Black History

Remember Bicentennial Park?
May 28, 2026

What remains of our last big national celebration, and the mystery of Buster Muggs   It’s America’s 250th, and the nation seems at odds about how or whether to celebrate it. For whatever it’s worth, it does seem to be […]

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The Bijou’s Second Balcony: A New Book Highlights the African American Experience at Knoxville’s Historic Theater
April 15, 2026

Late last year, the nonprofit Knoxville History Project published a new book for the Bijou Theatre, The Second Balcony: The African American Experience at the Bijou Theatre. Researched and written by Jack Neely with the assistance of the Beck Cultural Exchange […]

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The Ice Cream Man
August 8, 2025

Alfred E. Anderson’s unique career in civil rights was versatile, inspiring, and ultimately tragic. This is an incomplete story. Like many Black men of his era, there’s much about Alfred Anderson we don’t know, like where he came from or […]

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