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< Back Lincoln Academy Lincoln Academy, named after President Abraham Lincoln, was opened as a boarding school for African-American girls in the fall of 1888 by Emily Catherine Prudden. On the 23rd of January, 1888, Miss Prudden, an educator and missionary, obtained land for the academy when she paid 141 dollars for 14 and 1/10 acres near Crowder’s Mountain in Gaston County, North Carolina. Lincoln Academy, named after President Abraham Lincoln, was opened as a boarding school for African-American girls in the fall of 1888 by Emily Catherine Prudden. On the 23rd of January, 1888, Miss Prudden, an educator and missionary, obtained land for the academy when she paid 141 dollars for 14 and 1/10 acres near Crowder’s Mountain in Gaston County, North Carolina. In 1890, after two school years, the Lincoln Academy property in the King's Mountain area was deeded to the American Missionary Association by Miss Prudden. The AMA took over the operation of the school and Miss Lillian S. Cathcart served as Principal until 1910. Reverend Walter E. Ricks became the first African-American Principal of Lincoln Academy in 1922. When the Lincoln Academy high school department closed in 1955, faculty and students transferred entirely to the newly constructed Lincoln High School in Bessemer City, N.C. Source: https://gastonlibrary.libguides.com/lincoln-academy ----------- This is Prudden Hall on the grounds of Lincoln Academy in Kings Mountain, Clevland county N.C. Lincoln Academy was a school for Black girls and young women in the area as well as other Black girls from other areas of NC and from other states. Source of photograph: . http://dc.lib.unc.edu/.../cdm/ref/collection/nc_post/id/3351 Previous Next

< Back Tenant farmer plowing corn in Person County, North Carolina, July 1939. He mainly raises tobacco. Photo by Dorothea Lange- Library of Congress Tenant farmer plowing corn in Person County, North Carolina, July 1939. He mainly raises tobacco. Photo by Dorothea Lange- Library of Congress Tenant farmer plowing corn in Person County, North Carolina, July 1939. He mainly raises tobacco. Photo by Dorothea Lange- Library of Congress Previous Next

< Back Jackie "Moms Mabley" Moms Mabley, was born on 3, 19 1897. She was an African American vaudeville performer and comedian, the first Black woman to establish herself as a single act in standup comedy in America. Photograph : Jackie "Moms Mabley" Comic Pioneer, circa 1970- credit by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Moms Mabley, was born on 3, 19 1897. She was an African American vaudeville performer and comedian, the first Black woman to establish herself as a single act in standup comedy in America. Jackie "Moms" Mabley was from Brevard, North Carolina. She rose to national recognition as a standup comedian in the early 1960s. A pioneer of social satire, she has strongly influenced such contemporary Black comedians as Richard Pryor and Whoopi Goldberg. Mabley was also known for her compassion and kindness; these qualities earned her the endearing sobriquet "Moms". Born Loretta Mary Aiken, Mabley grew up in a large family in the south. Her father ran several businesses while her mother presided over a large household that included boarders. When Loretta was 11 her father died when his fire truck overturned and exploded. Encouraged by her grandmother to make a life for herself, she departed for Cleveland, Ohio. After singing and dancing in local shows, she began performing throughout the country. Traveling the vaudeville circuit, she experienced overt racism and demeaning working conditions and deflected her pain through satirical wit that drew heavily from black folk traditions. Mabley’s career took off when, in 1921, the husband-wife vaudeville team, Butterbeans and Susie, invited her to perform with them in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In her comedy routines, Mabley adopted a stage persona based loosely on her own grandmother but with a distinctly cantankerous and sassy edge. She was known for her folksy humor and ribald jokes and affectionately referred to her audience as her "children." Onstage Mabley became famous for her gaudy housedresses, floppy hats, and oversized clodhoppers. During the 1960s, she recorded more than 20 albums of her comedy routines and appeared on television shows hosted by Harry Belafonte, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Bill Cosby. A year after starring in the feature film Amazing Grace (1974), Mabley died of natural causes at the age of 78. Reference: The Book of African-American Women 150 Crusaders, Creators, and Uplifters by Tonya Bolden Adams Media ISBN 1-58062-928-8 Black Women in America An Historical Encyclopedia Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark Hine Copyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York ISBN 0-926019-61-9 Previous Next

< Back Selma Burke Selma Burke - sculptor "I have known African art all my life. At a time when this sculpture was misunderstood and laughed at, my family had the attitude that these were beautiful objects". Selma Burke - sculptor Previous Next

< Back Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching By Paula Giddings (Author) March 2008 - Illustrated. 800 pp. Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers ----- O Pioneer! By Richard Lingeman/NYT Book Review - May 18, 2008 If slavery is America’s original sin, lynching is its capital crime. The historical memory dies hard: only last year, three nooses were hung from a schoolyard tree contested by white and black students in Jena, La. The wave of mob killings of blacks in the South � by hanging, burning, shooting and torture � started after the end of Reconstruction. These public murders were carried out with the real purpose of keeping blacks in their place, economically and socially. The practice was supported by leading citizens and became a popular public spectacle, a carnival of cruelty that drew excited crowds. According to “Rope and Faggot,” the 1928 study by the N.A.A.C.P. general secretary Walter White, between 1882 and 1927 there were 4,951 lynchings in the United States. About a third of them were aimed at whites, mainly in the West; 92 of the victims were women. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was one of the first African-Americans to raise an informed protest against this outrage. Paula Giddings’s devoted and scrupulous biography is not the first study of this pioneering woman, but it is a comprehensive work that attempts to portray her as part of the progressive movement that emerged among the black bourgeoisie in post-bellum America. Wells-Barnett dedicated her life to bringing lynchings to the attention of America and the world. Determined, outspoken and fearless, an incendiary pamphleteer, she was politically astute, anticipating the tactics of the civil rights movement. Giddings, a professor of African-American studies at Smith College and author of “Where and When I Enter,” a history of black women activists, brushes in the historical context of Wells-Barnett’s campaign ably, if in occasionally numbing detail. Excavating scattered letters, fragmented diaries and second-hand references to her writings for short-lived African-American weeklies, Giddings aims, she writes, to uncover the achievements of a bold woman whose militancy and “dominating style” sometimes cost her allies in her own day and proper credit in the eyes of history. Ida Bell Wells was born to slave parents in 1862 in Holly Springs, Miss. Her father, a skilled carpenter, and mother, a housekeeper, were struck down by yellow fever when Ida was 16. Giddings writes of this turning point: “Throughout the remainder of her life, she struggled to turn the negative emotions of abandonment into a righteous determination to reform herself and the society that had forsaken her race.” A precociously mature, bright and pretty teenager, standing barely five feet, Wells took charge of the upbringing of her younger siblings with help from relatives. She got some higher education, became a voracious reader with a love of Shakespeare and showed a talent for writing. She turned to teaching school to support her family, eventually moving in 1880 to Memphis. There she siphoned off some of her energy into journalism, turning out a column for a local African-American paper that regularly challenged the racist libels of the white press. Yet she remained very much the Victorian young lady who admired “noble true womanhood and perfect ladyship” and vowed to curb her “unfeminine” anger. Her craving for “perfect ladyship” toughened into a demand for respect. Black women at the time were often demeaned as dusky temptresses, which presumably explained their illicit sexual attraction to so many white men. Wells lashed out against the “wholesale contemptuous defamation of black women” and the “refusal to believe there are among us mothers, wives and maidens who have attained a true, noble and refining womanhood.” Her determination to be treated as a lady provoked her first clash with white supremacy, in 1883, when she violently resisted being ejected from the whites-only “ladies car.” She sued the railroad, but the Tennessee Supreme Court, in a preview of Plessy v. Ferguson, ruled she was no lady, merely a “mulatto passenger,” separable and unequal, whose intention wasn’t to ride comfortably but to “harrass” and litigate. Wells’s anti-lynching crusade hinged on a word ladies did not utter: “rape.” Defenders of the Snopesian New South, fearing Northern capitalists would pull out investments, claimed that lynching was a necessary response to an epidemic of attacks on white women by ravening black men. Defying Victorian gentility, Wells debunked this propaganda with evidence that accusations of rape were a factor in less than one-third of lynchings. The campaign that became her life’s work really started in 1892 with the murders of her friend Tommie Moss and two others by a Memphis mob. Moss’s offense had nothing to do with rape; he was defending the cooperative grocery of which he was president against a group of whites he believed were bent on destroying it. A solid citizen who also worked as a postman, Moss was captured with two others and jailed. A mob abducted them and put them to a slow, painful death by gunshots. The Memphis Appeal-Avalanche boasted that the lynching was “one of the most orderly of its kind ever conducted.” Wells, who had since moved to New York, was shocked by Moss’s death. It was “our first lesson in white supremacy,” she declared. Writing about the affair in Free Speech, the paper she began editing in 1889, she almost got herself lynched by daring to suggest that white men who “overreach” in charges of rape might end up being “very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.” Infuriated whites trashed her newspaper office and would have killed her had she not been out of town. Wells decided to stay in New York, and soon set down in an African-American paper a long article, “The Truth About Lynching,” expanding on her contention that some white women chose to consort with black men and that black women were exploited by white men. She called for boycotts and strikes by blacks to protest lynchings. “The Winchester rifle,” she wrote, “should have a place of honor in every black home,” since government refused to protect them. She herself bought a gun, but investigative journalism was her primary weapon. From a variety of platforms, she broadcast authoritative facts, statistics and case histories. One of her pamphlets was devoted to an 1899 auto-da-fé in Palmetto, Ga., where a laborer named Sam Hose was accused of killing his employer, raping his wife and throwing their baby onto the floor. (A private detective hired by Wells showed that the wife had never in fact accused Hose of rape.) Hose was taken to the town square, tied to a tree and stripped naked. His ears, fingers and penis were sliced off, and then he was burned alive. Afterward, bits of charred bone, slices of liver and even parts of the tree were sold as souvenirs. The tide of lynchings continued to terrorize Southern blacks well into the 20th century. Local authorities covered up for the mobs, while the federal government looked the other way. In the early 1920s the federal anti-lynching legislation Wells-Barnett had championed died in the Senate. Meanwhile, Ida had in 1895 married a Chicago lawyer named Ferdinand Barnett, a feminist who contributed his legal skills to the cause, suing to enforce Illinois’s anti-lynching laws. She settled in Chicago and bore four children, even as she continued lecture tours and meetings and ran The Conservator, a black paper her husband owned. Inspired by Jane Addams, she created programs for young black men and women patterned after those of Hull House. Susan B. Anthony endorsed her cause, and Wells joined the suffragists. But Anthony and others in the movement feared alienating their Dixie membership, so Wells concentrated on organizing black women to get out the vote for race candidates in local elections. Not long before her death in 1931, she ran unsuccessfully for state senator. Ida Wells-Barnett was among the first to grasp that the battle against lynching was the moral cutting edge of African-Americans’ struggle for equality. In fighting words and brave personal witness, she exposed lynching as a crime against a people. Previous Next

< Back A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History Re-examines civil rights history and the way it's been manipulated. Jeanne Theoharis is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College. Her book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, won a 2014 NAACP Image Award and the 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. Previous Next

< Back Alfred L. Cralle ​ Alfred L. Cralle (September 4, 1866 – May 3, 1920) was an African-American businessman and inventor of the "Ice Cream Mold and Disher". Cralle was born in Kenbridge, Virginia in 1866 just after the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865). He attended local schools and worked with his father in the carpentry trade as a young man, becoming interested in mechanics. He was sent to Washington, D.C.where he attended Wayland Seminary, one of a number of schools founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to help educate newly freed African-Americans after the Civil War. After attending the school for a few years, Cralle moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a porter at a drugstore and at a hotel. While working at the hotel, he developed the idea of the ice cream scoop. It came to him when he noticed ice cream servers having difficulty trying to get the popular confection desired by the customer into the cone they were usually holding. The ice cream tended to stick to spoons and ladles, usually requiring the server to use two hands and at least two separate implements to serve customers. Cralle responded to that problem by creating a mechanical device now known as the ice cream scoop. On 10 June 1896, Alfred applied for a patent on his invention. He was awarded patent 576,395 on 2 February 1897. The patented "Ice Cream Mold and Disher," was an ice cream scoop with a built-in scraper to allow for one-handed operation. Alfred's functional design is reflected in modern ice cream scoops. Cralle’s invention, originally called an Ice Cream Mold and Disher, was designed to be able to keep ice cream and other foods from sticking. It was easy to operate with one hand. Since the Mold and Disher was strong and durable, effective, and inexpensive, it could be constructed in almost any desired shape, such as cone or a mound, with no delicate parts that could break or malfunction. Cralle was also a successful Pittsburgh business promoter as well. When local black investors created the Afro-American Financial, Accumulating, Merchandise, and Business Association in Pittsburgh, he was selected as assistant manager and then was promoted to general manager. He did not become famous for his inventing of his ice cream scoop. It spread widely so quickly that people soon forgot or never knew Cralle as the inventor. Thus he never profited from his invention. Married and with three children, Cralle experienced a number of personal tragedies. His wife and one of his daughters died in 1918 of a communicable disease. In 1920 he lost his only son to another disease. With their deaths, Cralle’s only surviving immediate family member was daughter Anna Cralle, born in 1910. Later in 1920, Cralle himself was killed in an automobile accident in Pittsburgh. Sources: "Afro-American Notes". The Pittsburgh Press. February 14, 1897. Retrieved May 28, 2018. "The Gifts of African American Innovation". Desmond Tutu Foundation USA. February 12, 2014. Retrieved May 28, 2018. "The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed". www.blackpast.org . Retrieved 2018-09-05. "United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) : nombre de brevets délivrés à certains quelques opérateurs de télécommunications". United States Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved 2018-09-05. "History of Ices & Ice Cream". What's Cooking America. Retrieved May 28, 2018. "A. L. Cralle Ice Cream Mold and Disher Patent Number 576395". U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Retrieved May 28, 2018. Stradley, Linda (2015-05-14). "Ice Cream History, Whats Cooking America". What's Cooking America. Retrieved 2018-09-05. Previous Next

< Back Fred and Hyla Cundiff ​ Undated photograph of the Cundiff family. The family lived in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Fred and Hyla Cundiff were born and grew up together in Wilkes County, N.C. In their professional careers each made significant contributions to the education of African American students, both in Wilkesboro and Greensboro. Fred Cundiff came to Greensboro to teach in 1954. He became the first African American Assistant School Superintendent in 1969, playing a crucial role in the relatively peaceful integration of Greensboro’s school system in the early 1970s. Hyla Cundiff was an elementary school teacher for over 30 years, primarily at the Washington Street, Bluford, and Vandalia Elementary schools. Her thirteen years of volunteer work with the American Cancer Society brought her the distinct honor of the prestigious “2 Those Who Care” award in 1989 . Source: Gateway - Triad Digital History Collections - On loan from contributor. UNCG does not hold a physical copy of this item. Source link: http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/.../coll.../Community/id/1395/rec/37 Previous Next

< Back The "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." 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 Hospital Workers Strike Marching in Support of Striking Hospital Workers, 1968.-Orangeburg, SC Cecil J. Williams Photographer Previous Next

< Back LaTonya Andrews is the owner of Soul City Farm. ​ Nonprofit, Local Churches Partner to Support Farmers of Color APR 19, 2021/Cary Magazine Quote from Demetrius Hunter: "As a 4th generation farmer from Warren County NC its hard work and dedication to provide over 50 shares of produce for our first CSA! We will continue to partner with several agencies in our first #CSA #farm #faith #program to provide quality fresh produce. Thanks to RAFI-USA (Rural Advancement International-USA), for coordinating the faith and farm efforts to participate in such a monumental partnership. We are proud to work alongside Black Farmers Hub @RockyRidgeFarm and @SingingstreamFarm. Photo description: LaTonya Andrews, is a Black woman standing outside, holding a basket filled with vegetables, looking at the camera and smiling. She is the owner of Soul City Farm. She says "As a Black farmer, it’s quite important to have these types of CSAs that support the work that we do to be able to keep our farm going." Article By Jack Frederick / Cary Magazine - Photography By Latonya Andrews , SOUL CITY FARM To combat inequality in the food system, a new pilot program created by the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA this spring is partnering Wake County churches with N.C. farmers of color. Eight churches — including Cary’s Christ the King Lutheran Church and Good Shepherd United Church of Christ — are participating in the Farm and Faith Partnerships Project, an eight-week initiative that’s part of RAFI-USA’s Come to the Table Program. Beginning with planting in February, the project aims to create new local markets to sell produce grown by Black-owned farms and support a demographic that has historically been marginalized in agriculture. “The goal is that these relationships would result in farmers of color getting additional resources and sources of income, and increased access to new local markets,” RAFI-USA program coordinator Jarred White said. “Rural faith community members, on the other hand, would gain increased food security and access to fresh and healthy foods.” RAFI-USA anticipates the effort will produce $20,000 in sales, which will be split between three farms — Rocky Ridge Farm in Louisburg, Soul City Farm in Warren County, and Singing Stream Farm in Granville County. As a fourth-generation farmer of color with 60 acres of land, LaTonya Andrews, the owner of Soul City Farm, says the community-supported agriculture (CSA) partnership will “help tremendously.” “From my experience, it’s difficult to find that financial backing,” Andrews said. “A lot of times, historically, we’ve had some struggles when it comes to systemic racism and being able to get funds and good loans that aren’t going to cause us to be further in debt or lose our property as small farmers. As a Black farmer, it’s quite important to have these types of CSAs that support the work that we do to be able to keep our farm going. Every little bit counts.” This spring, Andrews has dedicated four acres of land to the project, planting 11 vegetables, including broccoli, beets, spinach, collard greens and turnips. The program is expected to begin distributing produce from the farms to churches in late April and continuing through May. As part of participating in the project, each church can decide how it would like to partner with the farmers, such as hosting a farmer’s market on the grounds or creating a food box purchasing group. Coordinated by members Susie Oliver and Sofia Sands, Good Shepherd United Christian Church became involved in the project because it already has a community garden and the goals of the project fit within the larger mission of the church. “We have been doing a lot of anti-racism work over the years, so to me this was a real tangible way to do something based on what we’re taught when we’re trying to embody the words and actions of the teachings of Christ,” Oliver said. Twenty-five members at Good Shepherd have signed up to purchase half-shares of produce, or a weekly delivery that will feed two people about six meals. Sands said any leftover vegetables the church has will be donated to Dorcas Ministries in Cary. RAFI-USA is already planning to expand the pilot project based upon feedback received from the farmers and other participants. More than 120 people are part of the project’s first run. “There’s definitely momentum and excitement about continuing into the summer season and into the fall, and becoming a long-term partnership,” White said. “In terms of other instances for the farm-and-faith partnership projects, we definitely want to continue to build on the momentum that has developed through this and continue to partner with farmers of color throughout the state. Source:https://www.carymagazine.com/.../church-farm.../... Previous Next

< Back Grady Jackson Mr. Grady Jackson, in his military uniform. He was a member of Boone’s (NC) historically Black community, Junaluska. Mr. Grady Jackson, in his military uniform. He was a member of Boone’s (NC) historically Black community, Junaluska. Source: Junaluska Heritage Collection, Digital Watauga . Previous Next

< Back Dr. Pauli Murray Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray born on November 20, 1910 was a Civil Rights activist who became a lawyer, a women's rights activist, Episcopal priest, and author. Drawn to the ministry, in 1977 Murray was the first Black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest, in the first year that any women were ordained by that church. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, orphaned when she was young, and raised by her maternal grandparents in Durham, North Carolina, Anna moved to New York City to attend Hunter College. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1933. In 1940, Murray sat in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus with a friend, and they were arrested for violating state segregation laws. This incident, and her subsequent involvement with the socialist Workers' Defense League, led her to pursue her career goal of working as a civil rights lawyer. She enrolled in the law school at Howard University, where she also became aware of sexism. She called it "Jane Crow", alluding to the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation. Murray graduated first in her class, but she was denied the chance to do post-graduate work at Harvard University because of her gender. She earned a master's degree in law at University of California, Berkeley, and in 1965 she became the first Black to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women's rights. The NAACP’s Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall called Murray's 1950 book, States' Laws on Race and Color, the "bible" of the civil rights movement. Murray served on the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, appointed by John F. Kennedy (1961–1963), and 1966 she was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg named Murray as a co-author of a brief on the 1971 case Reed v. Reed, in recognition of her pioneering work on gender discrimination. This case articulated the "failure of the courts to recognize sex discrimination for what it is and its common features with other types of arbitrary discrimination.” Murray held faculty or administrative positions at the Ghana School of Law, Benedict College, and Brandeis University. In 1973, Murray left academia for the Episcopal Church. She became an ordained priest in 1977, among the first generation of women priests. Murray struggled in her adult life with issues related to her sexual and gender identity, describing herself as having an "inverted sex instinct". She had a brief, annulled marriage to a man and several deep relationships with women. In her younger years, she occasionally had passed as a teenage boy. A 2017 biographer retroactively classified her as transgender. In addition to her legal and advocacy work, Murray published two well-reviewed autobiographies and a volume of poetry. Her volume of poetry, Dark Testament, was republished in 2018. On July 1, 1985, Pauli Murray died of pancreatic cancer in the house she owned with lifelong friend, Maida Springer Kemp, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. --------- It was Pauli Murray’s fate to be both ahead of her time and behind the scenes. Her home in Durham, NC has been added as a National Historic Site/Landmark .= 2017 – Designated NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK by the Department of the Interior/National Park Service 2015 – Named a “NATIONAL TREASURE” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 2015 – New Partnership with Iron Mountain to preserve the house and make Pauli’s story accessible to a wide audience -------- "Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray was an American civil rights advocate, feminist, lawyer and ordained priest. She is best known for furthering the civil rights and feminist causes. She is the co-founder of NOW, the National Organization for Women and was the first woman to be awarded a J.D.S degree from Yale" ."A talented writer and editor of non-fiction and poetry, Pauli Murray had several books published. Showing great versatility in her early works, she tackled complex issues as the editor of 1951's State's Laws on Race and Color, and shared her own story in 1956's Proud Shoes. Later in her career, she explored such diverse topics as Constitution and Government of Ghana (1961) and Human Rights U.S.A. (1967). She also had poetry published, including 1970's Dark Testament and Other Poems." Source Read More Here: https://www.biography.com/people/pauli-murray-214111 ------------------------------- Several other Links with Information about the Life of Dr. Pauli Murray are below. https://paulimurrayproject.org/pauli-murray/biography/ ---------- New Yoker Article= https://www.newyorker.com/.../the-many-lives-of-pauli... Previous Next

< Back Henry Hall Falkener ​ Henry Hall Falkener Birth: 30 Nov 1859, Warrenton, Warren County, North Carolina, USA Death: 7 Feb 1931 (aged 71) Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina, USA. Margaret C. V. “Madge” Mitchell Faulkner Birth: 1874, Oberlin, Lorain County, Ohio, USA; Death: 7 Feb 1938 (aged 63–64) Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina, USA. Father: George W. Mitchell (birthplace: Alexandria, VA) 1845-1877 Mother: Almira Jones (birthplace: Oberlin, OH) 1851-1923 . Henry Hall Falkener, Republican, served as a Senator of North Carolina, 19th district, Littleton, Warren County in the session of 1889. Falkener was also a principal at Percy Street School, the first graded school for African Americans in N.C., built in 1880, as well as one of four charter teachers at what is now NC A&T when it was founded in 1891. Margaret Mitchell Falkener founded the music department at A&T, and was the first woman supervisor of Guilford County Schools for Negroes in the early 1900s. She also was a Red Cross organizer in the area. Whoever is familiar with conditions in North Carolina knows that the educational life of the State has been practically reorganized in the last two or three decades. This favorable change in educational affairs has been due to some faithful men of both races who have committed themselves to a progressive policy in matters of education, placed their lives upon the altar and regardless of the demands which that policy has made upon them, have devoted themselves to the work of training the youth of the State. Among the colored teachers who found a place among this loyal number of leaders is Prof. Henry Hall Falkner now (1919) principal of the Logan Colored Graded and Industrial School at Concord. Professor Falkener is a native of Warren Co. His parents were Buckner and Elizabeth (Boyd) Falkener. Prof. Falkner was married on October 7, 1891, to Miss Margaret C. Mitchell, a daughter of George W. and Almira (Jones) Mitchell. They have five children, Ralph C. S., George H., Herschel H., Waldo C. and John Q. Falkner. When of school age, young Falkener went to the local public schools of Warren Co. and to the Peabody School. “For his college work he attended Shaw University, graduating from that institution in 1886 with the A. M. degree. He began teaching as early as 1877 in the schools of Warren Co., and frankly confesses that he learned more by teaching than in any other way. He was a close observer and was glad to profit by the experience and leadership of the devoted people about him. It was necessary for him to make his own way in college, where, by his attention to his work and steady progress, he attracted the notice of his professors so that he was appointed a student-teacher, which was of great assistance to him financially. Since youth Prof. Falkener has been in the school room in some capacity or other. He served as principal of the State Normal School for two years and was for five years a professor of English at what is now known as the A. & T. College, Greensboro. For more than 20 years he has been principal of graded schools in various parts of the country and is recognized as one of the educational leaders of his race. Looking back over his life, he regards his association with the best people as the greatest factor in shaping his career. Apart from his professional work, his favorite reading consists of history, biography, current magazines and the Bible. In politics he is classed as an independent now but at one time represented his senatorial district in the State senate. He was also postmaster at Macon, N. C. He is a member of the Missionary Baptist Church and is identified with the Masons. Speaking of racial conditions and how the best interests of the race may be promoted, he says: "By becoming educated along industrial as well as professional lines, economizing and living simple, plain and frugal lives, each one mastering as nearly as possible some art and living within his means, abstaining wholly from the use of alcoholic liquor and tobacco, obeying the civil laws of the State and early uniting with some Protestant church. The laws of the State should give equal justice to my race and provide them with every advantage that is given to any other race." *Biography taken from “History of the American Negro and his Institutions” by A. B. Cardwell 1919. . Left image description: Photograph of Senator Henry Hall Falkener and family, ca. 1906. Senator Falkener is seated on the left with his wife, Margaret Mitchell Falkener, seated on the right. From left to right, three of their sons, Hershel, (1900-1992) Ralph 1893 - 1955, and George " Harold" Falkener 1898 - 1984, are standing behind their parents. One son, Waldo C. Falkener, Sr. (1903-1992) is seated on a chair arm between the adults and the baby, John " Quentin" Falkener 1906 - 1971, is held by his mother. Right image: Falkener family years later, year unknown. Left image source: National Museum of African American History and Culture. Right image source: Photograph located in History of the American Negro and his institutions� by A. B. Cardwell, 1921. Previous Next

