When a pick-up truck of white boys suddenly appeared behind Stanley Rogers in a remote area of Jackson County known as Little Canada and rammed his vehicle with their bumper, Rogers gunned the gas, sliding down the mountain through the gravel turns with the pick-up truck on his heels.

“The faster I got, the faster he got,” Rogers said.

When he hit pavement, the road widened, and the white boys pulled alongside him to try to run him off the road. Rogers’ father and uncle were with him. All three black, they were going home to Cullowhee after a long day of roofing.

“We barely made it out of there,” Rogers said. “My father and my uncle took their guns and went back the next day and got their tools and scaffolds.” They told the homeowner to find someone else to finish the job.

That was 1975. Now fast-forward 30 years.

Last month, a 10th-grade black student at Smoky Mountain High school in Sylva found a piece of paper tucked under her keyboard in computer class. On the outside it had her name. Inside, there was a picture of a robed and hooded KKK member standing over a kneeling black man with a noose around his neck.

This month, a 7th-grade black student at Swain County Middle School found a typed note in her backpack that read “Federal N——- Hunting License.” The frightening so-called “N——- tag” authorized the holder “to hunt n——- any time day or night, with or without dogs.”

Last year, Della Moore sent her 11th-grade son to school in Sylva with a digital camera to photograph the latest profanity that appeared on a stall in the gym bathroom: the words “Hang the n——-“ accompanied by a picture of a noose.

These racist expressions manifesting in a handful of white students is troublesome. While racism is no longer state sanctioned — schools are integrated and restaurants serve black customers — racist views are still being propagated by a handful of white supremacists who never abandoned their views.

“Things definitely have changed for the better, but I can progressively see things gradually being turned back,” said Cyritha West, a black woman who lives in Franklin and is co-pastor of a predominantly black church in Sylva.

The boys who tried to run Rogers off the road that day are grown older, but are alive and well, carrying around those same views — they just keep their mouth shut in public.

“I’d say there is still prejudice around here you just can’t see it,” Rogers said. “They try to hide it under their hat.”

A really big hat

For the past two years, Evelyn Powell has been complaining to Swain County teachers, principals and the superintendent about students using the n-word against her daughters — two of only 11 black children in the Swain County school system.

Powell said she was not taken seriously enough. Failure to crack down on use of the n-word is what she believes led to her 7th grader, Cassie Miles, receiving the “n——— tag,” akin to a racial death threat as far as Powell is concerned. Powell has asked, then demanded, that the school system implement a racial policy and diversity training for teachers and counselors.

“Unless somebody asks for change, you won’t get change,” Powell said.

But school officials say they do not need change. Swain County School Superintendent Robert White said the schools don’t have a racial problem.

“I really don’t see any discrimination to speak of. Now we do have some smart alecks that do things and we handle those situations the best we can,” White said. “I think we are doing everything in our power to do what is right not only for her children but for every child in the county.”

Powell’s main complaint has been use of the n-word, including incidents on the bus, in the halls, and now in writing.

White denied the racial slur has been used by students in school.

“I don’t know of any incidents of anyone using that word. I really don’t,” White said. School officials point out that none of the other black students or parents have complained of such language, only the Powells.

Get real, said Dana Ensley, a white parent in Swain County and a friend of Powell.

“They (school officials) put their blinders on and they sweep everything under the rug,” said Ensley. “It’s finally coming out now because people are willing to challenge it.”

Another black parent in Swain who did not want to be named said her kids are subjected to racial name calling, too, they just keep their mouth shut. Parents in neighboring counties have similar stories as well.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said Della Moore, a black mother in Jackson County.

When Moore moved to Sylva from New Jersey with her husband and three teen-agers two years ago, it was for the same reasons white people move here.

“We had vacationed in this area and we liked it and decided to move here,” Moore said. “The area is beautiful. The mountains are beautiful.”

But their first day in school, her son came home and asked her what “porch monkey” meant. He didn’t know it was a racial slur directed at him.

“They never dealt with racism until they came here,” Moore said. “When I spoke to other parents and other kids in the school, they’d heard it for years but they never complained about it because they figured there was nothing they could do. They were from this area and were used to it, but I refuse to have my kids treated this way.

“I constantly told them don’t let them intimidate you. Whatever happens, you come and tell me,” Moore said.

A vocal minority

Franklin resident Cyritha West said she is glad that people like Evelyn Powell and Della Moore are confronting their schools about race, which has been a taboo topic for too long.

“I think people just want to sweep things under the rug,” West said. “There’s a time you just have to stand up for the things you believe are right.”

West said the majority of people in Macon County go out of their way to be friendly to her. But as an in-home health provider with Angel Home Health in Franklin, her supervisor was always cautious about which patients West was assigned to.

Before Martin Luther King Day was recognized by the schools, West kept her youngest son home every year on the holiday and played a record of King’s acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize, which she stumbled on in a bin at Uncle Bill’s Flea Market. Her oldest son stayed home, too, sometimes marching in the peace parade in downtown Franklin with his father. Her sons learned to honor King, but not on the same level as her generation, she said.

“My children don’t understand the struggle. They don’t know the things Martin Luther King went through,” West said.

West’s mother, Ella Mae Rogers, grew up in Swain County. There weren’t enough black students to form their own high school. The closest one was in Asheville, an impossible distance to travel twice daily back then. Rogers’ parents afforded one year of room and board at the school, but that was it. It was hardly separate but equal.

