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< Back Emma Jean and Juanita Chance At the age of 13, Hughie was faced with the decision of accepting the ruling from the Board to ride along the 72-mile bus trip or protesting to help bring attention to the broken educational system in Harnett County for Native Americans. Proudly, he refused the assignment to East Carolina Indian School. After being denied admittance to the all-white Dunn High School several times, he, along with the parents and other students of the community decided to protest with their own sit-in demonstration. Image description: high school students walking and running to board school buses Writing on top of photograph says, "8/31/60-Dunn, NC: Two Indian girls, Emma Jean and Juanita Chance sit outside high school here-8/30 as white children load up school buses after 1st day of school. The girls, two of nine Indians who tried to enter all white school, were told they could not be admitted as they were still assigned to East Carolina Institute for Indians which is 35 miles from their home. UPI TeliPhoto jhjr Previous Next

< Back North Carolina Central University-Students Hold Voting Pamphlets Aloft ​ Students Hold Voting Pamphlets Aloft01 January, 1970 - DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA: Students including Christine Gaither, Jaye Mizelle, Gerelyn Jierguson, Sonja Jierguson, Edith Auery, Diana Boney, Lavern Williams and Mavine Foyner hold up voting pamphlets on the campus of North Carolina Central University at the Alfonso Elder Student Union in Durham, North Carolina. Source: Photo by North Carolina Central University via Getty Images Previous Next

< Back St. Augustine’s University Lyman Building, built 1886 ​ Photo: Lyman Bldg. at St Augustines 1890 Lyman Building, St. Augustine’s University (Built 1886). St. Augustine’s University erected this large, four-story brick building in the center of its campus in 1886. It held a chapel, classrooms, and a men’s dormitory. The building was later named for Episcopal Bishop Theodore Benedict Lyman of North Carolina. Lyman Building was extended to the east with a large addition around 1900. The structure continued in use by St. Augustine’s for various purposes until its demolition in the 1960s. Photo source: N_80_2_25 - From the General Negatives Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC. Previous Next

< Back Christmas Boycott Note: We #IrememberOurHistory® #TheGCFHawleyMuseum® Are adding this information to a NC Black History specific gallery because much of what was going on in other areas of America directly affected Black people in North Carolina. -End note- Image 1- Photograph: Left corner insert, Louis Lomax. Back row: James Baldwin, Oliver Killens, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and (folk singer) Odetta Holmes are the artists who formed the Association of Artists for Freedom, which called for a Christmas boycott to protest the church bombing, and asked that, instead of buying gifts, people make Christmas contributions to civil rights organizations. Photograph sourced from: Finding Eliza dot com The article was printed in the Illustrated news in November 1963. Article sourced from: Finding Eliza dot com. . Image 2- Materials produced by the Association for The Black Revolution and the White Backlash event, including a sheet for submitting audience questions to the panel and a transcript of the event. Also included is an autographed letter signed in a postmarked envelope written to the Association by Maxine McNair, mother to Denise McNair, one of the children who died in the bombing. Sourced from: Boo-Hooray dot com. . The Association of Artists For Freedom In one of the most gruesome acts of terrorism in the United States, the Ku Klux Klan firebombed a Birmingham church in 1963, killing four young girls. This tragic event shaped the civil rights era, and was the direct catalyst for the founding of the Association of Artists for Freedom. In 1963, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, James Baldwin, John Oliver Killens, Odetta, and Louis Lomax formed the Association of Artists for Freedom, which called for a Christmas boycott to protest the church bombing, and asked that, instead of buying gifts, people make Christmas contributions to civil rights organizations. The Association of Artists For Freedom was an important precursor to the Black Arts Movement. Perhaps the most significant event the Association organized was a town hall titled, “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash,” which Harold Cruse described as a “radical, grandstand assault on white liberals.” The panel featured several prominent black artists: Lorraine Hansberry, LeRoi Jones, Paule Marshall, John Killens, Ruby Dee, Davis Susskind, Ossie Davis, Charles E. Silberman, and James Weschler. Link to JET magazine Oct 17, 1963 article about Boycotting Christmas https://noirg.org/.../Jet.10.17.1963.BoycottChristmas.pdf... . Link to paper about Black Artists and Writers Movement 1963-1964 https://scholarworks.umb.edu/amst_faculty_pubs/13/ Previous Next

< Back Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad (Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History) Miriam Thaggert illuminates the stories of African American women as passengers and as workers on the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century railroad. As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced Black Americans to "ride Jim Crow" on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Riding Jane Crow examines four instances of Black female railroad travel: the travel narratives of Black female intellectuals such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell; Black middle-class women who sued to ride in first class "ladies’ cars"; Black women railroad food vendors; and Black maids on Pullman trains. Thaggert argues that the railroad represented a technological advancement that was entwined with African American attempts to secure social progress. Black women's experiences on or near the railroad illustrate how American technological progress has often meant their ejection or displacement; thus, it is the Black woman who most fully measures the success of American freedom and privilege, or "progress," through her travel experiences. Previous Next

< Back 7 Indians Arrested in Sit-In at a North Carolina School. A total of 21 students were arrested that day along with their parents. They were accused of violating a court order forbidding them from “engaging in sitting-in, picketing, trespassing or otherwise interfering with the normal operation” of the school. Judge W.H.S. Burgwyn of the Harnett Superior Court in Lillington directed the Dunn School Committee and the Harnett County Board of Education to appear at the hearing and stated he thought the whole affair something of “a tempest in a teapot” as he expresses the hope it could be settled amicably. The American Friends Committee (AFSC) a Quaker organization that promotes peace with justice and respect for human life stepped in to help the students who refused to take the long 72-mile bus ride. The AFSC made arrangements to place the students throughout the State to live with families and to attend school until the court case was settled. Students were sent to Greensboro, High Point, and Raleigh. Hughie was sent to Cathedral Catholic School in Raleigh, where he attended for about six to eight weeks. Back home, parents were still fighting in court to have their children admitted to the all-white school. Contempt orders were issued against the parents for aiding, abetting and encouraging their minor children to defy the restraining order issued by Judge W.H.S. Burgwyn. State Senator, Robert Morgan and I. Beverly Lake were the attorneys who represented the Harnett County Board of Education. They argued that allowing the Indian students’ admittance would destroy the State’s student assignment plan and could result in integration attempts to be made by black students. Handy Groves, a shoe shop operator, stated, “ We’ve been asking for a high school since 1954. They have had plenty of time to build us a school. We’re taxpayers and we’re going to continue this fight. We either want to get the students admitted to Dunn school or get school facilities provided for them now nearby. We don’t intend to send our children to Sampson County.“ Image description: Newspaper clipping with title, "7 Indians Arrested In Sit-In At A North Carolina School. By Alan D. Resch--Dunn, NC Previous Next

< Back 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion Members of the Six Triple Eight take part in a parade commemorating Joan of Arc in Rouen, France, in May 1945. Photo: Members of the Six Triple Eight take part in a parade commemorating Joan of Arc in Rouen, France, in May 1945. This is part of the story, Obituary: Millie Dunn Veasey, pioneering sergeant turned rights activist By Roland Hughes BBC News 18 March 2018 https://www.facebook.com/.../ms.c.../192362681488322/... Previous Next

< Back Jessie Mae Brown Monroe ​ Source of images and narrative: Brunswick African American Heritage Society - Pauline Hankins. The Jessie Mae Monroe Elementary School located in Ash is named after an African American educator who devoted her life to providing care and love to young children. Educator Jessie Mae Brown Monroe was born in Durham, North Carolina. Both of her parents died when she was very young. She and her sister were sent to an orphanage, and while there she cared for the younger children and the babies. A visiting doctor of the orphanage, Dr. Dillard, and his wife took an interest in Monroe, gained custody and took her to live with them in Goldsboro, North Carolina, which was the beginning of a new life for her. Upon completion of high school she entered Elizabeth City State Teachers College, Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Upon completion of her degree she was sent to several areas in North Carolina to teach (such as Mt. Olive, Phoenix, Cedar Grove, Supply, Zion Hill and Bolivia). Her love continued to flourish for children. She married a man with five children (ages 2-11). Mr. & Mrs. Monroe had one daughter and adopted a son. After completion of advanced studies she was assigned to La Savannah School #5 in Ash, North Carolina to serve as the Principal. She treated each child, including the parents, with much respect, the upmost dignity and great compassion, and among other kinds gestures, brought some of the children to her home on the weekends. Learning/education was her priority and her motto was, “we are here to teach and the students are here to learn”. She served 44 years in the field of education. Her Christian life was remarkable as she participated in many organizations involving the church, at home and throughout the state of North Carolina. She had many accomplishments. Information provided by her granddaughter, Patricia Rourk, former Principal of Jessie Mae Monroe Elementary School. Previous Next

< Back Dr. Rev. Pauli Murray The wager was ten dollars. It was 1944, and the law students of Howard University were discussing how best to bring an end to Jim Crow. In the half century since Plessy v. Ferguson, lawyers had been chipping away at segregation by questioning the “equal” part of the “separate but equal” doctrine—arguing that, say, a specific black school was not truly equivalent to its white counterpart. Fed up with the limited and incremental results, one student in the class proposed a radical alternative: why not challenge the “separate” part instead? That student’s name was Pauli Murray. Her law-school peers were accustomed to being startled by her—she was the only woman among them and first in the class—but that day they laughed out loud. Her idea was both impractical and reckless, they told her; any challenge to Plessy would result in the Supreme Court affirming it instead. Undeterred, Murray told them they were wrong. Then, with the whole class as her witness, she made a bet with her professor, a man named Spottswood Robinson: ten bucks said Plessy would be overturned within twenty-five years. Murray was right. Plessy was overturned in a decade—and, when it was, Robinson owed her a lot more than ten dollars. In her final law-school paper, Murray had formalized the idea she’d hatched in class that day, arguing that segregation violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Some years later, when Robinson joined with Thurgood Marshall and others to try to end Jim Crow, he remembered Murray’s paper, fished it out of his files, and presented it to his colleagues—the team that, in 1954, successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education. By the time Murray learned of her contribution, she was nearing fifty, two-thirds of the way through a life as remarkable for its range as for its influence. A poet, writer, activist, labor organizer, legal theorist, and Episcopal priest, Murray palled around in her youth with Langston Hughes, joined James Baldwin at the MacDowell Colony the first year it admitted African-Americans, maintained a twenty-three-year friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and helped Betty Friedan found the National Organization for Women. Along the way, she articulated the intellectual foundations of two of the most important social-justice movements of the twentieth century: first, when she made her argument for overturning Plessy, and, later, when she co-wrote a law-review article subsequently used by a rising star at the A.C.L.U.—one Ruth Bader Ginsburg—to convince the Supreme Court that the Equal Protection Clause applies to women. This was Murray’s lifelong fate: to be both ahead of her time and behind the scenes. Two decades before the civil-rights movement of the nineteen-sixties, Murray was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Richmond, Virginia; organized sit-ins that successfully desegregated restaurants in Washington, D.C.; and, anticipating the Freedom Summer, urged her Howard classmates to head south to fight for civil rights and wondered how to “attract young white graduates of the great universities to come down and join with us.” And, four decades before another legal scholar, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, coined the term “intersectionality,” Murray insisted on the indivisibility of her identity and experience as an African-American, a worker, and a woman. Despite all this, Murray’s name is not well known today, especially among white Americans. The past few years, however, have seen a burst of interest in her life and work. She’s been sainted by the Episcopal Church, had a residential college named after her at Yale, where she was the first African-American to earn a doctorate of jurisprudence, and had her childhood home designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior. Last year, Patricia Bell-Scott published “The Firebrand and the First Lady” (Knopf), an account of Murray’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and next month sees the publication of “Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray” (Oxford), by the Barnard historian Rosalind Rosenberg. All this attention has not come about by chance. Historical figures aren’t human flotsam, swirling into public awareness at random intervals. Instead, they are almost always borne back to us on the current of our own times. In Murray’s case, it’s not simply that her public struggles on behalf of women, minorities, and the working class suddenly seem more relevant than ever. It’s that her private struggles—documented for the first time in all their fullness by Rosenberg—have recently become our public ones. Source:https://www.newyorker.com/.../the-many-lives-of-pauli-murray Previous Next

< Back A Chantey is a style of choral singing associated with black slave labor in the early United States. Chanteys, Worksongs With Roots From Africa That The Enslaved Black People Sang On Plantations, In Prison, And While Working On Boats-Harbors Chanteys, Worksongs With Roots From Africa That The Enslaved Black People Sang On Plantations, In Prison, And While Working On Boats-Harbors -------- The Registry looks at the origins of the Chanteys in 1882. A Chantey is a style of choral singing associated with black slave labor in the early United States. The Chantey has roots in some of the earliest African customs brought and raised by slave populations in north, central and south Americas. In Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, Blacks working on plantations sang work songs called “shanties or chanteys.” These areas were near passable rivers, and heard in Georgia as early as the 1880s. The Chanteys (singers) tended to die out as the work that demanded their services declined. Exactly when Chanteys were first used for helping men lift nets in the Menhaden fishery is unknown. It is likely that the practice began when purse seine technology, developed in the northern states, came to be used in the southern states of Virginia, and North and South Carolina, where African American crews and labor were common at the end of the 19th century. Chantey singing among menhaden fishermen, which became widespread around 1920, represents an adaptation of work songs by African-Americans in various mainland occupations during the late 19th century--lumbering and mining and building roads, railroads, levees, and sailboats. The rhythm of this call and response singing served a valuable purpose in aiding the men's efficiency. Back in the day, there was a story about a big sailboat where men had lined up, singing and hammering away. The big boss complained to the foreman about the men singing, and the foreman asked, "Do you want me to make them stop?" The boss said "yeah," and then they didn't know how to work! They sang chanteys and that's what made the work go! African-American work songs go back to a West African tradition that combines the call and response form, the improvisational nature of the words, and the functional relation of the songs to the lives of the singers. By bringing together the combined efforts of men laboring at a common task, the work song actually improved the workers' efficiency and made it possible for them to do things they could not do with uncoordinated individual effort. The fact that laborers accomplished more work if they were allowed to sing has been documented since the time of slavery so overseers not only encouraged slaves to sing, but often tolerated critical or satirical lyrics. As Frederick Douglass wrote, "A silent slave is not liked by the masters.” Work songs allowed Black workers to gain a measure of control over the work--to turn it into a form of expression and to control the pace of the work itself. From long rowboats, as many as 40 Chanteys “men” hauled in a "purse seine," a net filled with thousands of pounds of fish. To accomplish this backbreaking feat, they sang what were called "chanteys" to coordinate to their work movements. These fishermen's work songs were heard on boats out of Virginia and North Carolina wherever they pursued the great migrating schools of menhaden along the Atlantic coast, from New Jersey to the Gulf of Mexico. Today the Northern Neck Chantey Singers carry on this tradition, performing for enthusiastic audiences. Reference: Maryland Sea Grant, University System of Maryland 4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300, College Park, Maryland 20740 (301) 403-4220 V (301) 403-4255 F Previous Next

< Back William Blackstone Windsor (1879-1932) ​ William Blackstone Windsor (1879-1932) was a noted African American educator, born in Reidsville, NC, the son of a Rockingham County teacher named George A. Windsor. Windsor earned an A.B. (1899) and A.M. degrees from Bennett College, where he was active in student organizations such as the Y.M.C.A, of which he served as president in 1897. Bennett was then a co-educational institution that educated men and women as teachers. No later than 1902, he became a teacher in Greensboro. For many years, Windsor was principal of the Warnersville Graded School (also known as the Colored School No. 2); later, he was named superintendent of all Negro schools in Greensboro. Windsor also acted as head of Bennett College in 1916, and served on Bennett’s Board of Trustees during the 1910s and 20's. Windsor was also involved in the establishment of Greensboro’s Carnegie Negro Library, and edited an African American newspaper called the Greensboro Herald. The Windsor Community Center (opened in 1937) was name after Mr. William Blackstone Windsor. Windsor played an important role as an early activist in efforts to challenge racial segregation in Greensboro. In 1914, he bought a house in a white neighborhood on Gorrell Street and defied the unwritten “color line” in Greensboro. Windsor was offered a substantial amount of money not to move into his house. When he refused, the city commissioners passed a segregation ordinance that forced him to sell his house. Tragically, Windsor died in 1932 when he was struck by a car while crossing Market Street. The Windsor Community Center opened in 1937 and was named for William Blackstone Windsor. The facility was built on Gorrell Street, a place he was not allowed to live. Source: https://quepasamedia.com/.../sabes-por-quien-recibe-su.../ Source: Gateway - Triad Digital History Collections Previous Next