< Back Elizabeth Keckley's image on the left is a portrait of her, an engraving from Elizabeth Keckley's autobiography. Image: left is a portrait of her, an engraving from Elizabeth Keckley's autobiography. Right side is: The Keckly Quilt/ The White House Historical Assoc. This mosaic quilt is attributed to Elizabeth Keckly and was made between 1862 – 1880. This quilt style was popular during the Civil War period. It’s composed of scrap silks that have been embroidered and appliqued, some possibly left-over scraps from Mrs. Lincoln’s dresses. Gift of Ross Trump in memory of his mother, Helen Watts Trump, KSUM 1994.79.1; Photo courtesy of the Kent State University Museum, photography by JoAnn Arnett. You can visit the White House Historical virtual gallery to see more photos of Elizabeth Keckley. Glamour and Innovation: Elizabeth Keckly : https://www.whitehousehistory.org/.../elizabeth-keckly... ---- NOTE: Here's some information about the autobiography-slave narrative that Elizabeth Keckley wrote and published. -End Note- Behind the Scenes: or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House-Autobiography By Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley The Autobiography of Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (sometimes spelled Keckly); was born in February 1818 – died in May 1907 at age 89, was a former slave who became a successful seamstress, civil activist, and author in Washington, DC. She was best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady. Keckley had moved to Washington in 1860 after buying her freedom and that of her son in St. Louis. She created an independent business in the capital based on clients who were the wives of the government elite. Among them were Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis; and Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee. After the American Civil War, Keckley wrote and published an autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868). It was both a slave narrative and a portrait of the First Family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln, and is considered controversial for breaking privacy about them. It was also her claim as a businesswoman to be part of the new mixed-race, middle-class that was visible among the leadership of the black community. Keckley's relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln, the President's wife, was notable for its personal quality and intimacy, as well as its endurance over time Behind the Scenes: or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House was first published in 1868 and is considered one of the most candid and poignant slave narratives. Author Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley writes about her teenage years, working as a slave for the Rev. Robert Burwell in Hillsborough, NC. He is thought by many historians to have been Keckley s half-brother. The Burwells had twelve children and ran an academy for girls. She writes about the horrid mistreatment and violence against her by Rev. and Mrs. Burwell, and the sexual harassment and eventual rapes by one of the towns white citizens. He did these things and the Burwells knew about it and did not stop him. After Keckley gave birth to a son, she and her baby were sent to live with Burwells sister. Born into slavery, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley endured untold hardships at the hands of her master and half-brother Robert Burwell in Hillsborough, North Carolina. She eventually purchased freedom for herself and that of her son in the 1850s and is now remembered as an entrepreneur, fashion designer, abolitionist, educator, writer, and community activist. Being enslaved she learned to be self-reliant and was educated. Keckley used her dressmaking skills to set up a successful business in the pre-Civil War Washington D.C., where she became the modiste of choice for many of the most fashionable women in the nation s capital. Her talents and enterprising nature eventually led her to become seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln and confidante to both Mary and Abraham Lincoln. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Keckley's friendship with Mary Todd Lincoln eventually shifted into one of caretaker, as the former first lady s financial troubles mounted and her mental health declined. In an effort to buoy their financial fortunes and to balance Lincoln s battered public image, Keckley wrote Behind the Scenes: or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the While House. It is considered both a slave narrative and, in the words of historian Williams Andrews, the first major text to represent the interests and aims of this nascent African American leadership class the postwar era. Previous Next

< Back Circa 1899, Yosemite National Parks Buffalo Soldiers, 25th Infantry or the 9th Cavalry soldiers, .S. Army Yosemite National Parks. Circa 1899, Yosemite National Parks Buffalo Soldiers, 25th Infantry or the 9th Cavalry soldiers, .S. Army Yosemite National Parks. Image 1/3: Circa 1899, Yosemite National Parks Buffalo Soldiers, 25th Infantry or the 9th Cavalry soldiers, .S. Army Yosemite National Parks. Retrieved from: Monterey County Historical Society. Buffalo Soldiers: America’s First National Park Rangers NPS After fighting in the Civil War and later military engagements, the famous all-Black regiments protected the National Parks. Black soldiers were first tasked with patrolling Yosemite, Sequoia and General Grant (Kings Canyon) National Park nearly 20 years before the National Park Service was established in 1916. These soldiers were known as the Buffalo Soldiers, an African American cavalry initially tasked with battling Native Americans during the westward expansion. Buffalo Soldiers, like their White counterparts in U.S. Army regiments, were among the first park rangers, in general, and backcountry rangers, in particular, patrolling parts of the West. African American army regiments, formed just after the Civil War, had been dispatched westward where these black soldiers fought in the Indian Wars and were eventually given the name Buffalo Soldiers by the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians who saw a resemblance between their dark, curly hair and the matted cushion between the horns of the buffalo. Congress, in 1866, created six segregated regiments which were soon consolidated into four Black regiments: the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry. Historians have recorded the service of these Buffalo Soldiers on the Western frontier, but their service in some national parks has been nearly forgotten. Approximately 500 Buffalo Soldiers served in Yosemite National Park and nearby Sequoia National Park with duties from evicting poachers and timber thieves to extinguishing forest fires. Their noteworthy accomplishments were made despite the added the racism they were subjected to. As background, the U.S. Army served as the official administrator of Yosemite and Sequoia national parks between 1891 and 1913, and, in that capacity, it helped create a model for park management as we know it today. These army troops were garrisoned at the Presidio of San Francisco during the winter months and served in the Sierra only during the summer months. This arrangement was an unusual duty for troops and greatly prized by army men with one army officer referring to the Sierra Nevada as the "Cavalryman's Paradise." Commanding officers became acting military superintendents for these national parks with two troops of cavalry, normally, assigned to each park. Each troop would be made up of approximately 60 men. The troops essentially comprised a roving economy-infusing money into park and local businesses-and thus their presence was generally welcomed. The presence of these soldiers as official stewards of park lands brought a sense of law and order to the mountain wilderness. The hidden chapter of this U.S. Army history revolves around the participation of African American troops of the 24th Infantry and 9th Cavalry, who protected both Yosemite and Sequoia national parks in 1899, 1903, and 1904. (The parks are located approximately 150 miles apart.) Most of these men were veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War in which they were called "Smoked Yankees." Many of them enlisted in the South where opportunities for African Americans were limited to sharecropping, and other labor intensive work. Even though the Buffalo Soldiers wore the uniform of the U.S. Army, their ethnicity combined with the racial prejudice of the time made the performance of their duties quite challenging. In the early 1900s, African Americans were routinely abused, or even killed, for the slightest perceived offense. They occupied one of the lowest rungs of the social ladder; a fact which served to undercut the authority of any Black man who served in any position of power. Yosemite and Sequoia's Buffalo Soldiers had to be simultaneously strong and diplomatic to fulfill the duties of their job but to avoid giving offense. Although officers were mostly Euro-American, an exception to this was Charles Young, the third African American graduate of the U.S. military academy at West Point. He served as the acting military superintendent of Sequoia National Park in 1903. Although his tenure was brief, it was groundbreaking. Young is considered by some to be the first African American superintendent of a national park. Most of the men under Young's command in Sequoia, as well as the 9th Cavalry soldiers serving in Yosemite, were Philippine war veterans, but service in the Sierra brought about an astonishing change in geography and function for these battle-weary men. Their duties included confiscating firearms as well as curbing poaching of the park's wildlife, suppressing wildfires, ending illegal grazing of livestock on federal lands, and stopping thefts of timber and other natural objects. They oversaw the construction of roads, trails, and other infrastructure. Their accomplishments included, but by no means were limited to, the completion of the first usable road into Giant Forest and the first trail to the top of Mt. Whitney (the tallest peak in the contiguous United States) in Sequoia National Park in 1903; and the building of an arboretum in Yosemite National Park near the south fork of the Merced River in 1904. One scholar considered the latter area to contain the first marked nature trail in the national park system. Thus, an integral part of that history played by the 500 Buffalo Soldiers, comprising eight troops of cavalry and one company of infantry, will no longer be forgotten. Source link: https://www.nps.gov/.../historyculture/buffalo-soldiers.htm Previous Next

< Back Filming Location for The Color Purple "When Anson County Went Hollywood during the Summer of 1985" "When Anson County Went Hollywood during the Summer of 1985" - Retired Sheriff Tommy Allen remembers the phone call during the first half of 1985. He was invited to a secret meeting on a farm in southern Anson County. At the secret meeting were Hollywood Producer Steven Spielberg & several members of his staff, NC Film Commission Officials, along with Harry & Betty Huntley. By 1985 Steven Spielberg was already well-known whereas he had already produced several profitable movies such as “Jaws” & “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial: & the first Indiana Jones movie. Security was a very important issue. Spielberg was concerned with law enforcement & one evening rode with Sheriff Allen & a deputy across the county. Sheriff Allen honored Spielberg with an honorary title of “Special Deputy.” Mr. Harry Huntley age 50 at the time had owned & managed Huntley Buick for many years but now was interested in raising cattle, while his son Bill Huntley managed the car dealership. Mr. Huntley had purchased the 650 acre along with the large James C. Bennett plantation farm. Spielberg asked Mr. Huntley to convert the farm for filming most of the Color Purple movie & at the same time Spielberg asked that he or anyone not to publicize the forthcoming movie. The first item to take care of was to move over 300 head of cattle to other locations that included a pasture. The Anson County Water Department extended a water line down Diggs Road to a fire hydrant so there would be a sufficient water supply. Smith’s Cleaners in uptown Wadesboro did a great job of cleaning the “old timey” clothes of the actors. One other problem was that the movie executives did not want the modern day power lines to appear in their “Color Purple” movie, so Pee Dee Electric relocated a half mile of a power line so that the company could continue to provide electrical services to that section of the county. According to Mr. Walter Turner, “since my wife’s father was the brother of Harry Huntley, our immediate family was invited to watch a day of filming & it was very interesting to watch the filming.” “We were all invited to lunch at 3pm on the property. “A gentleman sitting at our table introduced himself & told us his name, which was Mr. Danny Glover, who had co-stared in “Places in the Heart” in 1984 with Miss Sally Field. The story that the “Color Purple” movie tells comes from the book, “The Color Purple” by Ms. Alice Walker, of which she won a Pulitzer Prize. The Academy Awards nominations in 1985 included “Best Actress” for Whoopie Goldberg & “Best Supporting Actress” for Margaret Avery. Ironically, the movie participants did not win any Oscars. However, the movie launched careers for Whoopie Goldberg in the movies & Oprah Winfrey in television. The filming of our “Color Purple” movie brought curiosity & excitement to the residents of Anson County. For a few months in 1985, Anson County was a part of Hollywood glamour. Source: (Page 3 of Anson County Historical Society's September 2019 Newsletter) Previous Next

< Back Bennett College-1914, Postcard with Six young women members of the baseball team ​ 1914, Postcard with Six young women members of the baseball team posing with mitts and baseball bats outdoors. Bennett College for women. Greensboro, NC. President James E. Wallace (1913–1915) Source: Bennett College. Thomas F. Holgate Library. Archives Department. Previous Next

< Back Shaw University was Founded by Dr. Henry Martin Tupper on December 1, 1865. ​ On December 1, 1865, SHAW was Founded by Dr. Henry Martin Tupper. Shaw University, located in Raleigh, North Carolina is the first historically Black institution of higher education in the South and among the oldest in the nation. The University was founded in 1865 by Henry Martin Tupper, a native of Monson, Massachusetts, a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War, and a graduate of Amherst College and Newton Theological Seminary. Shaw boasts many “firsts”: the first college in the nation to offer a four-year medical program, the first historically Black college in the nation to open its doors to women, and the first historically Black college in North Carolina to be granted an “A” rating by the State Department of Public Instruction. Dr. Paulette Dillard currently serves as the University's 18th President. ------------- Shaw University, founded as the Raleigh Institute, is a private liberal arts institution and historically black university(HBCU) in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Shaw University is the first HBCU in the Southern United States Shaw University has been called the mother of African-American colleges in North Carolina, as the founding presidents of North Carolina Central University, Elizabeth City State University, and Fayetteville State University were all Shaw alumni. The founder of Livingstone College studied at Shaw, before transferring to Lincoln University. What became North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University was located on Shaw's campus during its first year. Shaw University is affiliated with the General Baptist State Convention of North Carolina and a member of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. which supports the Shaw University Divinity School. Along with Howard University, Hampton University, Lincoln University, PA and Virginia Union University, Shaw was a co-founding member of the NCAADivision II's Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) Conference, the oldest African American athletic association in the U.S. The university has won CIAA championships in Football, Basketball (women's and men's), Tennis (women's and men's) and volleyball. The university won a 5-year grant with University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to create a Partnership for the Elimination of Health Disparities for minorities, and a 7-year grant with Johns Hopkins University for Gerontological Research. In 2007, Shaw received $2.5 million from the National Science Foundation to support its Nanoscience and Nanotechnologyprogram. In 2004, Shaw University received $1.1 million from the U.S. Department of Education to develop an Upward Bound Program. The school was founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society Henry Martin Tupper came south immediately after the end of the Civil War, establishing the Second Baptist Church of Raleigh (changed to Tabernacle Baptist Church in 1910, and now the Tupper Memorial Baptist Church.)[5] Later Tupper and his Bible study students constructed a two-story church, with one story for the church, and one for the Raleigh Institute, where he taught freedmen. By 1915, supported by the American Baptist Home Mission, the school had 291 students, evenly divided between men and women. In 1867 the school consisted of three buildings, two of which were Antebellum cabins. As of 1875 when Shaw Collegiate Institute became Shaw University only two major structures existed – The Shaw Building and Estey Seminary. The former, erected where once stood corn fields in which Tupper hid from lynch mobs, with a 165-foot frontage, four stories high and possessing a tower, was the most commodious school building in all of North Carolina at that time. It provided instruction services, a library, and lodging. The seminary, reputed to be the first building ever erected for the education of African-American females, was devoted to training women in cooking, sewing, music, and the like. Henry Martin Tupper bought the material from which the women made garments and he himself sold the garments in an effort to pay for the cost of the material and other expenses. In 1879, a third major building was erected – a chapel and dining hall called the Greenleaf Building. It was named for O.H. Greenleaf of Springfield, MA, a yearly liberal contributor. The upper part of the building was accessible by stairs. Doors on either side of the tower provided entrance to the dining room. At the right of the chapel was a small room and at the left a library. A storeroom existed under the stairway. Funds saved from the school were used to build this structure. These were augmented by contributions of $650 (15,116.28 in current dollars) from O.H. Greenleaf, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, and Deacon O.B. Grant of Stonington. It was renamed Shaw Collegiate Institute after Elijah Shaw, benefactor of Shaw Hall, the first building. In 1875, it became Shaw University. In 1873, Estey Hall was built, marked the first female dormitory on the campus of a co-ed school in the United States. In 1866 when the Raleigh Institute was first being developed, Tupper had hoped to open a medical school; in 1881 the medical building became a reality, $15,000 (220,588.24 in current dollars) was contributed to make it. The medical school complex consisted primarily of three structures – a four story medical dormitory built to accommodate 75 men and erected around 1880 when the trustees approved the establishment of a medical department; the Leonard Medical Building, erected in the summer and fall of 1881 and containing lecture rooms, dissecting rooms, an amphitheater, and opened for its first session on November 1, 1881; a 25 bed hospital which opened for the reception of patients on January 10, 1885. It was the first four-year medical school to train African-American doctors in the South. On December 11, 1888 the university opened their law school. The full curriculum offering at Shaw are unknown, but it was the only black law school that had a course in legal shorthand. The course was offered on the premise that such a skill would broaden the opportunities for a black lawyer to work in a legal firm in a clerical position or as an office assistant should discrimination impede their ability to practice law. Shaw University graduated fifty-seven law students before it closed in 1916. It graduated fifty-four law students between 1891 and 1914. North Carolina politician John S. Leary was an important figure in the founding of the law school served as its dean starting in March 1890. He was followed as dean by Edward A. Johnson, who was the law school's first graduate and later the first African-American member of the New York State Assembly. Leonard Medical School was founded in 1881 as the first four-year medical school in the South to train black doctors and pharmacists. The first medical school in the state to offer a four-year curriculum, it operated until 1918. Given their importance in United States educational history, both Estey and Leonard halls have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. By 1900, more than 30,000 black teachers had been trained. In 1968, Shaw University became the first black college to own a radio station. At first, the station used an antenna on top of a building on the downtown campus, but in the late 1990s a new tower was built in southeast Raleigh near Interstate 40. WFSS in Fayetteville, North Carolina moved from 89.1 FM to 91.9 FM to allow WSHA to increase power. The university sold the station to Educational Media Foundation effective July 26, 2018, who subsequently renamed it WRKV. CIVIL RIGHTS The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) /ˈsnɪk/ was one of the organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker that was held at Shaw University in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization, gaining many supporters in the North as well as in the South. It led grassroots organizing for voter education and registration in Mississippi, among other initiatives. Study of World War II service of black veterans Shaw University led a research study to investigate why no black veterans of World War II had been awarded the Medal of Honor. The study concluded that racial discrimination had contributed to the military's overlooking the contributions of black soldiers. The 272-page study recommended ten soldiers whose military records suggested they deserved the Medal of Honor. In January 1995, the team's findings were sent to the U.S. Department of Defense. In April 1996, the department agreed that seven of the ten soldiers should be awarded the Medal of Honor. All ten had been awarded other medals during the war years. President Bill Clinton awarded the Medals of Honor on January 13, 1997. The department's decision in response to Shaw's study marked only the third time that the military re-evaluated military records to award the Medal of Honor. Only one of the seven nominees, 1st Lt. Vernon Baker of St. Maries, Idaho, was alive to receive his medal. Those who were awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously were: 1st Lt. Charles L. Thomas of Detroit, Michigan; Pvt. George Watson of Birmingham, Alabama; Staff Sgt. Edward A. Carter Jr. of Los Angeles, California; 1st Lt. John R. Foxof Boston, Massachusetts; Pfc. Willy F. James Jr. of Kansas City, Kansas; and Staff Sgt. Ruben Rivers of Tecumseh, Oklahoma. Their families received the medals. Source:Shaw University Source:Black American Colleges and Universities: Profiles of Two-Year, Four-Year, & Professional Schools by Levirn Hill, Pub., Gale Group, 1994 ISBN: 0-02-864984-2 Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaw_University Previous Next

< Back Willa B. Player Dr. Willa B. Player (August 9, 1909-August 29, 2003) In 1953, Dr. Player became the first female president of Bennett College for Women In Greensboro, NC and the first African American woman in the country to be named president of a four-year fully accredited liberal arts college. Dr. Willa B. Player (August 9, 1909-August 29, 2003) In 1953, Dr. Player became the first female president of Bennett College for Women In Greensboro, NC and the first African American woman in the country to be named president of a four-year fully accredited liberal arts college. During the peak of civil rights demonstrations in Greensboro, when almost 40 percent of the Bennett student body was arrested and jailed, Player visited students daily and arranged for professors to hold class and administer exams for jailed students. She also arranged for Martin Luther King to speak in Feb 1958, when no other group in Greensboro was willing to host him." It was the local NAACP chapter that sponsored King's visit 60 years ago, but as the story goes, members almost gave up in frustration as door after door was slammed while the chapter tried to find a place to hold the rally. Many people didn't know how to respond to the brave orator who declared that segregation was wrong and that it was time to break the bondage On campus, King sat for an interview with reporters from the student newspaper, the Bennett Banner, who asked a range of questions from race relations in Montgomery after the bus boycott to President Dwight Eisenhower's the use of federal troops to integrate Central High School. "Many of these persons are bitter," King responded to the question about the success of the bus boycott, " and they are just as determined to preserve segregation as Negroes are to lift the thing." Source:http://crdl.usg.edu/people/p/player_willa_b/?Welcome Source:http://www.journalnow.com/.../article_76627f23-56df-574a... Previous Next

< Back Albemarle Regional Library Bookmobile Photo Black Mobile Library Albemarle Regional Library Bookmobile, North Carolina. [North Carolina Digital Collections] Photo Black Mobile Library Albemarle Regional Library Bookmobile, North Carolina. [North Carolina Digital Collections] Image description: A bookmobile van with the side open to show shelves of books. 7 African American Children are standing beside bookmobile, each holding a book, looking down at the book. An African American woman is loooking at the shelves of books. An African American woman is sittingi n the passenger seat of the bookmobile looking at camera. Previous Next

< Back The Honorable George R. Greene Oct. 5, 1930 – March 17, 2013 The Honorable George R. Greene Oct. 5, 1930 – March 17, 2013 Judge George Royster Greene, Sr., was born in Nashville, North Carolina to the late Dr. W. L. Greene and Georgia Royster Greene, on October 5, 1930. He was one of three sons. He transitioned into Heaven on Sunday, March 17, 2013, at his dearly beloved First Baptist Church. Judge Greene graduated from Mary Potter Academy in Oxford, North Carolina, before matriculating at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he received his degree in 1952. After enrolling in Law School at North Carolina College in Durham (now North Carolina Central University), he transferred to the University of North Carolina Law School in Chapel Hill. Law school was interrupted as he was drafted into the Army and served his country during the Korean Conflict. Judge Greene earned a place on the Third Army Rifle Team and displayed his marksmanship at various competitions before his discharge in 1956. He returned to UNC to receive the Doctor of Jurisprudence degree in 1957 and also passed the North Carolina State Bar in August of that same year. On June 29, 1957 he married his sweetheart, Ruby Powell. Their union was blessed with one son and three daughters. Judge Greene began his law practice in Raleigh, North Carolina in October of 1957. Segregation was alive and well, so he immersed himself in civil rights litigation. He successfully represented a Black plumber in a suit against the City of Raleigh, which led to Black plumbers being allowed to bid on and receive city contracts. Other highlights of his legal career include: Representation of students from Shaw University and St. Augustine¡¦s College for lunch counter sit-ins during the 1960¡¦s Attorney for the NAACP in Raleigh and Wake County, who successfully, along with other dedicated attorneys throughout the south, litigated the segregation issue to a favorable conclusion in the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Chairman of the NAACP Legal Redress Committee. Attorney for the Raleigh Interchurch Housing Corporation which successfully put together the first 221D3 Low Income Housing Project toe be accepted by the Depart of Health, Education and Welfare in North Carolina; Rich Park in the Method Community is the result of that effort. When the District Court system was instituted there were five seats available in Wake County. Judge Greene ran for one of those seats, and out of a field of twenty candidates he came in sixth. Later, when the sixth seat was added, he said that seat had his name on it, so he ran for election again. After a grueling run-off election, he became the Democratic nominee. Another grueling race with a Republican opponent ensued, and in the November election he was victorious! He was re-elected three times and served on the District Court for 14 years, 1974-1988. He was elected to Superior Court in 1988 and served six years, 1989-1995. He enjoyed service in numerous professional organizations, including the Wake County, North Carolina, and American Bar Associations; Southeastern Lawyers Association; the Superior Court Judges Association of North Carolina; years. His civic activities included membership in the North Carolina Advisory Council Small Business Administration; Legislative Advisory Committee for the City of Raleigh; North Carolina State Employees Association; Board of Com-missioners of the Raleigh Housing Authority; former District Chairman of the Wacanotka District of the Boy Scouts of America; life member of the NAACP. His civil rights activities were strengthened through his memberships in the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, and he was a Charter Member of the Meadowbrook Country Club, one of the first country clubs for African Ameri-cans in the United States. Fraternally, Judge Greene was a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Incorporated. He was a former member of the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, Shaw University. Because of his groundbreaking work in civil rights and politics, Judge Greene received many honors and awards: - Man of the Year, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, 1974 - Citizen of the Year, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, 1983 - Man of the Year, Knights of Columbus, 1987 - News and Observer ¡§Tar Heel of the Week¡¨ January 8, 1989 - Shaw University Career Service Award, 1992, -For being a role model alumnus and distinguished resident Superior Court Judge , for seasoning justice with compassion through judicial wisdom, legal expertise, and moral integrity; and arousing the admiration of colleagues in the Law, and the respect of people who crave truth in action. - Induction into the Raleigh Hall of Fame, 2011 Judge Greene loved people and never met a stranger. He had a unique ability to relate to all people. His hobbies included fishing, hunting, bowling, and an occasional game of billiards. He excelled in all of these activities, and made many friends. Sourced from Find A Grave , . As a leading civil rights attorney, effective community activist, church leader, and wise jurist, George R. Greene is celebrated as the first African American elected to serve on the Wake County Court bench. George Greene was born in Nashville, NC, the son of educators. He moved to Raleigh when his father was appointed as executive director of the NC Teachers Association. A graduate of Shaw University, Greene studied law at NC College in Durham (now NC Central University), before transferring to the University of North Carolina School of Law. He served in the US Army during the Korean War, and returned to UNC to graduate as the only African American in his class. He then set out to change the world, first through groundbreaking civil rights litigation. As the attorney for student activists from Shaw University and St. Augustine’s College during the lunch counter sit-ins, Greene played a role in the integration of eating establishments. His representation of a black plumber against the City of Raleigh led to the tradesman being able to bid on and receive city contracts, setting new precedents for minority access to government business. As attorney of record for the Raleigh Inter-Church Housing Corporation, he was instrumental in establishing Method community’s Rich Park, the first low-income housing project accepted by North Carolina’s Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In the face of deplorable conditions at Chavis Park pool, he led in the integration of the Pullen Park pool. In 1974, Greene won a hard fought race to become the first African American elected to serve on the Wake County District Court. He served with distinction for fourteen years on the District Court, and for six years on the Superior Court bench. Greene served his profession and the community as an energetic volunteer, providing leadership to several Bar Associations, the Commissioners of Raleigh Housing Authority, the Legislative Advisory Committee for the City of Raleigh, and the Board of Trustees of First Baptist Church. He also devoted his time and talents to Shaw University, Boy Scouts, the NAACP, Mechanics and Farmers Bank, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, and Meadowbrook Country Club. Greene has received numerous awards for his achievements, including Man of the Year from both Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and the Knights of Columbus, Citizen of the Year from Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the Harvey E. Beech Award from the University of North Carolina, and the William Brower Award from the Fayetteville/Cumberland County Democratic Caucus. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus by Shaw University, and Tar Heel of the Week by the Raleigh News & Observer. Greene was honored for 50 years in the legal profession as an original member of the Golden Rams Society by the UNC Black Alumni Reunion Committee, and by the Wake and North Carolina Bar Associations. Throughout his life, Judge Greene has worked effectively to defeat discrimination and strengthen the fabric of the Raleigh community. After more than half a century of legal and community leadership, Judge Greene is still changing the world for the better. Sourced from: Raleigh Hall of Fame, Inc. Previous Next

< Back James F. Shober, M.D. James Francis Shober was an African American doctor and the first Black physician in North Carolina. He was born in Salem (now Winston-Salem), N. C., possibly to Francis Edwin Shober, who was of the Salem Moravian Community, a successful politician and businessman, who served in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress. He was also a co-founder of the first Sunday school in North Carolina and a law graduate of the University of North Carolina. His mother was a slave named Betsy Ann, who in 1859 when James Francis was between the age of 6 and 7 and he was probably sent back to the Waugh Plantation in Waughtown where his grandmother and his mother’s other siblings were living. Shober graduated second in his class from Lincoln University in Oxford, PA, in 1875 with an A. B. degree. He went to Howard University's School of Medicine, where he was one of 48 graduates in the class of 1878 and the only one from North Carolina. Although a number of other blacks may have been licensed doctors sometime after Emancipation, Shober was the first black doctor to graduate from a regular medical school in North Carolina and was thus the first "official" black doctor in North Carolina. He was the only black doctor in a city more than 10,000 people. His wife, Anna Marie Taylor Shober, was an educator and taught at the Peabody School in Wilmington. His daughters both graduated from Fisk University and pursued a number of professions. Shober was active in his church and in the Old North State Medical Society, an association of African American physicians that is still in existence today. His life was tragically short; he died on the 1st of January 1889 at the age of 36. Reference: Wilmington Star, 2003 Article by Ben Steelman Wilmington Star (SC, USA) 343-2208 Source:https://aaregistry.org/.../james-shober-north-carolina.../ Previous Next

< Back North Carolina A&T University marching band c. 1930 ​ The A&T University marching band leads the way for the members of the graduation class as they march through campus in the 1930s. Source: Photograph part of the Art Shop Collection housed at the Greensboro History Museum. Source Link: https://gateway.uncg.edu/islandora/object/ghm%3A13255 Previous Next

