- [Narrator] Taylor Farms provides farm fresh vegetables and fruits to grocery stores, schools, and hospitals.

Including vegetable kits, snack and veggie trays, and organic salads.

More information at taylorfarms.com.

- This time on "Tennessee Crossroads," we join the "Journey to Jubilee tour" at the Belle Meade Mansion.

Then the story of how Dale Hollow Dam was created.

We'll sample the fare at Cafe Rakka in Hendersonville.

And enjoy a low flying aerial tour of the Tennessee River.

Hi everybody, that's what's on "Tennessee Crossroads" this time.

I'm Joe Elmore.

Sure glad to have you.

(soft music) Our first story takes us to the Belle Meade Mansion in Nashville.

Not to learn about the family who lived inside, but to hear the stories of enslaved families who lived in nearby cabins.

In honor of black history month, Danielle Allen takes us on a pre-pandemic "Journey to Jubilee Tour."

♪ Sometime in the fire ♪ ♪ Sometime in the fire ♪ - [Danielle] Their stories are intertwined with the Belle Meade Plantation.

This is where enslaved men, women, and children spent much of their lives.

Now, they can tell their side of the story and it starts in 1807 in a cabin just like this.

- So this is an example of some of the cabins that the slaves would live in?

- Yes, so this is called a saddleback cabin.

Saddleback, meaning that you have two sides that are joined by a fireplace in the center.

They're roughly 15 by 15 feet.

You have anywhere from eight to 10 people living per side at a given time.

So, not a lot of space.

- Bridget Jones is the former director of African-American studies at the Belle Meade plantation.

Today, she's taking us on the Journey to "Jubilee Tour", a project that she helped create.

- The "Journey to Jubilee" covers the African-American perspective, from the enslaved perspective, all the way into post-emancipation and reconstruction.

So "Journey to Jubilee" began just as a project that was later developed into a tour.

So, we try to make sure that we not only cover slavery and the horrors of slavery, but also what these individuals went on to do well on past emancipation and their descendants as well.

As well as covering the numerous parallels between society then and society today.

- Bridget starts the tour at the Carriage House.

She talks about the Harding and Jackson families who called this place home.

She also explains why Belle Meade was not a typical plantation.

- Most people tend to come to places like this and dive head first into cotton, tobacco, sugarcane, which I get, but none of those things were grown here.

Belle Meade is unique because it was a premier thoroughbred nursery and stud farm.

So this was a horse raising plantation.

So this plantation didn't raise regular race horses.

They raised the best of the best race horses of the era.

- [Danielle] Bridget explains the vital role that slavery played here.

At one point there were 136 enslaved people.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of details about all of them.

- We can tell you about the names for the horses over here, for sure.

Then also we can tell you about how a stud farm runs over here.

We can tell you about the hospitality of the Harding-Jackson family over there.

We can tell you about different people that would have been here over time, but we can tell you all this interesting information and everything about every single horse, but I can't even tell you the names of the people that would've been caring for the horses that made the family all of the money that they had.

That's where stuff gets a little bit tricky.

- [Danielle] Even with the missing details, the tour paints a vivid image of slavery.

- We're looking at primary source documents, so that you'll see who you're talking about on paper.

And then you're also gonna see their picture.

So now you can see, well, this is what they were doing and what they're listed as in 1865.

Now let's talk about what they look like around 1865 too.

So, we try to make it a really real experience.

- [Danielle] That real life experience is also told inside the mansion.

That's where you'll hear personal stories, like that of Susanna Carter, who was the head of domestic staff.

Bridget spends close to 30 minutes talking about her life.

- She gave a first person interview in 1886 to an author, and I used that interview too.

So, this is what she said about slavery.

Okay, but this is also some of the things that she was going through at that time.

Can we trust this interview?

And if we can trust it, what does that say about her psychological state at that time?

So we just try to look at the interview from every angle.

She said that, "Freedom had been good for some, but that it was bad for others."

Personal question, what does a person have to do to you generation after generation, and year after year for you to become a grown woman, get married, have five children, and believe it was better for you and your children to have been enslaved than to have your own freedom?

- [Danielle] Bridget leads the tour through the Belle Meade Mansion covering 99 years of history along the way.

Each room offers a different perspective, and a new set of questions.

What happened before the Civil War?

Why did so many choose to stay after emancipation?

These are all questions that Bridget tries to answer.

- Well, we teach that emancipation happened, but we don't teach how emancipation happened.

So imagine that you've been a slave your whole life.

You can't read and you can't write.

It's illegal for you to know how to do these things.

You've also never left this plantation before.

It's illegal for you to leave this plantation.

Okay, so what are you gonna do on Wednesday?

