoming Public Lands Initiative (S1348): This proposal could compromise protections for Wyoming’s public lands, increasing resource extraction and reducing conservation efforts.
Protecting wild places will keep drilling and logging from dumping pollution into the air, sequester emissions, provide protection from extreme weather, homes for wildlife and opportunities for people to enjoy the outdoors together.
Your support today will help ensure that our public lands remain protected for future generations.
ᎫᏬᎯ: Cherokee name restored to Tennessee’s highest mountain
Written by Katie Liming
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the formal name change of Clingmans Dome to Kuwohi, which means ‘mulberry place’ in Cherokee. Simon Whitehurst/Great Smoky Mountains Association
Work already underway to replace signage related to peak named after Rebel general
Katie Liming is a public information officer at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
GATLINBURG — The U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted Sept. 18 in favor of the formal request submitted by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to change the name of Clingmans Dome (FID #1326387) to Kuwohi.
Kuwohi is the Cherokee name for the mountain and translates to “mulberry place.” In Cherokee syllabary, the name is ᎫᏬᎯ. The National Park Service strongly supported the name restoration and applauds today’s decision, which also received support from local communities and governments.
Kuwohi is a sacred place for the Cherokee people and is the highest point within the traditional Cherokee homeland. Kuwohi is visible from the Qualla Boundary, the home of the Eastern Band. Efforts are already underway to update signage, website and other materials with the Kuwohi name.
Clingmans Dome has always been known as Kuwohi to the Cherokee. The mountain became known as Clingmans Dome following an 1859 survey by geographer Arnold Guyot, named for Thomas Lanier Clingman, who was a lawyer, U.S. representative and senator from North Carolina, and Confederate brigadier general.
Don’t hate the diggers. Hate the ginseng game.
Written by Justin Law
A ginseng digger works a hollow somewhere in the Appalachians. Traditional ‘sangers’ generally follow centuries-old protocols for sustainable harvest of the plant and pose much less of a threat to ginseng than habitat destruction and extractive industry. Photos from American Folklife Collection/Library of Congress
Wild ginseng is declining, but small-scale ‘diggers’ aren’t the main threat to this native plant — and they can help save it
This article was originally published by The Conversation. Justine Law is an associate professor of Ecology and Environmental Studies at Sonoma State University.
KNOXVILLE — Across Appalachia, September marks the start of ginseng season, when thousands of people roam the hills searching for hard-to-reach patches of this highly prized plant.
Many people know ginseng as an ingredient in vitamin supplements or herbal tea. That ginseng is grown commercially on farms in Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada. In contrast, wild American ginseng is an understory plant that can live for decades in the forests of the Appalachians. The plant’s taproot grows throughout its life and sells for hundreds of dollars per pound, primarily to East Asian customers who consume it for health reasons.
Because it’s such a valuable medicinal plant, harvesting ginseng has helped families in mountainous regions of states such as Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Ohio weather economic ups and downs since the late 1700s.
Photos: Glimpses of the old ways at Cherokee Fall Festival in Vonore
Written by Thomas Fraser
Scenes from the Cherokee Fall Festival, an annual celebration of Cherokee culture and history at the Sequoyah Museum in Vonore. Photos by Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press
A celebration of Cherokee people and the man who wrote their alphabet
VONORE — Flutes, dance, food and firearms were featured at the annual festival near the birthplace of a linguistic giant on the shore of the Little Tennessee River and the grounds of the Sequoyah Museum.
Cherokee dance, lore and storytelling communicated the rich story of the Native American nation, which was forcibly disbanded along with other indigenous residents of the Southern Appalachians under the administration of President Andrew Jackson. The main concentration of the tribe is now in Oklahoma, but the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians — including those whose ancestors resisted forced relocation — is now centered in Cherokee.
Sequoyah, born in nearby Toskegee in the Cherokee Nation circa 1770, developed an alphabet for the Cherokee language so it could be written and read, an astonishing feat to this day. By some accounts, the literacy rate of the then-fractured nation approached 100 percent soon after Sequoyah’s death in Mexico in 1843.