< Back N.C. Central University's Oldest Living Graduate, Maggie Bryant, Turns 106 ​ Maggie Bryant, N.C. Central University's Oldest Living Graduate, Turns 106 Next Month By Thomasi McDonald /The Indy June 23, 2021 6:00 A.M. There was a touch of revelry in the air Friday on the campus of N.C. Central University. A small group of people had gathered at the Durham home of the school's late founder James E. Shepard. They were dressed in their Sunday best to witness the taking of an official photograph of the school’s oldest living graduate, Maggie Poole Bryant. Bryant, who graduated in 1938, today lives less than a block from the school. She will celebrate her 106th birthday on July 2. The finely-turned-out group that had gathered to celebrate Bryant reminded this writer of an observation by the poet Ntozake Shange in her 1984 poem, “Madison Square Garden.” We dress up, we dress up because we got good manners/We honor our guests even if it costs us all we got...It’s just, when you got an audience with the Pope you want to look your best. And no doubt about it: Maggie Poole Bryant is NCCU royalty. The diminutive woman stands barely five feet tall and weighs around 120 pounds. It was about 12:30 p.m. when she arrived at Shepard House on Fayetteville Street with Andre Vann, the school’s archivist and historian. “The photograph will be shared on all of the university’s platforms on her birthday,” Vann said. The gentle, bespectacled centenarian was impeccably dressed in the school’s colors. She wore a maroon button-down blouse with a ruffled front, matching earrings, and gray houndstooth trousers. Bryant spent the previous day with friend Cheryl Brown, who took her to a beauty salon to get her hair done into a swirling spray of silver-gray curls pulled back from her forehead and touching her shoulders. Brown says that the day before the school took its official photo of Bryant, she picked her up around 10:45 a.m. and got her back home around four. “She actually asked if she could get her nails done,” Brown said. “I said, ‘of course.’ It was her first time going to the salon since COVID, and things are getting back to normal.” Bryant uses a cane to get around. She has a slight stoop and wore black, sensible, flat-bottomed shoes that spoke of the 43 years she worked as a high school English teacher and librarian before retiring in 1982. Someone asked Bryant how she was doing as she leaned on the arm of Vann and ambled up the concrete driveway of the Shepard House. “I’m trying to be good,” Bryant replied. “I feel good.” Prior to taking her official photo, Bryant participated in an interview with Vann. “I am Maggie Poole Bryant,” she said by way of introduction, “and I am the oldest alumna at North Carolina Central University. I have lived through World War I, the 1918 epidemic, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, 9-11, and now the COVID-19 pandemic.” In a word, Bryant said her long life was “unexpected;” her parents did not expect her to survive childbirth because she was born prematurely. Bryant said the key to her longevity has been to “eat what your body needs, not what it wants, exercise, walk” and “use the body and the brain.” “I read the Bible,” she added. “Like they say, if you don’t use it, you lose it.” According to the NCCU archives, Bryant was the oldest child and only daughter of four children born to Robert Kelley and Maggie Poole Bryant in Rocky Mount. Although she was born in Rocky Mount, her roots in Durham ran deep even then. She was named after her mother and great-grandmother, Margaret “Maggie” Faucette, who founded the White Rock Baptist Church in 1866. The church still stands on Fayetteville Street. Her eyes lit up with memory recalling the city’s Hayti district during its heyday. “There were all these businesses and people enjoying their home life,” she said. “We had a lot of fun, and we had a lot of different stores. Believe it or not, they used to have a Kroger (grocery) in Hayti. What else? Cafes, a bakery, doctors, and pharmacists.” In 1910, Shepard, a Raleigh native and pharmacist who attended Shaw University, founded the private National Religious Training School and Chautauqua in the Hayti District. Two of Bryant’s aunts were members of the inaugural class. One of those aunts lived 101 years. The Great Depression had ended by the time Bryant graduated from Rocky Mount’s Booker T. Washington High School in 1934. She earned a scholarship to NCCU, which was then called the North Carolina College for Negroes. She studied history and library science. According to the school’s archive, Bryant’s class was the first to graduate from B.N. Duke Auditorium, which was completed in 1937 by the Public Works Administration as a project during FDR’s New Deal era. Bryant earned bachelor’s degrees in history and library science and, later, a master’s degree from the university. She worked as an English teacher and librarian at G.C. Hawley High School—now a middle school—in Creedmoor and later at George Washington Carver High School in Kannapolis. Maggie Bryant’s civic-minded younger brother, R. Kelly Bryant, worked with many of Durham’s most prominent Black companies and community organizations, including the N.C. Mutual Insurance Company, Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People. In 2010, the city of Durham dedicated the R. Kelly Bryant Bridge that frames the southern entrance into the city on Highway 147. After sitting in a Victorian-style chair for her official photo, Maggie Bryant sat in front of an antique Gulbransen player piano. The mood shifted after her photograph was taken. Bryant’s friends and family asked her to play the piano. “We are going to light up the world on your birthday, Ms. Bryant!” Vann told her. “We are going to party like it’s 1999!” someone else chimed in. “I wish I could play,” Bryant said before gamely picking out a few chords. Undeterred and ever the optimist, Vann told her, “Ms. Bryant, you’ve been holding out!” She smiled. A woman who lives in a community where young people are being violently cut down in the prime of their lives doesn’t live for more than 100 years by pretending to herself—or anyone else for that matter. “No, I haven’t,” she quietly answered. No, she certainly hasn’t been holding out. Maggie Bryant’s existence has been the essence of a life well-lived. She has given it her all. Happy birthday, Ms. Maggie! Source: https://indyweek.com/.../maggie-bryant-n-c-central.../... Previous Next

< Back A Black Woman’s West: The Life of Rose B. Gordon Born in the Barker mining district of central Montana Territory, Rose Beatrice Gordon (1883-1968) was the daughter of an African American chef and an emancipated slave who migrated to the West in the early 1880s. This forthcoming book will tell the story of the Gordon family—John, Anna, Robert, Rose, John Francis Jr., George, and Taylor—and pays tribute to Rose, who lived most of her life in White Sulphur Springs. In her youth, Rose excelled academically and distinguished herself as a musical performer. As an adult, she established her economic independence as a restaurant owner, massage therapist, and caregiver. She also made a place for herself in the public sphere through letters to the editor and eventually through a regular newspaper column for the “Meagher County News”—a remarkable undertaking at a time when Black women in America were largely denied a public voice. As a Black woman in the West, Gordon’s life was ordinary in terms of its day-to-day struggles but extraordinary in its sum. Previous Next

< Back Photograph: Black woman sharecropper and her children. Tillery,NC 1938 (Excerpt from newspaper article connected to Mr. Charlie Holcombes oral history-article is cited at bottom of page) "When Charlie was a little boy, in the elections of 1894 and 1896, an interracial “Fusion” coalition won every statewide office in North Carolina, swept the legislature, won the governorship and both U.S. Senate seats. They championed local self-government, rather than the white conservatives’ program of having the state government select local officials. The Fusionists pushed free public education, the principle of “one man, one vote,” regardless of race, and modest regulation of the monopoly capitalism preferred by railroads, banks and corporations. (Excerpt from newspaper article connected to Mr. Charlie Holcombes oral history-article is cited at bottom of page) "When Charlie was a little boy, in the elections of 1894 and 1896, an interracial “Fusion” coalition won every statewide office in North Carolina, swept the legislature, won the governorship and both U.S. Senate seats. They championed local self-government, rather than the white conservatives’ program of having the state government select local officials. The Fusionists pushed free public education, the principle of “one man, one vote,” regardless of race, and modest regulation of the monopoly capitalism preferred by railroads, banks and corporations. These commercial interests, outraged by this democratic excess and wooed by secret promises to slash corporate taxes, bankrolled the White Supremacy Campaigns of 1898 and 1900 and furnished the “Red Shirts,” conservative paramilitary forces, with state of the art weapons. The conservatives overthrew the state government by blocking roads to polling places with armed guards; slanderous and lavish propaganda featuring “black brutes” unfit for freedom, let alone citizenship; intimidation, racial terrorism, and mass murder in the streets of Wilmington. By the time Charlie was twelve, the state no longer allowed black citizens to vote, and the rest of the South had followed its lead. Lynching had become commonplace and lynch mobs unpunished. North Carolina passed Jim Crow segregation laws, barred black North Carolinians from most well-paid jobs, and created a one-party racial state. Charlie’s grandfather told stories to instruct him on how a black boy could survive in an eastern North Carolina where the color line was increasingly drawn in blood." -------- Charlie Holcombe’s own 1939 interview with an employee of the Federal Writers’ Project "The pine-board shack in which Charlie Holcombe spent his childhood in the late nineteenth century rested on top of a red clay hil about a quarter of a mile fromthe main road in Sampson County, North Carolina. His father, a tenant tobacco farmer, rose each morning at four o’clock,laid the logs for a fire, and roused the children, while Charlie’s mother prepared a breakfast consisting of a pot of grits and a slab of salt pork. It was important to be in the field at sunup during the growing season as the soil was poor and the labor that much more demanding. They worked until sundown. Grandfather Holcombe did not work in the field; he had “de miseries” in his back and walked with a stick. But he performed other chores, slopping the hogs and feeding the chickens. Charlie Holcombe, considered too young and frail to fork in the fields, helped his grandfather with the chores and often accompanied him to the nearby creek to catch “a mess o catfish” for supper. As they sat there, waiting for the fish to bite, Grandfather would “do a heap o’ thinkin’.” And sometimes he shared his thoughts with Charlie,his youngest grandson, often imparting practical lessons drawn from his own life on how a black boy might hope to survive in the South less than half a century after emancipation. Charlie remembered one lesson in particular. After catching a large catfish, Grandfather Holcombe toyed with it for a time, admonishing his grandson to watch him. He carefully lifted the fish out of the creek, let it thrash about, then lowered the line and returned the fish to the water. It would swim again, but not for long Grandfather suddenly pulled it out on the bank where it thrashed about until it died. “Son,” his grandfather observed, “a catfish is a lot like a nigger. As long as he is in his mudhole he is all right but when he gits out he is in for a passel of trouble. You '‘member dat, and you won’t have no trouble wid folks when you grows up.” Neither Charlie’s father nor his grandfather had owned the land they worked. But as a young man Charlie Holcombe aspired to improve himself and be independent of whites, and he possessed an abundance of confidence about his ability to succeed. He vowed to break with a bleak past of arduous and mostly unrewarded labor. “I thought I could manage my business better and dat I was gonna be able to own a place o’ my own someday…I was a high-minded young nigger and was full of git-up-and-git Dey wan’t nothin in de world dat I didn’t think I could do, and I didn’t have no patience wid niggers what didn’t look for nothin’ but sundown and payday.” After his parents died, Charlie moved to Johnston County, North Carolina, took a job on public works, saved some money, and married. In 1909 he settled down on a farm, determined to make it his own. But like so many aspiring young blacks- the children and the grandchildren of slaves- he confronted formidable obstacles in his struggle to be independent.“Dey was always sumpthin’ come along and knocked de props from under my plans.That “sumpthin’”might be the worms, dust,or blight consuming the tobacco plants or more often than not, poor and declining prices and the rigid controls exerted by white men over black income. The only certainty was that by the time the landlord had taken his share and deducted the cost of the fertilizer and the money or credit advanced he had made, “dey wan’t but jist enough to carry on till de nex’ crop.” But Charlie persisted,and one year he seemed primed to break out of this cycle of indebtedness. After selling his tobacco and settling with the landlord he had something for himself-or so be thought. That was when “the man” called him back and told him he had underestimated the amount Charlie owed him for are house charges. The tactic was all too familiar, and Charlie’s inability to read the books made and legal protest impossible. “I knowed it wadn’t right, and it made me so mad I jist hit him in de face as hard as I could. Den Ikinda went crazy and might nigh beat him to death.” The judge sentenced Charlie to a year’s labor on the roads- a lenient sentence for an interracial altercation. His wife and children did what they could to make a crop, but was not enough to meet expenses. The landlord agreed to carry them over and it took Charlie three years to pay him back.“By that time I knowed it wan’t no use for me to try to ever make anything but jist a livin’.” Although Charlie Holcombe made his accommodation, he wanted something better for his oldest son, Willie. “I was ‘termined my oldest chile was gonna hab a chance in dis world, and I sent him all de way through high school.” That was more education than any Holcombe had known. But after completing high school, Willie wanted to go to college, arguing that it would enable him to improve his economic prospects significantly. At considerable sacrifice, the Holcombes sent their son to the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in Greensboro. Willie worked hard, made good grades, and in the summer returned to help his parents with the crop. He would take the tobacco to market, carefully scrutinize the accounts, and invariably return with money in his pocket. As Willie progressed in college, however, his horizon widened and he became more ambitious. Increasingly dissatisfied with the tobacco business, he told his father this was no future for a black man with an education. He did not want to return to the farm. “Dat hurt me,” Charlie Holcombe confessed. “’cause I had counted on Willie helpin’ me but I wanted him to do what he thought was best.” Willie Holcombe graduated near the top of his class. That, remembered Charlie, “was when de trouble started.” Despite his education, Willie found few opportunities open to him. He returned home from college, disillusioned with his life and bitter over his limited prospects. When he “started settin’ around and drinkin’ and gittin’ mean,” Charlie tried to reason with him, but little he could say would alleviate the disappointment and frustration. That ffall Willie took a load of tobacco to the warehouse and returned home angry and sullen;the next day he insisted on taking another load to the warehouse. Near dinnertime he had not yet returned. A neighbor finally appeared to inform Charlie that there had been a fight at the warehouse involving Willie. When Charlie reached the scene, he spotted his son lying on the ground, a puddle of blood around his head, and a group of white men standing nearby. “I knowed he was dead de minute I seed him.” For a while Charlie just stood there, not knowing what to do He looked at the crowd and could not find a friendly or sympathetic face. “Right den I knowed dey wan’t no use to ax for no he’p and dat I was jist a pore nigger in trouble.” Holding Willie in his arms, Charlie couldsee that his son’s head had been bashed in.“Dey was tears runnin’ down my cheeks and droppin’ on his face and I couldn’t he’p it.” He placed his son in the wagon, tied the mule behind it, and began his journey down the road. Reaching home, he washed Willie’s head and dressed him in his best suit Charlie and Dillie Holcombe then buried their son at the foot of the big pine tree near the well and planted some grass on the grave. Charlie Holcombe was never the same again. The spirit had had once shown in his determination to succeed no longer animated him. “For a long time atter dat I couldn’t seem to git goin’, and dey was a big chunk in de bottom o’ my stummick dat jist wouldn’t go away.I would go out at night and sit under de pine by Willie’s grave, and listen to de win swishin’ in de needles, and I’d do a lot o ’thinkin’.He knew his son had been killed because of an argument, no doubt over the “settlin’ price” for the tobacco Willie had delivered.But Charlie blamed himself for his son’s death. He had failed to heed his grandfather’s admonition.“I got to thinkin’ ‘bout what gran’pappy said ‘bout de catfish, and I knowed dat was de trouble wid Willie. He had stepped outen his place when he got dat eddycation. If I’d kept him here on de farm he woulda been all right. Niggers has got to l’arn dat dey ain’t like white folks, and never will be, and no amount o’ eddycation can make ‘em be, and dat when dey gits outen dere place dere is gonna be trouble.” When in subsequent years Charlie would encounter some “young bucks” dissatisfied with their lives and wanting to “cut loose and change,” he would listen to them, then take them out to see Willie’s grave. No other Holcombe child would be sent to college. They all settled down with their families and accommodated to the New South in the same way their father- and grandfather- had accommodated. They went about the business of surviving. “Dey don’t hab much, but dey is happy,” Charlie Holcombe said of his remaining children, the advice of his grandfather still vivid in his mind. “Niggers is built for service, like a mule, and dey needn’t ‘spect nothin’ else…A nigger’s place is in de field and de road and de tunnel and de woods wid a pick or shovel or ax or hoe or plow. God made a nigger like a mule to be close to nature and git his livin by de sweat o’ his brow like de Good Book says.” Resigned to his “place,” Charlie no longer worried that much about the price his tobacco might bring him. The children came by occasionally to help him with the crops. He now had ample time to engage in his own “heap o’ thinkin’,”and his final years were increasingly reflective. Sitting by the fireplace, his mind often wandered back to his childhood. “And I ‘member how my gran’pappy used to take me fishin’ wid him. Seems like when a feller thinks back he only ‘members de good parts." ---- The story of Charlie Holcombe evokes the contradictions of black life and coming of age in the New South- the initial hops and aspirations, the often heightened expectations, as well as the frustrations the terrors, the tensions, the betrayals, and the necessary accommodations. What came to be impressed on several generations of black Southerners the first born in freedom and coming to maturity in the 1890s and the early twentieth century- was the material, political, and military superiority of white people, the extraordinary power white men and women wielded over black lives and prospects in virtually all phases of daily life. “The only thing that you would be thinking of,” remembered Ardie Clark Halyard, was “that they were the ones that had everything.” And they maintained their dominance, she sensed, because “all the time they were taking advantage- you could see that.” The New South into which a new generation of African Americans would be born had clearly drawn racial boundaries and modes of behavior based on centuries of enforced custom and thought. Every black child would come to appreciate the terrible unfairness and narrowness of that world- the limited options, the need to curb ambitions, to contain feelings, and to weigh carefully every word,gesture, and movement when in the presence of whites. To learn to live with this kind of harsh reality became no less than a prerequisite for survival. “In this perilous world,” Benjamin Mays recalled of his childhood in rural South Carolina, “if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of howto get along with white folks.” Any deviation from white expectations invited instant and often violent reprisals." NOTE: We could not locate a photograph of Mr. Charlie Holcombe, we used this one instead. Photograph: Black woman sharecropper and her children. Tillery,NC 1938 PHOTOGRAPH BY LIBRARY OF CONGRESs Source: Charlie Holcombes oral history- Litwack, Leon. Trouble in Mind Black Americans in the Age of Jim Crow Source: Excerpt of newspaper article- https://www.chathamnewsrecord.com/.../at-the-hands-of... Previous Next

< Back Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown was born in Henderson,NC. ​ Noted African-American educator and founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown was born in Henderson,NC. She moved to Massachusetts with her family when she was young, but returned to North Carolina in 1901 to help educate southern blacks. In 1902, Brown established the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia. She named the school for Alice Freeman Palmer, a former president of Wellesley College, who was a friend and benefactor. It first operated out of an old blacksmith shop, but eventually grew to house hundreds of students in more than a dozen buildings. Palmer grew to become known as an elite black preparatory school, hosting students from all over the country and world. During her tenure at Palmer, Brown actively toured, speaking on behalf of women’s suffrage and racial equality. She devoted her life to the improvement of the African American community’s social standing and was active in the National Council of Negro Women, an organization founded by celebrated educator Mary McLeod Bethune in 1935. As president of the North Carolina State Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs, Brown also directed African American women’s formal civic experiences for more than 20 years. For more information about the museum and her life visit: http://bit.ly/2lSYcHS Previous Next

< Back Team photo of the Cornfield Boys, a Negro baseball team in Hertford County, NC. "Sandlot teams known as the "Cornfield Boys' created one of the state's greatest sports stories when they beat teams from the Negro Major Leagues in the 1940s and 1950s." We #NCMAAHC have put together some information about Negro Baseball Teams of NC. Without doubt, some teams are left out as there is not enough information about them online to add to this post. We are providing an article that was published in the Tar Heel Junior Historian 51:1 (fall 2011). which is a program of the NC Museum Of History for school students. We have also added several links at the bottom of this post that provide more information about the Negro Leagues and the Negro Baseball teams in NC. ------ "Negro Leaguers remain largely invisible to common memory because they performed behind a social curtain that existed prior to integration, when prominent newspapers largely shunned coverage of their careers, many thought “white” was synonymous with “better,” and a tacit and often-denied agreement among owners excluded them from Major League Baseball." Image: team photo of the Cornfield Boys, a Negro baseball team in Hertford County, NC "Sandlot teams known as the "Cornfield Boys' created one of the state's greatest sports stories when they beat teams from the Negro Major Leagues in the 1940s and 1950s." --------- Early Black Baseball in North Carolina By Bijan C. Bayne* From Tar Heel Junior Historian 51:1 (fall 2011). Around the mid-1800s, earlier games with names like rounders, town ball, and one cat were developing into the sport known today as baseball. By 1876, the National League had been formed, and minor-league and other levels of teams soon appeared. Until the 1950s, professional football was limited to a few large northern cities, and pro basketball had not become well established. For decades, baseball proved to be the sport of choice for most people across the United States—gaining its nickname as the “national pastime.” Black Americans, however, were largely shut out of professional baseball, after a man named Fleetwood Walker played in 1887 with Toledo in the American Association (a major league at the time). Throughout the early 1900s, much of public life remained strictly segregated, or separated, based on whether a person was black, white, or American Indian. The highest levels of play open to African Americans, often called Negro or “colored” people then, came on segregated factory or mill baseball teams, town teams, or integrated semiprofessional ball clubs in the North. Years before the establishment of national baseball leagues for Black competitors in the 1920s, African American men were playing baseball all over North Carolina, from Wilmington to Asheville. Black-owned ball clubs played at a high level, supported by a growing Black business class. In 1916 one local African American business leader named E. W. Pearson organized a baseball team called the Asheville Royal Giants. The Royal Giants carried a nickname then common for African American teams in the South. Teams in places including Louisville, Kentucky, and Memphis, Tennessee, used it, too. At the time, in fact, “Giants” served as a sort of code name for a black team, patterned after black baseball’s very first paid team, the Cuban X Giants. If fans saw the nickname on a poster or advertisement, they knew an African American team was coming to town. Semipro teams such as the Asheville Royal Giants, Raleigh Tigers, and Winston-Salem Pond Giants developed many players who would later compete in the national Negro Leagues. The North Carolina squads never received the same attention as the better known Negro League teams of the urban North and Midwest. The squads featured talented players but often were less organized. They frequently did not play in structured leagues. Few records remain beyond scattered, brief game summaries and box scores in the African American press of the era. In the early 1920s, Raleigh had a team called the Black Star Line, named for a shipping firm owned by popular activist Marcus Garvey. In addition, a club called the Raleigh Tar Heels played in 1920 and 1921. African American teams from Greensboro, Winston Salem, and High Point also were competing around that time. Not only the larger towns had teams in the early 1900s, however. Baseball was relatively inexpensive for children of all races to grow up playing, and North Carolina had many small towns near one another. This made games somewhat easy to arrange. Many Tar Heel towns had fairly large Black populations compared to northern and western states. Towns including Greenville, Rocky Mount, New Bern, Kinston, Elizabeth City, and Laurinburg fielded Black semipro teams. Most of these semipro players earned very little from baseball, making a living through other jobs. Games often were scheduled quickly or on short notice—even while a team was on the road, in large touring cars packed with players. Sometimes fans passed a hat around the stands to collect money to support teams. Owners took about 70 percent of team earnings for operating expenses that included travel, uniforms, promotion, and umpire pay. The rest was divided among 12 to 16 or 17 players, counting substitutes and pitchers. The teams played on weeknights, especially Thursday, the traditional day off for many African Americans working as domestic employees. Fans dressed in their best church clothing to attend games, which became major social events in the Black community. Most team owners were well-to-do preachers, owners of segregated funeral parlors or taxi companies, or African American men in other businesses who loved baseball. Black baseball, black hair care, insurance companies such as North Carolina Mutual, and black funeral homes served as financial pillars of their communities in the early decades of the 1900s. Pearson had developed Asheville’s Black Burton Street community, and he hosted a large, annual agricultural fair attended by white and Black citizens. Baseball fit in with his other pursuits. Baseball teams offered a means of extra income for players as young as 14. Many North Carolina boys left school around that age to work in fields and help support their families. Those who played well might earn the attention of bigger teams. In addition, teams such as the Negro National League’s Newark Eagles and Schenectady Mohawk Giants spent spring training in North Carolina in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Their owners could scout the rosters of North Carolina semipro opponents and take the best players back north with them. When North Carolina’s early Black baseball teams traveled out of state, their opponents included teams from Florence, South Carolina, and Virginia towns such as Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, and Newport News. On trips, players stayed in private homes or segregated rooming houses. If they played for more prosperous owners, they spent longer tours sleeping on team buses. Typical weeks varied widely, depending on individual owners’ financing, the ability to schedule games while traveling, and players’ availability from their main jobs. Most of the Asheville ballplayers worked on trains or at the Biltmore Estate, the large home owned by the Vanderbilt family. The Asheville Royal Giants played home games at Oates Park, in the triangle formed by Southside, Choctaw, and McDowell Streets. White teams from leagues including North Carolina State, Southeastern, and Appalachian competed at Oates Park, too. The Royal Giants also used Pearson’s Park, named after the team’s owner. In some cities, colored teams used ballparks during the times that white minor-league teams were on the road. In other places, laws prohibited African American people from using public parks and facilities at all, which is why many Black baseball owners built their own small ballparks. The Royal Giants hosted teams such as the Greenville (S.C.) Black Spinners and an Atlanta team that may have been the Dixie Giants or the Atlanta Cubs. In the 1930s, cities such as Greensboro (Red Wings), Asheville (Blues), Durham (Red Caps), and Winston-Salem (Mohawk Giants) had active Black ball clubs, as did smaller towns including Erwin (Red Sox) and Louisburg (Independents). During World War II, the Raleigh Grays played against Negro units at Fort Bragg. The Raleigh Tigers came a little later and were among the last of the state’s prominent black teams. The Tigers played until the early 1960s, featuring several future minor and major leaguers. In 1951, four years after Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the major leagues, some white minor-league squads in North Carolina had begun signing black players. Granite Falls of the Western Carolina League, for example, hired Boney Fleming, a pitcher from Morganton; Christopher Rankin, a pitcher out of Hickory; Conover’s Bill Smith, a catcher; Hickory’s Russell Shuford, a catcher; and Eugene Abernathy, an outfielder from Hickory. By that time, major-league organizations supported six or seven minor-league teams apiece. As racial barriers slowly fell in baseball, some of the more established Black segregated teams continued playing throughout the 1950s, including the Asheville Blues and the Raleigh Tigers. Smaller black teams closed down, due to the onset of televised major-league games, a shrinking talent pool after integration, and diminished fan interest. Many African Americans had already left smaller southern towns by the 1920s to seek better economic and employment opportunities to the north. The level of play and organization of southern Black baseball never reached that of the larger urban cities. But for more than 40 years, North Carolina had been a haven for baseball talent. Seeing Stars In 1921 14-year-old Walter “Buck” Leonard began playing for his hometown Rocky Mount Elks. This team, managed by Raymond Stith, took on every colored semipro ball club within 150 miles—competing against the Winston-Salem Pond Giants, Durham Black Sox, Salisbury Red Sox, Greensboro Black Patriots, and teams from Statesville, Tarboro, High Point, Smithfield, and Raleigh. Later, the team became the Rocky Mount Black Swans. By the time he was 20, Leonard was the manager. A quiet, religious leader, he went on to a Baseball Hall of Fame career as a first baseman with the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues. There were other early African American standouts with North Carolina roots. Here are a few: Tom Alston, of Greensboro, competed for the Greensboro Goshen Red Wings in the 1940s. In 1954 he became first African American player for the St. Louis Cardinals. Dave “Skinny Green” Barnhill, a native of Greenville, was a star pitcher for the Indianapolis Clowns in the 1940s. Moody “Big Train” Cozart was a longtime pitching star for the Raleigh Grays in the 1940s. The 6’4”, 300-pounder later played for the Newark Eagles. Willie Foster, a baseball Hall of Famer, was a noted pitcher who moved to Raleigh to manage the Raleigh Tigers. Burnell “Bun” Hayes, a pitcher from Louisburg, starred for the powerful Baltimore Black Sox of the 1920s. Charlie Neal played for the Raleigh Tigers before signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956. Hubert “Bert” Simmons, of Tarboro, played for the Raleigh Tigers in the early 1940s and, later that decade, for the Greensboro Goshen Red Wings and Asheville Blues. Simmons played Negro League ball for the Baltimore Elite Giants. Leamon Yokely’s back-to-back no-hitters earned him notice as a collegian in the 1920s and led to his career with the Baltimore Black Sox. Yokely and Hayes were college rivals; Yokely pitched for Livingstone College in Salisbury and Hayes, for Johnson C.Smith in Charlotte. *At the time of this article’s publication, Bijan C. Bayne was working as an award-winning freelance writer in Washington, D.C. His published works include the book Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball and a chapter on African American baseball in Baseball in the Carolinas. ------ Below Are Several Links To Articles Related To The Negro Leagues, And Negro Baseball Teams In NC. LINK: https://diversity.appstate.edu/events/jones/history/ LINK: https://indyweek.com/.../durham-native-bud-barbee-s.../ LINK:https://www.charlotteobserver.com/.../article63045067.html LINK: https://www.greensboro.com/.../article_fe909164-f453-5e9a... LINK: Video 'Cornfield Boys' beat major league teams in Hertford County/ Sandlot teams known as the "Cornfield Boys' created one of the state's greatest sports stories when they beat teams from the Negro Major Leagues in the 1940s and 1950s. https://www.wral.com/lifestyles/travel/video/16777154/ LINK: https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/mlb/article87403732.html LINK: https://www.fayobserver.com/article/20160226/NEWS/302269587 Previous Next