< Back Cover of Trade of Puerto Rico Image: Cover of Trade of Puerto Rico - Personal explanation - speeches of Hon. George H. White of North Carolina, in the House of Representatives, Monday, February 5, and Friday, February 23, 1900. There are 17 pages in this publication. Summary: In speaking about trade with Puerto Rico, White, an African American congressman from North Carolina, protests the treatment of American Blacks who have been murdered, disenfranchised, and deprived of their constitutional rights in the South, without any action by government. White introduces a bill to enable the federal government to enforce civil rights rather than to leave enforcement to individual states. A second speech contains a discussion about lynchings and a North Carolina newspaper editorial attacking White as unfit to represent whites of North Carolina. Published by: Washington : [U.S. Govt. Print. Office], 1900. Source: LOC Source link: https://www.loc.gov/resource/lcrbmrp.t2112/?sp=1 . Previous Next

< Back North Carolina A&T University-A team of A&T University cheerleaders practice out on the lawn on campus in 1938. ​ A team of A&T University cheerleaders practice out on the lawn on campus in 1938. Source: Photograph part of the Art Shop Collection housed at the Greensboro History Museum. Source link: https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/ghm%3A13289 Previous Next

< Back Kendrick Ransome Farm to School to Healthcare promotes healthy eating and outdoor recreation through community gardens and youth-led farmers' markets in Hertford County, NC. Black Farming Incubator Wants To Bring Equity To Industry In NC North Carolina Public Radio | By Naomi Prioleau Published December 30, 2021 at 12:28 PM EST A Black farming incubator in Edgecombe County wants to help other aspiring Black farmers learn about agriculture. The goal of the incubator is to bring racial equity to eastern North Carolina through hands-on experiences, produce boxes and farming workshops. Kendrick Ransome is a Black farmer with Golden Organic Farms that is responsible for the incubator. Ransome said equity is important in the agriculture industry, especially for Black farmers. “When we talk about equity, we're talking about building our farms up first,” he said. “I have a 100-year family farm and you look at my infrastructure compared to another white farmer who's always been farming for 100 years, the infrastructure pieces are totally different. We're talking about focusing on us what we can do to help improve our situations.” A recent report from Modern Farmer magazine showed that over the last century, Black farmers have lost 90 percent of their land. Roughly, 98% of all farmland in the U.S. belongs to white landowners according to a 2020 report from the National Young Farmers Coalition. Ransome said Black people who get into agriculture cannot only help reverse those statistics, but it will also help to heal the Black community. "The mental health aspect of just having your hands in soil, it is eliminating depression, eliminating a lot of anxiety, a lot of anger,” he said. “Connecting with our souls you know through nature and understanding our bodies is another way that we can all heal." Ransome says the incubator will have workshops, equipment sharing programs and hands on experiences and opportunities for aspiring Black farmers. He hopes to have it up and running by the spring. -End Of Article_ --- From N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services October 9, 2020 Sometimes passion fuels us to explore a new career or hobby that we end up falling in love with. Although he did not grow up farming, Kendrick Ransome, owner of Golden Organic Farm LLC in Pinetops, NC loves agriculture and the impact he has on the world through it. Kendrick has been farming since 2018, but his families history with farming reaches far beyond that. “This current farmland has been in my family for about 100 years,” he said, “my great grandfather raised hogs and various vegetables here and I originally took it over because I wanted to have more control over my families food source and I ended up really enjoying it.” Today, Golden Organic Farm grows a variety of fruits and vegetables, including onions, peppers, tomatoes, collards, watermelon, cantaloupe and kale. “Kale has been a pretty recent crop for us,” Kendrick said, “I really like the way that it grows as well as its easy marketability.” Kendrick starts each day before the sun rises by feeding the livestock and working the garden until lunchtime. After lunch, he makes deliveries to his customers and Vidant Health Hospital before heading back home to continue working the garden until bedtime. “It’s an all day job for sure and it is constantly a juggle,” he said, “the whole package of farming is pretty intense because you don’t just plant and harvest the crops, but you also have to market the products and promote your brand at the same time.” Despite the hard work, he says that promoting health and seeing people inspired by his work is enough motivation to keep him going day after day. Products from Golden Organic Farm can be found on their online portal as well as through their CSA program. “We have worked with farmers markets in the past, but lately we have been marketing directly to consumers to establish and build those relationships,” he said. In addition to marketing directly to consumers, Kendrick works with Down East Partnership for Children to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to school-aged kids. “The program means a lot to me because my kids are included in it,” he says, “and it means a lot to be a part of the movement that is providing healthy foods for kids in school on a regular basis.” As stated above, Kendrick also provides his fruit and vegetable products to Vidant Hospital to promote healthy eating among patients and staff. “Nothing comes easy in this life, especially not farming,” he said, “it requires a lot of hard work and patience but brings a lot of joy at the end of the day.” In the future, Golden Organics hopes to become an incubator for young farmers, especially Black farmers, and create a market for them to work in. “Finding your platform and voice as a young person can be difficult, especially in the agriculture industry,” Kendrick said, “I hope to make that process easier by not only helping kids gain experience and reach their dreams in farming, but by also giving them a platform where they can do that.” Previous Next

< Back William R. Pettiford William R. Pettiford William Pettiford was born on Jan. 20,1847. He was a Black minister, educator and business entrepreneur. From Granville County, North Carolina, William Ruben Pettiford’s parents, William and Matilda Pettiford, were free, and, according to the law of the land, their son was free. His parents sold their farm and moved to Person County, where he had the advantage of private instruction, and obtained a very fair knowledge of the English language. Being the oldest child, he had to bear a part of the responsibility of the family; the hard, toilsome work he was compelled to do was a school of preparation for his life work. At age 21, Pettiford converted religiously in 1868, and was baptized at Salisbury, N.C., by Rev. Ezekiel Horton. This was the beginning of the life that made him an earnest disciple and minister of Christ. In 1869 he married Miss Mary J. Farley. He moved to Selma, Alabama, and worked there both as a laborer and teacher. In March 1870, after being married eight months, his wife died. Deciding to pursue a further course of training he entered the state normal school at Marion, Alabama. He remained there seven years, paying his expenses by teaching during vacations. He was connected with the church at Marion, where he attended and conducted prayer meetings and revivals. The church licensed him to preach in 1879. In 1873, Pettiford married a Mrs. Jennie Powell, of Marion, who died in September 1874, leaving him for the second time a widower. As principal of the school at Uniontown Mrs. Florence Billingslea and Rev. John Dozier assisted him. Three years later Pettiford, wishing to take a more extended course of study, he resigned his position as principal, 1877, and entered Selma University. The following year the trustees appointed him a teacher at a salary of twenty dollars per month and permission to pursue the theological studies. He married Della Boyd on November 23, 1880; was ordained at St. Philip Baptist Church in Selma; moved to Union Springs; then, in 1883, accepted a call at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. At this time the church had a membership of one hundred and fifty, were worshiping in a store in the low part of town, and five hundred dollars in debt. A year later, the debt was retired and a new edifice costing more than $7000 built. He was president of the ministerial union of Birmingham, a trustee of Selma University, president of the Baptist State Convention. During that time the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon Rev. Pettiford by Selma University. In 1890 Pettiford founded and became president of Alabama Penny Savings Bank. It was Alabama’s first bank for Blacks one of the first three for Blacks in America. William Pettiford died in 1914. Reference: North Carolina Free People of Color Previous Next

< Back [Three] colored boys with banjos back of Swannanoa Hotel, Asheville, NC Glass negative showing three young African American men posing in front of a wooden fence behind the Swannanoa Hotel. Title: [Three] colored boys with banjos back of Swannanoa Hotel, Asheville, [NC] [graphic]. Date: March 28, 1890 , 10:00 AM. Photographer: Marriott Canby Morris. Description: Glass negative showing three young African American men posing in front of a wooden fence behind the Swannanoa Hotel. In the left, the man, attired in a cap, a scarf, a waistcoat, a jacket, pants with the bottoms rolled up, shoes, and a wedding ring, smiles and looks at the viewer as he holds a banjo. In the center, the shorter, young man, attired in a brimmed hat, a white shirt, a checked jacket, a coat, pants, and shoes, smiles and looks at the viewer with his hands in his coat pockets. The man in the right, attired in a cap, a collared shirt, a tie, a scarf, a waistcoat, a jacket, striped pants, and shoes, looks at the viewer and holds a banjo. Source: Library Company of Philadelphia. The Marriott C. Morris Collection [P.9895.1611] Previous Next

< Back Fred L. Brewer Jr., a Charlotte, North Carolina native and Tuskegee Airman. Brewer graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh in 1942. He enlisted in the Army the following year and trained as a pilot at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Tuskegee, Alabama. Image: Remains uncovered in Italy after World War II have been identified as Second Lieutenant Fred L. Brewer Jr., a Charlotte, North Carolina native and Tuskegee Airman. Brewer graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh in 1942. He enlisted in the Army the following year and trained as a pilot at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Tuskegee, Alabama. The Pentagon and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Brewer's identity was confirmed on Aug. 10, 2023. . Lt. Fred L. Brewer Jr. was a Tuskegee Airman from North Carolina, he's been Identified as unknown soldier 79 years after vanishing in WWII By WTVD Charlotte, NC Sunday, September 3, 2023 11:46PM Remains uncovered in Italy after World War II have been identified as Second Lieutenant Fred L. Brewer Jr., a North Carolina native and Tuskegee Airman. The Pentagon and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Brewer's identity was confirmed on Aug. 10, 2023. Brewer went missing while piloting one of 57 fighter planes escorting bombers on a mission to Regensburg, Germany, on Oct. 29, 1944. The airplanes ran into heavy cloud cover in southern Italy, forcing 47 of the fighters to return to base. Brewer was not among those who returned. He had reportedly been attempting to climb his airplane out of the cloud cover when he stalled and fell into a spin. His parents, Fred and Janie Brewer of Charlotte, were told he had been declared dead two weeks later. Their son, a second lieutenant, was 23. Remains were recovered after the war in a civilian cemetery in the area, but technology at the time was unable to identify the remains. So they were interred as an unknown. New techniques allowed scientists with the Department of Defense to reexamine the remains and identify them as belonging to Brewer. According to our newsgathering partners at the News & Observer, Brewer was a native of Charlotte who graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh in 1942. He enlisted in the Army the following year and trained as a pilot at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Tuskegee, Alabama. A cousin of Brewer told The Washington Post that funeral arrangements had not yet been made, but she wanted to see Brewer properly buried in Charlotte. . Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Conflict: WORLD WAR II Service: UNITED STATES ARMY AIR FORCES Status: Was unknown, Changed to Accounted For Date of Identification: 08/10/2023 On August 10, 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Second Lieutenant Fred L. Brewer Jr., missing from World War II. Second Lieutenant Brewer, who joined the U.S. Army Air Forces from North Carolina, was a Tuskegee Airman and member of the 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group. On October 19, 1944, he piloted a single-seat P-51C Mustang (tail number 43-25108, nicknamed "Traveling Light") out of Ramitelli Air Field in Italy as one of fifty-seven fighters on a bomber escort mission over enemy targets in Regensburg, Germany. The flight left Ramitelli and split into three groups over the Udine area of Italy to continue on to the target area. However, heavy cloud cover forced nine fighters to return to Ramitelli early, and none of the other fighters could locate their bomber aircraft or the target. Forty-seven fighters eventually returned to base, and 2nd Lt. Brewer was not among them. Reports from other pilots on the mission indicate that 2nd Lt. Brewer had been attempting to climb his aircraft out of the cloud cover but stalled out and fell into a spin. After the war, a body was recovered by U.S. personnel from a civilian cemetery in the area, but the remains could not be identified using techniques available at the time and were interred as an unknown. In 2011, researchers examined the case of those unknown remains and discovered that an Italian police report indicated they were recovered from a crashed fighter plane on the same day as 2LT Brewer's disappearance. German wartime records corroborated this information. In June 2022, the remains were disinterred and sent to a DPAA laboratory for further study. The totality of evidence allowed a positive identification of the remains as those of 2LT Brewer. Second Lieutenant Brewer is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Florence American Cemetery in Impruneta, Italy. . Military information source link: https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile... . Article link: https://abc11.com/tuskegee-airman-unknown.../13733258/ Article source link: https://www.newsobserver.com/.../local/article278935269.html . Previous Next

< Back Ms. Bessie Alberta Johnson Whitted This photograph is of the North Carolina Mutual Glee Club in 1929. Bessie Whitted is on the far left, front row. This photograph is of the North Carolina Mutual Glee Club in 1929. Bessie Whitted is on the far left, front row. Ms. Bessie Alberta Johnson Whitted was born in Charlotte NC, and educated at Barbara Scotia Women's Seminary before she came to work at the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1907. She was one of the first female employees there, and she quickly became a vital part of the growing business. When she retired in 1957, she had been promoted to the level of Assistant Treasurer (she also served as cashier and chief bookkeeper for the company during her term there). Ms. Bessie, as she was fondly called by all, was famous, not only because she was the 'black woman who handled the most cash in the country' but also because of her community involvement-- with youth education, the Algonquin Tennis Club, Iota Phi Lambda businesswomen's sorority, and St. Joseph's AME Church...on top of all that, she threw extravagant parties at her home on Fayetteville Street, all of this while she was paving the way for women in business. In 1959, just months before her death, she was recognized at a This is Your Life Ms. Bessie Ceremony. Previous Next