Union soldiers gallop up and read off the Emancipation Proclamation.

Better yet, what you're gonna do when they finish and tell you that you are hereby and ever for free.

Thanks, you can go now.

- [Danielle] While the "Journey to Jubilee Tour" is a look at the past, Bridget hopes it can shed light on the present and lead to a better future.

- Here we stand today still trying to figure out what does freedom look like.

To be honest, we still trying to figure out if we entitled to it yet.

Thank you for listening, any questions?

(crowd clapping) Thank you so much, thank you.

These topics affect everybody.

Slavery is something that not only happened to just black Americans.

It happened to Afro-Latinos, and Afro-Caribbeans, and anybody else that is a derivative of Africa.

So I think it's important that everyone hears this story, so it doesn't happen to anybody else again.

(soft music) - Thanks Danielle.

Tennessee has more than its share of beautiful rivers.

They are less beautiful when they overflow their banks and destroy lives and property.

That was the case with the Obey River until the Dale Hollow Dam tamed it, began generating electricity, and providing a fantastic recreational area.

Ed Jones has the story.

(light music) (water splashing) - Dale Hollow is known as a vacation destination.

We protect it jealously.

We have the beautiful pristine shoreline enforced at hillsides.

We're very proud of our lake and what we do here.

People will come out, and recreate and enjoy, and you never think what this was like before Dale Hollow was here.

- [Ed] Sandra Carmen has thought a lot about what was here before Dale Hollow Dam tamed the Obey River.

As a park ranger, she knows more than most about what was gained and what was lost.

- William Dale came to this area.

He married a lady out of Willow Grove, Rachel Irons.

They bought a 449 acre farm in 1808, and it is told that there still was in the Dale family until 1942 when the dam was begun and the lake began.

- [Ed] That beginning marked the end of a way of life for residents up river from Dale Hollow.

(dramatic music) - There were two major communities that were totally inundated, the Willow Grove community and the Lily Dale community.

So there were a lot of people that did sacrifice back then by giving their farms.

The Corps engineers and the Federal Government relocated over 2000 known grave sites onto private property.

Because those folks they, they really did sacrifice quite a bit, so that we can have what we have today.

- It was hard times for those folks.

All the families had to leave their, their farms, where they had been for generations.

You know, I could relate to that because I farm myself, and it would be hard for me to leave my place.

- [Ed] Dale Hollow superintendent, Stanley Carter, can also relate to their fate on a much more personal level.

- My family, well my mother's side and father's side, we are from the upper headwaters of the Obey river itself.

And where my mother was born is, it's underwater now.

With that being said, with this dam being in place, it has saved millions upon millions of dollars, just in flood control alone, not to mention the hydro electricity that we produce.

(soft music) (water gushing) - [Ed] Enough electricity to power a city of 45,000.

Power that was sorely needed back in '38 when the Army Corp of Engineers got the green light to begin planning the Mammoth project.

- March 2nd of 1942 construction began.

It was completed in October of 1943.

So it was record time.

The dam, it is 200 feet tall, 1,717 feet wide.

It goes straight down to bedrock, and on each side it goes straight down to bedrock.

- The original purpose for this dam was for flood control and power generation.

One of the most interesting things that you're gonna see as we go downstairs, it's what we call the actuator cabinet.

And the actuator cabinet is what opens and closes the gates, allowing more or less water into the turbine.

We produce 18 megawatts of power per unit.

We have three units, which is 54 megawatts, is what we're able to produce.

- [Ed] The roar of the rushing water, the enormous size of the concrete mountain holding back the Obey River, it's hard to fathom the sheer scale of it all.

But then consider that this huge remote complex is just a tiny part of a nationwide electrical network known as the grid.

- Several years ago the whole Eastern seaboard had all the blackouts.

I was inside this powerhouse when that happened, and we felt that.

The generators, they started making these weird sounds.

When you work here, you know what these units sound like, and you know when something ain't right.

So we just started doing some investigation and found out that we had a large section of the country that had blacked out.

That was all the way up in New York, edge of Canada.

We still felt it here.

(guitar music) - [Ed] After the tour, you'll want to reconnect with the soothing natural wonders of the Dale Hollow Reservoir.

- It is so large that even if you're out on a boat, even on the busiest times, there are places that you can go and tuck into a cove, and be undisturbed.

We do have over 27,000 acres of water, and almost 25,000 acres of land.

We have about 2.6 million visitors a year that come to Dale Hollow.

We have 15 commercial marinas on the Lake and two group camps.

So with those commercial marinas, they can rent boats, houseboats, watercraft.

So there is a lot of water sports that are available here.