< Back Paula Dance Paula Dance Is The First Black Woman Elected Sheriff In North Carolina. Pitt County, NC -Voters in Pitt County made history Tuesday when they elected the first black woman to the office of sheriff and the first black man to the office of district attorney. Democrat Paula Dance, 53, a major with the sheriff’s office, defeated Republican Gary Weaver in the sheriff’s race 31,853 to 26,523 votes in unofficial returns, according to the Pitt County Board of Elections. Democrat Faris Dixon defeated Republican Glen Perry 30,313 to 27,896 votes in the race for Pitt County district attorney. “I wanted everybody to come on this journey with me because I knew it was going to be different than anybody else’s race,” Dance said during a victory party held by Democrats at the Hilton Greenville on Tuesday night. “There's never been anybody who looked like me, who was my gender, to run for sheriff. I knew there were a lot of people who worked hard and I knew that I had what it took to do this. I stepped out on a leap of faith and I did it. I want to say thank you God, and I got a lot of people beside me who've been there and for me since day one,” Dance said Dance will succeed Neil Elks, who was elected to the office in 2010. Previous Next

< Back Dr. Charles R. Drew Dr. Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3, 1904, in Washington, DC. Drew was a famous physician, surgeon, racial justice activist, and medical researcher who excelled in the area of blood transfusions. Dr. Charles R. Drew died on April 1, 1950, at Alamance General Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina at age 45 after being involved in an automobile accident while traveling through the area. On October 1, 1940, Dr. Drew was named as the supervisor for Great Britain’s Blood Plasma Project. There was a great need for blood plasma to help in the lifesaving medical efforts going on with World War II in Europe. Drew was recruited to organize and administer a pioneering program in the storage and preservation of blood. The project was based in New York to recruit Americans to give blood to help soldiers and civilians in Great Britain. The program acquired, tested, stored, and properly shipped blood from approximately 15,000 people over a five-month period. The project was applauded as being very successful. Dr. Drew is also credited with improving methods of blood storage which aided in creating massive scale blood banks during World War II which led to saving the lives of thousands of American Soldiers. In 1941, Dr. Drew’s research helped establish the American Red Cross Blood Bank. ---- NOTE: There is a long time myth surrounding Dr. Drews death. The gist of the myth is that Dr. Drew was denied admittance to the Alamance General Hospital, which was considered a "Whites Only" hospital because he was a Black man. And therefore, he died for lack of medical care. We, #TheGCFHawleyMuseum want to give you the information that corrects this myth. Please keep reading the article below. End Note. ------ Stranger Than Fact By Charles B. Dew / NYT April 7, 1996 The book, "One Blood The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew" By Spencie Love. Illustrated. 373 pp. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Spencie Love has written a moving and important book on race relations in America. She enters this murky world through the life, death and legend of Dr. Charles R. Drew, a gifted black surgeon and pioneer researcher on blood plasma who died following an automobile accident in rural North Carolina in 1950. Dr. Drew's death became the source of a powerful and persistent myth among African-Americans: the "father of the blood bank" had bled to death after the local white hospital refused to treat him because of his race. The author's dissection of this legend and of the reasons for its remarkable longevity is masterly. She demonstrates in clear and convincing fashion that this myth, though inaccurate, still reveals an inner core of truth about what it meant to be black in the era of racial segregation. Dr. Drew's career is fascinating on many levels. Born in 1904 into a middle-class family in Washington, he graduated from the legendary Dunbar High School, went on to Amherst College, took his medical degree in Canada at McGill University and received the degree of doctor of medical science from Columbia in 1940. During his years at Columbia, he became the first black surgical resident at Presbyterian Hospital. His research and dissertation, "Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation," led directly to two high-profile positions in 1940-41. First, he took charge of the Blood for Britain project, which was attempting to prepare and ship substantial quantities of liquid plasma to Britain in the early months of World War II. His outstanding performance brought him his next post: medical director of the first American Red Cross blood bank, located in New York City. Again, Drew performed brilliantly. He was instrumental in setting up a model program for collecting blood and processing it into dried plasma, the form preferred by the American military for overseas shipment and ready battlefield availability. His work helped save untold lives during the war and, in the opinion of the author, made him the most important single figure in this complex scientific enterprise. Drew's first love was surgery, however, and in October 1941 he returned to Washington to head the department of surgery at Howard University Medical School. He became a "leader to a rising generation of black doctors," the author notes. Between 1941 and 1950, over half of the African-American surgeons receiving board certification in the United States studied under his direct supervision. Drew's reaction when he learns that his first two graduate students in surgery have finished first and second in their certification exams is one of the most moving moments in this absorbing book. In youth Drew did not actively seek a confrontation with American racism. He believed, as Booker T. Washington had argued, that demonstrated success in demanding fields was the best challenge to prejudice; in a very real sense, his life was his protest. But he was unable to sidestep controversy indefinitely. In late 1941 and early 1942, the Red Cross, under pressure from the military, first moved to exclude black donors from the national blood program and then agreed to accept black blood but to segregate it. "As you know, there is no scientific basis for the separation of the bloods of different races except on the basis of individual blood types or groups," Drew wrote in 1942. Wounded soldiers needed blood, black donors could help provide it, and it was wrong for the government to "willfully humiliate its citizens." On the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi called Drew and the other critics of the Red Cross policy "crackpots," "Communists," "parlor pinks" and "fellow travelers" who were "trying to mongrelize this nation." Drew continued his protests and broadened his attack to include other forms of discrimination, like the American Medical Association's policy of excluding black doctors. On April 1, 1950, Drew and three other black doctors from Howard were driving through Alamance County, N.C., on their way to a medical conference, when Drew apparently fell asleep at the wheel. The car hit the shoulder going more than 70 miles per hour and rolled over; Drew suffered massive head and internal injuries. The others escaped largely unhurt. Drew was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at Alamance General, a private hospital in Burlington, where white doctors worked with genuine dedication to save his life. Plasmas and intravenous fluids were administered, but his injuries were too severe; he died less than two hours after entering the hospital. Why then the legend? Ms. Love, a historian who has taught at Duke and the University of Oregon, answers this question in part by recounting the events surrounding the death of another black man, Maltheus Avery, a student at North Carolina A & T State College, who was involved in a serious automobile accident in Alamance County on Dec. 1, 1950, eight months to the day after Dr. Drew died. Avery was refused treatment at Duke University Hospital in Durham "because Duke's 'black beds' were full." He was then taken to Durham's smaller and less well-equipped black hospital, where he died less than an hour after admission. In 1983, when the author interviewed Warmoth Gibbs, a former dean of A & T State, about Avery's death, he replied, "Wasn't he riding with Dr. Drew?" The mythology surrounding Drew's death points to a chilling consequence of American racial prejudice. Blacks were denied admittance to white hospitals countless times, and they faced an acute shortage of beds in black hospitals or in the Jim Crow wards of segregated institutions; adequate medical treatment was the exception rather than the rule. "The Drew legend is not literally true, but it reveals a larger truth at the heart of black culture," Ms. Love writes; "it demonstrates the continuing psychological trauma of segregation and racism in American life." But Dr. Drew, in life and death, also bore witness to a more humane and, the author hopes, a more powerful truth: that in the end all of us are truly of "one blood." Her superb book may carry us a step or two closer to a recognition of that indisputable fact. Note from The NYT: A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 1996, Section 7, Page 26 of the National edition with the headline: Stranger Than Fact. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/.../07/books/stranger-than-fact.html Previous Next

< Back They Marched Anyway. A group photo of the Howard University Delta Sigma Theta founders, 1913. Courtesy of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and Howard University. They Marched Anyway. Image: A group photo of the Howard University Delta Sigma Theta founders, 1913. Courtesy of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and Howard University. Front Row: Winona Cargile Alexander, Madree Penn White, Wertie Blackwell Weaver, Vashti Turley Murphy, Ethel Cuff Black, Fredericka Chase Dodd Middle Row: Pauline Orberdorfer Minor, Edna Brown Coleman, Edith Mott Young, Marguerite Young Alexander, Naomi Sewell Richardson Last Row: Myra Davis Hemmings, Mamie Reddy Rose, Bertha Pitts Campbell, Florence Letcher Toms, Olive Jones, Jessie McGwire Dent, Jimmie Bugg Middleton, Ethel Carr Watson. Not Pictured: Eliza Pearl Shippen, Osceola Macarthy Adams, Zephyr Chisom Carter. . Excerpt: "These young Black women who “marched anyway.” as the White suffragists movement leaders insulted them, belittled them, used every White woman supremacist tactic to scare them away and flat out refused to allow them to march with them in the fight for women's voting rights. They also had evidence of White suffragists’ hypocrisy through their personal experiences. Let's be clear that Alice Paul did not do Black women any favors by “letting” them join a segregated procession. Rather, it was a disappointing blow that Paul chose the comfort of segregationists over the dignity of Black women. This tension was especially palpable in the planning of the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., which was embroiled in racial controversy and internal contradictions. Alice Paul and other march organizers discouraged Black women from participating and even hoped for a low Black turnout to appease southern White suffragists. Some organizers were so intent on segregation that they planned to “strategically place” male suffrage league members in between Black and White women marchers in order to create more physical distance. An article from The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), noted how Black women’s desire to participate in the march had been contested by parade organizers: The woman’s suffrage party had a hard time settling the status of Negroes in the Washington parade. At first Negro callers were received coolly at headquarters. Then, they were told to register, but found that the registry clerks were usually out. Finally, an order went out to segregate them in the parade, but telegrams and protests poured in and eventually the colored women marched according to their State and occupation without let or hindrance. The same issue also included a report praising the women who persisted against these barriers and marched, saying, “They are to be congratulated that so many had the courage of their convictions and that they made such an admirable showing in the first great national parade.” The account of what actually occurred during the march, and Black women’s responses, is varied. One well-known story surrounds Ida B. Wells, who—after unsuccessfully lobbying for integration of the official Illinois delegation—“jumped in” to take her place with the delegation halfway through the parade. Other women chose to march in the back, or refused to participate altogether. For example, the first Black sorority at the historically Black college Howard University, Alpha Kappa Alpha (founded in 1908), had expressed interest in participating in the 1913 March. However, Paul apparently did not or could not assure their president, Nellie Quander, that they would not be met “with discrimination on account of race affiliation.” It is not known whether or how many members of Alpha Kappa Alpha ended up marching, but Paul’s ambivalence certainly kept many Black women away." . Excerpt from article source: https://www.nyhistory.org/.../girls-in-caps-and-gowns-the... . Source: https://19thnews.org/.../08/black-sororities-in-suffrage/.... Previous Next

< Back Dovey Johnson Roundtree ​ Dovey Johnson Roundtree.-Lawyer, Civil Rights Activist Even though she was not allowed to use the law library, cafeteria or restroom in the courthouse, Dovey Johnson Roundtree was a master litigator. --- BY CRISTINA B BOLLING Charlotte observer-May 21, 2018 06:24 PM Updated May 21, 2018 06:42 PM Dovey Johnson Roundtree, a pioneer of the civil rights movement who shattered color and gender barriers in the military, in transportation, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, died Monday in Charlotte. She was 104. Roundtree came of age at a time when doors were not only closed, but barricaded, for blacks and women. Yet, armed with her legal education and courage, she fought to open them. "Her life is worth pausing over because she broke barriers in so many areas," said biographer Katie McCabe on Monday. She and law partner Julius Winfield Robertson made civil rights history in 1955, in the case of an Army private named Sarah Keys, who was thrown off a bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white Marine. Roundtree and Robertson argued the case before the Interstate Commerce Commission and won. The ICC voted to end the “separate but equal” policy in interstate busing, but real change didn’t come until six years later, when the vote was finally enforced after the actions of the Freedom Riders sparked national attention. Her efforts were “a spiritual mission for Dovey,” said McCabe on Monday, from her home in Washington, D.C. “Defending the black poor and being an advocate for people who were marginalized ... rose from a religious conviction.” Roundtree was born Dovey Johnson in Charlotte on April 17, 1914. After her father died in the influenza outbreak of 1919, young Dovey, her mother and her three sisters moved in with her maternal grandparents in the historic Brooklyn neighborhood. She graduated from Charlotte’s Second Ward High School, earned a bachelor’s degree from Spelman College and went on to earn both law and divinity degrees at Howard University. After graduating from Spelman, Roundtree taught school for three years in segregated Chester, S.C., and was selected by activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune (who had been a friend of Roundtree’s grandmother) to be among the first black women to train as officers in the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. The military sent her on solo missions to recruit other black servicewomen in the South, and she was so successful, she far outpaced her supervisors' expectations. “She was a force in changing the military before it was desegregated in 1948,” said McCabe, who together with Roundtree wrote the book, "Justice Older than the Law: The Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree,” which was published in 2009. “She was a pioneer. She took the brunt of it, right in the gut, in an era when the military didn’t want black men – and they didn’t want women at all.” She faced resistance as a woman of color in the military, and when she went on to law school at Howard University on the GI bill (where she was one of only five women in her class), she battled even greater opposition. It was in the 1950s that Roundtree entered law practice in Washington, D.C., a city with a courthouse so segregated that Roundtree had to cross the street to eat or use the bathroom in the Recorder of Deeds office. In 1961, she was among the first women to be ordained to the ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and for 35 years served on the ministerial staff of Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast Washington. In 1962, she became the first black member of the Women’s Bar Association of D.C., leading to an explosion among members, many of whom who threatened to leave the association if she was admitted. Despite the change she helped create in interstate travel, some of Roundtree’s biggest headlines came as the result of her defense of a Washington, D.C., day laborer named Ray Crump, accused of the 1964 murder of a Georgetown socialite and ex-wife of a CIA officer: Mary Pinchot Meyer. In one of the most widely covered trials in Washington history, Roundtree got Crump acquitted and later became one of the city’s most well-known criminal defense attorneys. An insulin-dependent diabetic, she returned to Charlotte in the late 1990s to be near family and friends when her eyesight began to fail. Roundtree, married briefly to Bill Roundtree, is survived by her goddaughter, Charlene Pritchett-Stevenson of Spotsylvania, Va., and a cousin, Jerry L. Hunter, of Washington, D.C. Pritchett-Stevenson says that Roundtree considered her a daughter, and lived with her for some time in Washington. For Roundtree, “it all boiled down to, ‘Is there somebody I can help along the way? Do that,’” Pritchett-Stevenson says. “So I’m continuing that.” Source:http://www.charlotteobserver.com/.../article211601039.html Previous Next

< Back Mr. John William Mitchell John William Mitchell (1885 – 1955) was a 1909 graduate of the Agricultural and Mechanical College for The Colored Race (now North Carolina A&T) who became a pioneering leader in the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, and later for the United States Department of Agriculture. At one time he was seen as the nation’s most significant person of color in agriculture, second only to George Washington Carver. After earning his bachelor’s degree in agriculture, Mitchell was an assistant principal at the State Colored Normal School (now Fayetteville State University) and a principal for a Rosenwald School in Aberdeen, North Carolina. He became a N.C. extension agent in 1917 for Bladen, Columbus and Pasquotank counties to improve the living conditions of farm families by teaching best agricultural practices. This required commuting from county to county through dirt roads, by horse or bicycle, sometimes spending nights with farm families. In 1924, he was appointed to the new service district office on A&T’s campus where he would direct the extension activities for 15 counties. Among his accomplishments in this role, he built one of the largest Negro 4-H Clubs for youth in the nation. He became the state agent in charge of extension work for African Americans in N.C. in 1940. At N.C. A&T, he worked with many of the south’s greatest men and women of agriculture and vocational education like Robert E. Jones (R. E. Jones Drive), John D. Wray, Dazelle Foster Lowe, S. B. Simmons, and Dean John McLaughlin. A&T was also a family affair for the Mitchell clan. At least two of his children, Rivera and Talmadge attended A&T. His wife Lena Mae was a student in the A&T extension’s Greensboro Center. Mitchell was well known for his multiple roles as chair, director, or secretary for national and regional agricultural conferences. He was also known for his financial and innovative leadership in the lives of the state’s African American farmers, and academic and community efforts between the races in the North Carolina Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation. In 1943, Mitchell left A&T when he became a field agent for the United States Extension Service to represent 17 Southeastern states. Livingstone College awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities in 1950 for his work in improving the rural life of farmers in the South. In 1953, USDA Secretary Ezra Taft Benson appointed him to the specially created post of National Extension Leader on the Division of the Department of Cooperative Extension Work. This was the highest rank ever given to a person of color within the national extension organization. Mitchell was still serving in the USDA when he passed away on January 8, 1955, at the age of 69. He is still recognized as one of A&T’s most outstanding agriculture alumnus and was inducted into the N.C. A&T School of Agriculture Hall of Fame in 1996. John W. Mitchell Drive on A&T’s Campus was dedicated in the 1975-76 academic year. In addition, during the 2014 centennial celebration for the cooperative extension he was remembered as one of five key pioneers of the N.C. A&T Cooperative Extension program. Source: A&T Alumni https://relations.ncat.edu/.../2018/aug31/blufordaug.html --- Life of An Extension Agent : John W. Mitchell By: James Stewart - NCSU EDU Library - December 11, 2015 John W. Mitchell* (1886-1955) was a pioneering African American extension agent and educator who became one of the most well known Cooperative Extension agents in the nation. A native of Morehead City, North Carolina, Mitchell graduated from the State Colored Normal School (now Fayetteville State University), earned a B.S. in agriculture from the Agricultural and Mechanical College for The Colored Race (now North Carolina A&T State University) in 1908 and studied sociology in graduate school at Indiana Central University in Indianapolis (now the University of Indianapolis). After serving as an assistant and lead principal at two high schools, he became an extension agent in 1917. At first he served the North Carolina counties of Bladen, Columbus and Pasquotank, commuting from county to county by horse or bicycle. In 1922 Mitchell was appointed to the newly created extension service district office at the A&T campus in Greensboro where he would direct the extension activities for 15 counties. During this time he is said to have built one of the largest Negro 4-H Clubs in the nation. In 1940, following the death of C. R. Hudson, who was responsible for extension and 4-H club work for the entire state, Mitchell became the “State Agent for Negro Work” or the state extension agent for African Americans. In the A&T position John W. Mitchell was well known for his financial and innovative leadership in the lives of the state's African American farmers. He was also active in academic and community efforts between Whites and Blacks. He participated in the North Carolina Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation to advocate for state and national anti-lynching laws, and he spoke at churches for Race Relation Sunday services. In 1943 Mitchell moved to Virginia after he was appointed the field agent for the United States Extension Service to represent 17 southeastern states or the “Upper South’s Field Agent in Negro Extension Work." His office was based at the Hampton Institute in Virginia. During the Second World War and postwar era, 4-H membership soared, and Mitchell served as Director of Regional 4-H Club camps for Negro boys and girls in addition to multiple roles as chair director or secretary for national and regional agricultural conferences. By 1950 Mitchell was renowned as one of the top agricultural experts in the nation. That same year Livingston College awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities for his work in improving the rural life of farmers in the South. Three years later, United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson appointed him to the specially created post of National Extension Leader on the staff of the Division of the Department of Cooperative Extension Work, the highest rank ever given up to that time to a person of color within the national extension organization. Mitchell was still serving in this position when on he passed away in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 7, 1955, at the age of 69. In his memory the J. W. Mitchell 4-H Camp was dedicated in June 1956 in Onslow County, North Carolina, and a building was named for him at Fayetteville State University in 1955. Mitchell’s legacy has continued for decades. He was inducted into the N. C. A&T School of Agriculture Hall of Fame in 1996. At a 2014 centennial celebration he was remembered as one of five key pioneers of the A&T Cooperative Extension program. *The extension agent John W. Mitchell should not be confused with Dr. John W. Mitchell (b. 1905), the principal physiologist of the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering in Beltsville, Maryland. Bibliography: Research for this blog post yielded scores of newspaper and peer-reviewed journal articles, history books, and archival finding aids on the life and work of John W. Mitchell. His tasks, accomplishments and honors are too numerous to list here. Clark, J. W. (1984). Clover all over: North Carolina 4-H in action. Raleigh: NCSU, 4-H & Youth. Also available online: Clark, J. W. (2011). Clover all over: North Carolina's first 4-H century, 1909-2009 . Raleigh, N.C: Published by the North Carolina 4-H Development Fund, in cooperation with Ivy House Pub. Group. Cooperative Extension commemorates 100th anniversary of landmark legislation. (2014, October 1). On The Move (newsletter), 2-2. Hall of Fame Inductions Planned. (1996, March 26). Greensboro News and Record . Retrieved October 21, 2105. Race Farmers Will Fare Well In 1950, Experts Say . (1950, January 14). Philadelphia Inquirer . Retrieved October 21, 2015. Untitled article. (1950, June 24). The Carolina Times. p. 4. Retrieved December 10, 2015 Urges State Anti-lynch Law. (1937, May 5). Greensboro Record (Greensboro News and Record), p. 7. Retrieved October 21, 2015. Images and 2nd narrative source: https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/.../life-of-an-extension-agent...)%2C%20earned%20a%20B.S. Previous Next