< Back Come Out Fighting! Trezzvant William Anderson was a member of the 761st Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army during World War II. Anderson wrote the unit's history book "Come Out Fighting: The Epic Tale of the 761st Tank Battalion, 1942-1945" , exploits during World War II. The battalion was made up of Black soldiers. Left portrait: Trezzvant W. Anderson (born in Charlotte, NC November 22, 1906 and died March 25, 1963) began his career in journalism and activism in the late 1920s. Not long after he dropped out of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC, and after he landed a job with the federal Railway Mail Service, this official photograph of Anderson was taken in 1938. Right portrait: Portrait of Trezzvant W. Anderson in his military uniform. Circa 1945. World War (1939-1945) Sourced from: Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Bottom left image: Trezzvant William Anderson was a member of the 761st Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army during World War II. Anderson wrote the unit's history book "Come Out Fighting: The Epic Tale of the 761st Tank Battalion, 1942-1945" , exploits during World War II. The battalion was made up of Black soldiers. Image sourced from: Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library. Right bottom image: Gunner Cpl. Carlton Chapman poses in the hatch of his M4 Sherman tank near Nancy, France, Nov. 5, 1944. Chapman served in the 761st Tank Battalion, the first African-American tank unit to go into combat. The unit's first engagement came Nov. 8, only. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army). . Trezzant W. Anderson. (1906-1963) "Only a few in his hometown know the name. He wasn’t much for self-promotion. But Anderson was a crusading journalist in the South during Jim Crow, and his work exposed discrimination against Black people long before what we think of as the civil rights era." "During World War II, the U.S. Army mobilized a huge public relations campaign to glorify its soldiers and boost public support for the war. But that effort largely ignored America’s segregated Black troops, who were given second-class treatment and often relegated to menial support roles. Journalist Trezzvant Anderson fought to fill that gap and give Black troops the recognition they deserved—in part by embedding with the 761st Tank Battalion and documenting their role in winning the war. The 761st, the first Black tank squad to see combat, would go on to earn nearly 400 decorations for heroism in just seven months of combat." "Anderson was born in Charlotte in 1906 and lived much of his life here. For most of his 56 years, Anderson worked as a journalist and, in the age of Jim Crow, uncovered example after example of discrimination against Black people at a time when few dared tell those kinds of stories. He went on to write and publish a book, Come Out Fighting: The Epic Tale of the 761st Tank Battalion, 1942-1945,about the first all-Black tank battalion in U.S. Army history." "Anderson attended JCSU but dropped out in 1927. He’d written for the student newspaper, and although he had gotten a good job in another field, he wanted to continue his work as a journalist. The Charlotte Post, the city’s established Black-owned newspaper, hired Anderson soon after he left school. Anderson had landed a job with the Railway Mail Service (RMS), a branch of the Postal Service that processed mail and shipped it throughout the country by train. The work provided him with a good monthly paycheck, $154, and required him to work only 10 to 12 days a month, which gave him the perfect pretext to work as the Post’s “roving reporter” throughout the Southeast. Anderson’s route usually took him from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta to Knoxville, Tennessee, and all the cities and towns along the way. Anderson, who was young and unmarried then, would deliver the mail, stop in a city or town for a few days, find a story of interest to Black readers, and send dispatches back to the Post. Within three years, his missives from the South appeared in prominent Black papers throughout the country, and he held staff positions at the Associated Negro Press, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, The Carolina Times, and The Afro-American, the renowned Baltimore-based paper founded in 1892. He kept riding from place to place and reporting on discrimination against Black people, especially in their search for jobs and economic opportunity, as the Great Depression gripped the country. He reported on a lynching in Tarboro, NC in 1930. In 1932 in New Orleans, he wrote about a protest of Mayor Thomas Semmes Walmsley’s efforts to prohibit anyone not registered to vote—which meant, overwhelmingly, Black people—from holding jobs as longshoremen, a vital occupation in the South’s leading port city. Several hundred Black residents attended the protest, and even white newspapers and political leaders spoke out against the measure. But the mayor enacted the ban, and nearly 2,000 Black longshoremen lost their jobs. Anderson’s work was dangerous. White business interests of the day frequently targeted Black publications, and Anderson was concerned enough to sometimes write under pseudonyms. “There would be efforts to intimidate me, or perhaps even lynch me,” he once told his editors, “should my name appear over the story.” Yet he kept at it throughout the 1930s, balancing his journalism with the RMS job, which provided money and mobility. In 1939, Anderson convinced the publisher of The Carolina Times, the venerable Black-owned paper in Durham, NC, to open an office in Charlotte and hire him to staff it. The Times did. Anderson also continued to write for The Afro-American—which turned out to be the vehicle he used to report on the discriminatory practices of Charlotte’s postmaster, a prominent civic leader whose name still takes up public space in this city: Paul Younts." Griffin already knew that Anderson had stirred up something that involved the Postal Service. Some of the interview subjects for his master’s thesis had mentioned it. Richardson had told him that Anderson wrote about discrimination in the Postal Service’s Charlotte office and organized the 1940 student protest in response. Richardson and Griffin’s grandfather, the trucking pioneer Fred Griffin, were members of the Charlotte Black Shriners chapter, one of numerous and influential Black fraternal organizations that formed during segregation. During his research, Griffin learned that in the ’50s, Anderson had exposed the misdeeds of leaders in another of those organizations, the national Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, and that the Elks likely would have “blackballed” anyone who crossed them. It was the first time Griffin had considered the possibility that it wasn’t just entrenched white interests that had buried Anderson’s legacy." "Among the papers in Atlanta, Griffin discovered a 1941 letter from Kelly Alexander Sr.—then the Charlotte NAACP chapter president and later national NAACP chairman—that recommended Anderson for the presidency of the national postal workers’ union. The year before, Alexander wrote, armed local NAACP members had protected Anderson after midnight in his home on Beatties Ford Road against “car-loads of whites, probably Ku Kluxers,” who were responding to “the recent Post Office investigation.” The reference eventually led Griffin to write the Postal Service to request any records they’d kept on Anderson. He expected a few pages that detailed his employment history, maybe his mail routes. What the Postal Service sent Griffin in 2010 was a 200-page dossier that covered all 14 years of Anderson’s employment—and spelled out how Anderson learned of Younts’ discrimination against Black employees and job candidates, how Anderson’s reporting led to Younts’ conviction of a federal crime, and postal officials’ reactions to them. Griffin was ecstatic. As far as he knew, no one else had the records. No one else even knew to look for them." Narrative source: https://www.history.com/.../761st-tank-battalion... Narrative source: https://704shop.com/.../fact-friday-259-the-charlotte... Previous Next

< Back Buffalo Soldiers 2 1899 photo of Buffalo Soldiers in the 24th Infantry carrying out mounted patrol duties in Yosemite. Image 2/3: 1899 photo of Buffalo Soldiers in the 24th Infantry carrying out mounted patrol duties in Yosemite. Retrieved from: NPS- Buffalo Soldiers. Previous Next

< Back Dr. S.A. Malloy examining Louis Graves ​ Dr. S.A. Malloy examining Louis Graves and his family on their front porch. They are FSA (Farm Security Administration) borrowers. Oct.1940, Caswell County, North Carolina. Photographer: Marion Post Wolcott Source: LOC Previous Next

< Back Betye Saar ​ ARTIST BETYE SAAR HAS BEEN COLLECTING BLACK DOLLS SINCE THE 1960S YOU COULD SAY ARTIST BETYE SAAR’S NEW SUITE OF WATERCOLORS STARTED IN THE 1960S, WHEN THE NOW 95-YEAR-OLD ARTIST BEGAN COLLECTING BLACK DOLLS IN LOS ANGELES. THIS LED TO A LIFELONG COLLECTING PURSUIT THAT IS NOW PLAYING OUT IN AN EXHIBITION AT ROBERTS PROJECT IN LOS ANGELES CALLED “BETYE SAAR: BLACK DOLL BLUES.” HERE SAAR ANSWERS OUR INQUIRIES ON THE MATTER. CULTURED MAGAZINE 09.17.2021 CM: When did you start collecting dolls? Betye Saar: As a child, I never had a Black doll. I usually had dolls that my mother found, and every year she would repaint their hair or make a new dress. Black dolls were not manufactured back then. If there was a Black doll, it was a rag doll that your grandmother or mother or someone else had made. When I was young, there was a radio show called Amos ‘n’ Andy, which had a couple of white actors playing Black characters. In the show, Amos got married and had a baby who was called Amosandra, and they made a doll for that character, who was Black. The show was so popular that everyone wanted those dolls, including white kids, but by that time I was already in college at UCLA. As I experienced it, that is how Black dolls came into being manufactured, with the exception of rag dolls that were made by hand. I love buying things at antique stores. In the late 1960s, I found a black doll on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, by Book Soup and the old Tower Records, and I was fascinated with it. So I didn’t begin collecting Black dolls until I was an adult and I started to notice them at swap meets and elsewhere. Then friends began gifting them to me and my brother gave me some which had been discarded by someone. Friends and family still give me Black dolls. My daughter Alison just gave me a Topsy-Turvy doll for my birthday that she bought at a flea market in Maine last month. CM: Do you collect other things besides dolls? BS: Yes, I have many collections. I like things that are made from recycled materials. That has always been more interesting to me than new products. I have collections of shard-mosaic vessels, mercury glass, elephant teapots, as well as outsider, tramp and prisoner art. CM: What drew you to the medium of watercolor? What’s your favorite quality about it? BS: I’ve always used watercolors for personal notes and also sketchbooks when I travel. Throughout COVID, things were so strange and I wasn’t interested in making big art or assemblages. I was interested in creating watercolors, but I didn’t know what I wanted to paint. I have a large cabinet of toys and Black dolls, so I decided to concentrate on painting a series of Black dolls from my collection. Usually, people think about watercolors as being very light and airy, but I enjoy using them as rich, saturated, bright colors. CM: What’s the last picture you took? BS: Last week, I took a photo of my family at my 95th birthday party with my iPhone. Source: https://www.culturedmag.com/betye-saar-black-dolls.../... Previous Next

< Back Heritage Quilters — at Heritage Quilters Giving Circle, Inc. Previous Next

< Back Fred "Curly" Neal's Harlem Globetrotters Jersey. He is an American former basketball player best known for his career with the Harlem Globetrotters, instantly recognizable with his shaved head. Following in the footsteps of Marques Haynes, Neal became the Trotters' featured ballhandler, a key role in the team's exhibition act. Fred "Curly" Neal's Harlem Globetrotters Jersey. Born May 19, 1942 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Neal attended Greensboro-Dudley High School. He went to Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. At Smith, he averaged 23.1 points a game and was named All-CIAA guard. He is an American former basketball player best known for his career with the Harlem Globetrotters, instantly recognizable with his shaved head. Following in the footsteps of Marques Haynes, Neal became the Trotters' featured ballhandler, a key role in the team's exhibition act. On January 11, 2008, the Globetrotters announced that Neal's number 22 would be retired on February 15 in a special ceremony at Madison Square Garden as part of "Curly Neal Weekend." Neal was just the fifth Globetrotter in the team's 82-year history to have his number retired, joining Wilt Chamberlain , Meadowlark Lemon (36), Marques Haynes (20) and Goose Tatum (50). On January 31, 2008, it was announced that Neal would be inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. His jersey is on display at the NC Museum of History in the sports exhibit. Source: https://www.harlemglobetrotters.com/.../22-years-retired... Previous Next

< Back 2018 Career Ladder Profiles 2 "Thank you to the Center for Environmental Farming Systems Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) for profiling myself and five other rising professionals in the Agricultural field of North Carolina. I am truly honored to be a part of the first cohort of their Career Ladder initiative. The Center for Environmental Farming Systems is a collaborative between NC State, NC A&T, and the NC Dept. of Agriculture which develops and promotes just and equitable food and farming systems that conserve natural resources, strengthen communities, improve health outcomes, and provide economic opportunities in North Carolina and beyond. @ North Carolina A&T State University" --Chanel Ashley Nestor Previous Next

< Back Three B's of Education Photograph Description: Left:Charlotte Hawkins Brown: "Education, religion, and deeds." Top Right:Mary McLeod Bethune: "The head, the heart, and the hand." Bottom Right:Nannie Helen Burroughs: "The book, the Bible, and the broom." Photograph Description: Left:Charlotte Hawkins Brown: "Education, religion, and deeds." Top Right:Mary McLeod Bethune: "The head, the heart, and the hand." Bottom Right:Nannie Helen Burroughs: "The book, the Bible, and the broom." The "Three B's of Education" Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1883-1961) took time off from Palmer Memorial Institute (now Charlotte Hawkins Brown Historic Site-in Sadelia, NC), to travel and study. In Europe she shared ideas with the great African American educators Mary McLeod Bethune and Nannie Helen Burroughs. Together, these three women became known as the "Three Bs of Education," and it was Bethune who introduced Brown to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The "Three Bs" believed in combining a holistic triangle of ideas and lessons to achieve racial equality. Brown's triangle combined education, religion, and deeds; Bethune's triangle was "the head, the heart, and the hand," while Burroughs's was "the book, the Bible, and the broom." Dr. Brown strove to apply these concepts through culture and liberal arts to achieve racial uplift. By the mid-1920s, she had achieved national recognition as an effective speaker and educator. Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) was one of seventeen children born to slave parents in Mayesville, South Carolina. Amazingly, young Bethune left home at age 11 to attend Scotia Seminary, where she cultivated an interest in missionary work. Bethune studied at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois, and after two years applied for missionary work in Africa. Her bid for work in Africa was unsuccessful, but Bethune soon accepted a teaching position at the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia. After several years, she moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, to pursue her dream of opening her own school. In 1904, in a rented house, she established the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute, a school dedicated to high academic instruction and teacher training. Nine years later, Bethune's institute merged with the nearby Cookman Institute in 1923, and the new conglomerate became known as Bethune-Cookman College. This school, steeped in African American heritage, is still in operation today. Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) was a prolific writer, educator, orator, businesswoman, and Christian leader. She moved to Washington, D.C. as a young woman to take advantage of the city's superior educational opportunities. She dreamed of opening a school for African American girls to prepare them for a productive adult life. Burroughs, an active member of her church, organized a women's club that conducted evening classes in useful skills such as typewriting, bookkeeping, cooking, and sewing. Her leadership skills brought Ms. Burroughs the position of secretary of the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention. This organization supported missionary work and educational societies in Baptist churches throughout the nation. Ms. Burroughs's dream was realized in 1909, when she opened the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C. Images from: Daniel, Sadie Iola. Women Builders. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1931. Written Information Source:http://www.nchistoricsites.org/chb/three-bs.htm Previous Next

< Back North Carolina A&T photographer Charles Watkins remembered for stories told with his camera and his courage in facing adversity ​ Longtime A&T photographer Charles Watkins remembered for stories told with his camera and his courage in facing adversity By Nancy McLaughlin -News/Record-December 14, 2019 Photograph: In this 2018 portrait, former NC A & T photographer, Charles Watkins, poses with some of his paintings. He continued to work on his art through a series of life threatening illnesses during his life.-Credit: H. Scott Hoffman-News/Record Greensboro, NC GREENSBORO, NC— Charles Watkins never gave up on the idea of getting dual kidney and heart transplants even as his own body weakened and doctors told him he stood the risk of dying on the operating table. The former longtime campus photographer known for documenting milestone moments involving A&T sought out research hospitals on his own and had thick stacks of medical bills. His work across A&T’s campus includes a mural in Corbett Gym. "I’m not afraid of death, but I’m not going to just give up and call it quits," Watkins said in 2018. The Alabama native and father of two died Friday at the age of 57 without ever getting the transplants that doctors at one time thought would save his life. Funeral arrangements are incomplete. "What a kind, courageous, talented, and wise man he was," Raycia Evans-Crawford wrote on Facebook. His life served as an example of what many Americans go through when an organ begins to fail and there’s no immediate donor. It is where the wait and life intersect. Also an associate minister at Raleigh’s Crossroads United Methodist Church, he often talked about the need for organ donation, even when it became apparent that it was too late for him. "People hold this gift in their hands that could do so much good," he said. Watkins, who was suffering from pneumonia, stopped by the church during services on Sunday, said Phyllis Jeffers, a member of the church. "Rev. Charles was an inspiration," she said. He suffered with unrelated ailments since childhood. Watkins, who collected 10-cent Marvel comic books and sketched from them as a boy, was born with a rare kidney disorder that made it hard passing liquids and often leads to kidney failure. Doctors didn’t expect him to live past the age of 12. "In the 1960s there was no dialysis — it was either you die or you get over it," he told the News & Record in 2010. A doctor told his mother to eliminate meat and excess salt from his diet. Irene Watkins fed him oatmeal, grits and rice. Eventually, the problem resolved itself, and his kidneys began functioning normally. While working at UPS in his 30s, Watkins ruptured a hernia. Midoperation, doctors discovered cancer on his urinary tract. The mass was removed and after chemotherapy, things seemed to improve for Watkins, who also worked for a stint in law enforcement. A barrage of health problems would follow in the next few years, including hypertension, a mild heart attack and the return of the kidney disorder. Watkins didn’t smoke or drink. "It’s not that someone is picking on you — that’s the way it goes," Watkins said he has always reasoned. It would only get worse. By 2001, with his kidneys failing, Watkins was put on dialysis. On Nov. 21, 2007, a kidney became available. The organ was a perfect match. But by then, Watkins’ immune system was so severely compromised that a week later he would suffer another mild heart attack, even momentarily flatlining. He blames his body’s eventual rejection of the kidney on the high toxicity of the 52 drugs he was taking — and the discovery of acute lymphoma, which doctors were able to clear up with a blood transfusion. As far back as 2010, doctors were telling Watkins that in order to get another kidney, he’d need a heart transplant at the same time. His heart was only functioning at 10% and he might not last through surgery. As he waited, Watkins was using a mobile dialysis machine at night that in 8 1/2 hours filtered his blood through his abdominal cavity. He used much of the time to paint, including portraits for a campus art show. When the divorced Watkins awakened his daughter Imari, then in high school, at 6:30 a.m. for classes, he was on his way to work. Watkins' 18-year-old son, Xavier, was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2013. After an infection, Watkins would end up at a center undergoing dialysis most days a week. He was in the middle of shooting a women’s basketball game at N.C. A&T in 2012 — and healthy enough for surgery — when he got the call from the Duke University transplant team. Both a kidney and heart compatible to his blood type were available and waiting for him. The odds against something like that happening at the same time were enormous. It helped that he had previously signed off on accepting the first available organs, whatever the medical history of the donor. The organs, they told him, were healthy, but they were coming from someone who carried HIV before dying. Watkins was willing to take the chance as he raced to the car, the heavy camera equipment still slung around his neck. He had just started the car and buckled up when a second call came. The organs, the team had just learned in the passing seconds, were cancerous — unusable. So Watkins unbuckled his seat belt, got out of his car and walked back into the gym to finish shooting the action. "I’m still a very functional person and they can’t understand why," he would say of his ability to keep working years ago. He shot Carolina Panthers football games and former President Barack Obama's first trip to Greensboro as a candidate. He even took pictures — while carrying three cameras the whole 4 miles — of N.C. A&T Chancellor Harold Martin leading the March of Dimes walk-a-thon. More recently, he was using a cane. "He fought a good fight," said his former colleague and friend, Nettie Rowland. After leaving A&T on disability, he spent more of his time in front of his canvases. "He was so creative," said his brother, Ira Watkins of Fayetteville. "He was good at so many things." He took delight in a mixed-art collage of former A&T chancellors in front of the old campus administration building constructed in 1891, and the newer one with the statue of the four A&T freshmen who sat down at the downtown segregated Woolworth lunch counter and started a sit-in movement that spread across the South. He also surprised people, including District Court Judge Lora Cubbage and people in the pews and his church, with portraits. "I find serenity," he said at the time, "in just praying and painting." Source: https://www.greensboro.com/.../article_c3912104-a92b-5c33... Previous Next

