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JUNIOR HISTORIAN History for Students

african american life

Fall 1995 Produced by the North Carolina Museum of History N.C. DOCUMENTS CLEARINGHOUSE

OCT 31 1995

STA‘JE LIBRARY Tar Heel Junior Historian NO RTH CAROLI North Carolina History for Students RALEIGH

Fall 1995 Volume 35, Number 1

State of North Carolina James B. Hunt Jr., Governor Dennis A. Wicker, Lieutenant Governor Contents

Department of Cultural Resources Betty Ray McCain, Secretary Elizabeth E Buford, Deputy Secretary 1 African American life in North Carolina

Division of Archives and History Jeffrey J. Crow and Raymond Cavins Jeffrey J. Crow, Acting Director Larry G. Misenheimer, Deputy Director 3 The slave community at North Carolina Museum of History Section James C. McNutt, Administrator Dorothy Spruill Redford

Education and Interpretation Branch Janice C. Williams, Head Kathleen B. Wyche, Managing Editor 8 An adaptable institution: Slavery in western North Carolina Tar Heel Junior Historian Association Mary Bradford, Program Coordinator John Inscoe

Tar Heel Junior Historian Staff Stephen P. Evans, Editor/Designer Nancy Pennington, Cover Designer 12 First steps to freedom:

Tar Heel Junior Historian Association North Carolina's emancipation experience Advisory Board John David Smith Laura Baum, Mary Bradford, Stephen P. Evans, Gary Freeze, Janice Cole Gibson, Vince Greene, Cille Griffith, Valerie J. Howell, Susan Lamar, Patricia L. Phillips, and Janice C. Williams 18 Discovering the past through cultural traditions

Conceptual Editors Alice Eley Jones Jeffrey J. Crow Raymond Garins 22 What one young African American woman could do: The story of Dr. Charlotte Hawkins THE PURPOSE OF THE Tar Heel Junior Historian magazine (ISSN 0496-8913) is to present the history of Brown and the Palmer Memorial Institute North Carolina for this state’s young people through a well-balanced selection of scholarly articles, photographs, Charles W. Wadelington and illustrations. It is published two times per year by the Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, North Carolina Museum of History, 5 East Edenton Street, Raleigh, 27 Middle-class Durham during the age of Jim Crow North Carolina 27601-1011. Copies are provided free to association members, along with the association newslet¬ Beverly 1/1/ Jones ter, Crossroads. Individual and library subscriptions may be purchased at the rate of S4.00 per year. © 1995, North Carolina Division of Archives and History. EDITORI¬ AL POLICY: The Tar Heel Junior Historian solicits man¬ 32 "We were all brothers and sisters then": uscripts from expert scholars for each issue. Articles arc The grassroot Civil Rights movement in selected for publication by the editor in consultation with the conceptual editors and other experts. The editor Hyde County reserves the right to make changes in articles accepted for publication but will consult the author should substantive David S. Cecelski questions arise. Published articles do not necessarily rep¬ resent the views of the North Carolina Museum of History, the Division of Archives and History, the 36 THJH Essay Contest award winner Department of Cultural Resources, or any other state agency. THE TEXT of this journal is available on mag¬ Jerrian Elizabeth Brooks netic recording tape from the State Library, Services to the Blind and Physically Handicapped Branch. For infor¬ mation call 1-800-662-7726. NINE THOUSAND copies of this public document were printed at an approxi¬ mate cost of $7,830.00, or $.87 per copy. African American by Jeffrey J. Crow and Raymond Look at the “Chronology of Events in African American Life” that appears in the margins throughout this issue. One of the first entries states that Africans visited the shores of North Carolina as early as the 1500s when they accompanied European explorers to the New World. That means that , Native Americans, and European Americans have worked or lived together in separate and shared communities for more than four hundred years. As you read the articles in this issue, think about how community has shaped In 1890 five generations of Mountain blacks posedfor this photograph. Think of the the African American experience in North changes they saw during their lifetimes and how they tried to preserve, protect, maintain, Carolina. Think about how African and re-create their heritage and traditions. As you read this issue of THJH, think about Americans have constantly tried to the challenges that African Americans have faced since then and how they also have strived preserve, protect, maintain, and re-create to preserve, protect, maintain, and re-create their heritage and traditions. their community while facing the challenges process of emancipation during the Civil War of slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights revealed African Americans’ committed sense A movement. of identity, self-direction, and independence. Chronology The articles by Dorothy Spruill Redford As soldiers in the fight for freedom, they of Events and John Inscoe discuss the slave community expected to receive equal treatment and equal in North pay. And as other free citizens, they wanted in African VIVE POUNDS REWARD. Carolina to support their families with honest labor. American RUN-AWAY from the fub- and how icriber, a negro fellow nam¬ The pictorial article by Alice Eley Jones Life enslaved ed DANIEL, thirty-three years demonstrates how enslaved Africans and Africans of age, a low well fet fellow, has later African Americans continued to use a very flat nofe, down look, black 1500s fought to the knowledge they inherited from their The first Africans complexion, and but few words in accompany explorers maintain common, he can .read fome in ancestors. They used ideas and skills learned to the New World. In family ties prinr, and is a black-fmith, filvcr- in Africa to build what would become North and the fmith and a cooper; carried away homes, cultivate Carolina, Lucas Vasques with him iilver-fmdhs tools, and de Ay lion (1526) and Sir elements crops, cook food, and dilferent Cults of homefpun cloths, Francis Drake (1586) bring of African one pair of buck-fkin breeches, make tools and Africans with them. culture and one Dutch blanket. Any per- utensils. 1619 and beliefs fon that will deliver him to me,or Essays by Charles A Dutch ship drops that their fecure faid negro lo that I may W. Wadelington, anchor at Jamestown in get him again, (hall receive the the colony. Its parents above reward from Beverly W. Jones, cargo includes the colony’s first African slaves. and grand¬ ABRAHAM TAYLOR. and David S. Cecelski parents Bertie County, March 24, 1791. demonstrate the 1670 had held. continuity that The colony of Virginia The story of African American life that we passes a law stating that These discuss in this issue begins with slavery, the persisted in educa¬ newly imported Africans articles first major obstacle to face blacks in the tion, racial uplift, and are heathens that do not United States. believe in Christ and also dis¬ solidarity from one “should, in good Christian cuss how African Americans constantly generation of African Perhaps one of the biggest conscience, be held as slaves for the duration of their Americans to the challenges to face African adjusted and adapted to new conditions. lives.” Southern ministers txt i ,. Americans since emancipa- John David Smith’s essay on emancipation next. Wadelington, , , 7 „ . I commonly use this argu¬ ° tion has been thefightjor ment to defend slavery. shows how strongly both slaves and free tor example, points equal opportunities, in blacks fought to protect their families. The out that Charlotte particular for education.