< Back Geer Cemetery NOTE: This article is about the efforts to rescue, preserve, maintain and honor African American burial grounds. With profiles about Oberlin Cemetery in Raleigh, NC, and Durham’s Geer Cemetery, NOTE: This article is about the efforts to rescue, preserve, maintain and honor African American burial grounds. With profiles about Oberlin Cemetery in Raleigh, NC, and Durham’s Geer Cemetery, -End Note. When Black History Is Unearthed, Who Gets To Speak For The Dead? Efforts to rescue African American burial grounds and remains have exposed deep conflicts over inheritance and representation. American Chronicles October 4, 2021 Issue By Jill Lepore - September 27, 2021 "Herein lie buried many things." —W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903. When Deidre Barnes was a kid in North Carolina, horsing around in the back seat of the car with her little brother, her grandfather drove by the woods in a white neighborhood in Durham. “You got cousins up in there,” he called back from the driver’s seat, nodding at a stand of loblolly pines in a tangle of kudzu. Barnes and her brother exchanged wide-eyed glances: they had cousins who were wild people? Only later, looking hard, did they spy a headstone: “Oh, it’s a cemetery.” A few years ago, Barnes read in the newspaper that the place was called Geer. “My grandmother’s maiden name is Geer,” she told me. “And so I asked her, ‘Do we have people buried there?’ ” I met Barnes at the cemetery on a warm, cicada night, with Debra Gonzalez-Garcia, the president of the Friends of Geer Cemetery. “When I was growing up, I could name five African Americans in history,” Gonzalez-Garcia said. “Five. Nobody else did anything.” At least fifteen hundred people who did all sorts of things are buried in Geer Cemetery, including Deidre Barnes’s great-grandfather, a grandson of Jesse Geer, a plantation owner who sold two acres of land to three Black freedmen in 1877. Gonzalez-Garcia and her team have been painstakingly reconstructing the cemetery’s population from its two hundred surviving headstones and from burial cards recorded by the W.P.A. in the nineteen-thirties. The movement to save Black cemeteries has been growing for decades, led by Black women like Barnes and Gonzalez-Garcia, who have families to care for and work full-time jobs but volunteer countless hours and formidable organizing skills looking after the dead and upending American history. They transcribe death certificates; they collect oral histories. They bring in community organizations—Keep Durham Beautiful helps out at Geer—and hand out rakes and shears and loppers to Scouts and college students, tackling poison ivy that’s strangling trees. They hold tours, warning everyone to wear long pants, because of the snakes. They work with churches. They work with businesses: Durham Marble Works repairs broken headstones. Eagle Scouts installed Carolina gravel along what might once have been a carriage road. An archeological survey will be done soon, to make sure that, when you walk that road, you’re not stepping on sunken graves. “The people who started White Rock Baptist Church and St. Joseph’s A.M.E.,” Barnes told me, “they’re buried here.” She and Gonzalez-Garcia seemed to know each epitaph, telling story after story about African American families who thrived in the early years after Reconstruction—getting college degrees, starting businesses—only to lose most of their gains to segregation and swindles. “Olivia Tilley Wills,” Gonzalez-Garcia said, pointing to a stone, amid the overgrowth. “She was married twice. There was a big court case about her estate. She had investments.” Underneath America lies an apartheid of the departed. Violence done to the living is usually done to their dead, who are dug up, mowed down, and built on. In the Jim Crow South, Black people paid taxes that went to building and erecting Confederate monuments. They buried their own dead with the help of mutual-aid societies, fraternal organizations, and insurance policies. Cemeteries work on something like a pyramid scheme: payments for new plots cover the cost of maintaining old ones. “Perpetual care” is, everywhere, notional, but that notion relies on an accumulation of capital that decades of disenfranchisement and discrimination have made impossible in many Black communities, even as racial terror also drove millions of people from the South during the Great Migration, leaving their ancestors behind. It’s amazing that Geer survived. Durham’s other Black cemeteries were run right over. “Hickstown’s part of the freeway,” Gonzalez-Garcia told me, counting them off. “Violet Park is a church parking lot.” What would it mean for the future of the United States to mark and honor these places? In 2019, the four-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first captive Africans in Virginia, members of Congress from North Carolina and Virginia, inspired by volunteer organizations like the Friends of Geer, introduced the African-American Burial Grounds Network Act. Last year, an amended version passed unanimously in the Senate. It doesn’t come with any money, but if it’s enacted it will authorize the National Park Service to coördinate efforts to identify, preserve, and interpret places like Geer, Hickstown, and Violet Park. Federal legislation might also provide some legal clarity. A few years ago, a Geer neighbor took down a giant tree; as it fell, it crushed a row of headstones. They’re pinned there still. There’s little the Friends can do about that: they don’t own the land. “Legally, this place is considered abandoned,” Gonzalez-Garcia explained. “The city hasn’t traced anyone who’s inherited the title.” The Friends of Geer can’t find a titleholder, either, and not for lack of trying. Their work is guided by the principle that descendants (“people with bodies in the ground”) should decide what to do with the cemetery. They’ve so far found about fifty. They’re still looking. Meanwhile, that same principle—that descendants decide—lies at the center of a widening controversy about human remains in the collections of universities and anatomical and anthropological museums. It has led to a proposal for another piece of federal legislation modelled on the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, nagpra, but for African American graves—an aagpra. This spring, in an essay published in Nature, three young Black archeologists called for, among other things, a halt to the unethical study of all human remains in the United States until those of people descended from Africans can be identified, and descendants found and consulted. Another group of Black archeologists argued that, on the contrary, suspending research would only further widen the gap between what scientists know about people of African and European ancestry, leading to worse public-health outcomes for African Americans, who are already adversely affected by a history of medical mistreatment and poor representation in everything from clinical trials to the human-genome project. Antiracist orthodoxy has it that everything’s either antiracist or racist: there is no other position. This anguished disagreement reveals the limits of that premise. It isn’t merely an academic dispute. The proposed burial-grounds network and graves-protection acts are parts of a larger public deliberation, less the always elusive “national conversation” than a quieter collective act of conscientious mourning, expressed, too, in new monuments and museum exhibits. History gets written down in books but, like archeology, it can seep up from the earth itself, from a loamy underground of sacred, ancient things: gravestones tucked under elms and tangled by vines; iron-nailed coffins trapped beneath pavement and parking lots and highway overpasses. How and whether the debates over human remains get resolved holds consequences not only for how Americans understand the country’s past but also for how they picture its future. The dispute itself, along the razor’s edge between archeology and history, is beset by a horrible irony. Enslavement and segregation denied people property and ancestry. But much here appears to turn on inheritance and title: Who owns these graveyards? Who owns these bones? Who owns, and what is owed? "Bury me not in a land of slaves." —Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, 1858. When I went to Geer Cemetery, dusty with Carolina gravel, I was about midway through a road trip from New Hampshire to Florida. I’d plotted a route that would take me through battlefields in today’s history-and-archeology wars. I started out in Portsmouth, a brick city founded in 1652 along the Piscataqua River and the site of the northernmost African burial-ground memorial in the United States, and I ended in the Tampa Bay area, on the Gulf Coast, incorporated in 1866, where a half-dozen paved-over Black cemeteries holding thousands of graves have been found in the past two years alone, including under a parking lot at the Rays’ baseball stadium, Tropicana Field. In an interview Toni Morrison gave in 1989, she explained why she’d written “Beloved,” a novel whose title is an epitaph. “There is no place that you and I can go to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves,” she said. No marker or plaque, no museum or statue. “There’s not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit, or you can visit, in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence or better still on the banks of the Mississippi.” Three decades after “Beloved,” people everywhere are tending to markers. Portsmouth’s Negro Burying Ground first appeared on a map in 1705 and disappeared only after 1902, but it had already been built over by the eighteen-teens. Primus Fowle, an enslaved artisan who operated the press that printed the New Hampshire Gazette, was buried there in 1791. The Gazette printed an epitaph: “Now he’s dead, we sure may say / Of him, as of all men, / That while in silent graves they lay / They’ll not be plag’d agen.” In October, 2003, construction crews working on a sewer line under Chestnut Street discovered eight coffins, which turned out to be a fraction of those buried there. In deciding what to do next, Portsmouth took as its model the New York African Burial Ground Project, an effort that began in 1992, after the remains of hundreds of people—at a site that held some twenty thousand—were found in lower Manhattan during excavations for a federal office building. Because these weren’t Native American graves, no law explicitly applied to burial grounds which would prevent the government from continuing to excavate and build. Protests persuaded Congress to authorize funds for a memorial. Michael Blakey, a bioarcheologist then at Howard University, led the study of the remains and artifacts; he also pioneered a protocol for collaborating with the Black community, rather than leaving decisions to white property owners, government officials, and archeologists. Under nagpra, indigenous artifacts and remains were returned to Native nations designated as their “culturally affiliated group.” Blakey created an analogous group-rights category: what he called the “descendant community.” Descendants can be hard to find, for reasons that have everything to do with the atrocities of slavery, which stole people from their homes, separated children and parents, barred marriage, and assigned to people no family name except that of the people who claimed to own them. You can find Primus Fowle at Findagrave.com, but you can’t find his family tree at Ancestry.com. Given the difficulty of identifying literal descendants, the New York African Burial Ground Project used a proxy—the local community of African Americans. Portsmouth’s population is more than ninety per cent white. The city council appointed a committee, led by a local Black educator, that, in the absence of a descendant community, held public meetings and selected a memorial designed around the theme of honoring those who have been forgotten. Sometimes the people in charge of a site do nothing more than consult with a descendant community after the fact. In an article published last year, Blakey denounced some white archeologists working in this field for “appropriating” human remains and “avoiding acknowledgment and redress of White racism, blinded to their own deep subjectivity and deaf to critiques of those who are not of their own White likeness and presumed neutral voice.” (Blakey declined to speak with me.) In 2003, just as Portsmouth’s site was discovered, the New York remains were carried from Blakey’s lab at Howard back to New York and reburied in a series of ceremonies called the Rites of Ancestral Return. The site is now a national monument. Here, too, Portsmouth followed New York’s example: in 2015, the remains found in 2003 were placed in eight coffins and reburied in a vault beneath that block of Chestnut, now permanently closed to through traffic, at the unveiling of a memorial featuring eight golden silhouettes that appear to rise up from the ground. A trail of red bricks is inscribed with the words from a petition that African-born Portsmouth men submitted to the New Hampshire legislature in 1779, seeking emancipation and pleading “that the name of ‘slave’ may no longer be heard in the land gloriously contending for the sweets of freedom.” More unknown sites are sure to turn up, especially if the African-American Burial Grounds Network Act passes. Still, not all African burial grounds in the North have disappeared. Last March, Keith Stokes, whose first African ancestor arrived in Philadelphia and moved to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1795, buried his mother beside seven generations of his family in an area now called God’s Little Acre. (In 2019, the Newport site was awarded a fifty-thousand-dollar grant from the African American Cultural Action Fund, which is part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.) What survives in God’s Little Acre is a measure of what’s been lost elsewhere. Its every headstone, including those carved by an enslaved eighteenth-century artisan named Pompe Stevens and dozens with engraved portraits—faces with strikingly African features—contains a record not found in any archive. As Stokes told me, “It’s a repository of African American heritage and history.” Vincent Brown, a colleague of mine who teaches in Harvard’s departments of history and African and African American studies, has ancestors who were enslaved in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake. He coined the expression “mortuary politics,” to describe the uses to which mid-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century diasporic Africans put the dead. Lately, there’s a partisan politics to mortuary politics. “I’d for sure rather have voting rights than Juneteenth,” Brown told me. “But who knows where that goes, because anytime someone is celebrating the dead it’s not really about the past—it’s about how we imagine the future.” A century ago, when white supremacists destroyed Black cemeteries and erected Confederate monuments, they weren’t so much honoring the Lost Cause as advancing their cause: segregation forever. A risk, in this fraught moment, is of getting strangled by their dead hands. White Tea Partiers dressed up like George Washington; Black Lives Matter activists demanded the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. The Trump Administration answered the New York Times’ 1619 Project with its 1776 Commission. And then what? “There’s a strange overlap between people who don’t want to think about the history of slavery and people who fixate on the politics of race only in terms of slavery,” Brown said. Both assume that “the conflicts of the past are necessarily the conflicts of the present and the future, as if somehow the descendants of the slaveholders and of the slaves are supposed to be aligned with their ancestors forever.” In Albany, a graveyard not on any map was found in 2005, on the onetime plantation of a cousin of Philip Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law. It held the bodies of African-descended people, mainly children and babies, all buried before 1790. Cordell Reaves, who is African American, was working for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation when he learned about the Albany remains. Those bones went to the New York State Museum for analysis. “What people ate, where people were from, where their ancestors hailed from, understanding the effect of the brutal physical labor they were forced to endure,” he told me. “That story is etched into their actual bones.” For a long time, Reaves tried without success to get people interested in a reburial. In 2015, it finally came together: a Catholic cemetery donated plots; woodworkers built coffins, and artists and schoolchildren decorated them. The dead lay in state in the front hall of Schuyler Mansion before the multi-faith burial, in one of the best attended and most moving public-history events the state has ever hosted. Reaves wept. “It was like lightning struck,” he told me. All that night and the next day, people read poems, and sang, and danced. “Something about this captured people,” Reaves said, tearing up again. “I’m not sure what it was. But I keep coming back to the word ‘reconciliation.’ ” He’s got a slightly different notion of what a descendant community might be. “I looked out at the sea of people that were there,” he said. “This country is rooted in the story of enslaved people. This is everyone’s history.” You can be a cynic about all of this, Reaves admitted. It’s one thing to pray for the dead; it’s another to look after the living. But Reaves isn’t cynical. “It’s a door,” he said. “You open it, some of them will walk through.” The question is what lies on the other side. "God has no children whose rights may be safely trampled on." —Frederick Douglass, 1854. Samuel Morton, a Philadelphia doctor, began collecting skulls in 1830. Determined to study the craniums of the world’s five newly classified “races,” he directed faraway correspondents to dig up graves and ship him heads, eventually amassing nearly nine hundred, including, closer to home, those of fourteen Black Philadelphians. Morton is buried in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery, under an obelisk inscribed, “Wherever Truth Is Loved or Science Honored, His Name Will Be Revered.” In 1854, three years after Morton’s death, Frederick Douglass called his work “scientific moonshine,” but it took more than a century for scientists to disavow the notion of biological race. And yet calls for the return of those remains rest on a notion of race, too. Christopher Woods, a Sumerologist from the University of Chicago, is the first Black director of the Penn Museum, in Philadelphia. In April, not yet two weeks after he began his appointment, the museum issued a statement apologizing “for the unethical possession of human remains in the Morton Collection” and pledging to return them “to their ancestral communities.” Penn is not alone. In January, the president of Harvard issued a similar apology and charged a committee to inventory the human remains found in its museums, with priority given to those of “individuals of African descent who were or were likely to have been alive during the period of American enslavement.” As Evelynn Hammonds, a historian of science who chairs the Harvard committee, told me, “No one institution can solve all these questions alone.” But Penn has other problems. Days after Woods’s first apology, the museum issued another one, this time for holding on to the remains of a Black child killed by police in 1985 during a raid against the Black-liberation organization move. (The police bombed the move house, and eleven people, including five children, were burned to death.) The museum returned those remains to the families this summer. As for the rest of the remains, including the Morton collection, “We want to do the right thing,” Woods told me. “We want to be able to repatriate individuals when descendant communities want that to be done.” During the years when Morton was collecting skulls, much of Philadelphia’s African American community was burying its dead in a cemetery on Queen Street that’s now a playground called Weccacoe, for a Lenni Lenape word that means “peaceful place.” The day I stopped there, the playground was a tumble of sippy cups and strollers, water buckets and tubes of sunscreen, and toddlers playing pirates. Underneath lie thousands of graves. Pennsylvania passed a gradual abolition law in 1780, and by the seventeen-nineties Philadelphia had a thriving free Black community, much of it centered on what is now the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1810, the Bethel church trustees and the A.M.E.’s founder, Richard Allen, bought a city block on Queen Street. Until 1864, the congregation used the land as a burial ground and then, in 1889, strapped for cash, sold it to cover the cost of a new church. The burial ground became a park, and then a playground. Nearly half the city’s population is Black, but the city’s monuments and museums mostly commemorate Benjamin Franklin, the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, and the drafting of the Constitution. Avenging the Ancestors, a coalition formed in 2002 to advocate for a slavery memorial in the city, has taken a broad view of the notion of a descendant community, describing its members as “today’s free Black sons and daughters” of “yesterday’s enslaved Black fathers and mothers.” In 2010, Terry Buckalew, an independent researcher and aging antiwar activist, read in the newspaper that the city was about to renovate Weccacoe. “They were going to dig it up,” he told me. “They were going to put in new trees, new light poles, and a sprinkler. And I said, ‘Oh, no. The bodies are still there!’ ” Three years later, the city conducted a ground-penetrating-radar survey and concluded that the site, the Bethel Burying Ground, contained at least five thousand bodies. Buckalew, who is white, has spent his retirement researching the lives of those thousands of Black Philadelphians. I asked him why. “Reparations,” he said. “I firmly believe in reparations.” Reparations rest on arguments about inheritance and descent. But, if genealogy has a new politics, it has always been urgent. After Emancipation, people put ads in newspapers, desperately looking for their children, husbands, wives, and parents. “information wanted of my mother, Lucy Smith, of Hopkinsville, Ky., formerly the slave of Dr. Smith. She was sold to a Mr. Jenks of Louisiana,” Ephraim Allen of Philadelphia posted in the Christian Recorder in 1868. Today, reparative genealogical projects in search of descendants put out calls on social media and ask people to fill out Google Forms. One of the most successful, the Georgetown Memory Project, has been looking for direct descendants of two hundred and seventy-two enslaved people sold by the Jesuit Society that ran Georgetown in 1838, mostly to pay off debts. So far, the project, in conjunction with independent researchers and American Ancestors (the nation’s oldest genealogical research organization, which established pedigrees for Mayflower descendants), has located more than eight thousand descendants. In 2019, after a student-driven referendum, the university announced a plan to provide four hundred thousand dollars a year in reparations, in the form of “community-based projects to benefit Descendant communities.” Reparations hasn’t been the dominant note sounded in Philadelphia over Bethel, perhaps in part because it was the A.M.E. Church that sold the burial ground. Still, there’s been plenty of controversy, along with the usual and more than usual delays of a complicated city-planning process. But last year the Bethel Burying Ground Historic Site Memorial Committee selected a proposal by the award-winning artist Karyn Olivier, for a memorial titled “Her Luxuriant Soil.” Olivier, who teaches sculpture at Temple University, was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1968. “My ancestors were slaves, but not here,” she told me. Olivier likes to work with soil: “It holds history and holds loss and holds pain.” But she took her title from a speech made by Richard Allen in 1817, before a meeting of three thousand free men of African heritage, who’d gathered to debate a proposal, mostly favored by Southern slaveowners, for resettling free Black men and women in West Africa. “Whereas our ancestors (not of choice) were the first cultivators of the wilds of America,” Allen said, “we their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil.” Olivier’s elegiac design incorporates features discovered during excavation of the site, including the inscription found on the only headstone that was unearthed: “Amelia Brown, 1819, Aged 26 years. Whosoever live and believeth in me, though we be dead, yet, shall we live.” A wrought-iron cemetery gate reading “Bethel Burying Ground” will mark the entrance to the park—half of which will still be a playground—where paving stones engraved with epitaphs will have something of the quality of Germany’s Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, marked with the names of those who were killed in the Holocaust. You won’t trip over Olivier’s installation; instead, inscribed into water-activated concrete, the words will appear, and disappear, with rain, snow, and a sprinkler system. The plan is to break ground in March. But it won’t be very broken: the graves lie only inches deep. Olivier’s work stands at the vanguard of a mournful aesthetic, closely associated with a Philadelphia-based non-profit called the Monument Lab, which, with a four-million-dollar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is reimagining the nation’s public memory. In September, the Monument Lab released the results of a National Monument Audit as a prelude to opening ten field offices across the country—places in need of new monuments “to transform the way our country’s history is told in public spaces.” The stops along my route began to appear to me to be gathered together by thread. The artist Sonya Clark, who teaches at Amherst College, has worked with the Monument Lab, and she also once collaborated with a carver named Nicholas Benson, who owns the stone-carving shop in Newport where Pompe Stevens etched headstones: Benson carved the word “slave,” in Italian, in Roman capitals in marble, then sent her the dust. Clark likes to work with dust the way Olivier likes to work with soil. “To gather dust is to gather up all that is around us that is sloughed off,” she told me. In 2019, Clark covered a floor with dust she’d collected from Philadelphia sites like Independence Hall and Declaration House, and—dressed as a charwoman named Ella Watson, photographed by Gordon Parks in 1942—got down on one knee with a bucket of soapy water and scrubbed the floor with a Confederate-flag hand towel, to reveal the words “We hold these truths . . .” "Let the people see what they did to my boy." —Mamie Till-Mobley, 1955. Washington, D.C., is a monument to the dead. But the “national” dead rest on top of the Black dead: Arlington National Cemetery started out as a Black burial ground, the former plantation of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, seized by the Union during the Civil War. After Appomattox, James Parks, once enslaved, dug the graves of the white Union dead; the United States Colored Troops were buried in a separate section. In 1898, President William McKinley opened Arlington to the Confederate dead, declaring, “In the spirit of fraternity, we should share with you in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers.” In 1914, Woodrow Wilson dedicated a thirty-two-foot monument to the Confederacy, on Jefferson Davis’s birthday. Having admitted secessionists, Arlington remained racially segregated until Harry S. Truman integrated the military, in 1948. A bill introduced in 2020, the Removing Confederate Names and Symbols from Our Military Act, would, if passed, call for taking down the Confederate monument. But, like a lot of gestures made in 2020, nothing has yet come of it. Washington’s newest monument is written on the ground across from the White House, where yellow painted letters spell black lives matter. If a commitment to naming and marking the Black dead undergirds reparation efforts, it also informs the design of new monuments and museum exhibits. They cleave to the same dark themes—dust and soil, ancestors and descendants, death and resurrection—because the spectre and the spectacle of Black death lie at the heart not only of anti-Black violence but also of Black freedom struggles. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opened in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2018, suspends from its ceiling hundreds of steel coffins, memorials to victims of lynching. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016, displays Emmett Till’s glass-topped casket. In September, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History installed a single artifact in a vast hall at the entrance of the museum, a historical marker that, until recently, stood along the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where Till’s body was found. It’s a sign, evocative of an old headstone, that not long ago had been shot by vandals three hundred and seventeen times. Dimpled with BBs, pocked with shotgun blasts, riddled with the bullets of semi-automatic weapons, the sign now stands as a monument not to the past but to our violent national present. “It is an object of such pain,” Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director, said to me. “How do you memorialize when you’re still in the middle?” The historian Tsione Wolde-Michael, who co-curated the Till exhibit, is also the director of a new Center for Restorative History. “There are very few historical moments that create openings like the one we have right now,” Wolde-Michael told me. “You have publics around the globe that are pushing not just museums but universities, and governments, all sorts of major institutions, to not just issue solidarity statements, but to create altogether new structures.” Lonnie Bunch III, the first Black secretary of the Smithsonian, has charged the National Museum of Natural History, down the block from the American-history museum, with assessing its human remains and sorting out individuals of African descent. Sabrina Sholts, a museum curator of biological anthropology, is leading that effort, from an office where a plastic skeleton, propped up in a corner, gathers dust. The audit is beset by a paradox: the people who collected these remains did so in order to invent “race” as a biological category, one that does not exist, but one that has to be used, somehow, to identify what remains can be considered those of African heritage. “Our discipline, biological anthropology, helped reify race,” Sholts told me. “And now we need to explain to the public that race does not describe biological variation.” Here’s one way of thinking about this impasse. Democratic political struggle rests on the idea that ancestry is not destiny. But American history has betrayed that idea through centuries of state-imposed inequality, discrimination, and disenfranchisement. There is therefore no path to equality without measures aimed at repair: restorative history, reparations, the return of remains. But these measures sometimes advance the anti-democratic idea that ancestry is destiny. Politicians are trapped in this maze; you can hear them in there, screaming. Can archeologists and genealogists, curators and artists, and, not least, everyday people who volunteer in cemeteries find a way out? Among the remains Sholts’s committee will consider are thirty-three skeletons found in Maryland in 1979, during the expansion of a state road through what turned out to have been a slave cemetery at Catoctin Furnace, an ironworks. (Catoctin isn’t far from Gettysburg, along a route taken by Civil War battleground tourists, where the highway signs read “Hallowed Ground.”) “It’s an accident of history that we have these bones,” Elizabeth Comer, the head of the Museum of the Ironworker, told me, but the museum is able to tell its visitors about those lives because of what has been learned from the remains by Sholts’s curatorial colleague Doug Owsley. Owsley’s study, along with sequencing done by the Harvard geneticist David Reich, is the kind of research that people calling for aagpra want halted, until a descendant community can be found and consulted. (Owsley says that the local African American community supports the research.) As for what to do with the Catoctin remains now, Comer, too, believes that it’s up to the descendants, except that, after years of steadfast searching, she has yet to find any. Why add only historical African Americans to a protected category? If collecting human remains without consent is wrong, which was nagpra’s argument, why not include everyone? Sholts’s answer is that no one is more powerless to give consent than a person held as property, so the work has to begin there. She sees this change of approach as generational, and she’s a part of the new generation. Among the leaders of that generational change are Ayana Omilade Flewellen, from U.C. Riverside, and Justin Dunnavant, of U.C.L.A., co-founders of the Society of Black Archaeologists. They’re trying to build the kind of restorative justice-based structures in archeology that Tsione Wolde-Michael wants to build in history. In an essay that appeared this past April in American Antiquity, Dunnavant, Wolde-Michael, and others warned, “The future of archaeology is antiracist, or it is nothing.” The next month, Nature published an essay, by Dunnavant and others, calling for the creation of an aagpra, while acknowledging that “centuries of displacement and sparse genealogical records for African Americans can mean that it is difficult to link a set of human remains to specific Black descendants.” The sensible solution, they argue, is to define “descendants both in genealogical terms and more inclusively, to welcome input from African Americans whose ancestors had a shared historical experience.” According to guidelines established in 2018 by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, that shared historical experience is enslavement. For Dunnavant, it’s also being Black in America. “We need to do this research on behalf of the communities we are studying,” Dunnavant told me. The Society of Black Archaeologists is calling for a national audit of all human remains. But the universal keeps straining against the particular. The people whose remains were most likely to be taken without their consent are also the people whose lives are the least well documented in paper archives, the people about whom forensic and genetic analysis has the most to tell. That’s why Henry Louis Gates, Jr., disagrees with aspects of the aagpra approach. Gates, who serves on the Harvard human-remains committee, has been studying the diaspora through historical records, genealogy, and DNA for decades. In 2006, he started a PBS series called “African American Lives” that spurred interest in genealogy in the African American community. Gates grew up in West Virginia, where he visited the “colored” cemetery. “My grandfather and my grandmother were buried there,” he told me. He hasn’t had a strong emotional response to the African-burial-ground ceremonies he’s seen, with kente cloth and African drumming. “I’m deeply moved by the recovery of remains,” Gates says, “but I worry that sometimes an excess of kitsch substitutes for substantial reflection about the meaning and import of the burial sites.” Although he believes in a notion of descent that encompasses shared historical experience, he thinks that decisions “shouldn’t be made exclusively by local Black families who happened to live there” but through a process of collective deliberation involving genealogical descendants, representatives of the local Black community, scientists, and other researchers. For Gates, DNA research has the potential to repair some of the damage done by slavery: it can restore links that were severed when families were separated and genealogical evidence was destroyed. Otherwise, it’s a Catch-22: not sequencing the DNA makes it harder to find the descendants to ask for their permission to sequence the DNA. “This is magical stuff,” Gates said. “It’s the only way to connect the dead to the living. It’s the only way these dead can speak. Some people think they should be buried and sealed. I believe in respecting the dead. I also respect the living.” Fatimah Jackson, a professor of biology at Howard University, has been weighing the implications of aagpra for scientific research. (Jackson, like Blakey, is a former director of Howard’s W. Montague Cobb Research Laboratory, which houses the largest collection of African American skeletal remains in the world—a collection that Cobb assembled to refute the work of people like Samuel Morton.) Suspending research, she argues, will affect public health, widening historical inequities and leaving the African American community even less well represented in databases that are essential to practices expected to be central to the future of medicine. What should be done when one kind of restorative racial justice conflicts with another? Jackson is unpersuaded by the contention that all people whose ancestors were enslaved ought to be called upon to decide what to do with their remains. “Scientists know more about Neanderthals than modern humans recently out of Africa,” she said. And she’s skeptical of Dunnavant and his co-authors “speaking for forty million people, or even for four people.” She thinks their rhetoric of representation is misbegotten. “What sampling method is that?” she asks. “Does he speak for Black America? Or do I speak for Black America? It’s ludicrous.” She also believes that, on balance, African Americans (who lately, like the rest of the country, have tended to cremate their dead) would want the research to proceed and that, meanwhile, if the scientific community needs to make an ethical assessment about future research, it should engage in a deliberative process, perhaps involving a series of conferences with Black lawyers, doctors, clergy, ethicists, and scientists. That deliberative body sounds something like the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, called for by Congress in 1974 in the aftermath of revelations about the experiments done on Black men at Tuskegee. The commission—eleven scientists, ethicists, lawyers, and activists who deliberated for nearly four years—produced the landmark “Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research,” better known as the Belmont Report. It might be time for a new commission, on the Protection of Human Subjects, Postmortem. Still, it’s easy to imagine that venture falling apart before it even starts, over the vexing question of who can speak for the dead. "Why do you not propose a cemetery for the illustrious Negro dead?" —Zora Neale Hurston to W. E. B. Du Bois, 1945. Near Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, Brian Palmer met me at East End and Evergreen Cemeteries with his little black dog, Teacake, named, he said, “for the one good male character in Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’ ” Palmer, an award-winning journalist, helped found Friends of East End, in 2017. “I’m a descendant,” he told me, hitching Teacake’s leash to a carabiner dangling from a belt loop and waving to me across a locked gate. The cemeteries, both founded in the eighteen-nineties by African American citizens, are open only to descendants and, for now, only with advance notice. Between 2019 and 2020, the Enrichmond Foundation, a nonprofit that had no experience with cemeteries or with historical preservation, acquired both of them, an area that stretches across seventy-six acres. “The state secretly anointed this white-led organization and said, We’ll do what we want, and then we’ll worry about the descendants,” Palmer said. “In my humble, grumpy-ass view.” Enrichmond plans to develop a tourist site (Palmer calls it a “recreation plantation”), with an estimated price tag of $1.9 million, including a visitor center, bike trails, and hundreds of feet of electrical, sewer, and water lines—all plans that could disturb unmarked graves. Last winter, members of Richmond’s Black community formed a descendants council: they consider the site hallowed ground, and they have asked the governor to suspend the development’s funding. But Enrichmond has enlisted its own group of descendants, including John Mitchell, a descendant of Richmond’s celebrated Black newspaper editor John Mitchell, Jr., who is buried in Evergreen. Mitchell is also “Enrichmond’s Family Ambassador,” and the man you’ve got to notify before you enter the cemetery. While Palmer and I were walking around with Teacake in tow, Mitchell pulled up in a pickup truck. He waved hello but eyed us warily. “Brian has valid concerns about descendant representation,” Mitchell later said. “But twisting the words and actions of those descendants that chose to get inside this system is not productive.” The term “descendant community” comes from Michael Blakey’s work on the New York African Burial Ground, but it also has roots in sites of conscience, where the terms are “families of the missing” or “communities of mourners”—labels that apply equally well to U.S. sites of mass atrocity, like Tulsa, where archeologists have been uncovering a grave believed to hold the bodies of hundreds of African Americans who were killed in the 1921 massacre. The human-rights scholar Adam Rosenblatt, the author of “Digging for the Disappeared,” is struck by the relationship between descendant communities and communities of mourners. “These are the people who matter the most,” he told me. “But what it often too quickly translates into is the assumption that somehow those people are always going to agree with each other.” Which, as a visit to East End and Evergreen makes clear, isn’t necessarily what happens. Palmer, pointing out that the condition of these cemeteries is a consequence of disenfranchisement, argues for a democratic solution. “There are people who still have deeds to their plots, people in the ground,” Palmer said. “Let’s gather around a table. Let’s vote. Isn’t that what democracy is for?” After Richmond, I travelled through the heart of the Confederacy, from cemetery to cemetery. The Oberlin Cemetery, in Raleigh, NC was one of the smallest, with about six hundred bodies interred beneath magnolias and oaks. Cheryl Williams’s family is buried there, and she’s the cemetery’s steward, but she doesn’t expect ever to lie in any grave. “My family recently, we’ve been going with cremation,” she told me. The Friends of Oberlin Village gives amazing tours. Williams said, “We’re at a time when people are ready to hear these stories and accept them as true history.” But in Charleston I wasn’t so sure. The neighborhood around Bethel United Methodist Church, on Calhoun Street, sits atop graveyards, including Bethel’s own, containing the remains of congregants, white and Black. The church grounds are covered in dug-up old headstones, lying in beds of pine needles and on patches of shaggy grass, some rescued by the church, others left by neighbors who came across them in their back yards. (“Sacred to the Memory of Laurence Carnes,” one 1805 stone reads. “Disturb not his bones while they are mouldering in their Mother Earth.”) Behind the church is a house on a lot that city archeologists believe to be the not very restful resting place of more than fifteen hundred people. In the nineteen-forties or fifties, the owner began using headstones as paving stones, for a garden path. I found the new owner by a dumpster in the driveway. Earlier in the summer, when he filed for a construction permit, the city issued a stop-work order but then decided that it lacked the authority to halt the planned renovations. I asked him about the burials in his back yard. “It’s all over,” he said, exasperated. “It was sold in 1915.” He threw up his hands. “There is no story.” Everything happening in the rest of the country is happening faster, and hotter, in Florida. “It’s just insane right now. It’s crazy here,” the anthropologist Cheryl Rodriguez said when we spoke about the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. Rodriguez is the former director of the Institute on Black Life at the University of South Florida, in Tampa. In June, within a matter of days, DeSantis denounced the teaching of critical race theory, forbade the use of the 1619 Project in the state’s classrooms, issued a requirement that state colleges and universities survey their students to reveal whether they have been indoctrinated into an antiracist agenda, and signed a law convening the Task Force on Abandoned African-American Cemeteries. I asked Rodriguez how the task force could possibly produce a report that doesn’t document the very kind of discrimination that the Governor’s other directives ban people from even talking about. She laughed, and said, “Welcome to Florida!” In 2018, a Tampa Bay Times reporter named Paul Guzzo got a tip from an amateur genealogist named Ray Reed: he found death records for an African American cemetery called Zion, but he couldn’t find its location. At first, chasing leads and digging through the archives, Guzzo thought there might be just a few bodies, but then he realized, “Oh, shit, this is a big cemetery.” Guzzo fell down a rabbit hole, and so did a lot of other people. He learned that part of Robles Village, now a predominantly Black public-housing community, had been built on top of Zion. People would call to tell him about another cemetery they knew had been paved over, Guzzo would investigate, the Tampa Bay Times would run another story. A local TV news station, WTSP, started a history series called “Erased.” All this breaking news galvanized activists, including Corey Givens, Jr., whose great-great-grandfather, a mason who helped build the St. Petersburg seawall, is buried somewhere under an overpass for I-175, outside Tropicana Field. The Tampa Bay Rays are scheduled to redevelop the site in 2027. “All I’m saying is it should be Black descendants telling the mayor what we want to do to honor our Black ancestors, not him telling us,” Givens told me. “I want to bring some peace and justice to my family.” The Task Force on Abandoned and Neglected African-American Cemeteries, introduced by the state congresswoman Fentrice Driskell, passed Florida’s legislature with unanimous support, and was signed into law this summer by DeSantis, even as he was doing things like banning the 1619 Project. Paul Ortiz, a historian at the University of Florida, and the president of the United Faculty of Florida, says, “They’re going to make sure you don’t mention 1619—I mean, don’t mention the date?” Ortiz is the author of a history of racial violence in Florida. Between 1882 and 1930, no state in the country had a higher rate of lynching than Florida; a state senator urged the nullification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; and one governor, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward II, effectively proposed the deportation of all Black people. During the election of 1920, the Ku Klux Klan burned prospective voters alive in their homes, and Dade County Democrats published an announcement in the Miami Herald: “white voters, remember! white supremacy is being assaulted in our midst.” In the face of this violence, Blacks fled the state. In 1860, the Black and white populations of Florida were roughly the same size; by 1930, whites outnumbered Blacks by more than two to one. Then came cars, and asphalt. The decades-long process of transforming Florida from the Jim Crow South into a Sun Belt Disney World involved not only destroying Black communities but also dismantling Black cemeteries, all but erasing the state’s Black history. In 1945, Zora Neale Hurston wrote to W. E. B. Du Bois proposing that the N.A.A.C.P. buy a hundred acres of land in Florida, build a cemetery, and rebury the remains of the “illustrious Negro dead.” Du Bois wrote back, “I have not the enthusiasm for Florida that you have.” If a way ahead is possible in this moment, if all sorts of people can be brought together through a door to sit down around a table and come up with something like a Belmont Report, Antoinette T. Jackson is the person to make it happen. Jackson, an anthropologist at the University of South Florida, is dazzling and unstoppable. In 2020, with funding from a university antiracism initiative, she started the African American Burial Grounds and Remembering Project. The project has brought a team of anthropologists, historians, activists, artists, poets, and storytellers to burial sites in both Tampa and St. Petersburg. (Cheryl Rodriguez is a principal investigator on Jackson’s team.) They research genealogies, conduct oral histories, meet with community members and organizations, make art, tell stories, and perform poetry. A burial-grounds network? Jackson isn’t waiting for federal legislation; she’s doing this now. This spring, she founded the Black Cemetery Network, a research coalition that tweets using the hashtag #BlackGravesMatter. Jackson, who was born in New Orleans, was an executive at A.T. & T. in Illinois when, on vacation in South Carolina, she heard stories she’d never heard before, and decided to become an anthropologist. “I went to a rice plantation outside Charleston with my dad, and we were on a boat,” Jackson told me. “And something just hit me, and I knew, this is what you gotta do. Tell these stories.” She took a leave of absence from her job, and went to graduate school. She wrote a pioneering book called “Speaking for the Enslaved,” about the efforts of African Americans to preserve their own heritage at antebellum plantation sites. “Descendant knowledge needs to be on the same plane with archeological and historical knowledge,” she told me. “The same thing applies to the cemetery project.” As a cultural anthropologist, she doesn’t have the same attitude toward descendants as Justin Dunnavant’s society of archeologists: she’s not only looking for descendants with a legal claim; she’s interested in the meanings people make out of places. “One way to think about it is you network out, six degrees of separation,” she said. “There are the people who have people in the ground. There are the people who live on top. There are the people who own the land.” Her work rests on all kinds of other work, including researching, unearthing, and reburying, but she has a particular gift for bringing people together around learning, the act of openhearted and honest inquiry. Jackson and I got into her blue Volvo and drove across a city of pavement and palm trees. Zion, Tampa’s first cemetery for African Americans, opened in 1901, at the center of a Black community on North Florida Avenue. It closed in 1920. In 1951, the Housing Authority of Tampa bought the land and then built Robles Park Village, a residential community for middle-class whites, a Sun Belt Levittown, one and a half acres of which is on top of more than eight hundred graves. Later, the housing authority opened Robles to Black residents, who now account for more than ninety per cent of the population there. Three months after Guzzo’s story about Zion ran in the Tampa Bay Times, the housing authority conducted an environmental assessment. When it announced the results at a community meeting in Robles and the residents learned that they were living on the dead, people wept and screamed. Some left the room. There is no plan to move the bodies, only a plan to move the living. Finding Zion led the housing authority to relocate all the tenants and accelerate a planned redevelopment that will expand low-income housing. The housing authority has convened the Zion Cemetery Preservation and Maintenance Society to decide what to do with the cemetery; there has been talk of a memorial and a genealogical-research center. Todd Guy, the Robles Village property manager, met Jackson and me in the parking lot and took us into his office to show us a new master plan for a mixed-income community, a lavishly illustrated, glossy, oversized book that looks as though it cost the moon. “It is with great care and respect that we must now honor those buried within Zion and tell their story,” it says. The Zion committee has two vacant slots, reserved for descendants. So far, committee members say, they have yet to confirm any. Yvette Lewis, the head of the Hillsborough county branch of the N.A.A.C.P., wants more than a memorial at Zion. “These people have been walked on all their lives, and now they want to rest and people still want to walk on them,” she told me. She wants reparations: scholarships for African American families affected by the Robles Village discovery. Fentrice Driskell, the state representative, wants the whole community involved. “In a place like Zion, if we can’t find descendants it’s got to be a community conversation,” she said. “Also, what about all the Black families who have lived in Robles over the years? What about sending these kids to college? Starting grants for Black entrepreneurs?” But, here again, the particular strains against the universal: free college tuition and business grants are great ideas as remedies for economic injustice. Why stop at providing them to people whose families lived at Robles? Jackson, Lewis, and Driskell all serve on that state task force. Its report is due at the beginning of 2022, around the time that reports and audits from committees at Penn, Harvard, and the Smithsonian are to be finalized. “We don’t want to be a road to nowhere,” Driskell told me. “We want the work to continue even after the task force sunsets.” Jackson isn’t worried. DeSantis? “The Governor has sanctioned the importance of African American cemeteries,” she told me, and smiled. “We can go wherever we want with that.” Todd Guy drove Jackson and me around the Robles housing project in a golf cart. We rumbled across crumbling pavement and past tipped-over trash cans and fading grass to a six-foot-tall chain-link fence that marks the perimeter of Zion. A Mylar banner, zip-tied to the fence, lists the names of the people known to be buried there, a makeshift memorial. Beyond a swinging gate marked “Restricted Area” lies a peach stucco ghost town. The families living on top of the cemetery have been moved out. The housing authority will relocate the remainder, about four hundred families, in the next year or two. “The housing authority ran this place into the ground,” Jackson whispered to me. She fears the worst. “They’ll move these people to someplace worse, make this place nice, and move other people in.” Spanish moss drooped from an oak tree. The trees are protected, Guy explained. “Even to prune the oaks, we have to have permission from the city,” he said. “We have to build around them.” Jackson looked around. A lone washing machine stood in a patch of grass. A white plastic bag fluttered on the ground. She appreciates the work that human-rights activists do at sites of conscience, but she doesn’t think it fits a place like this. “They define justice as if you build a memorial and you’re done,” she said. “ ‘You’ve got justice. You have closure.’ That’s not justice. I don’t want anything to get closed. I want an opening.” In Zion, a black screen door, unlatched, flapped in the wind. ♦ Article Source: https://www.newyorker.com/.../when-black-history-is... Previous Next

