In the late 1800s, North Carolina's favorite mountain retreat was home to a progressive African-American community that founded the Young Men's Institute. It remains the country's oldest free-standing African-American community center.

Legendary North Carolina fiddler Joe Thompson turns 90-years-old today. He is widely recognized as being the last living link to a time when African American String Bands played for square dances nearly every weekend around here. Thompson's toured the world with his music and is still playing, but now mostly, at home with friends and neighbors.

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Most traditions have plenty of people, history and folklore to back them up. Carolina barbecue is no different. A new book called, "Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue" explores the Tar Heel tradition - past and present.

Saxophone master and Durham resident Branford Marsalis has never shied away from a challenge when it comes to tackling music.  The jazz legend's latest undertaking incorporates his sax into the classical music traditions of South America in a show called "Marsalis Brasilianos: Villa Lobos, Milhaud and the New Worlds of Brazilian Modernism."  

Jan Boxill grew up playing football with her 11 siblings at a time when girls weren’t even allowed to march in the band because it was too strenuous. She went on to help found her college basketball team, and later became a college coach. For more than 20 years Jan served as the Public Address Announcer for Women’s Basketball at UNC and was even an announcer at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

On this day - June 23, 40 years ago, the first interracial couple in Orange County was married. Alvin and Omelia Garner got their marriage license a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws forbidding such unions. To mark this year’s anniversary, the Garners decided to celebrate in style and have the wedding they never had.

John Rosenthal is renowned for his black and white photographs of New York City in the 1970s. The photos archived parts of the city that were vanishing and eventually disappeared: a dusty model of a ship in a bottle in the window of a social club in Little Italy, for example, or seltzer bottles stacked in wood crates.