1 1731 Hawkins Brown strived Benjamin Banneker is to build the state’s black bom near Baltimore. This African American community through the will serve two years on the development of an commission to survey and plan Washington, D.C. educated leadership. As an older man, he Jones shows us that the will become absorbed in city of Durham became astronomy and in 1789 will accurately predict the capital of the black a solar eclipse. middle class in the 1775-1783 Jim Crow, or segregated, Before and during the American Revolution South and that its about 5,000 African insurance and banking Americans, many from institutions remain vital North Carolina, fight for The challenge of obtaining equal civil rights continues for African Americans today, though American independence. parts of the African progress has been made since this day in Raleigh, May 1963. American community to this day. Cecelski describes the impact of community but never destroyed it. the Civil Rights movement on rural Hyde Education, protection of family and County when integration threatened to close heritage, and the re-creation of community the county’s black schools. He also describes gave African Americans a strong sense of how the African American community joined identity that continues today. together to defend those institutions. As these articles reveal, slavery, racism, and prejudice affected the African American

Jeffrey J. Crow is acting Definitions blacks were treated “equally” by having their own separate director of the North facilities like carryout windows at restaurants or places Carolina Division of Basic rights, or privileges of citizenship, are guaranteed to like the backs of buses and specially designated water Archives and History. most Americans by the U.S. Constitution, especially the fountains and rest rooms where they were barely tolerated. He is the author of Bill of Rights. The struggle by minority groups, especially These facilities were often labeled with signs that said The Black Experience African Americans, for equal rights has come to be known “White only”and “Black only, "or “Colored only." During in Revolutionary North as the Civil Rights movement. the Jim Crow era, if you were with a friend of a different Carolina and the coauthor color (which would have been discouraged by society in the of A History of African Emancipation is the act of freeing, in this case from first place), you would not have been able to eat together Americans in North generations of bondage, or slavery. in a restaurant, sit together on a bus, or drink from the Carolina. Crow received same waterfountain or use the same rest room. his Ph.D.from Duke The term “Jim Crow” apparently originatedfrom a song University, where he and dance routine that was popular in the 1830s and Racial segregation is the separation of a group ofpeople studied Afro-American became a negative term for segregation in the South as because of its race, nationality, skin color, or ethnic origin. history with Raymond early as the mid-1800s. Jim Crow laws legally separated Desegregation is the act of reducing or elim inating that Gavins. African Americans from whites in places like neighbor¬ separation so that different groups can work, live, and hoods, schools, hospitals, prisons, and cemeteries. Jim interact together on an equal level. Integration is the Raymond Gavins is Crow restrictions even carried over into areas where combining, or unifying, of different groups into one body. professor of history at , where he is also codirector of “Behind the In putting together this issue of THJH. I had the cooperation and assistance of several Veil: African American Life Acknowledgments and Thanks persons. My thanks, first of all, to the Tar Heel Junior Historian Association advisers in the Jim Crow South, "a who returned surveys and offered comments about the design and format of the magazine. Many of the changes in this issue result from those returns. My continuing admiration and appreciation are offered to the following individuals and team members who assist with all THJHA publications: Jerry collaborative research Cashion and Wilson Angley, Research Branch, Division of Archives and History, for their valuable historical review and research skills; members of the project. He has written a Curation and Collections Management Branches, Museum of History, for their assistance, reviews, and suggestions; Eric N. Blevins, D. Kent book and many articles on Thompson, and Jim Mercer, Photography Unit, Design Branch, Museum of History, for quick and professional artwork; Laura B. Baum, Editorial blacks in the South between Unit, Education and Interpretation Branch, Museum of History, for finding time for reviews and to offer advice as recent guest editor of the magazine; Darryl Ketcham and Obelia J. Exum, Graphic Design Unit, Design Branch, Museum of History, for their assistance and advice; members of the the Civil War and the Education and Interpretation Branch, Museum of History, for reading suggestions and impromptu reviews and advice; and Steve Massengill and Earl Civil Rights movement. Ijames, Iconographic Unit, Archives and Records Section, Division of Archives and History, for their help and information. For their assistance with this African American Life issue, I wish to thank the following: the conceptual editors and the authors and contributors, from across the state and from , who provided timely and knowledgeable information when, or before, I needed it; Jody Barber, Baker-Barber Collection, Hendersonville; Tim All photographs and Barnwell, photographer, Asheville; Scott Bolejack, Smithfie/dHerald, Smithfield; Tim Bottoms, Cape Fear Museum, Wilmington; Cheryl M. Brown, documents in this article are North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, Durham; Chandrea Burch, Archaeology and Historic Preservation Section, Division of Archives and from the North Carolina I listory; Sam Gray, Mountain Gateway Museum (Old Fort), Museum of History Section; Terry Harper, Historic Sites Section, Division of Archives Division of Archives and and History'; Kenneth M. McFarland, Stagvillc Center, Division of Archives and History; Elizabeth Moorman, volunteer photographer for the Durham County Library, Durham; David Perry, UNC Press, Chapel Hill; Zoc Rhine, Pack Memorial Public Library, Asheville; Christy Simcox, History. Charlotte Museum of I listory, Charlotte; Pam Smith, Information Services, North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Bill Surface, Museum of the Cape Fear (Fayetteville), Museum of I listory Section; and Bob Topkins, Historical Publications Section, Division of Archives and History.

2 Who were the enslaved people at Somerset Place? At the plantation site yon can still see the results of some of their labors like canals, ditches, and buildings, but who were they? Have you ever wondered what kind of personalities they had... what kind of life they were living in Afica ... or what it must have been like to be kidnapped fom their home country and chained, carried across the ocean for weeks, and put to labor in a strange country with different customs and unfamiliar people who spoke a language unknown to them? Try to imagine a time almost two hundred years ago ...