< Back The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb An American Slave Henry Bibb, Narrative of the life and adventures of Henry Bibb, an American slave, written by himself (New York, 1849) by Henry Bibb (Author), Charles J. Heglar (Introduction) Paperback – November 30, 2000 Here is the first hand description that Mr. Henry Bibbs wrote about the image-Slave Auction. Slave Auction, U.S. South, ca. 1840s Bibb describes this scene. He writes about a Mr. Young, a Methodist, who was the owner of a large number of slaves, many of whom belonged to the same church with their master. They worshipped together. Bibb describes Young as a kind master who ultimately became deeply involved in debt forcing him to sell his property, including his slaves, many of whom were his brothers and sisters in the church. . . . The slaves were offered on the auction block one after another, until they were all sold before their old master's face. . . . After the men were all sold they then sold the women and children. They ordered the first woman to lay down her child and mount the auction block; she refused to give up her little one and clung to it as long as she could, while the cruel lash was applied to her back for disobedience . . . . There was each speculator with his hand-cuffs to bind his victims after the sale; . . . the Christian portion of the slaves asked permission to kneel in prayer on the ground before they were separated (pp. 199-200). One of the most celebrated of the North American slave narratives. Bibb was born of a slave mother in Kentucky in 1815, escaped from slavery in 1838, and ultimately became a leading figure in the fugitive slave community of Canada. Source: Henry Bibb, Narrative of the life and adventures of Henry Bibb, an American slave, written by himself (New York, 1849), p. 201. ----- Book Summary: First published in 1849 and largely unavailable for many years, The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb is among the most remarkable slave narratives. Born on a Kentucky plantation in 1815, Bibb first attempted to escape from bondage at the age of ten. He was recaptured and escaped several more times before he eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan, and joined the antislavery movement as a lecturer. Bibb's story is different in many ways from the widely read "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave". and of, "Harriet Jacobs- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Henry Bibb was owned by a Native American; he is one of the few ex-slave autobiographers who had labored in the Deep South (Louisiana); and he writes about folkways of the slaves, especially how he used conjure to avoid punishment and to win the hearts of women. Most significant, he is unique in exploring the importance of marriage and family to him, recounting his several trips to free his wife and child. This new edition includes an introduction by literary scholar Charles Heglar and a selection of letters and editorials by Bibb. ----- Below we include a source where you can read Henry Bibbs autobiography online. Source: DocSouth UNC EDU https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bibb/bibb.html Summary of Bibb's book by Doc South UNC EDU Henry Bibb, 1815-1854 Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself New York: Author, 1849. Summary: Henry Bibb (1815-1854) was born in Shelby County, Kentucky. His father was state senator James Bibb, and his mother was a slave named Mildred Jackson who worked for Willard Gatewood. Henry Bibb was married twice, once before his escape to a slave named Malinda, and again after his escape to a woman named Mary Miles. In 1842, Bibb began lecturing on slavery and became a well known African American activist. In 1849 he published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave. Bibb helped create Canada's first black newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive a publication that worked to convince African slaves to settle in Canada. He was also the founding director of a Canadian black colonization project, the Refugee Home Society. He died in 1854. Lucius C. Matlack, author of the introduction to Bibb's Narrative, was born on April 28th, 1816, in Baltimore. He was a member of and preacher in the Union Church in Philadelphia and was recommended to join the Philadelphia Annual Conference, but because of his abolitionist beliefs, his application was rejected and he was removed from the Local Preachers' Association. He lost his preaching license in 1839. Matlack continued to preach anyway, even under threat of expulsion, and in 1839 he was ordained a junior preacher in Massachusetts. He eventually helped organize the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, with which he remained affiliated for the duration of his life. During the Civil War, he served as an army chaplain, working his way up the ranks to colonel, and in 1867 the Philadelphia Annual Conference reversed their previous decision and welcomed him back into their conference. He spent the rest of his recorded life preaching throughout the eastern United States. Bibb begins his narrative by recalling his birth in 1815 to a slave woman named Mildred Jackson. Though he never knew his father, Bibb was told that he was the son of a white man named James Bibb. Mildred was also the mother of six other boys after Henry. Henry and the rest of his family were the legal property of a slaveholder named David White, a widower with a little girl around the same age as Henry. While she was being schooled, Henry was loaned out as a laborer to neighboring farms; his wages were used to pay for her schooling. As a young teenager, Bibb was sold to a man in Newcastle, Kentucky, named Mr. Vires, whose wife treated Bibb poorly. Recalling the abuses he received in that household, Bibb says that the Vires' cruelty inspired him with a desire to escape. He would run away for days at a time, and though they would beat him for it, he never gave up. Eventually they grew tired of his escapes and returned him to Mr. White, who was now remarried to a woman Bibb describes as a "tyrant" (p. 16). Mr. White began to hire Bibb out again, and again he resumed his escape attempts. In 1833, at the age of eighteen, Bibb was introduced to his future wife, Malinda, a slave who lived on a farm four miles from Bibb. At first he was reluctant to get romantically involved with her because he knew that such a relationship would impede his aspirations to freedom, but the more he spent time with her, the more he was distracted from his goals. Though everyone except for Malinda's owner opposed their union, they entered into a common-law marriage since legally binding marriages were a privilege withheld from slaves by most slaveholders. After marrying Malinda, Bibb was moved from farm to farm until, because of fear that he would run away to see his wife, he was contracted to labor for the Malinda's slaveholder. He quickly became disturbed at seeing the abuses that his wife was subjected to, and even more so once Malinda gave birth to their daughter, Frances, who was likewise abused. In December of 1837, Bibb made another, more successful, bid for freedom. He left his wife and child without their knowledge and crossed the Ohio River into the free state of Indiana. From there he took a steamboat to Cincinnati, all the while hiding his identity from those onboard. In Cincinnati, he came into contact with the Underground Railroad and started on his journey to Canada. Along the way many people helped Bibb while others refused, but his greatest assistance came from a small community of African Americans, many of whom were themselves fugitive slaves. In Canada he found work and saved enough money for a return trip to Kentucky and his family. Bibb met with his family in a joyous reunion and quickly made plans for their escape. He traveled to Cincinnati to await their arrival, but while he was there, two men professing to be abolitionists came and spoke to him, offering their help in his escape. But when these men obtained the name and address of his owner, they betrayed him, and a mob soon came to recapture him. They shipped Bibb downriver, offering him money to assist in the capture of other slaves, but he refused. Bibb eventually learned that he was not in fact returning to his family, but was to be sold further south. He was able to escape again from his captors in Louisville, Kentucky, where they were attempting to sell him, and he headed back to Bedford to attempt to rescue his family once again. The guard placed on his family was so strict, however, that he was forced to abandon his attempt to liberate them for a space of time. He left instructions for his wife to meet him in Ohio as soon as the excitement about his escape had died down, and then took his leave up the river once again. Again Bibb was betrayed and captured and sent to a slave prison, where he was unexpectedly reunited with his wife and child. He contrived to be sold with his family to a pious-looking man named Whitfield, who turned out to be a horribly abusive and neglectful slaveholder. They suffered many atrocities at his hands, including the loss of his second child, whose mortal illness was caused by neglect. Bibb escaped yet again only to be recaptured when he returned for his family. This cycle of escape, return, and recapture occurs a few more times before he finds himself in the hands of a Cherokee slaveholder and separated from his family. His new owner was comparatively liberal and provided for his slaves, but before long he passed away and Henry made another break for Canada. He again attempted to find his wife, only to learn that she was living with another man and had given up hope for a reunion. Neither this event nor the many captivities he endured quelled his spirit entirely, and he ultimately found his freedom. Bibb finishes his narrative with the earnest hope that "this little volume will bear some humble part in lighting up the path of freedom and revolutionizing public opinion upon this great subject" (p. 204). Following the narrative is a section titled "Opinions of the Press," which features several of "the many favorable notices of the Press which this volume has received" (p. 205). Henry Bibb was above all determined in his dream of freedom and never gave up no matter how hard it got. He loved freedom, but he was not willing to sacrifice the lives and freedom of those he loved and several times he risked recapture to save them. Though he was recaptured several times that never dampened his spirit and ultimately he found his freedom. Works Consulted: Landon, Fred, "Henry Bibb, a Colonizer," The Journal of Negro History 5.4 (1920): 437-447; Wheaton History A to Z, "Lucius C. Matlack," 11 Dec. 2011. Previous Next

< Back A Tribute to Mr. Marshall Harvey 12/8/45 - 2/13/22 It is with a sad heart that I post this tribute to my former business partner Marshall Harvey. Marshall and I co-founded the NC Rosenwald Schools Coalition in order to support the restoration of these historic schools and assist alumni members in capturing the rich history of their years being educated in segregated school systems. Marshall was a graduate of St. Augustine's College (now university). His original goal was to become an Episcopal priest but he decided to serve the public by becoming a social worker instead. He attended Greensboro College (now UNC-G) and worked in many institutions across the state including Dix Hospital and for several social services departments. He pledged Phi Beta Sigma Inc., and developed many friends and associates along the way. Marshall founded Harvey and Associates consulting firm and worked closely with his friend Bradford Thompson. They were responsible for getting many people elected across NC as well as the first African American president! Marshall worked as a Family Development Specialist at Regency Development, Family Self-Sufficiency Coordinator at Wake County Housing Authority, and was the VP of Community Development at the WEB DuBois CDC. A lifelong political activist, Marshall was on the planning board for Wake County, also coordinated the census count years ago, and was elected a Wake County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor. In addition, he was appointed to the Wake County Historic Preservation Commission. His wife Mildred, children Mikayla and Gretchen and granddaughter Lauren were his life. For anyone that knew Marshall, even if just for a short time, you knew he was a great conversationalist. He could talk about most any subject you could introduce. And he was a gifted storyteller. He regaled us with stories of his days at St. Aug, and all of his life journeys. I had to remind him whenever we went out with staff members for lunch, that we could not sit back and chat all afternoon. After all, we were the leadership for the CDC. He enjoyed spending time with friends and family, eating, drinking and talking. I hope that we can all learn from his life that you never stop giving back. He was always ready for any opportunity to serve the community in any way he could. His love of life and commitment to causes that uplift and educate youth will be missed. Our sincere condolences to his family and all who cared for Marshall Harvey. Photo collage description: Left: Marshall Harvey Middle: Bradford Thompson, Bettie, Marshall, Haywood Massenburg, and Ho Haryadi at one of our luncheons. Right: Marshall speaking at PNC Conference on behalf of the NC Rosenwald Schools Coalition Previous Next