Most of Sequoyah’s community was destroyed and its culture imperiled by the invasion of the nation by federal forces after the sham Treaty of New Echota, named after the then-capital of the Cherokee Nation in north Georgia. The Cherokee and other regional tribes were rounded up in the late 1830s during an Army campaign under the command of Gen. Winfield Scott and forced upon the Trail of Tears.
Editorial: As historic climate legislation turns two, the numbers don't lie
Written by Stephen Smith
The IRA’s clean-energy progress is clearest in our communities
Stephen Smith is executive director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. He was a founder of the Foundation for Global Sustainability (FGS) and serves on the FGS board of directors. Hellbender Press is published by FGS.
KNOXVILLE — The largest climate investment legislation in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act, celebrated its two-year anniversary in August: two years of reducing harmful pollution, of creating thousands of good-paying clean energy jobs, of welcoming billions of dollars in clean energy investments to the Southeast. The ways the IRA has and will continue to benefit our region and beyond are innumerable — and the numbers don’t lie.
The IRA’s progress is clearest here in our communities: between Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, 559,820 households received more than $1.3 billion in residential clean energy and energy-efficiency tax credits in tax year 2023. Real people are saving money and benefiting from the historic climate law every day — take it from seven SACE members, their IRA stories and the encouraging statistics mentioned here.
The reach of the IRA stretches beyond our homes — over 70,000 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations now dot the U.S., and federal tax credits on both new and used EVs have saved consumers over $1 billion so far this year alone. Last month, SACE released its updated 2024 Electrify the South Electric Transportation Toolkit to help guide decision-makers through this time of enormous opportunity.
Editorial: Revoke North Carolina’s water regulatory authority
Written by Gray Jernigan
EPA should take over water protections in face of hostile legislature
Gray Jernigan is deputy director and general counsel for MountainTrue.
RALEIGH — MountainTrue is committed to safeguarding the public water resources of Western North Carolina. Our mission to protect the health of our waterways and the well-being of our communities has never been more critical. However, the obstacles we now face have made it clear that the state cannot meet its obligations under the Clean Water Act.
Therefore, MountainTrue has joined the Southern Environmental Law Center, Cape Fear River Watch, Environmental Justice Community Action Network and the Haw River Assembly in filing a formal petition asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw North Carolina’s authority to regulate water pollution. This action is necessary because the state legislature has crippled the NC Department of Environmental Quality’s ability to protect our waterways, drinking water sources and communities from harmful pollution.
- mountaintrue
- gray jernigan
- epa water regulations
- north carolina deq
- legislature hostile toward water permitting
- north carolina water quality
- north carolina water permitting process
- revoke nc water authority
- cape fear river watch
- environmental justice community action network
- haw river assembly
- support clean water in western north carolina
Editorial: TVA executes sharp electric rate increase amid lack of transparency
Written by Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
A protestor holds a sign during a 2021 demonstration against TVA’s plans for continued fossil fuel use outside the federal utility’s headquarters in Knoxville. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press
KNOXVILLE — On Thursday, August 22, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Board of Directors will meet in Florence, Alabama to authorize a 5.25 percent electric power rate increase without any public documentation showing why the increase is needed or how those additional revenues will be spent. This rate increase amounts to approximately a staggering half-a-billion-dollar increase for Tennessee Valley ratepayers. Only in the Tennessee Valley could a major utility raise rates without public scrutiny of financial documents.
The 5.25 percent rate increase coupled with last year’s 4.5 percent electric rate increase is strategically set just below a 10 percent threshold that would trigger renegotiation of hundreds of power supply agreements with local utilities. But even with this rate increase, TVA is still racking up debt at a rate not seen in decades.
Based on documents over a year old at this point, we can only guess what is driving TVA’s current financial woes: the largest buildout of fossil gas in the country this decade. These new fossil gas pipelines and power plants aren’t cheap, and TVA’s plan to increase reliance on gas is risky. Families and businesses across the Valley will see increased bills when gas prices rise again and as these new gas power plants become obsolete in just a few short years.