< Back White terrorist bombings #OnThisDay #FiftyFiveYearsAgo In the early hours of November 22, 1965, Charlotte suffered its worst act of terrorism when bombs exploded at the homes of city councilman Fred Alexander, civil rights lawyer Julius Chambers, and civil rights leaders Kelly Alexander Sr. and Reginald Hawkins within a span of 15 minutes. These four men were the city’s most prominent civil rights leaders and among the state’s most prominent leaders. Fred Alexander had been elected to the city council in May of 1965, becoming the first African American to serve on the council since Reconstruction. His brother Kelly Alexander Sr. was the president of the North Carolina branch of the NAACP. Reginald Hawkins was the head of the Mecklenburg Organization for Political Affairs (MOPA) and would become the first African American to run for North Carolina governor in 1968. Julius Chambers had just filed a lawsuit to desegregate the Shrine Bowl two weeks before the bombing and had filed Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education earlier that year. He would win the Swann case before the Supreme Court in 1971, which led to the use of busing to integrate public schools. In response to the bombing, Mayor Stan Brookshire started an "Anti-Terrorism Fund" for the four families and 150 volunteers from local construction companies repaired the homes. A week later, Charlotteans came together in an interracial rally at Ovens Auditorium to protest the attack. However, in spite of a state-wide manhunt, the perpetrators were never caught and the FBI’s case into the bombing remains open to this day. From The Crisis, Vol. 72, No. 10, p. 660, December 1965. ---- A Retrospective 50 years ago: Bombs ignited night of terror By Jim Morrill - November 21, 2015 - The Charlotte Observer- Staff writer Gary Schwab contributed. Charlotte’s night of terror began right outside Kelly Alexander Jr.’s bedroom, with a flash of light and thundering boom that rocked the walls and sent shards of glass flying over his bed. The front porch explosion ripped off the front doors and knocked open kitchen cabinets. Somehow 17-year-old Alexander made his way across the glass and joined his family in safety. Shortly after 2 a.m. on that rainy night, 50 years ago Sunday, three more bombs exploded across west Charlotte in a span of 15 minutes. All came at the homes of well-known civil rights activists. Kelly Alexander Sr. was state president of the NAACP. His brother Fred, who lived next door, had just become the first African American elected to the city council since the 1890s. Reginald Hawkins was an outspoken crusader for civil rights. Julius Chambers was a promising young lawyer who’d just filed one suit to integrate an iconic football game and another to speed public school desegregation. The dynamite bombs blasted into headlines across the country in November, 1965. They also shattered the complacency of a city that prided itself on racial tolerance while largely avoiding the violence rampant in other parts of the South. “So now Charlotte has joined the ranks of Birmingham, Jacksonville, Atlanta and other Southern cities where the bomb has become a fact of life,” editorialized the Statesville Record. Many people were afraid it might. “We were in the middle of the struggle and you didn’t know which way things were going to play out,” says Kelly Alexander Jr., now 67 and a state legislator. But in ways big and small, the bombings would showcase the city’s resiliency as white and black Charlotteans came together in displays of unity. Despite a statewide manhunt, no one was ever arrested. The case, code-named CHARBOM by the FBI, has never been closed. ‘THE POWER OF HATE’ You can still see the thin cracks on the front stoop of the house across from West Charlotte High School that Alexander still shares with his mother, Margaret, 91. They’re reminders of the blast outside the bedroom where he slept that stormy November night. Other scars were less visible. Theodora Alexander, Fred Alexander’s daughter, says her mother never again had a good night’s sleep. Kelly Alexander Sr. told reporters at the time he thought “the whole house was coming down.” “This was done specifically to kill us,” he said. “This time we were lucky. The next time, who knows? Somebody may get killed.” Suspicion quickly turned to the Ku Klux Klan, a hate group known for its cross burnings and bombings that was still active in the area. FBI agents pressed their informants. According to FBI reports, one told them Klan members had met in Charlotte just hours before the bombing. But he said they talked not about bombings but plans for an upcoming Christmas party. Even though Charlotte had avoided the violence of other cities, race was still a constant fault line that for years widened over school segregation. Eight years before the bombings, in 1957, a 15-year-old girl named Dorothy Counts braved a gauntlet of taunts and became the first black student at Harding High School. Reginald Hawkins escorted her home that first day. In 1961, Hawkins organized a boycott to protest the school board decision to covert Harding High into an all-black school renamed Irwin Avenue junior high while moving the white students to an all-white school. Though his boycott won some concessions, tensions over the slow pace of integration continued to escalate. In 1964 CMS had 88 segregated schools, 57 white and 31 black. By 1965, only 2,126 of the district’s 23,000 black students attended school with white students. In January 1965, Chambers had filed a suit known as Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. It would go on to become a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1971 that upheld busing for desegregation. A few days after he filed the suit, Chambers’ car was bombed while he spoke inside a New Bern church. (After inspecting the damage, someone asked what he was going to do. “We’re going to go back inside and finish the meeting,” he replied.) Chambers was undeterred. That year he was involved in more than 50 desegregation lawsuits. One came on Nov. 11, 1965, less than two weeks before the bombings in Charlotte. Chambers sued over the Shrine Bowl, the annual football game for high school all-stars at Memorial Stadium. The trigger: the omission of black running back Jimmie Lee Kirkpatrick, who’d set a single-season record of 19 touchdowns at Myers Park High School, a record that still stands. The Alexander brothers and Hawkins were also involved in Chambers’ suit. On Friday Nov. 19, state Judge Braxton Craven allowed the Shrine game to be played but gave the Shriners less than four months to come up with a new player-selection policy. A lot of people were outraged. “A very raw nerve has been touched – football,” journalist Harry Golden would write. “Some of these bastards would even let you marry their sister if you promise not to touch – football.” Davison Douglas, dean of the William & Mary law school and author of a book on the desegregation of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, calls the Shrine Bowl suit “probably the precipitating event that led to the bombings.” But Douglas, a 1974 Myers Park graduate, believes the bombing also was prompted by resistance to efforts to desegregate schools, restaurants, hospitals and other public accommodations. Not lost on the community was the fact that the bombings came on the third anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. “Everywhere the memory of his passing rekindled the pain,” the Observer said in an editorial. “In Charlotte we felt the pain too. More acutely … because we learned the power of hate to endure.” COMMUNITY COMES TOGETHER As striking as were the bombings, so was the response. A day later more than 150 volunteer workers were at the bombed homes repairing brick walls and damaged roofs. Many were from C.D. Spangler’s construction company. “We are trying to make amends,” Spangler told a reporter at the time. “Even though it doesn’t completely heal the wound, maybe it will go a long way toward helping.” Spangler was particularly close to Fred Alexander, who managed his company’s Double Oaks apartments. “We wanted him back in his house,” recalls Spangler, who would go on to lead the University of North Carolina system. “People were shocked. It’s not the kind of thing you’d believe about your hometown.” Mayor Stan Brookshire started an “Anti-Terrorism Fund” for the victims. The ministerial association issued a statement that said, “this attack was against every home in our community.” Condolences came from around the country, many on Western Union telegrams. Addison Reese, president of NCNB, the precursor to the Bank of America, wrote Kelly Alexander Sr.: “Please know it is my sincere wish that the citizens of our community can … continue to work together in making substantial strides in the area of race relations.” A week later, 2,500 people of both races packed Ovens Auditorium to hear national NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins, Mayor Stan Brookshire and other leaders deplore the violence and appeal for unity. “This week Charlotte has shown that it can withstand the assaults of prejudice, hate and crime without falling victim to panic,” Brookshire said. “Except for this good community climate we might have had a conflagration that … set us back a score of years.” And on Dec. 5, 120 ministers gathered for worship in front of the homes of Kelly and Fred Alexander. Around 500 people joined them. “Charlotte was so intensely concerned about its reputation as a place of racial fairness, largely I think for economic reasons, and (the bombing) was a huge blow to that,” Douglas says. “Charlotte did not want to believe that this could happen … and was worried about what could happen to its progressive reputation on race.” The bombings came three months after President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act and a year after passage of the Civil Rights Act. Historian David Garrow says it was no accident the bombings came after signs of civil rights progress in Washington and Charlotte. “You get spasms of violent terrorism when unhappy, potentially violent people know that their side is really losing,” Garrow says. “None of these bombings or killings happen at random times. They are really a response to events that indicate fundamental political defeat for the violent side. CHANGE COMES SLOWLY On a living room wall of Alexander’s brick ranch, the same home bombed 50 years ago, hangs a framed editorial cartoon from 1965. It shows an arm marked “Charlotteans” holding a scrub brush. Next to a bucket on the floor is a mess labeled “bombings.” But despite the immediate response, the bombings did not spark wholesale change. Two weeks after the attacks, in a letter to Brookshire, a group of black leaders said little had fundamentally changed. They demanded immediate desegregation of schools and more public housing. “It wasn’t something that was transformative,” historian David Goldfield of UNC Charlotte says of the bombings. “But it did jolt some people … that we’re not immune to the fires of prejudice.” Change came slowly. In 1966, the Shrine Bowl was integrated when two black players, including West Charlotte’s Titus Ivory, were named to the North Carolina team. After the Supreme Court’s 1971 ruling, a school busing plan aimed at full-scale integration went into effect in 1974. Busing for integration continued until 1999, when a federal judge ordered CMS to stop using race as a factor in student assignment plans. In 2002, the Supreme Court refused to review a lower court ruling, effectively closing the Swann case. Since then the racial balance has slipped backwards. More than half of CMS black and Hispanic students now attend schools that some call re-segregated, where at least 90 percent of students are nonwhite and poverty levels are high. To be sure, gains were made. A half-century after Fred Alexander’s election, the city has had three black mayors and the council has six black members. But last year a study on upward mobility of children in large metropolitan areas by Harvard University and University of California-Berkeley ranked Charlotte last among the nation’s 50 largest cities. A task force is trying to address the problem. “Charlotte still has a long way to go in fostering true equality,” says historian Tom Hanchett. “And I think that would be agonizing to the four families who experienced that violence in their own homes.” For Kelly Alexander Jr., the lasting lesson of the bombing isn’t that city has erased all its racial problems, but that it learned to deal with them non-violently. “There was a lot of racist sentiment floating out there,” he says. “And for our community to essentially reject all of that and say, that’s not what Charlotte stands for, just made a lasting impression on me. “Charlotte has been a place where consensus-building has been engrained in all of us. And I believe that.” The bombing victims Kelly Alexander Sr.: A Charlotte native, he was state NAACP president in 1965. A quarter-century earlier he had revived the inactive Charlotte branch. He was appointed to the national NAACP board in 1950 and elected vice president in 1976. Seven years later, he was named national chairman. He died in April 1985. Fred Alexander: He was the first black member of the Charlotte Chamber and a charter member of the mayor’s community relations committee. In 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act became law, the man who’d spent much of his life fighting for voting rights became the first African American elected to Charlotte’s City Council in the 20th century. He died in 1980. Julius Chambers: In 1964, Chambers opened North Carolina’s first integrated law firm in Charlotte. He attracted lawyers who have gone on to leave their own mark, including former U.S. Rep. Mel Watt. A native of Mt. Gilead, he went on to head the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and serve as president of N.C. Central University. He died in 2013. Reginald Hawkins: The man who’s been called “the father of Charlotte’s civil rights movement” grew up in Beaufort. A dentist and a minister, he was outspoken and confrontational in his fight for desegregation. “We shall not be pacified with gradualism,” he told a crowd in 1963. “We want freedom and we want it now.” In 1968 he became the first African American to run for governor. He died in 2007. The unsolved crimes Police and the FBI received tips after the 1965 bombings, but no arrests were ever made. Photo Collage Description: Top Row Left- Kelly Alexander Jr. standing in front of his home that he still lives in on Senior Drive which was bombed in 1965. His uncle Fred Alexander, whose house also was bombed, lived next door. Credit: Diedra Laird Dlaird. Top Row Middle- Newspapers headlines about the November 22, 1965 White terrorist bombings. Credit: Charlotte Observer. Top Row Right- Kelly Alexander Sr. and his son Kelly Alexander Jr. March 15, 1983. Credit: Jeep Hunter. Bottom Row Left- Councilman Fred Alexander. Credit: Charlotte Observer. Bottom 2nd image- Crisis magazine photo showing FBI agents and Charlotte police detectives looking for more bombs and clues at the home of Kelly Alexander, NAACP president and national board member. Bottom 3rd image-Activist Dr. Reginald Hawkins Credit: Charlotte Observer file photo. Bottom 4th image- Attorney Julius Chambers Previous Next

< Back Cathey Alston-Kerney's "MARKET FORCES I : CELEBRATING ENTREPRENURSHIP AND INNOVATION" "MARKET FORCES I : CELEBRATING ENTREPRENURSHIP AND INNOVATION" by Cathey Alston-Kerney Connecting African to the ways African Americans create their own destiny. Machine pieced and quilted. — in Warrenton, NC. Previous Next

< Back 1980 Negro Leagues Reunion in Ashland Kentucky Photograph shows an 84 year old Effa Manley along with Buck O’Neil, Joe Black, Webster McDonald, Buck Leonard-(who is a native of NC), Ted Page, and Leon Day. Photograph shows an 84 year old Effa Manley along with Buck O’Neil, Joe Black, Webster McDonald, Buck Leonard-(who is a native of NC), Ted Page, and Leon Day. This is from the 1980 Negro Leagues Reunion in Ashland Kentucky. Photographer and newspaper source unknown. Copy of article sourced from: The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, June 21, 1980. https://msa.maryland.gov/.../pdf/msa_afro_1980_01-0447.pdf . Previous Next

< Back Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray 41 years ago Pauli made some more waves. The ripples are still being felt today. She opened another powerful door for Black women as the change agent that she was. . On this day January 8, 1977 Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray became the first ordained female African American Episcopal priest, Murray was also the first African American woman to receive a J.S.D from Yale Law School in 1965 and helped found the National Organization for Women in 1966. Previous Next

< Back Ihsan Abdin's 'KALEIDOSCOPE OF LIFE" "KALEIDOSCOPE OF LIFE" by Ihsan Abdin (quilted by Belinda Alston) A geometric medley. Machine quilted. — in Warrenton, NC. Previous Next

< Back Fayetteville State University Broncoettes-1947. *Researcher Stan Best* ​ Fayetteville State University Broncoettes-1947. *Researcher Stan Best* Previous Next