< Back Grove Hill Cemetery GROVE HILL CEMETERY - is an African-American burial ground located at 2919 Fayetteville Street, Durham, NC (We thank Denise Hester for letting us know about this unmarked, forgotten Black cemetery.) Location - on private property at the rear of 2919 Fayetteville Street, just south of the Fayetteville Street School and just north of the old railway right-of-way. GROVE HILL CEMETERY - is an African-American burial ground located at 2919 Fayetteville Street, Durham, NC (We thank Denise Hester for letting us know about this unmarked, forgotten Black cemetery.) Location - on private property at the rear of 2919 Fayetteville Street, just south of the Fayetteville Street School and just north of the old railway right-of-way. Coordinates: 35d 57m 48.0s N; 78d 54m 24.0s W. Lot survey by George C. Love, RLS, made in December 1981. It was established in 1933 on just over two acres of land owned by Charles H. McLaurin, an undertaker with a business on Fayetteville Street. It was at the time outside the city limits. It was active until 1943 and records at the county vital records office researched by Carrie McNair indicate there were 349 burials there. It is the burial place of the noted blues musician ‘Blind Boy Fuller’ (Fulton Allen: 10 Jul 1907, Wadesboro, NC - 13 Feb 1941, Durham, NC). In late 1971 or early 1972 a building housing the Amey Funeral Home and Florist Shop was constructed on the Fayetteville Street side; this building is now [1997] a small business complex. The extent of the area of burials on the property is not known at this time. View of lot looking toward the north. View looking eastward shows trees and the one gravestone seen just the other side of the trees. Researched in 1997 by Carrie McNair who extracted all the burials from the Vital Records Office death notices. Researched in 1997 by Milton Forsyth to discover the property ownership transactions, present conditions of the cemetery and to photograph the cemetery and remaining one gravestone. ------- LIST OF NAMES WHO ARE BURIED THERE. (* denotes18 and under in age) *-Adams, John (b. Sep 1941 - d. 2 Nov 1941) Age 2 mos -Alford, Hank (b. 1896 - d. 16 Jan 1938) Age 42 yrs *-Alford, Marvin (b. 1927 - d. 11 Nov 1935) Age 8 yrs *-Alford, Roosevelt (b. 1929 - d. 27 Apr 1933) Age 4 yrs -Allen, Fulton (Blind Boy Fuller) (b. 10 Jul 1907 - d. 13 Feb 1941) Age 33 yrs. Noted blues musician, born in Wadesboro, NC. Fulton Allen, who took the stage name 'Blind Boy Fuller,' was one of the most influential bluesmen of the 1930s, even though his musical career lasted from only about 1929 to 1940. He palyed in what was termed 'East Coast Piedmont Style' of blues. Discovered singing on the streets of Durham NC, his most important years were from 1935, when he was taken to New York City to record, to about 1939, after which time he became ill. His work was still being played regularly by blues performers into the late 1950s. -Allen, Ola B. (b. 1908 - d. 23 Mar 1938) Age 30 yrs -Allen, Sam (b. 1915 - d. 6 Apr 1938) Age 23 yrs -Amos, Monroe (b. 1907 - d. 22 Jan 1934) Age 27 yrs *-Archie, Constance (b. Apr 1938 - d. 8 Jul 1938) Age 3 mos -Artis, Jesse (b. 1888 - d. 16 Mar 1937) Age 49 yrs *-Ashford, Annie Mae (b. Mar 1932 - d. 25 Aug 1933) Age 1 yr 5 mos -Bailey, Ida (b. 1877 - d. 13 Jul 1937) Age 60 yrs *-Bains, Floyd (b. Aug 1935 - d. 18 Oct 1935) Age 2 mos -Baker, Alene (b. 1906 - d. 4 Oct 1942) Age 36 yrs *-Baker, Baby (b. 8 Jan 1943 - d. 11 Jan 1943) Age 3 days *-Baker, Elizabeth (b. 2 Apr 1936 - d. 9 Apr 1936) Age 7 days -Baptist, Nellie (b. 1884 - d. 27 Jul 1938) Age 54 yrs *-Barbee, Alphonso (b. 1919 - d. 7 May 1936) Age 17 yrs -Barbee, Demetrious (b. 1884 - d. 2 May 1941) Age 57 yrs *-Barbee, George (b. Jun 1939 - d. 18 Aug 1939) Age 2 mos -Barbee, James (b. 1913 - d. 16 Sep 1934) Age 21 yrs *-Barbee, Willie (b. 1922 - d. 3 May 1939) Age 17 yrs *-Barnes, Bertha Lee (b. 16 May 1935 - d. 16 May 1935) Age 3 hrs *-Beasley, Rosie (b. 21 Feb 1933 - d. 22 Feb 1933) Age 1 day -Bell, Effie (b. 1897 - d. 2 Sep 1939) Age 42 yrs -Bethea, Leroy (b. 1923 - d. 2 Mar 1942) Age 19 yrs *-Bobbitt, Harold (b. Aug 1933 - d. 29 May 1933) Age 9 mos -Bostic, Ben (b. 1891 - d. 30 Aug 1937) Age 46 yrs *-Bowling, Meria (b. 15 Mar 1935 - d. 15 Mar 1935) Age 6 hrs -Bradsher, Lina (b. 1910 - d. 18 Oct 1934) Age 24 yrs *-Bratcher, Hattie (b. 1909 - d. 5 Jan 1938) Age 3 mos -Bright, Elijah (b. 1906 - d. 8 Mar 1936) Age 30 yrs -Bright, Lenna (b. 1899 - d. 27 Apr 1937) Age 38 yrs *-Brown, Elaine (b. 1934 - d. 10 Apr 1942) Age 8 yrs *-Brown, Patricia Yvonne (b. Dec 1940 - d. 20 Jan 1941) Age 1 mo -Brunson, William (b. 1901 - d. 28 Feb 1936) Age 35 yrs -Bryant, Studman (b. 1876 - d. 5 Oct 1937) Age 61 yrs -Bullock, Allie (b. 1902 - d. 20 Aug 1936) Age 34 yrs -Bullock, Charlie (b. 1883 - d. 6 Oct 1941) Age 58 yrs *-Bullock, Elizabeth (b. Apr 1936 - d. 26 Oct 1936) Age 6 mos -Bullock, Henry (b. 1884 - d. 6 Aug 1937) Age 53 yrs *-Bunn, Arthur Jr (b. Aug 1934 - d. 10 Sep 1934) Age 1 mo *-Bunn, Trummila (b. Jun 1940 - d. 19 Jan 1941) Age 7 mos -Burch, Plassie (b. 1909 - d. 3 Mar 1936) Age 27 yrs -Burton, Jessie (b. 1888 - d. 18 Nov 1938) Age 50 yrs -Byrd, Robert (b. 1850 - d. 30 Jan 1935) Age 85 yrs -Cadlett, Mack (b. 1881 - d. 22 Jan 1936) Age 55 yrs *-Carver, Mary (b. 1921 - d. 4 Aug 1933) Age 12 yrs -Cates, John (b. 1899 - d. 30 Apr 1937) Age 38 yrs -Cathy, Pink (b. 1883 - d. 31 Oct 1936) Age 53 yrs *-Caviness, Bertha Lee (b. Dec 1938 - d. 18 Aug 1939) Age 3 mos -Chambers, Mattie (b. 1890 - d. 24 May 1937) Age 47 yrs *-Cheek, Otis Linwood (b. Jan 1937 - d. 14 Feb 1937) Age 17 days -Clark, Lula (b. 1877 - d. 7 Sep 1933) Age 56 yrs -Clayton, Beatrice (b. 1918 - d. 27 Jun 1938) Age 20 yrs *-Clayton, Frances May (b. 1934 - d. 10 Dec 1936) Age 2 yrs *-Clemmons, Ernestine (b. 1930 - d. 25 Nov 1934) Age 4 yrs -Clemons, Maggie (b. 1901 - d. 5 May 1935) Age 34 yrs -Cogdell, Offie Jr (b. 1890 - d. 24 May 1937) Age 47 yrs *-Cole, Margaret (b. Mar 1933 - d. 22 Jun 1933) Age 3 mos *-Cole, Robert (b. Mar 1933 - d. 19 Jun 1933) Age 2 mos *-Coleman, Floyd (b. Sep 1935 - d. 16 Nov 1935) Age 2 mos *-Coleman, Fred L. (b. Apr 1934 - d. 20 Aug 1934) Age 4 mos -Coleman, Henry (b. 1915 - d. 1 Aug 1939) Age 24 yrs -Coleman, Lindsey (b. 1909 - d. 22 Dec 1935) Age 26 yrs -Coleman, Rubin (b. 1902 - d. 21 Sep 1939) Age 37 yrs -Cooper, Matthew (b. 1894 - d. 9 Aug 1933) Age 39 yrs -Coppedge, Maggie (b. 1875 - d. 27 Dec 1936) Age 61 yrs -Core, Glendora (b. 1911 - d. 6 Aug 1940) Age 29 yrs -Cotton, Andrew (b. 1888 - d. 26 Mar 1936) Age 48 yrs *-Cotton, Willie Thomas (b. Oct 1932 - d. 7 Dec 1933) Age 14 mos -Covington, Alexander (b. 1914 - d. 10 Apr 1942) Age 28 yrs -Covington, Curtis (b. 1883 - d. 27 Mar 1942) Age 59 yrs -Covington, Effie (b. 1887 - d. 19 Aug 1935) Age 48 yrs -Covington, Marie (b. 1913 - d. 18 Dec 1935) Age 22 yrs *-Coward, Rena (b. 1913 - d. 31 Oct 1939) Age 26 yrs -Cozart, Lovenia (b. Oct 1937 - d. 12 Nov 1937) Age 1 mo *-Craddock, Will Edward (b. Mar 1937 - d. 25 Apr 1938) Age 13 mos -Croon, Virginia (b. 1905 - d. 24 Aug 1933) Age 28 yrs *-Crowder, Paul N. (b. Nov 1935 - d. 7 Jun 1936) Age 7 mos -Curity, Robert (b. 1904 - d. 27 Aug 1933) Age 29 yrs -Daniel, Beddie (b. 1883 - d. 19 Oct 1933) Age 50 yrs -Daniel, Lelia (b. 1906 - d. 25 Apr 1934) Age 38 yrs *-Daniel, Worth Jr (b. Jul 1932 - d. 17 Apr 1933) Age 9 mos -Davis, Maggie (b. 1899 - d. 16 Mar 1941) Age 42 yrs *-Dean, Helen (b. 19 Jan 1943 - d. 21 Jan 1943) Age 2 days -Deberry, Della (b. 1901 - d. 18 Jun 1935) Age 34 yrs *-Dixon, Dorothy Lee (b. 1926 - d. 1 Jan 1937) Age 11 yrs -Dixon, Willie (b. 1882 - d. 14 Nov 1933) Age 51 yrs -Dunegan, Lula (b. 1877 - d. 27 Apr 1933) Age 56 yrs -Dyson, Elizabeth (b. 1894 - d. 16 Jul 1937) Age 43 yrs *-Edwards, Virginia (b. Mar 1935 - d. 10 Oct 1935) Age 7 mos *-Egerton, Baby (b. 27 Dec 1934 - d. 31 Dec 1934) Age 4 days -Ellerbe, James (b. 1885 - d. 30 Oct 1933) Age 48 yrs *-Elliott, Ellen (b. May 1934 - d. 20 Aug 1934) Age 3 mos -Erwin, Junious (b. 1910 - d. 5 Mar 1936) Age 26 yrs *-Farrar, Baby (b. 20 Oct 1934 - d. 20 Oct 1934) Age 2 hrs -Farriel, Mary Allen (b. 1878 - d. 21 May 1942) Age 64 yrs -Farrington, Norvy (b. 1916 - d. 24 Aug 1936) Age 20 yrs -Farrow, Ernest (b. 1900 - d. 5 Aug 1936) Age 35 yrs -Farrow, Maude Torian (b. 1908 - d. 24 Aug 1938) Age 30 yrs *-Faulk, Marget (b. May 1938 - d. 24 Jul 1938) Age 2 mos *-Felder, Infant of David Felder (b. 29 Dec 1937 - d. 29 Dec 1937) Age 45 min -Floyd, Carrie (b. 1905 - d. 21 Apr 1936) Age 31 yrs -Freeman, Mattie Norwood (b. 1894 - d. 15 May 1934) Age 40 yrs -Gary, George (b. 1881 - d. 22 Feb 1939) Age 58 yrs -Gatewood, Ollie (b. 1897 - d. 6 Dec 1936) Age 39 yrs *-Gilbert, Harold (b. Jun 1938 - d. 18 Sep 1938) Age 3 mos *-Gladden, Robert Thomas (b. 1927 - d. 25 Sep 1936) Age 9 yrs -Graham, Hattie (b. 1890 - d. 28 Oct 1933) Age 43 yrs -Green, Daniel (b. 1866 - d. 9 Apr 1934) Age 68 yrs -Griffin, Margaret (b. 1896 - d. 14 Sep 1933) Age 43 yrs *-Griffin, William Edward (b. Apr 1938 - d. 2 Aug 1938) Age 4 mos *-Gunn, Dolores (b. 1925 - d. 24 Mar 1933) Age 8 yrs -Hall, Geneva (b. - d. 15 Nov 1935) -Hamilton, Rebecca Russell (b. 1901 - d. 20 Aug 1936) Age 35 yrs -Hammie, Eveline (b. 1859 - d. 24 Feb 1938) Age 79 yrs *-Harris, Baby (b. 18 Jun 1934 - d. 20 Jun 1934) Age 1-1/2 days *-Harris, Joseph Jr (b. May 1941 - d. 24 Sep 1941) Age 4 mos *-Harris, Mary Lois (b. 1 Nov 1941 - d. 11 Nov 1941) Age 10 days -Harris, Nora (b. 1876 - d. 24 Oct 1941) Age 65 yrs -Haskins, Bertha (b. 1894 - d. 8 May 1935) Age 41 yrs -Hayes, Roberta (b. 1903 - d. 25 Jan 1940) Age 37 yrs -Herndon, John (b. 1888 - d. 5 Dec 1935) Age 47 yrs -Herndon, Walter (b. 1905 - d. 19 Jul 1941) Age 36 yrs *-Hester, Willie Jr (b. Jan 1933 - d. 20 Dec 1933) Age 11 mos *-Hill, Edgar (b. Jan 1936 - d. 8 May 1936) Age 3 mos *-Hinnant, Virginia Mae (b. Jul 1935 - d. 13 Apr 1936) Age 7 mos -Hogan, Thomas (b. 1893 - d. 29 Sep 1934) Age 41 yrs *-Holeman, Johnnie Jr (b. 24 May 1935 - d. 24 May 1935) Age 9 hrs -Holland, Ella (b. 1893 - d. 28 Apr 1941) Age 48 yrs *-Holmes Johnnie Lee (b. Dec 1935 - d. 9 Mar 1936) Age 3 mos -Holmes, William Mack (b. 1898 - d. 24 Sep 1937) Age 39 yrs -Hubbel, William (b. 1887 - d. 16 Feb 1937) Age 50 yrs -Huston, Willie (b. 1902 - d. 5 Apr 1942) Age 40 yrs -Ingram, Lacy (b. 1914 - d. 18 Jul 1934) Age 20 yrs -Ingram, Mary (b. 1881 - d. 18 Apr 1933) Age 52 yrs -Ingram, Polly (b. 1892 - d. 5 Sep 1937) Age 45 yrs -Jackson, Jack (b. 1868 - d. 15 Feb 1935) Age 67 yrs -Jenkins, Bettie (b. 1865 - d. 28 Feb 1936) Age 71 yrs *-Jenkins, Mathew (b. Mar 1939 - d. 6 Sep 1939) Age 6 mos -Jenlock, Lincoln (b. 1890 - d. 3 Feb 1939) Age 49 yrs -Johnson, Elizabeth (b. 1908 - d. 28 Aug 1934) Age 26 yrs -Johnson, Freda (b. 1912 - d. 3 Oct 1935) Age 23 yrs -Johnson, Joseph (b. 1885 - d. 18 Oct 1937) Age 52 yrs -Johnson, Roosevelt B. (b. 1897 - d. 16 Sep 1935) Age 38 yrs -Jones, Annie Louise (b. 1911 - d. 10 Aug 1938) Age 27 yrs *-Jones, Baby (b. 28 Sep 1936 - d. 29 Sep 1936) Age 1 day *-Jones, Jesse (b. Dec 1934 - d. 2 Feb 1935) Age 2 mos -Jones, Mary (b. 1879 - d. 6 May 1936) Age 57 yrs -Jones, Nathaniel (b. 1901 - d. 1 May 1942) Age 41 yrs *-Jones, Robert Louise (girl) (b. 12 May 1935 - d. 27 May 1935) age 15 days *-Jones, Shirley Lee (b. 2 May 1937 - d. 23 May 1937) Age 21 days *-Jones, Thelma (b. 1921 - d. 20 Jul 1937) Age 16 yrs *-Joyner, Baby (b. 23 May 1940 - d. 23 May 1940) Age 6 hrs -Kitt, Nell (b. 1907 - d. 6 Sep 1939) Age 32 yrs -Knuckles, Henry (b. 1890 - d. 6 Mar 1938) Age 48 yrs *-Kollock, Leo (b. 1928 - d. 29 May 1940) Age 12 yrs -Kollock, Nathaniel (alias Collins) (b. 1915 - d. 7 Jan 1938) Age 23 yrs -Laddie, Curry (b. 1873 - d. 9 Oct 1936) Age 63 yrs -Langley, Mary Caston (b. 21 May 1891 - d. 30 Sep 1942) Spouse - Joseph Langley. 'At Rest'. This is the only visible grave marker at the present cemetery. *-Latta, Curry Lee (b. 1933 - d. 26 Jan 1939) Age 6 yrs -Lee, Bruce W. (b. 1900 - d. 15 Aug 1942) Age 42 yrs -Lee, George (b. 1882 - d. 7 Jun 1934) Age 52 yrs -Lewis, Ida (b. 1894 - d. 1 Nov 1933) Age 39 yrs *-Link, Infant of Ernest Link (b. 7 Apr 1933 - d. 9 Apr 1933) Age 2 days -Lipscomb, Fannie (b. 1893 - d. 27 Jun 1938) Age 45 yrs *-Little, Calvin (b. Jun 1933 - d. 25 Jan 1934) Age 7 mos -Little, Garfield (b. 1903 - d. 23 Oct 1938) Age 35 yrs -Little, Willie (b. Dec 1935 - d. 3 Feb 1936) Age 2 mos -Lucas, Little M. (b. 1911 - d. 4 Mar 1934) Age 23 yrs *-Lunsford, Fred Lewis (b. Jul 1934 - d. 2 Nov 1934) Age 4 mos *-Lunsford, Infant of Clide Lunsford (b. 6 Apr 1933 - d. 13 Apr 1933) Age 7 days -Lunsford, James (b. 1906 - d. 17 May 1937) Age 31 yrs -Lyon, Anna (b. 1883 - d. 28 Mar 1933) Age 50 yrs -Lyon, Zula (b. 1900 - d. 24 Jan 1938) Age 38 yrs *-Lyons, Baby (b. 3 Dec 1934 - d. 3 Dec 1934) Lived 20 min *-Lyons, Fredrick (b. Apr 1939 - d. 20 Jun 1939) Age 2 mos -Lyons, Mann (b. 1867 - d. 11 Apr 1935) Age 68 yrs *-Mallett, Ida Mable (b. Sep 1933 - d. 19 Jul 1934) Age 10 mos -Mallett, Julius C. (b. 1902 - d. 20 Apr 1935) Age 33 yrs -Malone, Booker (b. 1869 - d. 3 Sep 1937) Age 68 yrs *-Mangum, Grace D. (b. Dec 1934 - d. 28 Jul 1935) Age 7 mos -Mangum, Jane (b. 1877 - d. 25 Dec 1940) Age 63 yrs -Marshall, Tallulah (b. 1882 - d. 27 Jan 1938) Age 56 yrs *-Mason, Lula Mae (b. 1930 - d. 1 Nov 1938) Age 8 yrs *-Mason, William C. (b. Apr 1935 - d. 20 May 1935) Age 1 mo *-Massey, Baby (b. 30 Aug 1938 - d. 1 Sep 1938) Age 2 days -McAllister, Annie (b. 1868 - d. 11 Sep 1933) Age 65 yrs -McCain, Hoydee (b. 1906 - d. 26 Nov 1934) Age 28 yrs *-McCaskill, Leroy (b. 1918 - d. 26 Jul 1934) Age 16 yrs -McClain, Dolston (b. 1918 - d. 28 Jan 1938) Age 20 yrs *-McClain, James Jr (b. Apr 1935 - d. 8 Aug 1935) Age 4 mos -McClain, Lela (b. 1893 - d. 28 Aug 1938) Age 45 yrs *-McClain, Mamie (b. Aug 1936 - d. 2 Sep 1936) Age 1 mo -McCown, Mary (b. 1879 - d. 22 Apr 1933) Age 54 yrs *-McCoy, Virgil (b. 22 Feb 1934 - d. 22 Feb 1934) Age 2 hrs -McCray, Albert (b. 1918 - d. 12 Feb 1941) Age 23 yrs -McCray, James (b. 1905 - d. 3 Feb 1936) Age 31 yrs -McDaniel, Charlie (b. 1885 - d. 26 Oct 1938) Age 53 yrs *-McDaniel, Shirley Ann (b. 14 Nov 1937 - d. 25 Nov 1937) Age 11 days *-McDuffie, Anne Lois (b. Jul 1936 - d. 23 Apr 1937) Age 9 mos -McDuffie, Annie Mae (b. 1921 - d. 10 Jun 1940) Age 19 yrs -McLaughlin, Katie (b. 1910 - d. 2 Dec 1934) Age 24 yrs -McLaurin, Ernest (b. 1920 - d. 25 Jul 1941) Age 21 yrs -McLendon, Charlie (b. 1893 - d. 26 Apr 1933) Age 40 yrs *-McNair, Hattie Mae (b. Dec 1936 - d. 27 Jun 1937) Age 6 mos *-McNair, John Willie (b. 17 Oct 1933 - d. 31 Oct 1933) Age 14 days -McNeal, Katie (b. 1873 - d. 28 Oct 1933) Age 60 yrs *-McNeill, James Melvin (b. Jul 1933 - d. 9 Nov 1933) Age 4 mos *-McNiel, Cornelia (b. Jul 1935 - d. 22 Nov 1936) Age 4 mos *-Medlin, Naomi (b. Feb 1942 - d. 3 Mar 1942) Age 24 days -Mercer, Infant of Fred Mercer (b. 5 Jan 1934 - d. 5 Jan 1934) Lived 2 hrs -Merriett, Ida (b. 1883 - d. 3 Mar 1933) Age 50 yrs -Merritt, Sallie (b. 1885 - d. 29 Dec 1938) Age 53 yrs -Midgette, Charlie (b. 1908 - d. 31 Oct 1935) Age 27 yrs *-Miller, Edward (b. Jan 1935 - d. 5 Jul 1935) Age 7 mos -Mitchell, Frank (b. 1880 - d. 8 Dec 1938) Age 58 yrs -Mitchell, James (b. 1871 - d. 10 Oct 1933) Age 62 yrs *-Mitchell, Lelia Mae (b. Sep 1934 - d. 17 Oct 1934) Age 1 mo -Mitchell, Thomas E. (b. 19 Dec 1896 - d. 24 Sep 1944) husband of Irene Goins Mitchell. son of Willis and Lora Hester Mitchell. -Monroe, Daniel (b. 1888 - d. 31 Oct 1935) Age 47 yrs -Moore, Hattie McNeil (b. 1894 - d. 5 Jul 1941) Age 47 yrs -Moore, Lizzie (b. 1899 - d. 30 May 1935) Age 36 yrs *-Morris, Eleanor Lee (b. Apr 1938 - d. 2 Jul 1938) Age 3 mos -Moye, Dianah (b. 1876 - d. 24 May 1933) Age 57 yrs -Murphy, Albertis (b. 1917 - d. 6 Jan 1936) Age 19 yrs -Myatt, Cleveland (b. 1897 - d. 16 Aug 1939) Age 42 yrs -Newton, Dora (b. 1895 - d. 12 Dec 1937) Age 42 yrs -Norwood, Richard (b. 1850 - d. 4 Apr 1939) Age 89 yrs -Page, Rosa (b. 1903 - d. 21 Aug 1933) Age 30 yrs -Parks, Mollie (b. 1881 - d. 19 May 1938) Age 57 yrs *-Patterson, Baby Boy (b. Jan 1936 - d. 23 Jun 1936) Age 5 mos -Patterson, Helen (b. 1920 - d. 21 May 1939) Age 19 yrs *-Patterson, Joe Rees (b. 1926 - d. 18 Apr 1933) Age 7 yrs -Patterson, Nathaniel (b. 1885 - d. 29 Jan 1935) Age 50 yrs -Pelzer, Mamie Smith (b. 1902 - d. 27 Feb 1937) Age 35 yrs -Peterkin, Sallie Lou (b. 1871 - d. 28 Jun 1935) Age 64 yrs -Pollard, George (b. 1908 - d. 19 Oct 1937) Age 29 yrs -Porter, Fannie Jones (b. 1902 - d. 16 Sep 1934) Age 32 yrs -Pough, Edward (b. 1875 - d. 20 Dec 1935) Age 60 yrs *-Powell, Dorothy (b. Aug 1938 - d. 19 Oct 1938) age 2 mos -Pratt, Harold (b. 1917 - d. 11 Oct 1938) Age 21 yrs *-Pressley, Emanuel Jr (b. Jun 1939 - d. 3 Aug 1939) Age 2 mos -Pringle, Luvenia (b. 1869 - d. 30 Aug 1934) Age 65 yrs -Ray, Henry (b. 1893 - d. 13 Mar 1933) Age 40 yrs -Reeves, Jasper Jr (b. 1918 - d. 5 Jan 1938) Age 20 yrs -Regan, Annie (b. 1878 - d. 22 Oct 1934) Age 56 yrs -Reid, Amzie (b. 1884 - d. 24 Feb 1936) Age 52 yrs -Reid, Blanche (b. 1909 - d. 24 Jan 1936) Age 27 yrs *-Reid, Magnolia (b. 1917 - d. 31 Oct 1935) Age 18 yrs *-Reid, Peggy Maude (b. Dec 1934 - d. 3 Feb 1935) Age 2 mos *-Revels, Bertha Mae (b. Mar 1937 - d. 6 Jul 1937) Age 4 mos *-Richardson, Armiteen (b. Aug 1939 - d. 16 Jan 1940) Age 5 mos -Richardson, John (b. 1895 - d. 7 Apr 1933) Age 38 yrs -Richardson, Leone (b. 1915 - d. 1 Jul 1934) Age 19 yrs *-Rigel, Lucille (b. 1925 - d. 10 May 1939) Age 14 yrs -Riley, Eva Neil (b. 1893 - d. 15 Jan 1942) Age 49 yrs -Robinson, Armenious (b. 1878 - d. 3 Jan 1936) Age 58 yrs *-Robinson, Early W. (b. Dec 1937 - d. 25 Mar 1939) Age 15 mos *-Robinson, George Carey (b. 1935 - d. 6 Feb 1936) Age 1 yr -Robinson, Sam (b. 1896 - d. 21 Apr 1939) Age 43 yrs -Rogers, Martha (b. 1883 - d. 16 Jun 1935) Age 52 yrs -Roseman, Jerry (b. 1849 - d. 17 Mar 1942) Age 93 yrs -Rosemond, Carrie (b. 1910 - d. 26 Jul 1934) Age 24 yrs -Rowland, Moses (b. 1901 - d. 15 Feb 1938) Age 37 yrs *-Royster, Roosevelt (b. 1935 - d. 21 Sep 1938) Age 3 yrs -Ruffin, Rosa (b. 1874 - d. 23 Jul 1934) Age 60 yrs *-Russell, Christine (b. Feb 1936 - d. 23 Feb 1936) Age 23 hrs *-Russell, Ernestine (b. Feb 1936 - d. 23 Feb 1936) Age 20 hrs -Russell, Marvin (b. 1898 - d. 11 Jul 1939) Age 41 yrs *-Sampson, Lucille Caston (b. 1918 - d. 3 Jan 1936) Age 18 yrs -Sanders, James (b. 1871 - d. 19 Sep 1933) Age 62 yrs *-Sanders, Kenneth Lee (b. Aug 1934 - d. 26 Oct 1934) Age 2 mos *-Saunders, Willie Lee R. (b. 29 Jun 1935 - d. 14 Jul 1935) Age 16 days -Scott, Catherine (b. 1891 - d. 29 Apr 1942) Age 51 yrs *-Sherrill, Joseph Pelzo (b. Oct 1938 - d. 13 Dec 1939) Age 14 mos *-Simmons, Doris (b. 1922 - d. 2 Aug 1939) Age 17 yrs *-Singleterry, Melvin (b. 30 Jun 1938 - d. 9 Jul 1938) Age 9 days *-Slater, Mary (b. 12 Sep 1940 - d. 14 Sep 1940) Age 2 days *-Smith, Charles E. (b. Mar 1936 - d. 15 Apr 1936) Age 1 mo *-Smith, Emma Lois (b. Apr 1934 - d. 28 Jun 1934) Age 2 mos *-Smith, Infant (b. Oct 1936 - d. 14 Oct 1936) Age 10 hrs *-Smith, Maybelle (b. 1919 - d. 20 Jun 1937) Age 18 yrs *-Spencer, Baby (b. 4 Sep 1938 - d. 8 Sep 1938) Age 4 days *-Spencer, David Jr (b. Feb 1936 - d. 28 Nov 1936) Age 9 mos -Spruell, Isabelle (b. 1915 - d. 24 May 1940) Age 25 yrs -Stephens, Sarah (b. 1910 - d. 29 Sep 1942) Age 32 yrs -Stewart, Bennie (b. 1908 - d. 22 Aug 1939) Age 31 yrs *-Stewart, Lillie Mae (b. 1920 - d. 9 Mar 1936) Age 16 yrs -Stewart, Minnie (b. 1900 - d. 11 Jul 1937) Age 37 yrs -Stewart, Sadie (b. 1893 - d. 6 Jul 1939) Age 46 yrs *-Stewart, Valinda Maria (b. 1921 - d. 21 Apr 1939) Age 18 yrs *-Street, Infant of Thomas Street (b. 17 Jan 1936 - d. 18 Jan 1936) Age 30 hrs -Tapp, Bettie (b. 1890 - d. 21 Feb 1937) Age 47 yrs -Tapp, Mittie (b. 1906 - d. 3 Jan 1935) Age 29 yrs -Terry, Zora (b. 1863 - d. 29 Jul 1939) Age 76 yrs -Thaxton, Emmet Lee (b. 1889 - d. 13 Dec 1938) Age 49 yrs -Thaxton, Ora (b. 1888 - d. 24 Nov 1939) Age 51 yrs -Thomas, Frank (b. 1906 - d. 16 Aug 1937) Age 31 yrs -Thomas, Pearl Follen (b. 1905 - d. 10 Apr 1939) Age 34 yrs *-Thompson, Baby (b. 29 Jul 1938 - d. 29 Jul 1938) Age 3 hrs *-Thompson, Beulah (b. 1921 - d. 19 Jun 1934) Age 13 yrs -Thompson, Emma (b. 1878 - d. 16 Dec 1934) Age 56 yrs *-Thompson, Eugene (b. 11 Aug 1936 - d. 14 Aug 1936) Age 3 days *-Thompson, Joyce Webb (b. 1929 - d. 1 May 1933) Age 4 yrs *-Thompson, Loretta (b. 1927 - d. 27 Aug 1936) Age 9 yrs *-Thompson, Martin Jr (b. 26 May 1937 - d. 26 May 1937) Age 4 hrs *-Thompson, Sylvester (b. 1921 - d. 26 Dec 1939) Age 18 yrs -Thompson, Walter (b. 1896 - d. 27 Nov 1934) Age 38 yrs -Thompson, Wesley (b. 1877 - d. 7 Mar 1937) Age 60 yrs -Thompson, William Cornell (b. 1912 - d. 27 Jan 1940) Age 28 yrs *-Tilley, Robert Lee (b. Jul 1935 - d. 23 Sep 1935) Age 2 mos *-Toler, Annie Mae (b. Jun 1934 - d. 14 Sep 1934) Age 3 mos *-Torian, Lewis (b. 1937 - d. 27 Nov 1939) Age 2 yrs -Towns, Robert (b. 1900 - d. 12 Nov 1937) Age 37 yrs -Vaugh, Bettie (b. 1867 - d. 17 May 1933) Age 66 yrs -Vina, Helen (b. 1868 - d. 9 Jul 1935) Age 67 yrs *-Wade, James (b. Oct 1935 - d. 4 Dec 1935) Age 7 wks *-Walker, Baby (b. 6 Mar 1937 - d. 6 Mar 1937) Age 9 hrs -Walker, James (b. 1892 - d. 17 Jul 1939) Age 47 yrs -Walker, Mary R. (b. 1886 - d. 22 Jul 1941) Age 55 yrs *-Watson, Elsie (b. 1917 - d. 19 Jul 1934) Age 17 yrs *-Watson, Hattie (b. 1916 - d. 28 Mar 1933) Age 17 yrs *-Watson, Infant (b. 7 Nov 1935 - d. 7 Nov 1935) Age 2 hrs -Watson, Thorman (b. 1913 - d. 15 Feb 1934) Age 21 yrs *-Weathers, Baby (b. 16 Dec 1933 - d. 31 Dec 1933) Age 15 days -Weaver, Charlotte (b. 1890 - d. 13 Mar 1939) Age 49 yrs -Weaver, Sophronia (b. 1901 - d. 28 Sep 1934) Age 33 yrs -Weeks, Lemuel Jr (b. 1877 - d. 6 Apr 1941) Age 64 yrs -Weston, Charlie (b. 1898 - d. 22 May 1940) Age 42 yrs -White, Eugene (b. 1901 - d. 11 Mar 1934) Age 33 yrs *-White, Juanita (b. Jul 1936 - d. 24 Jul 1937) Age 1 yr -White, Nancy (b. 1906 - d. 25 Dec 1935) Age 29 yrs -White, Viola (b. 1898 - d. 22 May 1933) Age 35 yrs -Wiggins, Joe (b. 1881 - d. 29 Oct 1938) Age 57 yrs -Wiley, Emma (b. 1884 - d. 9 Sep 1942) Age 58 yrs -Wilkerson, Mollie (b. 1869 - d. 18 Apr 1937) Age 68 yrs -William, Callie (b. 1901 - d. 6 Jan 1940) Age 39 yrs *-Williams, Alma (b. 20 Jul 1933 - d. 20 Jul 1933) Lived 30 minutes -Williams, Gracie (b. 1890 - d. 19 Feb 1935) Age 45 yrs -Williams, Gus (b. 1889 - d. 16 Nov 1937) Age 48 yrs *-Williams, Herman Lee (b. Jul 1934 - d. 14 Sep 1934) Age 2 mos -Williams, Pomp (b. 1875 - d. 6 Apr 1938) Age 63 yrs -Williams, Willie (b. 1914 - d. 28 Oct 1937) Age 23 yrs -Williamson, Jannie Lide (b. 1887 - d. 29 Jun 1934) Age 47 yrs -Wilson, Willie (b. 1914 - d. 22 Jan 1938) Age 24 yrs -Winbush, Otis (b. 1897 - d. 3 Aug 1937) Age 40 yrs -Wortham, Thomas (b. 1875 - d. 11 Jul 1936) Age 61 yrs Source: Find A Grave. All pictures by Milton Forsyth. - Source: Durham County North Carolina Cemeteries Census https://cemeterycensus.com/nc/durh/cem262.htm --- Background on the Property Transactions Relating to the Grove Hill Cemetery Durham, North Carolina Researched and Compiled by Milton Forsyth, 1997 Grove Hill Cemetery is an African-American burial ground located at 2919 Fayetteville Street, Durham, NC. It is unattended and unused, is on private property, and only one gravestone remains to show that it at one time was a cemetery. Portions of the cemetery have been converted to other uses. It occupies the rear (east) portion of the lot, behind the building and away from the street. The county tax reference for the property on which it is located is 173 -06-016, parcel number 16274. The cemetery was established in 1933. On 23 Feb 1933 0. K. Ferrell sold to Charles H. and Bessie E. McLaurin 2.21 acres on the north of the [then] Norfolk and Southern Railroad right-of-way (Durham Co. Deed Book 107:277; see also Plat Book 12-71). There apparently were no structures on the property, which was at the time outside the city limits. At the time Mr. McLaurin operated a funeral home at 1108 Fayetteville St. and resided at 1708 Fayetteville St. [Note: street numbers were revised in the area in the late 1950s]. The first burial took place on 27 April 1933. The cemetery was not listed in the city directory, probably because it was outside the city. Research by Durham-Orange Genealogical Society member Carrie McNair shows that 349 burials were recorded in county death records for this cemetery, and that the last one occurred on 21 Jan 1943. Most of the burials were under the direction of Mr. McLaurin's firm, but a few were by other undertakers - Carolina, Mangum, and Woodward. In the 1930s the city directory shows Mr. McLaurin was in business by himself, but by 1946 he had a business in conjunction with a Mr. Williams as the McLaurin and Williams Funeral Home at 122 South Mangum. Bessie McLaurin was a school teacher. Just over a year after her husband's death on 10 February 1947 (Beechwood Cemetery records) she sold the property containing the cemetery to William A. and Essie S. Amey (Durham Co. DB 183:56, 30 Jun 1948). William Amey operated Amey's Funeral Home from his residence at 401 Pine St. and later at 401 South Roxboro St.; his wife operated a florist shop from the same addresses. Apparently Mr. Amey did not reinitiate burials at the cemetery, and the land sat unattended and unused for some 22 years. In 1961 William Amey sold .62 acres consisting of a 67 foot strip on the north side of the property to the Durham Board of Education. This is now part of the Fayetteville Street School site at 2905 Fayetteville Street - one might conjecture that there may have been burials in the 67 ft strip (Durham Co. DB 273:409; this deed mentions a "monument" on the NE corner of the strip which is taken to be a surveying monument of probably concrete or similar material, and might be found today 67 ft northeastward of the current cemetery site's NE corner). The transaction reduced the size of the lot on which the cemetery sat to 1.59 acres; in 1963 another small amount was taken from the Fayetteville Street side for street widening, leaving the present 1.409 acres (Durham Co. DB 294:85; Plat Book 44:189). Apparently in late 1971 or early 1972 Mr. Amey constructed a building for his business on the cemetery property but adjacent to Fayetteville Street, as the city directory shows his business address as 2919 S. Fayetteville Street in 1972 (an advertisement in the directory in 1973 with this address said: "Amey Funeral Home and Florist - 41 Years Service"). A mortgage was taken out on the property on 15 Dec 1971, possibly for this purpose. This was the site of his business for the next 10 years. William A. Amey died on 11 Aug 1981 (Beechwood Cemetery records) and in December, 1981 Essie Amey sold this property, described as the "site of Amey's Funeral Service," to Robert C. Brooks (Durham Co. DB 1073:140). Mr. Brooks took a mortgage on the property from the Amey family (Durham Co. DB 1073:141; Katherine R. Everett, trustee). In conjunction with that sale, a survey of the property was made by Mr. George C. Love, Jr., RLS, and Mr. Love has kindly made a copy of the survey available (see atch). Noted on the survey is the one gravestone that is readily visible on the property today. Listings in the city directory show that Mr. Brooks did not occupy the premises, as the building is shown as "vacant" in the 1983 and 1984 directories (1981-82 was a combined directory and lists the funeral service). On 15 May 1984 Steele Realty, Inc. [Sandy Steele and Deborah W. Steele, wife] assumed the loan on the property in a multiple transaction. Robert C. Brooks had sold the property to George Tate, Jr. and Esther W. Tate by assigning to them the Deed of Trust. They shortly thereafter resold the property to Steele Realty, which then assumed the $123,000 mortgage (Durham Co. DB 1161:955). This mortgage was canceled on 12 Nov 1991 (Durham Co. DB 1690:291; but see also DB 1688:305-313). The city directory lists two occupants for 1985: Steele Realty, Inc. and Marzella's Professional Complex. The "Complex" still occupies the premises, possibly in an expanded building. In December 1997 [at the time this summary was prepared] the property on which the cemetery is located was owned by the Kiddie Prep School, Inc., a nonprofit organization incorporated on 2 Jul 1984 (Durham Co. Corporations Book 69, p. 838). The incorporaters and directors were Maricoma Steele, Marzella S. Webb and Debra [Deborah?] Steele. The property had been transferred to this organization on 6 Apr 1993 by Sandy Steele and Deborah W. Steele [Steele Realty, Inc.] (Durham Co. DB 1834:69). It was described as 1.409 acres/61,384 sq. ft. with reference to the Love survey previously noted. [Added Note: During later research by blues music fans into the history of Blind Boy Fuller (Fulton Allen), cemetery exhumation or removal records were checked by them at the State Archives. No record was found that any removal of bodies or burials from the Grove Hill Cemetery had been recorded.] Source: https://cemeterycensus.com/nc/durh/262/262-summary.htm Previous Next