Researchers use environmental justice questions to reveal geographic biases in ChatGPT
Written by David Fleming
A U.S. map shows counties where residents could (blue) or could not (pink) receive local-specific information about environmental justice issues. Photo courtesy of Junghwan Kim via Virginia Tech.
Key findings indicate limitations of AI, suggest improvements
David Fleming is a communications specialist at Virginia Tech.
BLACKSBURG — Virginia Tech researchers have discovered limitations in ChatGPT’s capacity to provide location-specific information about environmental justice issues. Their findings, published in the journal Telematics and Informatics, suggest the potential for geographic biases existing in current generative artificial intelligence (AI) models.
ChatGPT is a large-language model developed by OpenAI Inc., an artificial intelligence research organization. ChatGPT is designed to understand questions and generate text responses based on requests from users. The technology has a wide range of applications from content creation and information gathering to data analysis and language translation.
A county-by-county overview
“As a geographer and geospatial data scientist, generative AI is a tool with powerful potential,” said Assistant Professor Junghwan Kim of the College of Natural Resources and Environment. “At the same time, we need to investigate the limitations of the technology to ensure that future developers recognize the possibilities of biases. That was the driving motivation of this research.”
Utilizing a list of the 3,108 counties in the contiguous United States, the research group asked the ChatGPT interface to answer a prompt asking about the environmental justice issues in each county. The researchers selected environmental justice as a topic to expand the range of questions typically used to test the performance of generative AI tools. Asking questions by county allowed the researchers to measure ChatGPT responses against sociodemographic considerations such as population density and median household income.
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Coal industry mea culpa was destined for a University of Tennessee dumpster. Now there’s a public records lawsuit.
Written by JJ Stambaugh
Coal industry acknowledged its contribution to climate change in 1966
KNOXVILLE — It began innocently enough.
A little over four years ago, an old trade journal was rescued en route to a dumpster by a professor from the University of Tennessee’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Professor Chris Cherry had no reason to suspect the journal contained a powerhouse revelation — the coal industry had been aware since 1966 that burning fossil fuels would eventually trigger cataclysmic global warming and had subsequently engaged in a decades-long coverup to protect corporate profits.
Cherry’s surprise discovery soon became international news thanks to a story written by a fellow UT employee, Élan Young, that was picked up by Huffpost. (Young is a regular contributor to Hellbender Press).
- mining congress journal
- elan young
- tom deweese
- climategate
- huffington post
- tennessee public records act
- american policy center
- university of tennessee’s department of civil and environmental engineering
- professor chris cherry utk
- climate change
- coal industry
- coal ash cleanup
- coal mining
- coal smoke
- climate change appalachia
- james r garvey
- hellbender press
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- coal
- coal industry trade publication
- jj stambaugh
- knoxville environmental journalism
- coal knew too
This 90-year-old theater is on a mission to provide a space for Black artists
— Barter Theatre
Experts and citizens plan and commiserate over TVA’s lack of public process
Written by Élan Young
Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson speaks to community members assembled for the evening discussion during the People’s Voice on TVA’s Energy Plan. John Waterman/Appalachian Voices
A lack of public process brought together a coalition of environmental organizations
NASHVILLE — In every state except Tennessee, for-profit utilities and their regulators are required to get public input about energy-resource planning.
These Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) provide an opportunity for a utility to demonstrate that the ratepayer money the utility spends is on the best mix of energy investments that meet this objective.
In Tennessee, however, TVA, which is the nation’s largest public power provider, has no process for engaging the public on its IRPs.
It is this lack of public process that brought a coalition of environmental organizations together to host a mock public hearing in a Nashville church last month presided by Ted Thomas, former chair of Georgia Center for Energy Solutions. Their goal was to call attention to the fact that TVA acts more like a corporation or a self-regulated monopoly than as a public utility. The groups say that lack of public involvement in the process harms Tennesseeans across the board.