The slaw® community at Somerset Place by Dorothy Spruill Redford

he beginning of the African American swampland “surrounding and bordering upon” 1776 community at Somerset Place is (mostly in present-day In the first draft of the Declaration of closely entangled in both the land and Washington County) with the plan of Independence, Thomas early labor needs of three business partners. developing a profitable plantation. The Jefferson, though himself a slave owner, writes a section In 1785 these men purchased more than one partners soon found that turning their condemning human bondage hundred thousand acres of densely vegetated swampland into fields that could be farmed and denouncing King George III for promoting had some obstacles. slavery in the colonies. First, the land Unfortunately the slave Somerset Place plantation trade is already very had to be cleared: by Dorothy Spruill Redford profitable, and southern thousands of huge delegates to the Continental In 1860 just over 630,000 whites and around 360,000 blacks lived in North trees that were Congress will not sign the document as written. The Carolina. While some 35,000 farmers owned enslaved blacks at the time, only hundreds of years section is omitted in the final four owned as many as the owners of Somerset Place. old had to be cut version. Josiah Collins I was the dominant partner of the three businessmen who purchased the land that became Somerset Place. He eventually bought out his down and uprooted. 1780 partners and willed the property to his seven grandchildren. But his son, Josiah II, Second, since Thomas Paine coauthors a Pennsylvania law that ran the business for ten years, until the grandchildren reached adulthood. He the land was too gradually abolishes cleared more land and purchased more slaves. waterlogged for slavery there. In 1829 his son, Josiah III, married and made Somerset Place his home. He continued to enlarge the plantation’s slave community through human purchases, passable roadways, 1785 and as children were born the community also grew through natural means. a six-mile-long, Three North Carolina businessmen purchase By 1860, 328 people of African descent lived and worked on what had twenty-foot-wide, more than 100,000 acres become North Carolina’s third largest antebellum plantation. six-to-twelve-foot- of swampland in present- The Civil War ended American slavery. Without unpaid, slave labor, planters day Washington County. deep canal had to like the Collinses could not afford to maintain their plantations. Today Somerset Enslaved Africans dig Place is a state historic site offering a be dug. This large canals to drain the land and create Somerset Place According to the 1860 census, North realistic view of antebellum plantation canal was primarily Carolina’s population was divided up plantation. like this: life. Visitors can enjoy guided tours of the to allow boats to mansion, grounds and outbuildings, and reach the plantation 1807 free black population 30,463 the foundation remains of six buildings Congress prohibits the enslaved black population 331,059 in the former slave community. School site from the importation of slaves white population 631,100 directly from Africa. total population 992,622 groups can also experience plantation Scuppernong River, Enforcement is lax, work in a hands-on educational program. which connected to though, and violations Albemarle Sound O Murphy G Wilmington Q Asheville O New Bern Q Charlotte © Beaufort O Winston-Salem © Edenton 0 Greensboro © Elizabeth City O Hillsborough 0 Somerset Place Q Raleigh

Almost half of the original 167 slaves at Somerset Place (number 13 on the above map of North Carolina) were brought directly from West Africa. This was unusual because North Carolina did not import many slaves from there. In fact, from 1749 to 1775 only 15.6 percent of the slaves imported into the colony came from Africa. Most came from the West Indies, with somefrom other colonies. Enslaved persons who were imported by ship almost always wore shackles like these (right) to restrain them.

are common. In fact, as and the ocean. But the canal also provided and skills of the first workers: 167 enslaved late as 1859 a ship lands drainage and irrigation to some areas. Much men, women, and children. Mainly, they in Georgia with more than 300 Africans. Scholars of the dirt from the canal was piled alongside were young, strong men in their late teens to estimate that as many as it to provide higher ground for improved early twenties. Some young women worked 250,000 slaves have been smuggled into the United roadways. beside these men in planting and harvesting States during these five Third, to help drain hundreds of acres of the fields, but uprooting tree stumps and decades. The law also does not prohibit the stagnant water, miles upon miles of smaller hauling mud away from the ditches were importation of slaves cross-ditches had to be dug. seen as “men’s work.” from the West Indies. All this work had to be done before crops This initial labor force came from three

1820s could be planted and harvested—before the basic sources. Almost half, including a man Thomas Day, a free black, plantation could make a profit. And it all named Guinea Jack and his wife named establishes himself as a talented cabinetmaker and had to be done by hand. Workers had to be Fanny, a man named Quammy, and 77 others, successful businessman in found quickly. At the time, the ready solution were brought to the plantation site directly Caswell County. to cheap labor was slavery. All plantations from their homeland in West Africa. Others 1827 relied on enslaved individuals to build and run included 49 people from neighboring counties After New York abolishes slavery, Isabella Baumfree them. Somerset Place would be no different. and states, women like Suckey and Rose who changes her name and cooked and washed. The remaining men and begins crusading for abolition, temperance, They were workers with skills women were artisans who were already in prison reform, woman’s Labor needs dictated the number, age, gender, Edenton: a carpenter named Lewis, a suffrage, and better working conditions. As Sojourner Truth, she The largest canal you can becomes a famous figure see in this photograph is at antislavery meetings and part of the six-mile-long irritates those who do not canal that enslaved agree with her. Africans dug at Somerset

1828 Place. It connected the America’s first gold rush plantation (in the last begins in western North grove of trees on the right Carolina. Slaves are side of the canal, against sometimes used to perform mining duties. Lake Phelps) with the Scuppernong River and 1829 trade in the Atlantic George Moses Horton Ocean. You can also see publishes his first book of some of the smaller cross¬ poetry, The Hope of Liberty. ditches that slaves dug to This book is the first work published by a southern help drain away stagnant African American. Horton swamp waters.

4 brickmason named Joe Welcome, and yams, and cucumbers. Fortunately these later will become famous others who were joiners, cobblers, millers, foods had been brought to America on slave for writing acrostic poems for students at the and weavers. ships long before she arrived. University of North Only 113 of those 167 survived to be Quammy made musical instruments, bowls, Carolina. counted in the 1790 census, but within those and dippers from gourds that grew from seeds 1829 brought from Africa. He also adapted and David Walker, a free black few years, the swampland was transformed from North Carolina, into a prosperous plantation. used gourds that were native to America. publishes his “Appeal,” calling upon African Guinea Jack likely brought spiritual beliefs American slaves to They were individuals with traditions that worshiped elements of the universe that rise up and throw off the burden of slavery. Each man, woman, and child who was humankind could not have created—elements brought to the plantation had a special like the sun. He also may have had “healing 1838 Frederick Douglass escapes identity and traditions that could be hands,” or skills that could heal the sick. In from slavery in Baltimore passed to future generations. addition he used the practice of “May Rain,” to freedom in New York disguised as a sailor. Guinea Jack, Quammy, and the other or collecting the first rain that falls in May to Douglass becomes not native Africans brought special “day names” wash eyes and prevent allergies. only the most well known African American indicating the day they were bom: Quammy In time these traditions mixed, and what abolitionist but also an meant “born on Saturday” and Kofi, or Cuff, had been purely African became a part of advocate for women’s meant “born on Friday.” Each person also African American traditions. For example, rights. In 1847 he will begin publishing the North carried a special family last name chosen by some slave descendants still use May Rain. Star. The paper’s slogan is the father and bestowed on the child during Carpenters, joiners, and masons who had printed under its name: “Right is of no sex; Truth a special naming ceremony that was attended built the fourteen-room house where Josiah is of no color; God is the by the whole village eight days after birth. III lived, thirty-seven houses in the enslaved Father of us all, and all we are Brethren.” These special African last names were lost as community, and the plantation’s bams and the native Africans were forced to adopt the mills passed their skills on to their sons. 1846 American Missionary last name of their first owner—Guinea Jack Cooks, spinners, weavers, laundresses, and Association (AMA) is and Quammy became Collinses. housemaids passed all they knew to their founded to promote the nonviolent defeat of Fanny brought her love of African foods daughters. Plowmen and field hands passed slavery. like rice, black-eyed peas, watermelon, okra, on their knowledge about working the land. 1849 The California gold rush Once the swamplands begins. An estimated 200 were cleared and drained, slaves from North Carolina plantation life at journey west to mine for Somerset Place became their masters. much like life at other 1850 plantations in the South. The Fugitive Slave Law is For their masters, slaves signed by President Millard grew crops and caredfor Fillmore. This law requires livestock. They made federal marshals to arrest any African American, runaway farm implements and or free, on demand. Once household tools. They arrested, these suspects are cooked, they sewed. jailed without warrants and They washed and cleaned. released to persons swearing They often worked from to be their owners—no real proof or evidence is required. sunup to sundown. And Many free blacks and black in their personal lives, abolitionists flee to Canada they survived with and England to escape this whatfood, clothing, and law. supplies their owners gave Early 1850s them. New York City newspaper reporter Frederick Law Olmsted tours the South and writes for his Northern readers about his travels. He pays particular attention to the institution of slavery.

