On Dec. 10, the Burrell conference room on Southwestern Community College’s Jackson Campus was packed full of friends and family as the college’s founding class of Practical Nursing students celebrated their accomplishments during a pinning ceremony. 

The fallout immediately following the disaster wrought by Hurricane Helene was tragic and traumatizing, but as time has gone on and debris piles slowly disappear, certain secondary woes are being fully realized. 

By the end of the 1900s, groups of marginalized Americans like women, Blacks, Hispanics and others had made great strides in their respective liberation movements after centuries of subjugation, leaving some to wonder if we’d ever again witness the bravery and sacrifice required when the oppressed refuse to be treated as second-class citizens any longer. 

When Tropical Storm Fred cut a half billion-dollar swath of destruction through the eastern part of Haywood County and killed six people in 2021, the tragedy gave residents a chance to come together across political, racial and socioeconomic lines as never before. But it also had another hidden upside, revealed this past September.