< Back Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner ​ Inventor and visionary Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner was the woman who invented the sanitary pad, which was first a sanitary belt, a precursor to the adhesive maxi pads. Jane Crow’s White American racial discrimination prevented its adoption for thirty years. It’s hard to imagine a world for women without sanitary pads and napkins. Today, grocery and drugstores keep them in stock. Her invention would have brought women into a comfort zone from using rags, sheep’s wool, and even grass to absorb menstrual blood. In the 1920s however, Mary B. D. Kenner changed women's menstrual challenges forever. Her invention would’ve revolutionized how women handled that time of month during the social changes of the "roaring twenties", but because of Jane Crow White American racism her invention did not get patented and popularized until more than three decades later in 1956. Companies became disinterested due to Kenner being a Black woman. However, that did not stop Kenner who once said that her inventions were never about money, she just wanted to help make life easier for people. She was born in 1912, in Monroe, North Carolina and credited her father, Sidney Nathaniel Davidson (June 1890-November 1958), with giving her a thirst for discovering things. Her sister, Mildred Davidson Austin Smith (1916–1993), was also an inventor, and together they created several useful inventions to help people. Kenner’s innovative mindset can be credited to her family full of inventors. Her father Sidney Nathaniel Davidson had invented the pants presser, which was later patented in 1914. Her sister, Mildred Davidson, broke into the board game industry creating “Family Treedition.” While her paternal grandfather, Robert Phromeberger invented the tricolor light signal for trains among his many creations. From childhood to becoming an early adult, Kenner was consistently creating things. She created a sponge tip to adhere to umbrella’s to stop water from dripping on the floor, a portable ashtray for cigarettes and a convertible roof for cars that could protect all passengers from weather ailments, all before she entered college. In 1931 she enrolled at Howard University to cultivate her creative mindset. Soon after, she was unable to afford tuition and ended up dropping out. Nonetheless, Kenner holds the most patents for any African American woman in history. Between 1956 and 1987 she received five patents for her household and personal item creations. She also had invented a bathroom tissue holder and a back washer that mounted onto shower or bathtub walls, to help people clean parts of their back that were hard to reach. Mary also patented the carrier attachment for an invalid walker in 1959, which included a hard-surfaced tray and a soft pocket for carrying items Kenner’s sister Mildred loved music and became a professional singer. She married and had two sons, then fell seriously ill with multiple sclerosis. Largely confined to her home in Washington, D.C., she had lots of time to think. She came up with a game to teach family relationships, for which she received a patent in 1980. She got a trademark on the game’s name, “Family Treeditions,” and copyrighted its written instructions. Mainly designed for young people to help them understand their place in the extended family, the game became popular with adults. Early sales were strong, but Smith’s marketing and distribution methods did not make her rich. She did recover part of the money spent getting her product marketed. It was created in several languages, including Braille. As she continued inventing helpful items, Mary also worked as a professional floral arranger and had her own business in the Washington DC area. Mary was the more prolific inventor of the two sisters, as she eventually filed five patents in total, more than any other Black woman in history. The two sisters did not have any professional training, and they never became rich from their inventions. They made inventions ultimately to improve the quality of life for people. The sisters were both born in the town of Monroe, N.C. Mary was born May 17, 1912, and died on January 13, 2006 in Sibley Memorial hospital in Washington, DC at the age of 94. Mildred was born January 31, 1916, and died in 1993. Previous Next

< Back Charles George November 30, 1952, Charles George died at age 20 near Songnae-dong, Korea. Private First Class George, a member of the 45th Infantry Division, had sustained injuries the night before when he threw himself on a grenade to shield his comrades. November 30, 1952, Charles George died at age 20 near Songnae-dong, Korea. Private First Class George, a member of the 45th Infantry Division, had sustained injuries the night before when he threw himself on a grenade to shield his comrades. With enemy forces near, George suffered from his wounds in silence to protect his company. Born in 1932 within the Qualla Boundary of Cherokee, North Carolina he was a Cherokee Native American. George was given the Cherokee name “Tsali,” which translates to English as Charles or Charlie. He grew up in Birdtown in Swain County before enlisting in the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict.He entered service at Whittier, North Carolina. At the time of George's death in battle he held the rank of Private First Class in Company C of the 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division. The action for which he received the Medal of Honor was near Songnae-dong, Korea. For his bravery during the last hours of his life, George was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1954. His parents, who spoke no English and had never ventured beyond the North Carolina mountains, traveled to Washington, D.C., to receive the medal. The Medal of Honor was awarded on March 18, 1954. The citation read: Pfc. George, a member of Company C, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy on the night of November 30, 1952. He was a member of a raiding party committed to engage the enemy and capture a prisoner for interrogation. Forging up the rugged slope of the key terrain feature, the group was subjected to intense mortar and machine gun fire and suffered several casualties. Throughout the advance, he fought valiantly and, upon reaching the crest of the hill, leaped into the trenches and closed with the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. When friendly troops were ordered to move back upon completion of the assignment, he and 2 comrades remained to cover the withdrawal. While in the process of leaving the trenches a hostile soldier hurled a grenade into their midst. Pfc. George shouted a warning to 1 comrade, pushed the other soldier out of danger, and, with full knowledge of the consequences, unhesitatingly threw himself upon the grenade, absorbing the full blast of the explosion. Although seriously wounded in this display of valor, he refrained from any outcry which would divulge the position of his companions. The 2 soldiers evacuated him to the forward aid station and shortly thereafter he succumbed to his wound. Pfc. George's indomitable courage, consummate devotion to duty, and willing self-sacrifice reflect the highest credit upon himself and uphold the finest traditions of the military service. In 2002, The VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina is renamed in honor of Charles George and thus is officially known as the Charles George VA Medical CenterSeveral boys recovered George's Purple Heart, Bronze Star and GCM in an antique shop. The owner donated the medals on the condition the boys find the family and return them, which they did. Image description: Private First Class Charles George, in his full military uniform, standing, facing the camera,smiling. end of image description Previous Next

< Back Frank Roberts Frank Roberts, an Elizabeth City native and member of the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers, which was later renamed the 35th USCI Sargt. Bob” was Sgt. Frank Roberts, an Elizabeth City native and member of the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers, which was later renamed the 35th USCI. This drawing is from the Fred W. Smith, Jr. Civil War Sketch Book. Courtesy of the Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens Collection, New Bern, NC. Previous Next

< Back The Wilmington Ten “THE STORY OF THE WILMINGTON TEN” TIMELINE September, 1968 - Williston Senior High school, a prominent all-Black high school was suddenly closed in order to integrate its 1100 students into the two white high schools. The sudden closing angered many in the Black community who felt that while it was inevitable and desegregation was necessary, it did not have to and should not have occurred in the sudden and traumatic manner in which it did. December 18, 1970 - Black students upset over treatment at New Hanover High School, which was one of the newly integrated schools, gather at the nearby Wildcat Café . Seventeen students, all of whom were Black, were arrested after reportedly refusing to disperse. Of the seventeen arrested, 11 were expelled following an investigation by principal John Scott. Scott had previously been labeled a racist by most of the black students. January 15, 1971 - After numerous appeals to school administrators to allow a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were all rejected, seventy Black students stage a sit-in at Hoggard High Schools cafeteria. This peaceful protest led the expulsion of 15 students who were identified as leaders of the protest. January 26, 1971 - Eight students form a boycott committee which drew up a list of grievances to present directly to Heyward Bellamy, superintendent of schools. January 29, 1971 - A white minister, Rev. Eugene Templeton invites about 100 Black students to gather in Gregory Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) to begin a school boycott. February 1,1971 - Heyward Bellamy meets with students at Gregory to discuss grievances. Rev. Templeton calls Rev. Leon White of the United Church of Christ-Commission for Racial Justice to ask for assistance for the students in presenting their grievances. White dispatches his field organizer Rev. Benjamin F Chavis, to Wilmington. February 2,1971 - Ben Chavis along with student leaders hold a press conference at Gregory to present their grievances, demanding that the expelled students be reinstated immediately. February 3,1971 - Frustrated by the seeming lack of concern of the part of the Board of Education to provide an acceptable response to the students grievances, the students marched some 500 strong to the Board of Education demanding to speak to Bellamy. Bellamy agrees to meet with Chavis and two of the students. Chavis refuses, saying all the student leaders should be present. That night Chavis holds a rally at Gregory encouraging the students to continue their struggle for equality in the schools. Students scramble for cover as shots are fired at the church. Later that night several buildings are burned to the ground including L. Swartz Furniture with damages estimated at over $130 thousand dollars. February 4,1971 - Certain that there would be bloodshed accompanying the widespread violence, Rev. Templeton calls for a curfew. City Manager E.C. Brandon, speaking on behalf of Mayor Luther Cromartie and Chief Williamson, said afterward, “There was no evidence of any impending racial clashes or violence against the church. That Rev. Templeton has nothing to worry about,” later adding, “the police appear to be on top of the situation.” Mayor Cromrtie refused to grant a curfew saying that it would be “ not only inconvenient but expensive.” Responding to that comment, Chavis, along with several hundred students, march on City Hall to plead with the mayor to call a curfew. The mayor refused. February 5, 1971 - About 400 Blacks march on City Hall demanding better protection for Blacks in Black neighborhoods. On the steps of City Hall, with hundreds of students chanting “We want action!” Chavis demanded that the mayor and chief of police call a curfew. When the city again refused to declare a curfew, Chavis, after a phone conversation with a major from the state Highway Patrol, said “ I want to publicly charge the mayor and the city council with conspiracy, in setting up the Black community for annihilation.” A Black minister, Rev. Vaughn, is shot outside of Gregory Church by white vigilantes as he tries to persuade men who were protecting the church to leave the church and go home. Lum’s Restaurant burns to the ground, and police and firemen responding to another fire at Mike's Grocery Store say they are fired upon by snipers. February 6 , 1971 - Mike’s Grocery burns to the ground after being torched for a second night. A 17-year-old Black youth, Steven Corbett, is killed by police who say they were returning sniper fire from the vicinity of Mike's Grocery Store. Feb, 7 1971 HARVEY CUMBER GUNNED DOWN! When Harvey Cumber, a 57 year-old white male, drove through the barricade and began shooting, his life came to an abrupt end as someone behind the barricade returned fire. It was then that city officials decided that was time to call a curfew. When Steve Corbetts had died less than twenty-four hours earlier, Mayor Cromartie said Corbetts "will serve as a deterrent". A decision to bring in the National Guard was announced at 3:00 P.M. The curfew was announced shortly after 7:00 P.M. It was in effect from 7:30 P. M. Saturday till 6:00 A. M. Monday. May 1971- Allen Hall charged with burning Mike’s Grocery. Says he and Ben Chavis burn store. March 6, 1972 - North Carolina officials arrested Rev. Chavis on "conspiracy to murder" charges stemming from racial incidents in Wilmington in February 1971 in which Harvey E. Cumber, a 57-year-old white man was killed. Other charges against Rev. Chavis were: assault on emergency personnel, conspiracy to assault emergency personnel, burning property with an incendiary device, conspiracy to burn property with an incendiary device. Bail for Rev. Chavis was set at $ 75, 000. The same charges were brought against Marvin Patrick, an associate of Rev. Chavis and Tommy Atwood. Others were arrested. The five others were: Connie Tyndall, James McKoy, James Bunting Michael Peterson Cornell Flowers, Jerry Jacobs, Willie E. Vereen and Anne Shepard, a white woman. All except Ms. Shepard were charged with arson and conspiracy to assault emergency personnel (firemen and policemen). She was charged with conspiracy to burn property and conspiracy to assault emergency personnel. April 24, 1972 - Joe Wright, George Kirby and Reginald Epps arrested on charges of conspiracy to assault emergency personnel and conspiracy to burn property. May 1, 1972 - Wayne Moore the last to be arrested. Trial for Rev. Chavis and the others charged with conspiracy to assault emergency personnel and arson postponed until a federal judge rules on a petition to remove the trial to federal court. Attorneys for the defendants had asked for a delay to prepare their case but had been refused by the State of North Carolina. The petition to federal court provided the defense attorneys some additional time to prepare the defense. June 12, 1972 - Mistrial declared for Rev. Chavis and the other defendants charged with conspiracy to assault emergency personnel and arson when the prosecutor becomes "ill. " Ten Blacks and 2 Whites had been seated in the jury box and accepted by the defense, but the prosecutor had not agreed to accept them. June 16, 1972 - Chavis and 12 other persons charged with offenses in the Wilmington violence released on bail. October 17, 1972 - Chavis and the "Wilmington 9" convicted on charges of conspiracy to assault emergency personnel and burning with an incendiary device. Anne Shepard convicted on charges of "accessory before the fact" of firebombing. Her original charges had been reduced sometime after the mistrial was declared. Chavis was sentenced to 25-29 years for arson, and 4-5 years for End of Part One--Part Two Continued with Next Photo of The Wilmington Ten" Previous Next

< Back Althea Gibson An African-American Woman Pioneer In Professional Tennis And Golf Althea Gibson, An African-American Woman Pioneer In Professional Tennis And Golf Althea Gibson was born 8. 25, 1927. She was an African American tennis player. From Silver, South Carolina, the family moved to Harlem in New York City when she was three. Growing up there, Gibson disliked going to school so much that she often played hooky. What Gibson liked to do was play sports; at first basketball was her favorite, then paddle tennis. Then a friendly musician gave her a tennis racket, and she immediately took to the game. She quit high school not because of tennis but because she couldn't stand classes and began competing in girls tournaments under the auspices of the American Tennis Association, which was almost all black. In 1946, she attracted the attention of two tennis-playing doctors, Hubert Eaton of North Carolina and Robert W. Johnson of Virginia, who were active in the black tennis community. Soon-to-be welterweight champion Sugar Ray Robinson and his wife, who had befriended Gibson, advised her to go south. She did. Each doctor took her into his family — Eaton during the school year, Johnson in the summer. Not only did they provide tennis instruction, they also straightened her out academically. She went back to high school for her last three years and graduated in 1949 in Wilmington, North Carolina. As the two-time winner of the national black women's tennis championship, Gibson thought she had a good case for being admitted to the 1950 U. S. Nationals. But it appeared as if she were going to be shut out again until Alice Marble, a four-time winner of the event, advanced her cause in the July 1950 issue of "American Lawn Tennis" magazine. "If Althea Gibson represents a challenge to the present crop of players, then it's only fair that they meet this challenge on the courts," Marble wrote. In her celebrated debut at the 1950 U. S. Nationals, Gibson beat Barbara Knapp in straight sets. Her second-round match on the grass of Forest Hills was against Louise Brough, who had won the previous three Wimbledon’s. After being beaten 6-1 in the first set, Gibson recovered to win the second set 6-3 and led 7-6 in the third when a thunderstorm struck, halting the match. When it resumed the next day, Gibson dropped three straight games to lose the match. It took Gibson a while to adjust to the stronger competition. She also remained unwelcome at some clubs where tournaments were held. She was ranked number 9 among American women in 1952, but it wasn't until four years later that Gibson displayed the game of a player ready to move into the first echelon. She won her first major in 1956, the French championships on the clay courts in Paris. The next year, she made more history by winning Wimbledon and the U. S. Nationals, the first Black to win either. Even while winning tournaments she was denied rooms at hotels. One refused to book reservations for a luncheon in her honor. She said she didn't care. "I tried to feel responsibilities to Negroes, but that was a burden on my shoulders," she said in 1957. Including six doubles titles, she won a total of 11 Grand Slam events on her way to the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. Her singles record at the Grand Slams events was an impressive 53-9, 16-1 at Wimbledon, 27-7 at the U. S., 6-0 at the French and 4-1 at the Australian. One year she earned a reported $100,000 in conjunction with playing a series of matches before Harlem Globetrotter basketball games. There was no professional tennis tour in those days. Gibson turned to the pro golf tour for a few years, but she didn't excel. She tried playing a few events after open tennis started in 1968, but by then she was in her 40s and too old to beat her younger opponents. She worked as a tennis teaching pro after she stopped competing. Gibson has turned into a recluse in her well-kept garden apartment in East Orange, New Jersey, according to sources she is suffering in silence from a series of strokes and ailments brought on by a disease she is simply said to have described as "terminal." "If it hadn't been for her," says Billie Jean King, winner of 12 Grand Slam singles titles, "it wouldn't have been so easy for Arthur (Ashe) or the ones who followed." Althea Gibson died on September 29, 2003 of respiratory failure at a hospital in East Orange, N.J.. Reference: ESPN.com ESPN Plaza Bristol, CT 06010 Previous Next