1851 Harriet Tubman takes a party of eleven runaways

5 Recovering a lost history When I was born only ten miles from And their descendants were my kin. by Dorothy Spruill Redford the old plantation in 1943, my family was Somerset Place had grown from the three generations from slavery. No one efforts of the Collins family' and from the knew anything about those times or the hard work of the black enslaved families. With the end of the Civil War in 1865, place. My mother’s grandpa, Alfred The gracious buildings and grounds of nearly all of the black families that had Littlejohn, never told her he had spent the historic site were a testament to both been held at Somerset Place left the his first eighteen years there in bondage. groups. That gave me a sense of pride: I plantation for nearby towns like When I began to document my family wondered if other descendants felt the Creswell. They carried only a few history', a paper trail starting with Grandpa same. personal possessions and hopes for Alfred’s 1929 death certificate led me back I contacted as many as I could find, and everything slavery had denied them: to his early life, before 1865. they' in turn contacted others. All were education, wages, and homes of their own. That trail led to thousands of invited to a grand family reunion, the With everyone’s minds fixed on documents in the North Carolina State “Somerset Homecoming.” freedom’s dreams, thoughts of Somerset Archives and offices in Edenton. I found On Labor Day weekend, 1986, one Place and slavery faded. The “old heads” birth, death, and marriage records, and thousand, then two thousand, then three felt it best not to look back on “slavery deeds by which Alfred’s sons had purchased thousand people filled the grounds at times.” property'. I also found a deed with Grandpa Somerset Place. They had come from Alfred listed as Texas and , New York and Kansas. property: a slave of Josiah Collins IV came from the state of Josiah Collins III. Washington and Alex Haley came from Just as he California. Haley was not a descendant of owned the land the plantation, but his 1976 book Roots: The FOR SALE. that was Somerset Saga of an American Family had inspired me Place, Collins to research my' family history'. 1 will sell by Public Auction, on Tuesday of next Court, Folks hugged and kissed family they being the 20th of November, Eight Valuable Family Ser¬ owned Alfred and vants, consisting of one Negro .>lan. a first-rate field hand, 327 other men, already knew and family they had never one No. 1 Roy, 17 years o’ age, a trusty house servant, women, and seen before. The day had the feel of a one excellent Cook, one Ilouse-.tlaid, and one Seamstress. children. Many' special church homecoming. All who came The balance are under 12 years of age. They are sold left with a feeling of pride and reverence for for no fault, but in consequence of my going to reside were Alfred’s kin. North. AI so a quantity of Household and Kitchen Furni¬ those who created Somerset Place. ture, Stable Lot, &c. Terms accommodating, and made Slaves were often That was almost ten years ago. Now, as known on day of sale. thought of just manager of the historic site, I am helping Jacob August. like furniture, as preserve the history of all the people who P. J. TFRNBLLL, diuctioneer. shown in this ad once lived and worked at Somerset Place. IVarrenton, October 28. 1859. for a property Prmled «i the A'rtcs office, Warrentoo, North Carolina auction.

all the way from the South They were people with fears but hopes One slave named Smart ran and was to Canada to escape fears Although none in the slave community at caught, taken to the West Indies, and sold. about the Fugitive Slave Law. She is known to Somerset Place were there voluntarily or for Beck}' Drew ran, too. When captured, she have made at least eighteen pay, most did not try to leave. Laws before was put in the stocks overnight. The weather other secret trips, guiding 300 slaves to freedom. As 1808 allowed Americans to import Africans one of the most successful and hold them as slaves on plantations like conductors on the so-called Underground Railroad, she Somerset Place. Overseers supervised the once said, “I never run my enslaved and deterred them from running train off the track, and I away. In addition, each county had teams of never lost a passenger.” At one time a reward of “patrollers” to catch any slaves who attempted $40,000 was offered for to escape. If slaves tried to escape, the law her capture. required that “finders” return that property 1860 to its owner. Owners could give out North Carolina’s population is 992,622 punishments that ranged from flogging people: 631,100 whites to stocking to selling the runaways. and 361,522 blacks— 331,059 enslaved, Knowing what could happen, most slaves, 30,463 free. especially mothers afraid of being sold away from their children, decided to remain. Besides, The United States fights most who tried to escape seemed to get caught. the Civil War. As Union troops invade North Today Somerset Place is a state historic site where school¬ Carolina, many African children can see some of the tasks that slaves once performed there: basket weaving, cooking, cleaning, and candle dipping.

6 turned bitterly cold and her leet froze. Both overseer at Somerset Place. Sixteen were Americans leave their legs had to be amputated. taken to the Deep South by a slave trader and work as slaves to assist their Northern liberators. Some slaves did not run but committed sold. Most slaves simply stayed and focused other acts of defiance and were severely on preparing their children for the freedom September 22,1862 President Abraham punished, too. In 1853, field-workers led by they prayed would come. Lincoln’s Preliminary Peter and Elsy Littlejohn tried to poison the When the Civil War finally ended slavery Emancipation in 1865, these African American men and Proclamation declares slavery illegal in any women had to leave behind every tangible seceding states that thing they had created. But they took into do not rejoin the Union within one hundred days. freedom their families and the knowledge their family elders had passed on. For them freedom did not just mean starting over, it meant starting afresh.

One of the common duties for slaves who worked in the homes of their masters was to watch over the master's children. Some of these duties did not change after the Civil War brought freedom. Many African American women continued to care for children, cook, and launder.

Definitions Common slave punishments were fogging, or whipping, and stocking, or confining a person in stocks, a wooden fame with holes for arms and legs to fit through. When a limb, such as a leg, is amputated it is surgically removed, usually to prevent the spread of infection. At this time in history, freedom was a state of being unenslaved. Freedom was not guaranteed to any race. It The antebellum period is a time period in American was given, taken, or purchased by an owner or employer. history that spans the years between the end of the early national period (which ended roughly between 1815 and “Kin” in the Af lean and Afican American slave 1830) and the beginning of the Civil War (1861). community referred to a group of people suffering under common circumstances more than to actual blood Artisans are persons who are trained and experienced in relationships. In the slave community, families were a manual skill:for example, joiners (woodworkers who often broken between different owners: husbands were Dorothy Spruill specialize in making joints in pieces like doors, staircases, sold away as punishment, sons and daughters were sold Redford is a decendant and windows), cobblers fwho make and repair shoes), away as surplus, or extra, property, girls were traded for of Somerset Place and and millers (who grind grain). boys who would grow up to do field labor or boys were author of the book, traded for girls who could sew or cook. Blood relatives Somerset Homecoming: When something is bestowed upon someone, it is were sometimes never reunited, so a substitute family Recovering a Lost presented as a though ful, meaningful gift. unit was formed with kin who lived together and Heritage. She is currently supported one another. site manager at Somerset Acts of defiance, like making comments under their Place State Historic Site breaths, not working up to theirfull potential, or trying Stagnant water is standing, unchanging water, as near Creswell, Washington to make their master look foolish, were used by slaves as opposed to water that flows in a stream or water that is County. a form of silent protest. replenished, like a lake.

