Join KHP and Jack Neely discussing his recent book, The Old City: A Short History—which, despite its title, is his longest book ever. If you think of Knoxville as a homogeneous city, the Old City—not one neighborhood, but the nexus of six or seven—will give you second thoughts. It was the part of town where whites and African Americans were most likely to cross paths—and where most of the white people spoke languages other than English. As it turns out, all the rumors you’ve heard about the Old City are true. The story goes into Knoxville’s real “red light district”—not the area we know as the Old City, by the way, but nearby—as well as the city’s saloon district and warehouse district, Irish Town and Gunter’s Flats, the Bowery and Cripple Creek.
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