< Back Journey of Reconciliation Photograph: Members of the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947. Image from Fellowship of Reconciliation Freedom Riders Surrender in Hillsborough On March 21, 1949, the Freedom Riders surrendered at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough and were sent to segregated chain gangs. In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court declared that segregation on interstate buses and trains was unconstitutional, though segregation was still widely practiced across the south. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to test compliance with the court’s ruling across the South by having interracial groups of protesters travel on Greyhound and Trailways buses. This “Journey of Reconciliation,” as it was dubbed, began in April 1947, and the protesters who participated became known as the “Freedom Riders.” In Chapel Hill in April 1947, four riders, including one of the organizers, Bayard Rustin, were arrested and later went to trial. In 1949, Rustin and two white protesters surrendered and were sent to segregated chain gangs. Rustin published journal entries about the experience. His writings, as well as the actions of the “Journey” riders in April 1947, in time inspired Rosa Parks’ nonviolent protest in 1955 and the Freedom Rides of 1960-1961. The Freedom Riders Some of the young Nashville sit-in leaders joined up with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which in 1961 helped to launch the “Freedom Rides.” Back in 1946, Thurgood Marshall’s NAACP lawyers had obtained a Supreme Court ruling that barred segregation in interstate bus travel. (Under the U.S. federal system of government, it is easier for the national government to regulate commerce that crosses state lines.) In the 1960 Boynton v. Virginia decision, the Court expanded its ruling to include bus terminals and other facilities associated with interstate travel. But possessing a right and exercising it are two very different things. It was widely understood that any African American who exercised his or her constitutional right to sit at the front of an interstate bus or use the previously whites-only facilities at a southern bus terminal would meet with a violent response. Understanding this, an interracial group of 13, including Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). National Director James Farmer, departed Washington, D.C., by bus. Farmer and his companions planned to make several stops en route to New Orleans. “If there is arrest, we will accept that arrest,” Farmer said. “And if there is violence, we are willing to receive that violence without responding in kind.” Farmer was right to anticipate violence. Perhaps the worst of it occurred near Anniston, Alabama. Departing Atlanta, the Freedom Riders had split into two groups, one riding in a Greyhound bus, the other in a Trailways bus. When the Greyhound bus reached Anniston, the sidewalks, unusually, were lined with people. The reason soon became clear. When the bus reached the station parking lot, a mob set upon it, using rocks and brass knuckles to shatter some of the bus windows. Two white highway patrolmen in the bus, assigned to spy on the Riders, sealed the door and prevented the Ku Klux Klan-led mob from entering. When the local police finally arrived, they bantered with the crowd, made no arrests, and escorted the bus to the city limits. The mob, by some accounts now about 200 strong, followed close behind in cars and pickup trucks. About 10 kilometers outside Anniston, flat tires brought the bus to a halt. A crowd of white men attempted to board the bus, and one threw a fire bomb through a bus window. As the historian Raymond Arsenault writes: “The Freedom Riders had been all but doomed until an exploding fuel tank convinced the mob that the whole bus was about to explode.” The bus was consumed by the blaze; the fleeing Freedom Riders, reported the Associated Press, “took a brief but bloody beating.” The second group of Freedom Riders shared their Trailways bus with a group of Klansmen who boarded at Atlanta. When the black Freedom Riders refused to sit at the back of the bus, more beatings ensued. The white Freedom Riders, among them 61-year-old educator Walter Bergman, were attacked with particular savagery. All of the Freedom Riders held to their Ghandian training; none fought back. When the bus at last arrived in Birmingham, matters only grew worse. CBS News commentator Howard K. Smith offered an eyewitness account: “When the bus arrived, the toughs grabbed the passengers into alleys and corridors, pounding them with pipes, with key rings, and with fists.” Inside the segregated bus station, the Freedom Riders hesitated momentarily, then entered the whites-only waiting room. They, too, were beaten, some unconscious, while Birmingham’s police chief, Eugene “Bull” Connor, refused to restrain the Klansmen and their supporters. Still, the Riders were determined to continue. In Washington, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy asked Alabama Governor John Patterson to guarantee safe passage through his state. Patterson declined: “The citizens of the state are so enraged I cannot guarantee protection for this bunch of rabble-rousers.” A member of Alabama’s congressional delegation, Representative George Huddleston Jr., deemed the Freedom Riders “self-anointed merchants of racial hatred.” He said the firebombed Greyhound group “got just what they asked for.” In Nashville, Diane Nash feared the political consequences. “If the Freedom Ride had been stopped as a result of violence,” she later said, “I strongly felt that the future of the movement was going to be just cut short because the impression would have been given that whenever a movement starts, that all that has to be done is that you attack it with massive violence and the blacks would stop.” With reinforcements from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") and other black and white activists supplementing the original Freedom Riders, a new effort was launched. On May 20, a group of Freedom Riders boarded a Birmingham-to-Montgomery, Alabama, Greyhound. Their bus was met by a mob estimated at 1,000 “within an instant” of pulling into the station, the Associated Press reported. Among the injured were John Seigenthaler, an assistant to Attorney General Kennedy. Kennedy dispatched 400 federal marshals to Montgomery to enforce order, while the Congress of Racial Equality promised to continue the Freedom Ride, pressing on to Jackson, Mississippi, and then to New Orleans. “Many students are standing by in other cities to serve as volunteers if needed,” James Farmer told the New York Times. And some 450 Americans did step forward, boarding the buses and then filling the jails, notably in Jackson, when Farmer and others refused to pay fines imposed for “breaching the peace.” On May 29, Attorney General Kennedy directed the Interstate Commerce Commission to adopt stiff regulations to enforce the integration of interstate transportation. The agency did so. With this sustained federal effort, Jim Crow faltered in bus terminals, on buses, and on trains, at least those that crossed state lines. The Freedom Riders’ victory set the tone for the great civil rights campaigns that followed. Not for the first time during these climactic years, a free press forced Americans to take a cold, hard look at the reality of racial oppression. The Birmingham mob beat Tommy Langston, a photographer for the local Post-Herald newspaper, and smashed his camera. But they forgot to remove the film, and the newspaper’s front page subsequently displayed his picture of the savage beating of a black bystander. Each arrest and each beating attracted more media and more coverage. And while many of those accounts still referred to “Negro militants,” the contrast between rabid white mobs and the calm, dignified, biracial Freedom Riders forced Americans to decide, or at this point at least begin deciding: Who best represented American values? White religious leaders were prominent among those who lauded the bravery of the Freedom Riders and the justice of their cause. The Reverend Billy Graham called for prosecution of their attackers and declared it "deplorable when certain people in any society have been treated as second-class citizens." Rabbi Bernard J. Bamberger denounced white segregationist violence as "utterly indefensible in terms of morality and law” and criticized whites who urged civil rights activists to "go slow." And always there were the righteous: Raymond Arsenault writes that while the Greyhound bus burned outside Anniston, "one little girl, 12-year-old Janie Miller, supplied the choking victims with water, filling and refilling a five-gallon [19-liter] bucket while braving the insults and taunts of Klansmen." Credit text From Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Source:https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides Previous Next

< Back Ada Jenkins ​ Words on image: Top image: Ada Jenkins. Bottom image: The Davidson Colored School / Ada Jenkins Center. . Davidson Colored School/Ada Jenkins School In Davidson, Mecklenburg county, NC. In Davidson, NC, an effort to educate the town’s White children began in 1892, and in 1893 a substantial two-story brick school building was completed. The graded school was supported by local taxes, and by 1911 had an enrollment of nearly two hundred students, all White. No such effort was made to educate the rest of the town’s children. Black children were educated in small frame buildings located in the African American Westside neighborhood. By the 1930s, two frame school buildings were needed in the neighborhood to hold all the children. One building was described as a “one teacher school,” and the other as a “three-teacher school.” These frame buildings were not adequate. In 1937 a new brick six-classroom school, Davidson Colored School, opened to serve the black community. Staff included three teachers from the earlier schools in Davidson. One of these was Mrs. Ada Jenkins. Designing and supervising the construction of Davidson Colored School (now the Ada Jenkins Center) and a gymnasium was assigned to Willard G. Rogers (1863-1947). In addition to the gymnasium, a classroom wing and a freestanding cafeteria were added around 1958. In 1966 the school closed when the Mecklenburg County schools became racially integrated. The present owner of the property is Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools/Board of Education which uses it as an Education Center The Davidson Colored School, later the Ada Jenkins School, is the largest and most prominent historic element of the built environment of Davidson’s traditionally African American Westside neighborhood. The building, which originally served as a segregated school, helps document segregation and the Jim Crow era in Davidson and in Mecklenburg County. It is a reflection of the Black community’s commitment to improving the education of its young people. It is also an artifact of an unusual time, a time when Mecklenburg County was facing huge economic challenges and yet found the resources to greatly improve the infrastructure for public education. The property known as the Davidson Colored School/Ada Jenkins School possesses special significance in terms of the Town of Davidson and Mecklenburg County. , - In the 1930’s, fire destroyed a small wooden schoolhouse in the Mock Circle area of Davidson. Despite the Great Depression and limited funding from the Mecklenburg County Board of Education, local schoolteacher Ada Jenkins rallied the community to raise enough funding to build the Davidson Colored School. It was renamed the Ada Jenkins School after Mrs. Jenkins’ death in 1955. The school opened for the 1937-1938 school year. After Mrs. Jenkins’ death, it was renamed the Ada Jenkins School and served as the educational center for black students in Davidson until integration in 1966. From 1967 until the early 1990s, the building served as a daycare, a food co-op, a dance studio, and an after-school program. Recognizing the changing needs of the community, volunteers renovated the building and established The Ada Jenkins Families and Careers Development Center in April of 1994. Mrs. Jenkins’ daughter and granddaughter attended the celebration. The Center continues to promote the importance of education and equal opportunity for all citizens. Today, we are a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit organization helping those in poverty break the cycle and gain economic independence. The Center has become a resource hub for Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville and a well-respected model for community centers in the region. . . The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmark Commission judgment was based on the following considerations: 1) The Davidson Colored School/Ada Jenkins School is a rare and well preserved example of a substantial African American school building that dates from the era of Jim Crow in Mecklenburg County. 2) In terms of Mecklenburg County, the Davidson Colored School/Ada Jenkins School is a rare early 20th century school building which is in good condition, and has retained a high degree of integrity. 3) The Davidson Colored School/Ada Jenkins School is the oldest public school building in Davidson. 4) The Davidson Colored School/Ada Jenkins School is an important landmark in Davidson, representing the strength and resourcefulness of the town’s African American community during the era of racial segregation. 5) Built during the Great Depression, the Davidson Colored School in an important artifact representing the work of the Public Works Administration in Mecklenburg County. Source: The Ada Jenkins Center web site Source: The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmark Commission Previous Next

< Back Black Women Activists/Suffrage/Civil Rights/Educators Rare 19th-century photographs of African American women who were active in suffrage, civil rights, temperance, education, reform, and journalism. Digitized By the Library of Congress. While Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman may be among the most recognized 19th-century black women activists, a recent photography digitization project at the Library of Congress (LOC) spotlights some lesser-known figures. Images of women like Josephine A. Silone Yates, who studied chemistry and was one of the first black teachers at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, and educator Fannie Barrier Williams, who advocated for black involvement in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, are among the rare photographs in the collection of William Henry Richards. The late 19th-century portraits come from a post–Civil War period when rights and opportunities for African Americans, especially women, remained severely limited. The newly digitized cabinet cards and tintypes feature women who were active in everything from suffrage to temperance, such as writer Hallie Quinn Brown, who helped found the Colored Women’s League of Washington, DC, which eventually became part of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (of which she served as president in the 1920s), and journalist Lillian Parker Thomas, who worked as an editor at the Freeman. “William Henry Richards (1856-1941) was active in several organizations that promoted civil rights and civil liberties for African Americans at the end of the nineteenth century,” Richards taught at Howard University Law School from 1890 until his retirement in 1928. In 2013, the Library acquired his collection from the descendants of William C. McNeill, his physician at the end of Richards’ life. Both men were on the faculty of Howard University. The library acquired Richards’s collection in 2013, Prints and Photographs Division staff digitized selected photographs from the collection showing women who were identified by name. These photographs show the women at earlier ages than most portraits previously available of them online.” Previous Next

< Back Rev. Calvin Scott Brown, D.D. ​ Photograph of Rev. Calvin Scott Brown, D.D., used in the book, A history of the Negro Baptists of North Carolina by Whitted, J. A -published in 1908. Calvin Scott Brown - 1859 - 1936 by E. Frank Stephenson, Jr. Calvin Scott Brown, educator, editor, minister, and advisor, was born in Salisbury of Black and Scotch-Irish ancestry. His father was Henry Brown, a farmer, and his mother was Flora Brown. Brought up in poverty, he was educated at Freedman's Aid Society School, Salisbury, and Shaw University, Raleigh, where he earned A.B., A.M., and D.D. degrees. He worked his way through Shaw University with the aid of a northern white church. In 1885, at the insistence of Dr. H. M. Tupper, president of Shaw University, he went to Hertford County to assume the pastorate of Pleasant Plains Baptist Church. In that same year he founded the all-Black Chowan Academy, which later became Waters Training School and then the Calvin S. Brown School in Winton. He remained principal of the school until his death in 1936. For approximately fifty years he served alternately as secretary and president of the Baptist State Convention (African American). For many years he served as moderator of the West Roanoke Association, and from its organization to his death he was president of the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention. For a number of years he was editor of the Chowan Pilot and the Baptist Quarterly , published in Raleigh. He was grand master of the Odd Fellows for a number of years, grand secretary of the Grand Masonic Lodge of North Carolina for about thirty years, and for several years grand master of that lodge. He was moderately active in Democratic affairs in Winton. Brown, who traveled extensively in this country and in Europe and Africa, was offered a number of high and coveted positions; he chose, instead, to remain with the rural people of Hertford County, where he devoted his life's work and influence to the advancement of African American educational and spiritual life. He was a talented, self-taught musician who played the organ and piano and blew the cornet in a local band he organized. He served a three-year term on the Hertford County Board of Education and was appointed to the Liberty Bonds campaign during World War I. To Chowan Academy, Brown gave his personal attention and supervision for fifty-two years as principal. His wife shared her family wealth and her personal interest in the building and operation of the school. In the school's early years, Brown journeyed north each year to secure operating funds from sympathetic White and Black friends. Both Brown and his wife taught at the school for a number of years without compensation, and when he was afforded a salary, he would often return the entire amount to the operation and maintenance of the school. Through support obtained from his northern friends, the Baptist Home Mission Society, and the Chowan Sunday School Convention, he was able to enlarge his academy with additional buildings in 1893, 1909, and 1926. The 1926 building, known as Brown Hall, was a brick structure with six classrooms, principal's office, library, stage, dressing rooms, and auditorium. In 1924 the school facility was taken over by the State of North Carolina, which ensured its survival. Brown's activities were not entirely confined to the principalship of the school: his example offered a model of character building to blacks throughout the northeastern section of North Carolina. Brown was married on 8 Dec. 1886 to Amaza Janet Drummond of Lexington, Va.; they had nine children. He died in Winton, and he and his wife were buried on the grounds of C. S. Brown School there. There is a portrait of Brown in Winton. References E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (1939). National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race (1919). Joseph Roy Parker, The Ahoskie Era of Hertford County (1939). G. F. Richings, Evidences of Progress among Colored People (1902). J. A. Whitted, A History of the Negro Baptists of North Carolina (1908). Image credits J. A. Whitted, A History of the Negro Baptists of North Carolina (1908). p. 32. Previous Next