< Back Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC Book Summery: In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. The testimonies gathered here present a sweeping personal history of SNCC: early sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the movements in Alabama and Maryland; and Black Power and antiwar activism. Since the women spent time in the Deep South, many also describe risking their lives through beatings and arrests and witnessing unspeakable violence. These intense stories depict women, many very young, dealing with extreme fear and finding the remarkable strength to survive. The women in SNCC acquired new skills, experienced personal growth, sustained one another, and even had fun in the midst of serious struggle. Readers are privy to their analyses of the Movement, its tactics, strategies, and underlying philosophies. The contributors revisit central debates of the struggle including the role of nonviolence and self-defense, the role of white people in a black-led movement, and the role of women within the Movement and the society at large. Each story reveals how the struggle for social change was formed, supported, and maintained by the women who kept their "hands on the freedom plow. " As the editors write in the introduction, "Though the voices are different, they all tell the same story--of women bursting out of constraints, leaving school, leaving their hometowns, meeting new people, talking into the night, laughing, going to jail, being afraid, teaching in Freedom Schools, working in the field, dancing at the Elks Hall, working the WATS line to relay horror story after horror story, telling the press, telling the story, telling the word. And making a difference in this world." Previous Next

< Back The North Carolina Historical Review By 1910, North Carolina led the nation in the number of bachelor of arts degrees awarded to African American women. Of the 168 degrees awarded in the state by 1910, Bennett College had granted 71. By 1910, North Carolina led the nation in the number of bachelor of arts degrees awarded to African American women. Of the 168 degrees awarded in the state by 1910, Bennett College had granted 71. March is Women’s History Month! The North Carolina Historical Review has published numerous articles on women’s history over the years, most recently Jelani Favors’s article “Race Women: New Negro Politics and the Flowering of Radicalism at Bennett College, 1900-1945” in the October 2017 issue. You can read it here: https://files.nc.gov/ncdcr/documents/files/NCHR_OCT17_FB.pdf. That issue also features David La Vere’s article on the Tuscarora Indians, Benjamin Justesen’s essay “Reconsidering the American South,” and reviews of recently published books. Previous Next

< Back Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved By: Clarence Lusane- February 12, 2014 “Why We Shouldn’t Forget That U.S. Presidents Owned Slaves” Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved By:By Clarence Lusane- February 12, 2014 Image: In this drawing from about 1815, enslaved people pass the Capitol wearing shackles and chains. (Library of Congress) “Why We Shouldn’t Forget That U.S. Presidents Owned Slaves” Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved By:By Clarence Lusane- February 12, 2014 Image: In this drawing from about 1815, enslaved people pass the Capitol wearing shackles and chains. (Library of Congress) #OnThisDay #OTDIH February 17 #PresidentsDay Schools across the country are adorned with posters of the U.S. presidents and the years they served in office. U.S. history textbooks describe the accomplishments and challenges of the major presidential administrations—George Washington had the Revolutionary War, Abraham Lincoln the Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt the Spanish-American War, and so on. Children’s books put students on a first-name basis with the presidents, engaging readers with stories of their dogs in the Rose Garden or childhood escapades. Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian Institution welcomes visitors to an exhibit of the first ladies’ gowns and White House furnishings. Nowhere in all this information is there any mention of the fact that more than one in four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery. These presidents bought, sold, and bred enslaved people for profit. Of the 12 presidents who were enslavers, more than half kept people in bondage at the White House. For this reason, there is little doubt that the first person of African descent to enter the White House—or the presidential homes used in New York (1788–90) and Philadelphia (1790–1800) before construction of the White House was complete—was an enslaved person. The White House itself, the home of presidents and quintessential symbol of the U.S. presidency, was built with slave labor, just like most other major building projects had been in the 18th-century United States, including many of our most famous buildings like Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Boston’s Faneuil Hall, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and James Madison’s Montpelier. President Washington initially wanted to hire foreign labor to build the White House, but when he realized how costly it would be to pay people fairly, he resorted to slave labor. Constructed in part by black slave labor, the home and office of the president of the United States has embodied different principles for different people. For whites, whose social privileges and political rights have been protected by the laws of the land, the White House has symbolized the power of freedom and democracy over monarchy. For blacks, whose history is rooted in slavery and the struggle against white domination, the symbolic power of the White House has shifted along with each president’s relation to black citizenship. For many whites and people of color, the White House has symbolized the supremacy of white people both domestically and internationally. U.S. nativists with colonizing and imperialist aspirations understood the symbolism of the White House as a projection of that supremacy on a global scale. This idea is embodied in the building project itself. Although the White House is symbolically significant, there is a largely hidden and silenced black history of the U.S. presidency. Here are just a few examples. --George Washington’s stated antislavery convictions misaligned with his actual political behavior. While professing to abhor slavery and hope for its eventual demise, as president Washington took no real steps in that direction and in fact did everything he could to ensure that not one of the more than 300 people he owned could secure their freedom. During the 10 years of construction of the White House, George Washington spent time in Philadelphia where a law called the Gradual Abolition Act passed in 1780. It stated that any slaves brought into the state were eligible to apply for their freedom if they were there for longer than six months. To get around the law, Washington rotated the people working for him in bondage so that they were there for less than six months each. Despite Washington’s reluctance to carry out his stated antislavery predilections, the movement against slavery grew anyway, including within the president’s very own household among the men and women he enslaved. One of the presidential slaves was Ona “Oney” Maria Judge. In March 1796 (the year before Washington’s second term in office ended), Oney was told that she would be given to Martha Washington’s granddaughter as a wedding present. Oney carefully planned her escape and slipped out of the Washingtons’ home in Philadelphia while the Washingtons were eating dinner. Oney Judge fled the most powerful man in the United States, defied his attempts to trick her back into slavery, and lived out a better life. After her successful attempt became widely known, she was a celebrity of sorts. Her escape from the Washingtons fascinated journalists, writers, and others, but more important, it was an inspiration to the abolition movement and other African Americans who were being enslaved by whites. --By the age of 10, Paul Jennings was enslaved at the White House as a footman for James Madison, the fourth president of the United States. When he got older, Dolley Madison hired out Jennings, keeping every “last red cent” of his earnings. Dolley indicated in her will that she would give Jennings his freedom, but instead sold him before she died. Thankfully, Daniel Webster intervened and purchased his freedom. Soon after, Paul Jennings helped plan one of the most ambitious and daring efforts to liberate enslaved blacks in U.S. history, the Pearl Affair. It was not successful, but as with John Brown’s raid, the political repercussions lasted for decades and strengthened the abolitionist cause. Paul Jennings went on to become the first person to write a memoir of a firsthand experience working in the White House. In textbooks and popular history, the White House is figuratively constructed as a repository of democratic aspirations, high principles, and ethical values. For many Americans, it is subversive to criticize the nation’s founders, the founding documents, the presidency, the president’s house, and other institutions that have come to symbolize the official story of the United States. It may be uncomfortable to give up long-held and even meaningful beliefs that in many ways build both collective and personal identities. However, erasing enslaved African Americans from the White House and the presidency presents a false portrait of our country’s history. If young people—and all the rest of us—are to understand a fuller, people’s history of the United States, they need to recognize that every aspect of early America was built on slavery. This article is part of the Zinn Education Project’s If We Knew Our History series. Click Source Link To See Other LInks: Source Link: https://www.zinnedproject.org/.../hidden-black-history.../ Previous Next

< Back Jefferson's Children: The Story of One American Family Hardcover – September 5, 2000 On October 31, 1998, the Associated Press broke the news of the DNA findings linking Thomas Jefferson to Sally Hemings through the Eston Hemings line. On November 10, on national TV, Oprah united members of the Jefferson family and the descendants of the Eston, Madison, and Woodson lines of the Hemings family--and history was made. On this show, Lucian Truscott IV, a Jefferson descendant, issued an invitation to the Hemings family to come to a family reunion at Monticello. At the reunion, emotions ran high--and it was in this setting that photographer Jane Feldman met Shannon Lanier and the idea for this book was born. The authors have since traveled the country amassing historical materials and interviewing and photographing members of both sides of the family. This is the story of their journey, 200 years back in time, and back and forth across family and racial lines. It is not so much a story of black and white as it is a story about an American family. Previous Next

< Back Savannah State University NROTC cadets stand ready for commissioning ​ “At the turn of the century, in the early 1900's, this black and white image (left) features our student cadet corps. Flash forward to present day, (right) and the Savannah State University NROTC cadets stand ready for commissioning with the Spring Class of 2022.” Narrative and images source: Savannah State University Previous Next

< Back The Culture Keepers THE CULTURE KEEPERS --- National Black Storytelling Festival, in Wake this week, highlights Moral Monday movement October 29, 2018 06:46 PM News and Observer by Thomasi McDonald The East St. Louis poet and playwright Keith Antar Mason once asserted that “life may have began with the creation of atoms, but cultures are built with the telling of our stories. When I tell your story, I am telling my own.” Similarly, renowned folklorist Zora Neale Hurston said a man with a story has a million dollars in his pocket. Those affirmations will be on display this week at the annual National Black Storytelling Festival and Conference in Cary. The festival kicked off Monday night at The Cary Theater with a free event featuring local storytellers; Willa Brigham and Linda Gorham of Cary, Donna Washington of Durham, and U.S. Storytelling Treasure, Mitch “Gran’Daddy Junebug” Capel of Southern Pines. The weeklong event promises a gathering of masterful storytellers, musicians, authors and African-culture scholars whose work will be featured in Cary and some other Triangle locations. The Hillsborough duo Kevin and Tracy Bell will also perform during the festival as “The Two Bells.” Their work features a unique, interactive brand of storytelling from the African and African-American traditions. Capel, a native of Southern Pines, has been twice featured at The National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tenn. A natural for all the “signifyin’” that takes place at a great many lying contests, Capel will emcee the Jackie Torrence Tall Tale Contests during this week’s festival in Cary. The North Carolina Association of Black Storytellers is co-hosting the event, and will present African dance, drumming, spoken word performances, and of course storytelling on Wednesday night at N.C. State’s Witherspoon Student Center. The event is free and open to the public. The main events will be held at the Embassy Suites in Cary, where organizers have set up an “African Marketplace” and resource center that will feature African imports, Afro-centric wearable art and African-American literature and art. Storytellers from across the country, via the National Adopt-A-Teller program, will also visit more than 40 local schools, libraries, museums, correctional facilities and recreation and senior centers, to share educational and cultural experiences. “This annual Festival showcases NABS’ vision and creative approach to strengthen our communities through the art of storytelling and collecting, owning and institutionalizing our narratives,” Dr. Caroliese Frink Reed, this year’s festival director, said in a news release. “We stand on the backs and shoulders of those who came before us, and we continue to shine a light for those who will come after us.” North Carolina’s role in the preservation of stories is prominently featured throughout the festival and conference. This year’s theme is “Our Storytelling Fabric: Weaving Tales From the Dismal Swamp to Moral Monday Marches.” This festival presenters note that since the first Africans were brought to North Carolina in the 17th century, bound in chains and sold on auction blocks, the state has been a powerful depository for stories preserving the African-American continual flight to freedom. The festival’s theme highlights the Moral Monday movement that started in 2013 by the Rev. William Barber, a recent MacArthur “genius” grant winner. The movement was a series of weekly protests and rallies at the Republican-controlled N.C. General Assembly. During the festival, retired North Carolina Central University history professor Freddie Parker will talk about the history of “The Dismal Swamp” near Elizabeth City and Tidewater, Va. ▪ For more information, go to www.nabsinc.org . ▪ Registration for the festival and conference is available at Embassy Suites, 201 Harrison Oaks Blvd., Cary. ▪ For more information contact Caroliese Frink Reed, national festival director, at afamstorytellers@gmail.com or 215-796-2785. Previous Next

< Back July- Car belonging to Negro share tenant family. The mother said they were not running it because they did not have the money to buy tags. Title: 1939 July- Car belonging to Negro share tenant family. The mother said they were not running it because they did not have the money to buy tags. "I always say rations and clothes comes before riding. I can stay at home." Near Gordonton, Person Co., North Carolina. Photographer: Dorothea Lange Source: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) Previous Next

< Back Left photo: Empty tobacco bag with string. North Carolina Collection Gallery. Right photo: Country Gentleman Tobacco, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, Durham, N.C. North Carolina Collection Gallery. Left photo: Empty tobacco bag with string. North Carolina Collection Gallery. Right photo: Country Gentleman Tobacco, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, Durham, N.C. North Carolina Collection Gallery. Left photo: Empty tobacco bag with string. North Carolina Collection Gallery. Right photo: Country Gentleman Tobacco, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, Durham, N.C. North Carolina Collection Gallery. Source: UNC Chapel Hill, Wilson Library, Tobacco Bag Stringing North Carolina, Virginia Collection. . What is Tobacco Bag Stringing? In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, families throughout the tobacco-growing regions of North Carolina and Virginia earned much-needed income by sewing drawstrings into cotton tobacco bags. Long forgotten today, tobacco bag stringing was a common activity in many communities. Because the labor was not physically demanding and could be done at home, the work attracted many women, children, and others who needed money to supplement their farm incomes, or who could not find work in nearby factories and mills. Tobacco bags were used to hold loose tobacco, which smokers used in pipes or to roll their own cigarettes. The bags were usually made of cotton or muslin cloth and measured about four by three inches. They were sewn down the length of two sides, with an opening left at the top. Tobacco bag stringers would thread the string into both sides, enabling the smoker to pull on the ends to close the bags. Experienced stringers were remarkably efficient. One woman from West Durham, N.C. remembered working only in her spare time and still stringing as many as a thousand bags a day, for which she earned about fifty cents. Many of the bag stringers received work through a "bag agent," who was employed directly by the manufacturer. The agent was often a local businessman or county government official who was well known throughout the community. Distributing tobacco bags became an important responsibility when demand for work outpaced the number of bags available. A bag agent in Leaksville, N.C. in 1939 described the need for work in his community: The mills here have been running short time for several years now. And I believe less than one half of the people normally employed are now at work. Boiled down this means there probably is one in each household partly employed [as a tobacco bag stringer]. So every day I have hundreds of requests for bags above that I am able to provide. They come at me from every angle, telephone, doorbell and since my business is in my residence, they'll even go around the house and come in the back door just to tell me how needy they are, and ask me to please get them some bags to string to help out in the little they now receive. In 1939, three companies produced the bulk of the tobacco bags used in the United States. Of these, only one—the Golden Belt Manufacturing Company, a subsidiary of American Tobacco in Durham, N.C.—had come up with a way to insert drawstrings mechanically. The other two companies—the Millhiser Bag Company in Richmond, Va. and the Chase Bag Company in Reidsville, N.C.—had to rely on human labor to string the bags. This was not a small business: the three companies combined to produce a billion tobacco bags a year. Although many Americans showed a clear preference for the more convenient machine-rolled cigarettes, loose tobacco was still much cheaper and saw its sales jump in times of economic hardship. During the Great Depression, a bag of loose tobacco, from which about thirty cigarettes could be rolled, sold for ten cents, while packs of twenty machine-rolled cigarettes cost fifteen cents. Tobacco Bag Stringing and the Minimum Wage On June 28, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing a minimum wage of twenty-five cents an hour. This law threatened to disrupt the livelihood of home workers, whose activities were largely unregulated. Because tobacco bag stringers were paid based on how many bags they prepared rather than how many hours they worked, it was difficult to establish whether or not the bag stringers were receiving an hourly wage that met the new federal standards. With the rate of pay at around fifty cents for a thousand bags, it would be nearly impossible for tobacco bag stringers to earn enough to satisfy the requirements of the new law. Most earned on average between five and thirteen cents an hour. Not long after the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, the Virginia-Carolina Service Corporation, based in Richmond, began lobbying for an amendment to the act that would exempt home workers. The Service Corporation commissioned a report to argue for the vital importance of the income earned from tobacco bag stringing by many families in Virginia and North Carolina. The authors of the report solicited and published testimony from agents who distributed the bags and from local government officials. The bulk of the report contains photographs and descriptions of women and men who relied on tobacco bag stringing as a supplemental and, in some cases, a primary source of income. The authors interviewed 147 families, primarily in and around Wilkes and Rockingham Counties, North Carolina, and Richmond and South Richmond, Virginia. The completed "Report on Tobacco Bag Stringing Operations in North Carolina and Virginia" was produced in 1939. The short, factual sketches of tobacco bag stringers are similar to the life histories that were being prepared around the same time by writers for the Federal Writers' Project. The biographical notes discuss the health and living conditions of the bag stringers and list their current expenses in an effort to illustrate the importance of the income earned from tobacco bag stringing. Most of these profiles are accompanied by striking black and white photographs, many of which document the heartbreaking poverty in which so many of these people lived. . Suggestions for Further Reading "American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940." American Memory, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html. See especially the life histories for Mary Smith, The Dunnes, and East Durham. Eileen Boris, Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Robert K. Heimann, Tobacco and Americans. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960. Joan M. Jensen, With These Hands: Women Working on the Land. Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1981. Ben F. Lemert, The Tobacco Manufacturing Industry in North Carolina. Raleigh, N.C.: National Youth Administration of North Carolina, 1939. Nancy J. Martin-Perdue and Charles L. Perdue, Jr., Talk About Trouble: A New Deal Portrait of Virginians in the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Previous Next

< Back Dr Charotte Hawkins Brown with three women. ​ Dr Charotte Hawkins Brown with three women.Photo is from the 1920's. Previous Next

< Back Alpha Phi Alpha, Shaw University. ​ Alpha Phi Alpha, Shaw University. Shaw Bears 1959 yearbook. Previous Next

< Back Samantha Foxx Meet the Inspiring Woman Behind North Carolina's Buzziest Farm Samantha Foxx, a master beekeeper, started Mother’s Finest Urban Farms three years ago in an effort to serve the local community, educate, and inspire people to look after the earth. By Meghan Overdeep/Southern Living June 11, 2020 Samantha Foxx is uncomfortable with the idea of being considered a role model. But as a black woman, a mother, a master beekeeper, and the founder of a thriving 2.5-acre family farm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, she’s a uniquely inspiring figure. “I’m just a person with organized thoughts,” she explained to Southern Living. “I want to be myself.” Foxx started Mother’s Finest Urban Farms three years ago in an effort to serve the local community, educate, and inspire people to look after the earth. Today, her farm has an ever-growing variety of bees, worms, chickens, mushrooms, and other produce with a successful retail line. In a time when many businesses are struggling to stay afloat amid the coronavirus pandemic, Foxx says Mother’s Finest Urban Farms is thriving. “We’re busting out the seams!” she notes. Last year the farm had only one CSA customer. Now, they have almost 30. And a recent land donation is set to become a virtual apiary, while monetary donations have allowed Foxx to add two new beehives to the operation. “People are investing more into their local farmers and seeing food as a source of wellness and having access to fresh quality produce is becoming more relevant,” she told ShoppeBlack. But it’s not just about the food. Foxx’s social media presence, which often features her six-year-old son working alongside her, is particularly poignant in these unprecedented times. “Right now, I really think we need more of this,” she said of her back-to-the-earth approach to life. “Everybody… it’s not just about color. It’s about showing people there is still some beauty here.” Photo collage description: Samantha Winship tending to plants in raised garden bed. Inset photo: Samantha Winship in her beekeeper clothing, holding a beehive screen filled with honey. Credit: Mother's Finest Family Urban Farms Link To Mother's Finest Family Urban Farms web site: https://www.mothersfinesturbanfarms.com/ Previous Next

< Back Elizabeth City State University-Gathering of Female Students on State Colored Normal School Campus, circa 1924 ​ Title with photograph: Gathering of Female Students on State Colored Normal School Campus, circa 1924 - Elizabeth City State Colored Normal School. Elizabeth City, Pasquotank County. N.C. Female students wearing middy blouses casually gathered on lawn in front of Moore Hall classroom and administration building (erected 1922). An event appears to be going on in background. North Carolina's Historically Black Colleges and Universities Source: Elizabeth City State Univ. Archives Previous Next