All photographs and Overseers deterred, or discouraged, slaves fom running Tangible things are objects that can be touched. documents in this article are away by threatening and scaring them. fom the North Carolina In this case, testament is proof or evidence that supports a Division of Archives and A dominant business partner has the largest investment. claim. History.

7 People in the North were very curious about life in the South. In particular they wanted to know about slavery. By the 1850s issues sunounding slavery were fast becoming some of America’s most important political issues. Frederick Law Olmsted toured the South and reported back to his New York City readers what he saw.

An adaptable institution: Slavery in western North Carolina by John Inscoe

n the early and mid-1850s, a New York no large plantations and far fewer slaves. City newspaper reporter named Frederick But unlike many observers of the time and Law Olmsted toured the southern states. historians since, Olmsted recognized that Olmsted’s assignment was to write articles slavery did exist in the Mountain region. He describing to his readers what he saw as he also noted that slavery served a very different traveled through different parts of the South. purpose there. In the summer of 1854, toward the end of his tour, Olmsted moved into the southern One of the first things Olmsted noticed when he reached the Mountains ofNorth Carolina was the size of its farms: most Appalachian Mountains. He traveled from were small, self-sufficient, family farms like this one. Since Chattanooga, Tennessee, into the Mountain most northerners associated slavery with the large plantations region of western North Carolina. of the South, how coidd these Mountain people use slaves? He immediately recognized that this part Actually, Mountain masters found many ways to adapt of the South was very different from other their slaves’ labor in that highland environment, as did slave owners who lived in cities, on the western frontier, and in areas of the South. The Mountain region had other settings. Why was slavery different in the The two men who owned the most slaves in Buncombe County, with more than seventy Mountain region? slaves each, were both hotel owners in Asheville. In addition, James Love, who operated a Slave labor is usually associated with large large resort for summer tourists near Waynesville, was Haywood County's largest slaveholder, with eighty-five slaves in 1850. In fact, some of the wealthiest men and largest slaveholders plantations that produced profitable cash in the Mountain region owned and operated hotels, like the Eagle Tavern (below, bottom), crops such as cotton or . But the in Asheville, and resorts like the Warm Springs Hotel (below, top) in Madison County. rugged terrain and cool climate of North Carolina’s Mountain region did not support this large-scale, cash-crop economy. Most farms in the Mountain region were small and were managed by a single farmer and his family without the need of additional enslaved laborers. The New York reporter was not surprised to find far fewer slaves in this non-plantation culture than he had during his travels through the Deep South. Olmsted may have been surprised, though, at who Mountain masters, or slaveholders, were. “Of the people who get their living entirely by agriculture,” he wrote, “few own Negroes; the slaveholders being chiefly professional men [meaning people such as doctors and lawyers], shop-keepers, 1863 and men in office, who are also land owners.” The United States secretary of war authorizes He might also have been surprised at the Colonel Edward A. Wild differences in the slave environment and the to recruit a group of African American soldiers roles slaves played. Olmsted wrote that slaves to fight for the Northern in the Mountain region “were less closely cause. By war’s end, nearly 5,000 blacks from North superintended. They exercise more Carolina and Virginia responsibility, and both in soul and will fight in units of the African Brigade. intellect, they are more elevated.” Another observer said that “the slaves residing 1865 among the Mountains are the happiest and most Congress creates the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and independent portion of the population.” Abandoned Lands, the “Freedmen’s Bureau.”

What did slaves do in the 1865-1866 Mountain region? The Thirteenth Amendment is ratified— Since Mountain masters were not primarily slavery is oudawed in the farmers, how did they use their slaves? They United States, but all Southern states pass forms often made them a part of their business of “Black Codes” to restrict operations. Hotelkeepers utilized their the newly freed people. slaves to such an extent that a British visitor 1866 to Asheville in 1840 observed, “The business The Civil Rights Act of 1866 fails to protect the civil of the inn is left mostly to the black servants Many masters even contributed their enslaved rights of freedmen largely to manage as they see fit.” Slaves waited on laborers for the construction of public because of the political turmoil of the era. Legally, guests at tables, took care of the guests’ horses buildings such as courthouses and churches the act declares that “all and carriages, provided room service, and or for the building and maintenance of roads. persons (except Indians not served as guides on deer and bear hunting Mining provided work for many slaves in taxed) bom in the United States are now citizens, expeditions. the Mountain region. During the 1820s, without regard to race, Other merchants directed their slaves in the southern mountains of Burke and color, or previous condition.” African Americans can now, to make clothing, wool hats, and shoes for Rutherford Counties, a minor gold rush theoretically, enter into themselves and for sale. Some slaves picked attracted miners to the area. Slaves owned contracts, give evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, up supplies and made deliveries. Still others by local residents and slaves brought in by lease, and sell real estate worked as slaves in tanyards, ironworks, miners from outside the area provided much and personal property. brickyards, gristmills, and lumberyards. of the workforce in the panning for gold.