< Back Rosanell Eaton ​ In the 1940s, Rosanell Eaton became one of the first African Americans in North Carolina to successfully register to vote since Reconstruction. In her 90s, she became a vocal opponent of the state's voter ID laws, which disproportionately affected black voters. Remembering Rosanell Eaton, An Outspoken Advocate for Voting Rights December 12, 2018 By Leslie Ovalle - Code Switch-NPR When the Supreme Court shot down a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act — which required that certain places with a history of discriminating against voters get federal approval before making new changes to their voting laws — lawmakers in North Carolina wasted little time in passing sweeping new rules around voting. The state issued requirements for specific kinds of photo identification, cut back on early voting and preregistration. Supporters of the new laws, who were overwhelmingly Republican, insisted that the measures were necessary to prevent voting fraud. But voting rights experts and advocates said that voter fraud was extremely rare and that the rules would make it much harder for younger voters, poorer voters, and black people — groups that were more likely to vote for Democrats and less likely to have official identification — to cast their ballots. To Rosanell Eaton, the restrictive new laws seemed familiar. Eaton was the granddaughter of enslaved people who grew up under Jim Crow in Louisburg, N.C., and had been fighting against rules meant to keep black people from voting for nearly as long as she was legally eligible to cast a ballot. In the early 1940s, after she turned the legal voting age, Eaton traveled by mule wagon to register to vote at the Franklin County courthouse. But she found herself before three white men, who confronted her and tried to stop her. They demanded that she recite the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States — a common "literacy test" used to discourage and block and turn away black people from voting voters. Eaton, unshaken, recited the entire thing. The men conceded and allowed her to register, making Eaton one of the first black voters in North Carolina since Reconstruction. Eaton, who died on Saturday at the age of 97, was a well-known advocate for voting rights among Carolinians — she was a member of the NAACP, a county poll worker and a special registrar commissioner, helping thousands of people register to vote — but it wasn't until she became the face of the lawsuit against the voting rules that North Carolina adopted in 2013 that she gained national prominence. Eaton, then 92, used her biography to place her state's new rules into a larger history of disenfranchisement. "We have been this way before, but now we have been turned back and it's a shame and a disgrace, and absolutely disgusting," she said to a crowd at voting rights rally. "She would often tell us the story that the reason she had to fight now, because she had to fight then," the Rev. William Barber told NPR's Audie Cornish. It was Barber who asked Eaton and her daughter, Armenta, to join the lawsuit against the state as its lead plaintiffs. Eaton traveled, gave speeches and marched — with her walker — to have North Carolina's laws changed. "I went up to her [during a rally] and said, Miss Rosanell, you don't have to do this," Barber said. "'I know what I'm doing,'" Barber said she told him. "You don't have to tell me what I don't have to do. I do have to do this." Under the state's new voter I.D. rules, Eaton was likely to have been among those who would have difficulties casting a ballot. She had the necessary documents — a birth certificate, drivers' license and voter registration card — but her name varied on each, making it likely that her contradictory documentation would have been honored. Eaton and her daughter would testify over and over in the case during the next three years. In 2016, a federal court found that North Carolina lawmakers had specifically asked about racial differences in voting behavior as they were crafting the new rules, and said that the measures amounted to an unconstitutional "target on African-Americans with almost surgical precision." The judges said the "legislature crafted the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans" and that the bill "retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess." The court struck down much of the law and sided with the plaintiffs. A later effort by North Carolina to revive the case was refused by the Supreme Court in 2017. Laws like the one Eaton fought against were a central issue in November's midterm elections. Georgia's "exact match" voter ID law left about 53,000 voter registration applications in limbo, the vast majority of those application belonged to black voters, a AP analysis found. In North Dakota, a voter ID law required a residential address on the document, making it more difficult for Native Americans, who do not have fixed street addresses on the reservations there, to cast their ballot. And in Texas, student IDs do not serve as identification, a policy that discourages younger voters. In total, 34 states have laws that require voters to show some sort of identification. Seven of those states have what the National Conference of State Legislatures refers to as "strict photo ID" laws, similar to those Eaton challenged. "She taught us that you can't just get fed up with what's going on in a democracy, that you just to work for it. It's hard. And when things are going wrong, it should fire you up. It should make you more willing to engage, " Barber said. In a 2015 op-ed in the New York Times, President Obama cited Eaton's story and praised her. "I am where I am today only because men and women like Rosanell Eaton refused to accept anything less than a full measure of equality," he wrote. In 2016, he invited her to visit him in the White House. But Eaton's daughter told the Charlotte Observer that her mother only agreed to go after she found out the visit wouldn't conflict with an upcoming primary election. Source:https://www.thelily.com/rosanell-eaton-a-lifelong-ardent.../ Source: https://www.npr.org/.../remembering-rosanell-eaton-an... Previous Next

< Back W. A. Pattillo High School Faculty ​ W. A. Pattillo High School Faculty - Tarboro, NC. 1944 Seated, l. To r.: Frank Matthewson, Ms. Lassiter, Suzanna Matthewson Thomas, Ms. Dunn, Ms. Lewis, Beatrice Garrett Burnette, Katherine Anthony Johnson. 2Nd row, l. To r.: Minnie Gray Woodley, Nannie Waddell, Bryant, Laura Hammonds, Mrs. David James, Nolan Little, Ruth Moore Garnes, Lois McNair, Walter A. Pattillo 3rd row, l. To r.: Mabel Weaver, Helen Parker, Willie F. Jones, Eula Bryan Wiggins, Rita Mayo Little, Mrs. Sally Jean Pattillo, Ruby Graves. Photo Gift of Rudolph Knight, 1988. - Edgecombe County Memorial Library, Tarboro, NC. Previous Next

< Back Band of the Jaw-Bone John-Canoe Sketches of Character in illustration of the Habits, Occupation and Costume of the Negro Population in the island of Jamaica. Jonkonnu: The Holiday When Black Revelers Would Mock Their Enslavers As Well As Celebrate Chistmas Left image: Cropped, “Band of the Jaw-Bone John-Canoe” by Isaac Mendes Belisario. Jamaica 1837. Hand-coloured lithograph, Title: Band of the Jaw-Bone John-Canoe Series: Series: Sketches of Character in illustration of the Habits, Occupation and Costume of the Negro Population in the island of Jamaica. Description: Full-length image of two Black men and two boys walking, three of them holding instruments. 1837 Hand-coloured lithograph. Producer name: Print made by: Isaac Mendez Belisario Published by: Adolphe Duperly Published in: Kingston (Jamaica) Americas: Caribbean: Greater Antilles: Jamaica: Surrey County: Kingston (Jamaica) Owned by the British Museum. Acquisition name: Donated in 2006 by: Jonathan C H King -- #IrememberOurHistory® Right image: This 1857 illustration from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicts a Christmas celebration among enslaved African Americans on a plantation. 1 print : wood engraving ; page 41 x 28 cm. Title: Winter holydays in the Southern States. Plantation frolic on Christmas eve Summary: Illustration shows Christmas festivities on a southern plantation where enslaved African Americans dance, feast, and play music as their white owners observe. Created / Published: [New York] : [Frank Leslie], 1857. Title from item: - Illus. in: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. V, no. 108 (1857 December 26), p. 64. Source: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper-Library of Congress --- One of the most iconic descriptions of a North Carolina Jonkonnu comes from Harriet Jacob's famous "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." #IrememberOurHistory® Jacobs remembered watching the Jonkonnu dancers and drummers in Edenton, NC. Author and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs discusses the tradition of Jonkonnu (also known as Johnkannaus or John Canoe) in eastern North Carolina in "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"? In Chapter XXII, she writes, "Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the Johnkannaus. Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction. They consist of companies of slaves from the plantations, generally of the lower class. Two athletic men, in calico wrappers, have a net thrown over them, covered with all manner of bright-colored stripes. Cows' tails are fastened to their backs, and their heads are decorated with horns. A box, covered with sheepskin, is called the gumbo box. A dozen beat on this, while others strike triangles and jawbones, to which bands of dancers keep time. For a month previous they are composing songs, which are sung on this occasion. These companies, of a hundred each, turn out early in the morning, and are allowed to go round till twelve o'clock..." #IrememberOurHistory® This tradition of costumes, music, and dance is referenced in Jamaica beginning in the late eighteenth century, with potentially earlier origins in West Africa. In the United States, evidence of Jonkonnu is mainly concentrated in North Carolina and southern Virginia, and is found in nineteenth century sources. #IrememberOurHistory® -- Jonkonnu pronounced like, John Canoes, were troupes of slaves and free Blacks, brightly dressed and often masked, who sang and danced on Christmas and New Year's Day in the Wilmington, Lower Cape Fear, and Albemarle Sound areas throughout much of the 1800s. #IrememberOurHistory® The custom closely paralleled the annual "John Canoe" celebrations that survive today in Jamaica and the Bahamas. In the United States, however, the practice of "Kunering" or "Koonering" was apparently unique to North Carolina, except for isolated observances in Suffolk, Va. (suppressed after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831), and in Key West, Fla. All these practices seem to share roots in the West African Gold Coast, although details of their origin and spread are unknown. James Norcom described an "exhibition of John Cannu" in 1824 at a plantation near Edenton. Other celebrations were reported at Somerset Place Plantation (1829), in Bertie County (1849), and at various times in Southport, New Bern, Hillsborough, Martin County, and as far west as Iredell County. #IrememberOurHistory® In Wilmington, where newspapers regularly reported the practice through the 1850s, as many as eight to ten groups of Kuners, some with 20 members each, went from house to house, singing and beating rhythms with rib bones, cow's horns, triangles, and mouth harps. Kuners, who kept their identities secret, wore "tatters," or brightly colored rags sewn to their clothes, and masks, often made of buckram. All Kuners were men, although many dancers wore women's clothing. At each house, Kuners stopped to collect pennies. On plantations, they received small treats, rum, or desserts. Historian Elizabeth A. Fenn has interpreted the custom as a "safety valve" for slave resentments and "a medium for social change and commentary." Some of the costumes and improvised verses seem to have poked fun at White hypocrisy and pretensions. Kunering survived the Civil War and Emancipation but seems to have died out in Wilmington by the 1880s. Scholars have attributed its decline to Black clergymen who denounced the practice as demeaning. #IrememberOurHistory® Strict enforcement by White officials of laws relating to the wearing of masks may also have played a role. However, white youths in Wilmington, Fayetteville, Kinston, and other places continued to copy the custom into the early 1900s, dressing up and parading in blackface at Christmastime. -End of this article- Source: NCPedia #IrememberOurHistory® --- Article by By Gillian Brockell / WaPo December 26, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EST Edward Warren was a young doctor in the early 1850s when he first witnessed it. Later in life, he described what he saw at Christmastime among the enslaved population at Somerset Place, one of the largest plantations in North Carolina. On Christmas Day, he wrote, one of the enslaved men dressed up in a costume made of rags, cowbells, “two great oxhorns” affixed to his head and a mask of raccoon skin over his face. Another wore his Sunday best. Others beat drums and played banjos while the two men “entered upon a dance of the most extraordinary character.” #IrememberOurHistory® “I was convinced from the first that it was of foreign origin,” he wrote, “based on some festive ceremony which the negroes had inherited from their African ancestors.” Not exactly. Though Jonkonnu, pronounced “John Canoe,” was a folk custom practiced by enslaved Africans and their descendants, it is likely to have originated in Jamaica in the late 1600s, according to historian Robert E. May, author of “Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory.” From there, it spread to much of the Caribbean and “really came into its own” in coastal North Carolina in the decades before the Civil War, May told The Washington Post. “It was a male parade — females sometimes came along but they were never the paraders — and the parades occurred on plantations [and] in towns and cities,” either on Christmas or the day after, May said. He added, “They tended to go from place to place, picking up a bigger crowd as they marched.” That included going to the homes of their White enslavers, White clergy and other townspeople, where they would “raise a ruckus” until they were given money or gifts to leave. (Close observers of Christmas history may recognize similarities to English peasants’ wassailing and mummer’s nights.) #IrememberOurHistory® There really was a war on Christmas. It was waged by Christians. The revelers played instruments — drums, violins, banjos, tambourines and the like — and dressed in costumes that White observers sometimes described as “grotesque.” Intimidation and mocking of White people was one element of the parade, May said. One of the costumed revelers would carry a whip and threaten children with it; another would dress in a suit and tri-cornered or top hat and act out unflattering depictions of their enslavers. “What they’re doing is they’re forcing Whites for a short while to immerse themselves in Black culture,” May said. “There was something very satisfying about that.” If someone didn’t give the requisite coins or gifts, the revelers sang a song whose words amounted to, “Oh this poor guy, he’s so broke he can’t even afford to give us spare change,” May said. #IrememberOurHistory® Of course, most of what we know of Jonkonnu — also called Junkanoo, John Kooner and John Kunering — comes from descriptions written by White observers, so their biases must be taken into account. Some noted the “gaiety” and “merriment” of the enslaved. Harriet Jacobs, who was enslaved in Edenton, N.C., gave a rare account of Jonkonnu from a Black perspective. In her 1861 memoir, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” she wrote, “Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the Johnkannaus. Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction.” She described the revelers’ costumes and instruments, then continued: “For a month previous they are composing songs, which are sung on this occasion. These companies, of a hundred each, turn out early in the morning, and are allowed to go round till twelve o’clock, begging for contributions. Not a door is left unvisited where there is the least chance of obtaining a penny or a glass of rum. They do not drink while they are out, but carry the rum home in jugs, to have a carousal.” #IrememberOurHistory® Jacobs also described the heart-wrenching occasions when she watched from a distance as her children enjoyed the parade. Jacobs hid in an attic for seven years to escape the sexual harassment of her enslaver; that meant hiding from her own children, too, to avoid detection. On Christmas, she could catch a glimpse of them enjoying the festivities from holes she had made in her “prison,” as she called the attic. (The family was eventually reunited in New York after she escaped slavery.) So why would enslavers, who held their captives in literal and figurative chains, who controlled all the weapons, the military and law enforcement, allow a day of revelry, mocking and intimidation? It wasn’t a spirit of charity, May said. As with wassailing in England, enslavers may have seen it as a “pressure relief valve.” “The idea is that you have to give people who all year long are humiliated, whipped, bossed around, told what to do, family-separated, sexually exploited — you have to give them some way to vent their frustrations,” he said. “Some way that’s basically harmless, but you need to let them vent.” #IrememberOurHistory® Even if White enslavers went along with it, May stressed that Jonkonnu originated in the Black community. In other areas of the antebellum South where Jonkonnu didn’t exist, enslaved people were still generally given off a few days between Christmas and the new year. They could use this time to rest or visit family; some found it was the best time of year to attempt an escape. For many, this was the only time of year they could feast or just plain party. Famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had been enslaved in Maryland before escaping at age 20, wrote with disgust about Christmas on plantations, describing how enslavers encouraged drunkenness, even taking bets on who among the enslaved would get the drunkest. This practice, he wrote, “appears to have no other object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary freedom, and to make them as glad to return to their work, as they were to leave it.” Douglass agreed with the “pressure release valve” theory, writing, “Were the slaveholders to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity.” #IrememberOurHistory® By the time the Civil War began, Jonkonnu was already falling out of favor in the Black community, May said. Post-emancipation, Black leaders encouraged African Americans to become “upstanding citizens” who “deserved the vote,” believing that would convince White Americans to let go of their racism. Jonkonnu, with its costumes, wild dancing and panhandling, didn’t fit into that rubric. The last known Jonkonnu celebration in the United States was in Wilmington, N.C., in the late 1880s. But in the Caribbean, where many of the islands had, and have, Black majorities, it has continued and evolved. In the Bahamas, Junkanoo is a Dec. 26 festival during which teams, now including women, compete for the best costume, dancing and music. Gone are the rags, whips and horns; in their place are elaborate headdresses and colorful tunics decorated with feathers, sequins and glitter. #IrememberOurHistory® It’s a “joyous Bahamian celebration,” according to Arlene Nash Ferguson of Nassau’s Junkanoo Museum. -End of this article- Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../jonkonnu-christmas.../ Previous Next

