TRYON—The latest installment of the Tryon History Museum’s Tales of Tryon series took place on Thursday, June 13, at the Roseland Community Center. Dr. Warren Carson, educator, leading citizen, and raconteur, reprised his 2023 “Walk on the Eastside” performance in grand fashion with “Personalities of the Eastside and Environs: Entrepreneurs, Educators, Ecclesiastics, and Everyday People.
” Carson is a born storyteller and teacher. His long tenure as a college professor burnished these skills to a fine luster, and his talks always demonstrate why his classes at the University of South Carolina Upstate were long among the school’s most popular. Add to this his growing up on Tryon’s Eastside as a keen observer of people and their lasting impact on the community, and you have an unbeatable recipe for an hour of learning, laughter, and reflection.
Carson first reminded his audience that place has always been important to Southerners but then noted that it is people who create the history and the culture that give a place its identity. With that, he announced his intention to talk about “the notable, the noted, and the notorious.” On his way to doing so, he pointed out that the African American community in Tryon extended to all points of the compass, that the Eastside was merely the heaviest concentration of settlement—hence, his use of the word “environs.
” A significant commercial area in fact lay just to the west of Trade Street, where Rogers Park is now.