9 Isaac Avery of Morganton observed that many North Carolinians were “withdrawing their slaves entirely from the cultivation of cotton and tobacco, and removing them to the ... mines of this [Burke] county.” Though the rush subsided after about five years, some local slave owners continued to use their own slaves and hire additional ones to mine gold into the 1840s and 1850s. For masters who were not always able to keep their slaves working full time, hiring them out to others often provided a means of . Negroes Wanted. profit. Slave owners rented the “services” of ]£7~E want to Irov from their slaves on weekly, monthly, or even yearly v SOO TO 500 Tv LIKELY NEGROES, Mountain slaves were sometimes usedfor projects such as terms to individuals or to companies in need for whom we will pay the highest cash building and maintaining roads and public buildings. piicA*. of manpower. \ t . CHUNN & PATTON'. / Courthouses in Cherokee, Henderson (above, after construc¬ Asheville, OPeb. TO, 16^0. ^ * In the 1850s when the Western North tion in 1842), Macon, and Watauga Counties were built largely by slaves hired out or loaned by prominent local Carolina Railroad began work on its long- citizens. In 1859, in anticipation of railroad construction awaited line into the region, slaves proved in Buncombe County, two Asheville businessmen ran this to be a major part of the labor force in its advertisement (left) in several newspapers around the state. construction. Black men worked alongside They hoped to employ far more slaves than Mountain masters could have already provided. whites digging track beds and laying track, while slave women served as cooks and washers for the work crews. Slave owners along the route from Salisbury to Morganton More valuable and Asheville found that the railroad than gold? company paid well for the use of their by John Inscoe slaves. Some enterprising businessmen even Perhaps because Mountain purchased slaves in order to rent them out for masters had used their slaves such construction work and profit from the to search for gold during the rental income. gold rush in the North Carolina foothills, many of them took or sent their slaves Civil War years in the Mountains west to California when the gold rush began there in 1849. An estimated two For most of the war, the Mountains seemed hundred slaves from the North Carolina Mountains made the journey westward well removed from the paths of Northern to work for their masters there. soldiers. In fact, when Union troops invaded One popular story’ that arose around this duty concerned a Burke County man named Robert McElrath, who sent four of his slaves west under the or threatened to invade the coastal areas of guardianship, or supervision, of his son-in-law. He hoped his slaves would be North and and Georgia, able to pan enough gold for him to pay off his debts. The slaves spent six days a many eastern masters moved their slave week panning gold for their master and were allowed to spend the seventh day’ property to western North Carolina for panning for themselves. safekeeping. Some Mountain masters even After nearly a y'ear of such activity and a substantial accumulation of gold, McElrath’s son-in-law and his slaves began their journey’ home. They decided to offered to serve as guardians over the eastern take the fastest route, which at the time was to sail by ship from San Francisco to slaves. These masters knew that plenty of Panama, in Central America, where they' walked across the narrow isthmus to work was available for any new slaves, and catch another ship toward home on the Atlantic Ocean side. During this brief plenty of money was to be made from hiring overland trek, the young guardian contracted malaria and died, leaving no one to force the slaves, carrying bags of gold, to return to their owner in Burke County. out their services to others in the area. As Their ship even took them to New York City’ where they met abolitionists who Olmsted noted, most Mountain masters were urged them to stay on free soil. They chose to return home to Burke County, first and foremost businessmen who wanted where they delivered their gold cargo to their master. to make fast and easy money. While slave owners at the time suggested that their return provided proof A Wilkesboro businessman and large that Alrican Americans were happy as slaves, a far more likely explanation was that parents, wives, and children waited for them at their homes on southern slaveholder, Calvin Cowles, was eager to plantations: the McElrath slaves valued life in captivity there with their families bring slaves into the western part of the state. more than they valued freedom in the North without them. He wrote many letters to acquaintances across the South encouraging them to send their

10 Cherokee masters “black property” to him to keep it out of Union hands. Since the concepts of race and racial prejudice did not exist among early The demand for slave labor resulted largely Native Americans, they probably regarded the first Africans and Europeans from the absence of so many farmers, men they saw as equals who were traveling side by side into Native American hunting grounds. The Native Americans no doubt quickly realized that and boys, who had gone to war and could the Europeans treated the Africans as inferiors. not tend fields or perform other farm duties English colonists enslaved Native Americans beside Africans until the themselves. Slaves with skills such as mid-1700s. But at some point the English decided that Native Americans carpentry, blacksmithing, ironworking, or were not another race, like the Africans, so much as they were savage versions of Europeans. The royal government decided to “civilize the savages” by milling were even more in demand to replace teaching them European customs. the white men who were no longer at home The Native American tribe that dominated western North Carolina at the to provide those essential services. time was the Cherokee. The Cherokee quickly learned farming techniques of In Asheville a new workforce had to be the English. As some of the natives became more successful, they began to created when a Confederate armory was need more workers and followed the lead of their white teachers even farther: the Native American farmer class began to use African slaves. established there in 1862. Because of the Laws controlling the activities of slaves were passed by the Cherokee local shortage of white manpower, the armory Nation in 1820. But these laws, or codes, were different from white slave used slave men from around the area and codes because punishments for violations were given to the Native American advertised widely in newspapers across the masters, not their offending slaves. Masters were responsible for the actions of their slaves just as they were responsible for their own actions, an enduring state that it would pay owners well for the Cherokee tradition. use of their black labor. Around 1830 the rush of gold miners into the Mountains led to invasions These outlets for slave labor in the into Cherokee lands by white Georgians. Property of the Cherokee was Mountain region and the profits many seized—property including slaves. In December 1835, after years of arguing businessmen made as a result led to a and skirmishing, a treaty was signed that surrendered all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi River to the United States government. false sense of security among Mountain A few Cherokee moved west immediately, before the forced removal in slaveholders regarding slavery’s future. Unlike 1838 known as the Trail of Tears. They were able to take their slaves and owners to the east who had already seen their some other possessions with them to the new Indian Territory in present-day slaves disappear with invading Union armies, Oklahoma. many western North Carolinians were caught off guard in the spring of 1865 when the been given meant that they often began their John Inscoe, a native of Confederacy lost the war and the institution lives as freedmen and freedwomen with more Morganton, teaches history at of slavery. the University of Georgia skills and more experience than was true of Mountain masters were forced to cope and is editor of the Georgia plantation slaves elsewhere in the South. with both the financial loss of property and Historical Quarterly. He They were better able to compete for jobs the loss of their labor force. Their responses has written a book on slavery once they were emancipated, or freed, and in western North Carolina ranged from shock to anger to frustration at they had some choice as to where they went and is currently at work on a the new hardships they had to experience. book on the Civil War in and what they did. And like other owners throughout the South, North Carolina. they also had to develop a genuine interest in The photographs of Olmsted helping their former property adjust to a new and the Warm Springs Hotel and suddenly imposed concept—freedom. are provided courtesy of the For former slaves, the story was different. author. Photos of the The variety of jobs these Mountain slaves had Mountain farm and the Eagle Hotel are used with the permission of the North Carolina Collection, Pack Definitions War. Free blacks were African Americans who had never Memorial Public Library, been enslaved. Asheville. The print of the 1842 Henderson County Abolitionists were people, mainly from the North, who Guardians are, in this case, supervisors or masters of slaves. Courthouse is used with the supported ending slavery and actively campaigned permission of the Baker- against it. An institution is an established practice in a society or Barber Collection, culture. American slavery was sometimes called the Hendersonville. “Slave labor An armory is a building where arms (weapons like guns) ‘peculiar institution" because the practice seemed exempt gold mining" is used with the or other military equipment is manufactured or stored. from commonly accepted laws. permission of the North Carolina Collection, Freedmen, freedwomen, or freed people were slaves who An isthmus is a natural strip of land, with water on two University of North Carolina were freed from bondage, usually as a result of the Civil sides, that connects two larger bodies of land. Library at Chapel Hill.