< Back Kirk–Holden war was a police operation taken against the White supremacist Ku Klux Klan organization by the government in the state of North Carolina in the United States in 1870. ​ Image: Sign in front of courthouse. Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina. Photograph taken October 1940 Photographer: Marion Post Wolcott, 1910-1990, who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty, the Jim Crow South, and deprivation. Source: LOC The Kirk–Holden war was a police operation taken against the White supremacist Ku Klux Klan organization by the government in the state of North Carolina in the United States in 1870. The Klan was using murder and intimidation to prevent recently freed slaves and members of the Republican Party from exercising their right to vote in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Following an increase in Klan activity in North Carolina—including the murder of a Black town commissioner in Alamance County and the murder of a Republican state senator in Caswell County—Republican Governor of North Carolina William W. Holden declared both areas to be in a state of insurrection. In accordance with the Shoffner Act, Holden ordered a militia be raised to restore order in the counties and arrest Klansmen suspected of violence. This resulted in the creation of the 1st and 2nd North Carolina Troops, which Holden placed under the overall command of Colonel George Washington Kirk. In July 1870, Kirk oversaw the deployment of the 2nd North Carolina Troops in Alamance and Caswell counties, while the 1st North Carolina Troops garrisoned the city of Raleigh. A total of 82 men in Alamance and 19 in Caswell were detained on suspicion of Klan-related activity, including a former member of the United States Congress and the sheriffs of both counties, and Klan activity in both counties promptly ceased. No one was killed during the campaign, though the militiamen at times showed poor discipline and used foul language. Kirk's second-in-command also exceeded his orders and sent men to arrest a newspaper editor in Orange County, which was not declared to be in insurrection. Holden initially refused to have the men brought to regular courts under writs of habeas corpus, planning to try them by military tribunal, but eventually gave way to pressure from Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Richmond Mumford Pearson and United States District Court Judge George Washington Brooks. As a result, 49 men were indicted in court for crimes, but all were ultimately acquitted and released by late August. The militiamen were also deployed to guard polling stations during North Carolina's legislative elections on August 4, but Holden's use of the militia as well as other complaints about Republican corruption and Klan intimidation led the Conservatives and Democrats to take a majority of seats in the North Carolina General Assembly. Holden ordered the militia to disband on September 21, and on November 10 he declared that there was no longer a state of insurrection in Alamance and Caswell counties. Conservative and Democratic-leaning newspapers heavily criticized his actions and his political opponents coined the name "Kirk–Holden war" to describe the affair. The General Assembly subsequently filed articles of impeachment against Holden in December and ultimately removed him from office in March 1871. Holden was the first governor in the United States to be removed in such fashion, and his campaign against the Klan and impeachment crippled the image of the Republican Party in North Carolina for many years. The General Assembly repealed the Shoffner Act and passed another law designed to grant amnesty to Klansmen. Political Situation In North Carolina In 1861, the state of North Carolina seceded from the United States and joined other Southern states in forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy subsequently fought with the non-seceding states, or Union, during the American Civil War. The conflict caused intense political divisions within North Carolina, as many of its residents, particularly in the mountains and coastal regions, were opposed to the war and maintained Unionist sympathies. Politician William W. Holden unsuccessfully sought election as Governor of North Carolina in 1864 on a "peace platform" which included withdrawing from the war. The Confederacy ultimately lost the war in 1865 and North Carolina reverted to the jurisdiction of the United States. The issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation during the conflict meant that the federal government recognized the freedom of over 330,000 enslaved Blacks in North Carolina; this came into effect in most of the state with the end of the war. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1865, slavery was formally abolished across the United States. In 1867, the United States Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, which placed most of the Southern states under military occupation; North Carolina was placed in the Second Military District. The acts also disfranchised many former Confederates, and required states to revise their constitutions to enfranchise freedmen and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which granted equal citizenship to Black people. That year, Holden organized a Republican Party branch within North Carolina with both Black and White members. North Carolina Republicans generally favored equal citizenship and civil rights for all persons regardless of race. The opposing Democratic Party, also known during this time as the Conservatives, encompassed a range of opinion but generally advocated for the withholding of certain rights from non-Whites and forcing Blacks to work menial jobs. Republicans dominated the convention which revised the state constitution in 1868, resulting in a more democratic document. That year state legislative and gubernatorial elections were held. The Democratic Party attempted to paint the Republican Party as the "Negro" organization, but the Republicans won a majority in the North Carolina General Assembly and Holden was elected Governor of North Carolina by over 18,000 votes. Numerous Black men were also elected to office. Federal military presence diminished, though troops remained posted in the capital city of Raleigh. In 1869 North Carolina ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote to all citizens regardless of race or color. Rise Of Ku Klux Klan Activity The Ku Klux Klan was founded as a fraternal society in December 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee by several former Confederate officers. It quickly became a vehicle for terrorizing Black people and White Republicans across the South. In 1867, several Klan chapters met in Nashville and produced a constitution endorsing White supremacy and requiring potential members to support "the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights". Organization of the Klan was loose and fractured across regions, but all chapters were generally committed to limiting the rights of freedmen and opposing the Republican Party. Klan activity first cropped up in North Carolina during the elections of 1868. It committed some acts of violence to warn Black people — including destruction of Blacks' property—but had little impact on the conduct of the contests. Klan membership grew as White North Carolinians became frustrated with the Republican government and by 1869 Klansmen were murdering Black people to intimidate them and prospective Republican voters. Klan murders continued throughout the Piedmont region of the state through 1869 and 1870, especially in the counties of Moore, Chatham, Alamance, Orange, and Caswell. Violence was worst in counties that had significant Black populations. Local authorities were unable and often unwilling to prosecute Klan-related offenses. At Holden's request, in February 1869 the General Assembly authorized the creation of a detective force to investigate and undermine the Klan. Arrests were made but the violence continued. In November Holden asked the General Assembly to strengthen the provisions of the state militia law so that he could better confront the violence, telling the body, "Numerous complaints have been made to me of violence and mob law in certain counties, by parties who ride at night armed and disguised [...] injuring, insulting, and punishing inoffensive whites and colored persons." Holden thought that a revised law would ameliorate victims' fears and would protect black and white Republicans from Klan assaults. State Senator T. M. Shoffner of Alamance County introduced a bill to Holden's request on December 16, titled "An Act to Secure the Better Protection of Life and Property". Its provisions empowered the governor to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, declare a state of insurrection "whenever in his judgement the civil authorities in any county are unable to protect its citizens in the enjoyment of life and property", and request the assistance of federal authorities if state militia proved insufficient. Conservatives in the legislature delayed passage of the bill—dubbed the Shoffner Act—and particularly objected to the provision for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, suggesting it was unconstitutional. The provision was removed and the act was passed into law in January 1870. The Klan was affronted by the law and several Alamance Klansmen plotted to kill Shoffner at his home. The plan dissolved after Shoffner was tipped off and went elsewhere, but he continued to receive death threats and eventually fled to Indiana. Klansmen in Moore also proposed the assassination of Holden during this time. Klan Violence in Alamance County And The Murder Of Wyatt Outlaw Klan violence in the Piedmont worsened after the passage of the Shoffner Act. Early in the morning on February 26, about 100 masked Klansmen rode to Graham, Alamance County, and abducted Wyatt Outlaw, a town commissioner and leading Black figure in the county's Republican Party chapter. They hanged him in the courthouse square and pinned a note to his body, reading "Beware, you guilty, both white and black." That evening Klansmen visited the Alamance home of Black Republican Henry Holt. Holt was not there, but the Klansmen told his wife that he should leave the area or face the same fate as Outlaw. Holt promptly fled the county. Less than two weeks later another Black man, William Puryear, was found dead in a millpond tied down to a rock. Puryear, who was mentally disabled, had claimed to have followed two of Outlaw's killers to their homes and identified them. Graham Republican H. A. Badham wrote to Holden, saying, "Every republican in the County who has stood up for his own rights and that of freedmen, is in danger. The civil authorities are powerless to bring these offenders against law and humanity, to Justice." On March 7, Holden issued a proclamation of a state of insurrection in Alamance County. Hoping to use this as a warning against future offenses, Holden dispatched 40 federal troops stationed in Raleigh to Alamance. The lieutenant in charge of the soldiers reported that the situation was deteriorating and convinced the mayor and a local magistrate to issue warrants for the arrest of 12 men suspected of involvement in various murders, but the charges were dropped when other citizens offered alibis and death threats were made against the officials. Holden subsequently wrote to United States President Ulysses S. Grant to ask for assistance. Mindful that the Shoffner Act did not empower him as governor to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, he wrote: If Congress would authorize the suspension by the President of the writ of habeas corpus in certain localities, and if criminals could be arrested and tried before military tribunals, and shot, we would soon have peace and order throughout all this country. The remedy would be a sharp and bloody one, but it is as indispensable as was the suppression of the rebellion [during the Civil War. Grant responded by dispatching more federal troops to North Carolina, but took no additional action. Holden made further appeals for federal support, asking United States Senator for North Carolina Joseph Carter Abbott for help and sending North Carolina Adjutant-General A. W. Fisher to Richmond, Virginia to speak with Major General Edward Canby, commander of the Second Military District, to ask for reinforcements from the United States Army. Canby was not convinced that Alamance County was truly experiencing an insurrection and told Fisher that only the president could send more forces. United States Secretary of War William W. Belknap eventually dispatched two infantry companies to the county. North Carolina Klansmen remained attentive to the situation in Alamance and realized that Holden was isolated, but tempered their activities in the county over the next few months. For his part, Holden dispatched more detectives across the state to investigate the Klan and encouraged local authorities to take action. Klan Violence In Caswell County And The Murder Of John W. Stephens Meanwhile, Klan violence in Caswell County escalated. Klansmen flogged (beat) at least 21 Black and White Republicans between April 2 and May 15, and murdered Robin Jacobs, a Black man from the vicinity of Leasburg, on May 13. The Republican State Senator of Caswell County, John W. Stephens, became increasingly fearful of Klan attack. On May 21 he went to the Caswell County Courthouse in Yanceyville to watch the county Democratic Party host its nominating convention. After watching the proceedings he accompanied Frank A. Wiley to the ground level of the courthouse. Stephens wished to convince Wiley, a Democrat and former sheriff, to seek re-election to the office with his support and thus achieve a political reconciliation in the county. Wiley had secretly agreed to work with the Klan and lured Stephens into a trap; between 10 to 15 Klansmen awaited him on the ground floor and detained him. John Lea, the founder of the local Klan chapter, entered the room where Stephens was being held with more men. One Klansmen, G. T. Mitchell, held a rope around Stephens' neck, while another, Tom Oliver, stabbed him to death. The Klansmen left and locked the room, planning to return to move the body that night. After Stephens failed to return home that evening, his brothers and friends came to the courthouse to look for him. One of them saw a body in the locked room through a window and, after forcing their way inside, identified it as Stephens. The coroner conducted an inquest which included the interviewing of numerous persons, including Wiley and Lea, who lied about their knowledge of the affair. Caswell County Sheriff Jesse Griffith, himself a Klansmen, made no serious attempts to investigate the killing. The coroner's report ultimately concluded that the state senator was murdered by "persons unknown", and the circumstances of the killing remained unclear until Lea's signed confession to participation in the events was published posthumously in 1935. Klansmen and the Conservative press accused Black people of committing the murder. To read the rest of this information, please click this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk%E2%80%93Holden_war Previous Next

< Back Roland Martin Guest speaker Roland Martin places the memorial wreaths back into place after the flowers were moved to make photos at the February One Monument at the 60th Sit-In Anniversary Breakfast Celebration on the N.C. A&T campus in Greensboro, N.C., on Friday, January 31, 2020. Photo Credit-Woody Marshall/News & Record Previous Next

< Back Paula Dance Monday Dec 03, 2018 GREENVILLE, NC (WITN) - History was made today with the swearing in of a new sheriff in Pitt County. Paula Dance becomes the first African American woman sheriff in the state of NC and only the fifth in the entire country. She was sworn in this morning before hundreds of people at the Greenville Community Christian Church. Dance was a major with the sheriff's office prior to her election and has 28 years of law enforcement experience. Former Sheriff Neil Elks decided not to seek a third term, and Dance defeated Gary Weaver, a former state trooper, last month. Previous Next

< Back Dignified Defiance: The Ellen Harris Story Dignified Defiance: The Ellen Harris Story By Stella Adams In Durham, NC on February 12, 1938, Harris refused to move to the back of the bus, this is the story of how she won her case before the North Carolina Supreme Court and sued the bus company for damages. February 12, 1938 was a typical winter day in Durham, NC., when Ellen Harris entered the bus, paid her fare, and took a seat in the rear of the bus just in front of the last row which seated 5 people. Ms. Harris was riding home on a bus owned and operated by Durham Public Service Company. This was a bus that would hold 25 passengers, 5 rows on either side of the aisle and 5 passengers in the rear of the bus. As the bus was traveling along its route, Mr. and Mrs. R. B. Jones entered the bus and Mrs. Jones took the only vacant seat left except for the seat beside the defendant and the long seat at the back of the bus. According to the testimony of Mr. Jones, "She was on the bus when I got on. She was seated on the last seat except the long seat in the back. When I got on the bus there was room for one passenger besides my wife excepting the long seat at the back. When we entered the bus my wife took a seat about middle way up, which left only the long seat close to the rear and then the half seat beside the defendant. There was room for me to sit down there. There was no available seat across the aisle from where the defendant was sitting." He then demanded that Ms. Harris move to the long seat at the back of the bus. Ms. Harris refused to leave her seat. The bus driver came back and again demanded that she sit on the rear seat. She refused but offered to get off the bus if her fare was refunded. (State v. Harris,1938) Instead of refunding her fare, the bus driver had Ms. Harris arrested for violating segregation laws. The warrant says that "Ellen Harris, on or about 12 February, 1938, with force and arms, at and in the county aforesaid, and within Durham County, did unlawfully, maliciously and unlawfully occupy a certain seat in the front part of a bus operated by the Durham Public Service Company, and did then and there fail and refuse to move from said seat when requested to do so by the operator of said bus, against the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the State.” (State v. Harris, 1938). Ms. Harris was represented by two Black attorneys Caswell Jerry “ C. J. Gates and Edward Richard Avant.(Jones, 2014) Ms. Harris was tried and convicted in Recorder’s Court and fined $10.00. She appealed her case to the Superior Court. The local prosecutor amended the charge once it was appealed to say “that Ellen Harris, on or about 12February, 1938, with force and arms, at and in the county aforesaid, and within Durham County, that the said Ellen Harris did then and there unlawfully and willfully enter and occupy a seat in a bus operated for hire by the Durham Public Service Company, which seat was not the first seat nearest the rear of said bus that was vacant at the time and unoccupied, she, the said Ellen Harris, being a colored person, did unlawfully, maliciously and unlawfully occupy a certain seat in the front part of a bus operated by the Durham Public Service Company, and did then and there fail and refuse to move from said seat when requested to do so by the operator of said bus, against the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the State (State v. Harris, 1938). She received a trial by jury presided over by Superior Court Judge C. L. Williams and was again convicted, Gates and Avant immediately appealed her case to the North Carolina Supreme Court where it was heard Judge J. Carson. The case turned on the term "willfully” Judge Carson wrote that “Criminal statutes are to be construed strictly. Under the facts and circumstances of this case, we do not think the defendant intended to willfully violate the provisions of this act” and reversed her conviction (State v. Harris, 1938).Ellen Harris did not stop there, one month after being found innocent of the criminal charges, Ms. Harris and her attorneys filed a $15,000 civil lawsuit against Durham Public Services Company. $15,000 in 1938equals $271,327.08 in 2021. 1 The record shows that she settled her case with Durham Public Services for an undisclosed amount and locally it was considered quite a victory (Jones, 2014).Ellen Harris’ story deserves to be celebrated for her victories against transit discrimination in the south eighteen years before the Montgomery bus boycotts changed the nation. Works Cited Jones, A. N. (2014). The "Old Black Corporate Bar: Durham's Wall Street 1898-1971. 92 N.C. L. Rev. 1831Scholarly Repository @ Campbell University School of Law . State v. Harris, 213 N.C. 758, 197 S.E. 594 (1938) (North Carolina Supreme Court March 1938). Source: https://www.academia.edu/.../Dignified_Defiance_The_Ellen... Previous Next

< Back Angie Brooks, her nephew, and Allard Lowenstein On April 30, 1963, Angie Brooks, with her nephew, who was a student at St. Augustine’s at that time1, and Allard Lowenstein attempted to have lunch together at two restaurants in downtown Raleigh but were denied service because Brooks was African. Brooks, Liberia’s United Nations ambassador and a Shaw University graduate, was in Raleigh to deliver a speech at NC State University. After the speech, Allard Lowenstein, then a professor at the university, invited the ambassador to lunch. The pair, with a few students in tow, visited the S & W Cafeteria and Sir Walter Coffee Shop in downtown Raleigh. Despite her diplomatic credentials, Brooks was refused service at both establishments. The manager of Sir Walter Coffee Shop, Arthur Buddenhagen, approached the group and asked Brooks, “Are you looking for a job?” To which she replied, “No, I’m looking for a place to eat.” “I’m sorry, I can’t serve you,” Buddenhagen said. “It is a rule and a reasonable rule.” As they exited the restaurant Brooks handed Buddenhagen her business card and told him, “If you are ever in my country, you can be my guest.” The press was on hand to report the story. The incident brought national attention to North Carolina, and Governor Terry Sanford issued an apology to Brooks on behalf of North Carolina. Since Lowenstein chose restaurants that were frequented by state officials, many believed he was an agitator who wanted to stir up controversy. Although he was aware that the establishments were segregated, he denied staging the event. They ended up eating sandwiches at the downtown bus terminal, the only integrated restaurant in the capital city.2 _______________ Image and narrative source: NO.5-1-1963 From the N&O negative collection, State Archives of North Carolina. Photo copyrighted by the News and Observer. . . Source of some information, 1, 2: https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/01/a-century-of-readership/ Previous Next