Because we have such crystal clear waters, we're very popular for scuba.

We also manage and operate four Class A campgrounds with over 400 campsites.

Everything from a tent site to an RV site with water and electric cooker.

So you can get a, away from the city experience, come out and breathe the fresh air.

But it is just a jewel of Tennessee.

It's just gorgeous.

(soft music) - Thanks Ed.

As a young man, Riyad Kasem decided that he would leave his native Syria and make America his home, while bringing part of his culture with him.

While his recipes are from his home country, he likes to say that he doesn't serve Syrian food, he serves good food.

Rob Wilds agrees after making a trip to Cafe Rakka in Hendersonville.

- [Rob] When you walk into Cafe Rakka in Hendersonville, the first thing you notice is it smells good, spicy.

Riyad-Al-Kasem, who everyone calls, Rakka, makes certain of that.

It's what his grandma, who taught him to cook, would have demanded.

- This is part of the culture.

(laughs) This is if you wanna taste out culture taste the spices.

Literally, you smell it, you taste it.

I couldn't find anything here, like similar to what we do.

So the challenge was to make like an authentic food, you introduce it and in a healthy way, but recipe is good too.

You can't just-- [Rob] Sure, right.

- Yeah.

That was the challenge I faced what I thought every healthy food facing.

For me, it was an easy job.

I'm not to brag about it, but the kitchen we, like I kind of inherit from my ancestors, from my grandmother, watch them cook, by design was healthy.

The way it is, it's healthy.

You don't have to take stuff and substitute anything.

If you just, If I just cook my grandmother's food, it will be the healthiest thing available.

So I decide to do that.

So what did I...(chuckles) This is like, I don't even have to try harder.

This is something easy.

- [Rob] Rakka has been doing difficult things and making them look easy for a long time.

Take for instance, coming to America from Syria.

Rakka left his desert home to go to law school.

I moved from the desert to the city to go to college.

I go to law school.

Law school, I come across a subject called American government.

And the American government, you study the government of United States.

So I study it.

And by the time I graduated, I kind of fell in love with their system.

- [Rob] When he graduated, he was scheduled to be a judge.

The youngest in the country, but instead of going to assume the bench.

- I went to the American embassy instead.

Met the council, and I remember it was a, a very interesting conversation.

And now I have, the only thing I have in my hand is the paper, my name in it.

Like I was one of the youngest judges, and he said we'd love to have you in the United States and... - [Rob] And that's it, huh?

- That was it.

- [Rob] Which put him on the path that led to the kitchen and Cafe Rakka.

Everything is fresh here.

There's not a can on the place.

Rakka has to work hard to find the flavors he wants, and sometimes he has to ruffle some feathers along the way.

- Most of the spices comes from its source.

It could be India, could be Guatemala, could be whatever it's available.

The best spices available, I buy it.

Our meat is fresh, we buy it fresh.

Our vegetables, I go myself.

I produce and I hand pick them.

I'm extremely particular about the produce.

And I had a fight with the guy of the produce company once.

And he said, "Why are you a pain in the neck?"

I said, "Because my customer deserve the best."

That night him and his wife were eating here, and she said, "We're trying to go to a restaurant, and I told him let's go to that guy who just had a fight with you today, 'cause he told you my customer's deserve the best.

Let's go there."

(both laughing) "Seems like a good place to go and eat at."

(both laughing) We became friends after that.

- [Rob] Good food makes friends of a lot of people.

Everything is prepared here, even the cheese.

In Rakka's desert homeland, making cheese was expected and necessary.

- In the spring, we have abundance of dairy products.

So what do you do is, you need to go ahead and preserve that.

So how you preserve that?

Either your dry the yogurt, which is then food products with dry yogurt and you dry 'em, and then you use them in the winter, or you make cheese.

So that's how the cheese making came about.

I'm a fifth generation cheese maker.

I know how to make cheese, and I taught my kids how to make cheese.

'Cause we're not gonna lose that side of the family.

And it came from one of my grandmothers that who really was an artist of cheese making.

- [Rob] The artist technique used on all the food here.

- We like eggplant.

And we, I cook a lot eggplant dishes.

One of them is moussaka, which is different than the Greek moussaka.

The Greek moussaka they have the milk and cheese in it, all that.

Our mousakka is vegan.

Yeah so, and again, not because trying to promote the vegan dishes, it's been done this way.

- [Rob] Still, it's a different crowd in Nashville, but even the musicians like Kyle John's dig the Cafe Rakka.

- As a drummer, I can say polyrhythmic, how about that?

(laughs) You know, you get the rhythm of the heat, the sweet, you get the flavor, and you get the base, you get the acidic, and it's all in this big massive polyrhythm, you know.