To West’s 20-year-old son, that was a long time ago. But to West, it was just yesterday.

“My children say it’s a new day. I say, ‘no, it’s a new day, but it’s not necessarily a new way,’” West said.

Waking up to color

Like West’s son, many white people don’t see the layer of racism that many black people say still permeates society.

“I just don’t think our school system has ever really had a racial problem that I can see,” said Roger Parsons, Swain County school board chairman. “We’ve always prided ourselves on how we get along.”

Swain County school officials view use of the n-word the same as other derogatory words hurled between students.

“No kind of verbal harassment is tolerated in school,” said Swain Assistant Superintendent Glenda Callicutt.

But for black families like the Powells and the Moores and the Rogers, the freewheeling use of the n-word by a handful of white students is very different than other forms of bullying, like words directed at obese students or students with disabilities. No other American subgroup was enslaved on a mass scale nor publicly executed for a defining physical trait. Tolerating the use of the n-word could be a slippery slope back into an era when not only discrimination, but violence toward black people, was socially-acceptable.

Evelyn Powell remembers her father’s stories about walking down the street in Waynesville and being knocked down with a horse whip by a pick-up truck of white boys. Her husband, George Powell, relayed similar accounts involving his father, only it was in Bryson City and the weapon was with a strip off an old fan belt. The grandchildren of those men are now wielding words as weapons, but the mentality is the same, the Powells said.

“As long as we let it continue to happen it will,” George Powell said.

But African Americans as well as whites can become complacent with the status quo.

George, is fifth-generation Swain County. When he moved back to Swain with his wife and daughters two years ago, and heard reports of racial slurs at school, he was passive at first.

“My wife would get mad and say ‘aren’t you mad?’” George recounted. “I was like, I grew up here. I’m used to it.”

Only time will tell

Edward Moore, 47, remembers a cross burning outside the all-black elementary school in Waynesville when he was young.

“It was not too long ago that you had men running around in hoods and robes and now those same men are still running things but they have three piece suits on,” Moore said.

Racism is still pervasive, but the expressions more subtle. With such a small black population, people just don’t see it, Moore said.

“I guess you have to be black to be aware of it,” Moore said. “It’s a lot different from the inside looking out than the outside looking in.”

An older co-worker at Blue Ridge Paper Products pulled a KKK membership out of his wallet one day and showed it to Moore. Moore said the two men exchange pleasantries when they pass each other and get along fine.

“I would rather a person with racial motivations show that to me up front than try to hide behind a three piece suit,” Moore said.

Moore said open and honest discussions about race need to occur more frequently. Maybe now is the time.

“People are afraid of change and change is what diversity is all about,” Moore said. “I think it is something that is going to be wiped out by generations. The more educated people become, the more they will understand.”

Moore has earned a reputation in Waynesville as being vocal on racial issues. When Moore ran for the town board two years ago, his platform was diversity in town hiring policies, encouraging racial diversity among residents and equal representation for the historically black neighborhoods, which he said are ignored by town leaders.

Moore recently floated the idea of renaming a portion of a local thoroughfare for Martin Luther King, which went over with a flop. Moore said those who supported the idea behind the scenes evaporated when faced with negative public sentiment.

“If you forget where you came from, you lose sight of where you want to go,” Moore said.

The place of the past

When Stanley Rogers started elementary school in 1961, he rode a bus from Cullowhee to Sylva to attend an all-black school, which seemed awfully strange to him.

“All my friends were white. White kids would come spend the night, and we would spend the night with them,” Rogers said.

The schools soon integrated and Rogers started going to school in his community. It was a “smooth transition,” he said.

There were only a handful of black students and they were all part of the same family — the well-known, well-liked Rogers family. His father was a contractor and his grandfather a mason. They were property owners and farmers.

“There were a few so-called rednecks that tried to start something. We didn’t stand for it,” Rogers said. “We stuck together.”

In 7th grade, a white boy wrote the letters “KKK” on Rogers notebook. But the problem was quickly solved by the boys’ gym teacher.

“He put us on the mat and let us wrestle it out. I never had any more trouble out of him,” Rogers said the boy.

Kids who lived in the remote area called Little Canada had an elementary school, but no high school, so they came down the mountain to Cullowhee. It was the 1960s and some had never seen a black person, but they treated him well, Rogers said.

Cyritha West, Rogers’ sister, said when the community was smaller and families knew each other personally, not just by the color of their skin, it almost seemed better.

“It was who you were and the reputation you had,” West said.

In her early 20s she went to the bank and asked for credit to buy her first car.

“It was a just a shoe in,” she said. She was William Rogers’ daughter.

But outside their tight-knit Cullowhee community, it was different.

Rogers was on the football team in high school. At his first away game against a high school near Andrews, fans of the other team heckled Rogers by shouting the “n-word” from the bleachers throughout the whole game. He was the only black player on the field.

“It was really bad. It was terrible,” said Rogers, whose team surrounded him walking back to the bus after the game. The coach of the other team, nor anyone from the other school, ever apologized, Rogers said. Those football fans are today’s parents and grandparents. Most changed their views toward black people, but a handful didn’t. And the community needs to remind itself of that occasionally, Rogers said.

“History has a tendency to repeat itself if you aren’t careful. You’re liable to think everything is alright,” Rogers said.