Asheville honors civil rights advocate John R. Hayes with public event

As Asheville continues to grapple with how Black history is preserved in public life, a gathering at Eulogy on Buxton Avenue turned John R. Hayes’ legacy into something immediate: a performance, a remembrance and a push to carry his work forward in Buncombe County.

People gathered in downtown Asheville on June 18 to honor Hayes, a civil rights advocate whose influence still reaches local institutions and families. The City of Asheville had already proclaimed June 18 as John R. Hayes Day after his death in 2021, and the remembrance came during the city’s 2026 Juneteenth celebration, which ran June 16-20 and marked another year since Juneteenth became a city holiday in 2021.

The event began with a live performance by the John R. Hayes Highsteppin’ Majorettes and Drum Corps before moving inside for remarks from community leaders and a screening of selections from an in-progress documentary about Hayes and his legacy. Michael Hayes, John R. Hayes’s son and the executive director of UMOJA Health, Wellness and Justice Collective, spoke about carrying his father’s work forward through the public celebration and the documentary campaign.

That film, Legacy on the Mountain, is planned as a feature-length project following the High Steppin’ Majorettes and Drum Corps over a year, with the story woven together with the history of Black Asheville and the marching-band tradition at Stephens-Lee High School. UMOJA said the June 18 program also served as a launch for that campaign, linking memory to a broader effort to keep Black civic history visible in Asheville rather than confining it to annual observances.

The setting underscored how local history is being taught through active community organizing. The program was held Thursday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Eulogy, 10 Buxton Ave., with free food provided by Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ, a cash bar from Burial Beer, suggested general admission of a $15 donation and limited reserved seating for $50. The city and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County promoted the Juneteenth schedule as a public slate of events, placing Hayes’ remembrance within a wider community calendar.

Hayes’ reach in Western North Carolina stretched back decades. According to The Urban News, he relocated to the region in the 1970s, co-founded the Hillcrest Enrichment Program with Sophie Dixon, led the Asheville-Buncombe NAACP for 16 years and co-founded WRES 100.7 FM. In Asheville, those details matter now because the debates over race, representation and whose stories are centered continue to shape the city’s civic identity. The June 18 event suggested that Hayes’ legacy is not being preserved as a closed chapter, but as part of an ongoing public commitment to Black leadership, youth development and community memory.