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he Civil War accomplished many their Northern liberators. In November of 1868 T After more than two years things, but no other outcome was as 1862 a planter complained that Yankees had of defeats and reballoting, dramatic as the emancipation of the freed no fewer than 3,000 slaves in Martin the Fourteenth Amendment is ratified. Section 1 states, South’s four million African American slaves. and neighboring counties. One plantation “All persons born or By war’s end, more than 331,000 North lost 60 slaves. Some of these freed people naturalized in the United States ... are citizens of Carolina slaves were free. became spies and guides. More than 5,000 the United States and of Emancipation in North Carolina actually former slaves joined regiments of the United the State wherein they reside.... No State ... began long before President ’s States Colored Troops and fought to free shall deprive any person Emancipation Proclamation took effect on their enslaved friends and relatives. Large of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; January 1, 1863, or passage of the Thirteenth numbers of freed people, including women nor deny to any person ... Amendment in 1865. It began even before and children, gathered at , equal protection of the laws.” Sections of this the ’s invasion of coastal North amendment continue to Carolina in 1861 and 1862 as thousands of enforce the civil rights of slaves freed themselves by running away from all minorities. their masters’ farms and plantations.

The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified: “The right of Freedom by self-emancipation. citizens of the United or running away States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the In October 1862 a Beaufort County United States or by any slaveholder wrote, “It is nothing uncommon State on account of race, color, or previous condition for dozens of slaves to escape from one man of servitude.” in a day, or for a plantation to be effectually ruined in a few hours.” African American Unquestionably, the war and the presence army regiments known During the Civil War and Reconstruction era, black North as “Buffalo Soldiers” of Union troops along the coast seriously Carolinians took theirfirst vital steps toward emancipation. help settle the West, threatened slavery’s future in North Carolina. in particular the Texas This leather and wood shoe, made around 1860for a North frontier, Indian Territory As Union troops began moving into coastal Carolina slave, could have been worn to take the first steps counties in 1861, freedmen began to labor for to freedom.

12 (present-day Oklahoma), New Mexico, Arizona, and the Dakota Territory. Fourteen black soldiers are awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, making these troops symbols of pride. Later Buffalo Soldiers will fight in the Spanish-American War (1898-1899) in Cuba and the Philippines.

1875 Massachusetts senator Charles Sumners Civil Rights Act of 1875 becomes law. This bill promises equal enjoyment “of accommodation in inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.” In 1883 the These words (oppositepage, top), from President Abraham Lincolns Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, were Supreme Court will find announced on September 22,1862. With his signature, the proclamation became official one hundred days later, on January the law unconstitutional. 1,1863. Considered by many to be one of the most important documents of the 1800s, it immediately changed the focus of the 1877 Civil War from a fight to preserve the union of states to a fight for human freedom. During the Civil War enslaved people The North Carolina both emancipated themselves and were liberated by Union troops (opposite page and above). The case of planter James C. General Assembly Johnston, who owned slaves in four counties, illustrates that point. In 1860Johnston owned 103 slaves in Chowan County. establishes the State By the spr ing of1863 he held 77. By July 1864 only 40 were left. According to historian Max R. Williams, "It seems Colored Normal School as the first African American reasonable to assume that the 1863 and 1864figures resulted largely from slave defections [or escapes] brought about by the teacher-training school in prospect of freedom—freedom made possible by the occasional appearance of Federal troops in Edenton....” Little did the the South. It is now newly freed slaves know this was only the beginning of another long fight. Fayetteville State University.

New Bern, and James City. Despite Their lives as freedmen and freedwomen September 18,1895 their newfound freedom, many suffered. were not easy, however. Shortly before the Booker T. Washington delivers a speech known Two black North Carolinians, Richard end of the war, former slaves living in a as the Atlanta Exposition Etheredge and William Benson of the government contraband camp on Roanoke Speech. In it he asks whites to accept blacks Thirty-sixth United States Colored Infantry, Island met to air a variety of grievances. as partners in achieving complained in a letter that while they served They complained loudly against the camp’s southern economic progress. He also asks in Virginia, their families lived horribly on white administrators. These African blacks to be patient for Roanoke Island. Americans had worked for the government acceptance and to live with the changing social as teamsters and built fortifications. attitudes of the time. Reaction to this speech our familys have no protection the white The freedmen felt oppressed by the camp commanders, the very people they looked to and its “accommodationist soldiers break into our houses act as they please approach” is enthusiastic steal our chickens rob our gardens and if any one for help. “We dont exspect to have the same from whites and some blacks. But W. E. B. defends their-Selves against them they are taken wrights as white men doe,” they wrote. “We Du Bois labels the speech to the gard house for it. so our familys have no know that [we] are in a millitary country and “Washington’s Atlanta protection.... we exspect to obey the rules and orders of our Compromise,” saying that this passive attitude will authori[ti]es and doe as they say doe, any prolong segregation and These men signed their letter “in behalf of thing in reason.” In one petition the blacks discrimination in the South and even retard humanity.” wrote that they felt “entily friendless.” They recent successes. charged that the United States Army “treated 1896 They endured because of a dream us [as] mean [as] . .. our owners ever [did] ... The Supreme Court As difficult as conditions were for these just like we had been dum beast.. ..” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson establishes newly freed people, their Eves were clearly The men charged that their employer a “separate but equal” an improvement over slavery times. For rarely paid the monthly ten dollars promised ruling that will provide the constitutional basis generations they had dreamed of freedom. them for their labor and that some blacks for decades of Jim Crow And now the dream was reality. No matter who worked on fortifications had not been legislation. The decision how limited their new opportunities were as paid in three years. The ex-slaves also leads to the erosion of many of the civil rights freed people, these former slaves realized that claimed that satisfying the superintendent that have been gained since at least they were now free. was impossible. He frequently encouraged

73 the Reconstruction era and allows governments, Harriet Jacobs businesses, organizations, by Jeffrey J. Crow and individuals to discriminate openly on the basis of race and color as Harriet Jacobs, born a slave in Edenton in 1815, long as another, “separate made a remarkable escape to freedom in 1842. but equal” allowance or Between 1853 and 1858 she wrote an autobiography, opportunity is provided. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861), under the pseudonym, or fictitious name, 1901 George H. White, from Linda Brent. The book spoke openly and with North Carolina, is the last startling frankness about how African American African American to hold women were sometimes treated under slavery. a seat in Congress until In the book, Jacobs used imaginary names to 1929. describe the real people in her life. For example, the