And as a drummer, it appeals to me on that level.

- [Rob] You know, I'm not sure how much Rakka knows about music, but hey, a compliment about his food is a compliment.

- It's just simply healthy delicious food.

Come on, enjoy it.

Yes, it is Syria.

It's not any Syrian food either.

It's a deep desert of Syria.

Really we are novelty of our own culture by the way.

Me and the Syrian people don't know much about.

(laughs) Unless they come here to the United States.

- [Rob] Under the radar, huh?

- Exactly.

So, but we're a small community.

We're still, you know, like the South here.

When you find a small city in the South, and you see people like tight knit community and they still have their own heritage.

We are like that.

So when I came in here, yes, it was, it wasn't a challenge in a sense, it was so difficult.

It was a challenge with the progress.

Like every day I gain a customer.

I gain one.

And then all it took is a word of mouth.

In the South if they love you, that's it, you've got it made.

(laughs) - [Rob] As long as Rakka keeps making his food, I'd say his customers have it made too.

(upbeat music) (bell rings) - Thanks a bunch, Rob.

It's easy to enjoy the beauty of a Tennessee river from its banks or from a boat.

But you may never look at rivers the same after meeting Ron Lowery.

You see, Ron combines his love of flying with his passion for capturing life behind the camera lens.

He invited me to share his vision from a special vantage point in the backseat of his plane, the "Cloud Chaser".

(upbeat music) Other people fly, they go from point A to point B, and the best they can, you know, it's convenient.

But I fly to take pictures and observe.

So it's, it's just fun to just watch things go by.

(upbeat music) (camera clicking) - Ryan Lowery is a professional site seer.

Taking in views of life and nature from a totally unique perspective, inside the wide open cockpit of an airplane he built and named "Cloud Chaser".

- It's a thousand pound plane, but it's got 200 horsepower.

So it can climb 2000 feet a minute.

I named it "Cloud Chaser" because I shoot a lot of clouds and I put them into my composition.

Ron's rendezvous with "Cloud Chaser" came after a successful career as a corporate photographer.

Kind of left him bored and craving a way to pursue his wanderlust with his camera close by.

He finished his experimental aircraft in February, 2000 and immediately flew it to unparallel points of view.

It would even take Ron 1400 miles from his home in Chattanooga to follow the trail of Lewis and Clark, with his wife, Sue, following in an RV.

- It was like a kaleidoscope view of America as you just went along.

The general routine was I would fly for several hours to meet up with them.

Or if I found a place that was really had a photo rich environment, we would camp there for, you know, a couple of days.

It was not snap pictures as you flew along.

This was, this is had to do with discovering the place and then determining in your mind and using the GPS and the compass where the light would be at a certain time.

- "Exploring Lewis and Clark" evolved into a successful book and DVD for Ron and Sue.

But it only perpetuated their passion for more rare photo adventures.

And the next idea was waiting right in their own backyard, the Tennessee river.

(upbeat music) From Knoxville through four States before flying home to the Ohio river in Kentucky, all from breathtaking viewpoints never seen before.

- Well, think a year down on a river and a boat and you're taking pictures of the river.

What you see, it's a flat plane.

But you get up there and it becomes a beautiful graceful curve with highlights and everything.

It's quite impressive, you'll see.

(upbeat music) - Well, it's not every day you get to ride along in a river shoot like this.

I was hoping to get some video of Ron at work and honestly hoping just to make it back in one piece.

I got to say, it's an experimental part, I don't like that word.

(faintly speaking) - All right, here we go.

(upbeat music) (plane engine roaring) (upbeat music) This little plane can climb 1800 feet in a minute and then easily settle in to a 40 mile an hour cruise.

That's when Ron gets his best shots with his totally unobstructed view.

It's many tributaries and natural nuances make this river one that's full of visual rewards, and cloud chaser offered up some memorable perspectives.

(upbeat music) - Look at his hair!

(both laughing) - Am having a bad hair day but I'm having a good time.

The flights are fun and productive, but now comes the hard work of putting the river adventure into a book and DVD.

After that, the only one thing's for sure for the Lowery's, the future is up in the air.

- We wanna do like rivers of America.

You know, all the major rivers.

And that way gives me a chance to explore the country.

(upbeat music) - Wow, what an adventure?

Well, that's it for this edition of Tennessee crossroads.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Please check it out on our website when you get a chance.

TennesseeCrossroads.org Follow us on Facebook and I'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Taylor farms provides farm fresh vegetables and fruits to grocery stores, schools, and hospitals.

Including vegetable kits, snack and veggie trays, and organic salads.

More information at taylorfarms.com.