1902 character she named Dr. Flint was really Dr. James Charlotte Hawkins Brown Norcom. Norcom, her owner, repeatedly tried to opens a school for African force his affections on Jacobs. She refused, and Americans, Palmer when he threatened her further, she ran away. For Memorial Institute, seven years Jacobs hid in a crawl space under the in Sedalia, east of Greensboro. roof of her grandmother’s home only blocks from the Norcom residence. Finally, she was able to slip 1909-1910 aboard a boat in Edenton harbor and escape to the Events have led to the North. Later she got her two children to the North, founding of the National too. Association for the Advancement of Jacobs spent her early years of freedom in New Colored People (NAACP) York City and Rochester, New York. There she I am sitting under the old roof twelve feet by many prominent became involved in the antislavery cause. When from the spot where I suffered all the crushing African Americans of the the Civil War broke out in 1861, she moved to time, including W. E. B. weight of slavery. [TJhank God the bitter cup Washington, D.C., to nurse black troops. With her Du Bois. The NAACP is drained of its last dreg. [Tjhere is no more strategy, in opposition to daughter, she followed Union troops south to assist need of hiding places to conceal slave the accommodationist newly freed slaves, known as colored refugees. In approach (see 1895), uses 1868 Jacobs went to England to raise funds for the Mothers. [Y]et it was little to purchase the publicity, protest, and the orphaned and aged freed people of Savannah, blessings of freedom. I could have worn this legal system to fight for Georgia. racial equality and justice. poor life out there to save my Children from As a writer, reformer, and relief worker, Jacobs the misery and degradation of Slavery. 1910 devoted her life to the cause of freedom and the Booker T. Washington advancement of African Americans. She died in visits Durham and remarks 1897 and was buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Enclosing some jasmine blossoms for her friend’s on the progressive, friendly Before she died, Jacobs made at least one trip to her daughter, Jacobs concluded, “[Tjell her they bear the environment between white and black residents old home in Edenton. In 1867 she wrote a friend: fragrance of freedom.” and businessmen.

1917 The U.S. Supreme Court decision Buchanan v. The Underground Railroad in their opposition to slavery. In his Reminiscences, Levi Warley rules that wrote: ordinances supporting North Carolina segregation in residential areas are illegal and violate The Underground Railroad was not particularly sections of the Fourteenth My father, in common with other farmers in Amendment. Although active in North Carolina, but it did have “lines” and that part of the country, allowed his hogs to neighborhood restrictions “stations” through the middle of the state and along run in the woods, and I often went out to feed quickly replace these laws, the coast as marked on this map. The movement the Court’s ruling sets a first appeared in the state around 1819 when Vestal them. My sack of corn generally contained precedent that begins a Coffin organized a station around New Garden, supplies of bacon and corn bread for the slaves, slow shift toward eliminating near present-day and many a time I sat in the thickets with segregation laws. Guilford College west them as they hungrily devoured my bounty, of Greensboro. Vestal 1917 and listened to the stories they told of hard and his cousin, Levi Sears and Roebuck Coffin, who was later masters and cruel treatment, or spoke in president Julius Roscnwald creates one of the many called the president language, simple and rude, yet glowing with philanthropic funds of the national native eloquence, of the glorious hope of that will help fund Underground freedom which animated their spirits in the improvements to the Railroad movement, quality of education for darkest hours, and sustained them under the were Quakers who African Americans. were outspoken in sting of the lash....

14 Freed slaves helped their Northern liberators by working as teamsters and helping with fortifications. Shortly before the end of the war; some of these government workers compiled a petition of grievances. Despite their complaints, the petitioners assured President Abraham Lmcoln of their continued loyalty and determination to serve the Union.

the African Americans to work independently Dealing with new. Northern “masters ’? 1917-1918 but then penalized them for doing so. These freedmen had obviously discovered America fights in World War I. Perhaps They added that Northern authorities limitations to their hard-fought freedom. the most celebrated treated them inhumanely and that though the Because of their harsh treatment, many blacks African American unit government had promised to supply food for considered United States Army officers, other of the war is the 369th Infantry Regiment of their lamilies, none was provided. As one government agents, and Northern the all-black Ninety-third petition proclaimed: entrepreneurs their “new masters.” White Division. This unit is cited eleven times for bravery, Northerners, after all, shared the same belief and the entire regiment in innate Negro inferiority as white receives the French croix we are not willing to work as we have done ... de guerre for gallantry Southerners. White racism enveloped the and be Troden under foot and Get nothing for it under fire. General entire society of the time, not just the South. John J. Pershing tells we have work faithful Since we have been on the the companion all-black Their petitions underscored the former Island we have built our log houses we have Ninety-second Division, slaves’ discontent. The freedmen on Roanoke “You have measured up to Cultivate our acre of Ground and have Tried to every expectation of the Island argued that officials treated them so be less exspence to the Government as we commander in chief.” poorly “because they think that we are Possible Could be and we are yet Trying to help 1920 ig[n]orant.” Disappointed with their the Government all we Can for our lives those W. E. B. Du Bois recognizes that Durham’s head men have done every thing to us that our situation, African Americans found dealing “social and economic with the government far more difficult than masters have done except by and Sell us and now development is perhaps they are Trying to Starve the woman & children they had expected. The former slaves had to more striking than that negotiate with officials for even the basics of of any similar group in the to death cutting off they ration they have Got so nation.” In addition to the now that they wont Give them no meat to eat, life, including food and housing. One city’s African American petition concluded, “all we wants is a business accomplishments every ration day beef & a little fish and befor the and social institutions, Ten days is out they are going from one to Chance and we can Get a living like Du Bois is also referring to its quantity and quality another Trying to borrow a little meal to last White men.” Unfortunately, despite their of entertainers and until ration day. impassioned pleas, the government never performers. addressed their complaints.

15 1920s African American North Carolina's African Brigade educators Charlotte Hawkins Brown, In the spring of is to-day [fir] better than that of any regiment Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Mary McLeod 1863 Edward A. I know of, and I believe ... our efficiency will be Bethune emerge as Wild, a colonel second to none.” nationally known with volunteer Units of the African Brigade saw their first speakers and promote troops in action during a raid on the Wilmington and Weldon education as a means Massachusetts, Railroad near Warsaw in early July 1863. A recruiter for racial improvement. was authorized with these troops encouraged slaves in the area to 1920s~1930s by United States return to New Bern and become part of a new Dozens of African secretary of war North Carolina Colored Volunteers regiment. American authors promote Edwin M. Stanton The Wilmington Journal estimated that about two black cultural awareness to create a group of hundred slaves did leave with them. and pride through their poetry, short stories, African American On July 30, parts of the brigade were ordered to novels, and plays during soldiers to fight for Charleston, South Carolina. By early 1864, the the Harlem Renaissance. the Northern cause. troops were again moved, this time to Fortress This literary movement, This group became Monroe and other areas around Norfolk and based in the Harlem Portsmouth in Virginia. neighborhoods of known as the northern Manhattan in African Brigade. Portions of the African Brigade saw service in New York City, shows By the end of the Richmond, Virginia, and at and Fort white America an Sgt. Furney Bryant was a Civil War in 1865, Anderson in North Carolina. Some of the soldiers intelligent “New Negro” member of the First North this new and were present for the capture of Wilmington in who is different from many stereotypical images of Carolina Colored Volunteers. controversial February 1865 and the campaign of the in freed slaves. Modern blues idea yielded five March and April 1865 (in particular, the advance on and jazz influences arise thousand African American soldiers from North Kinston and Goldsboro and the advance on Raleigh). from this era, too. Carolina and from Virginia. Members of the brigade were also present at the The men in the first regiment of Wild’s African surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston’s troops at 1925 Durham’s National Brigade were first officially known as the First North on April 26,1865. Until February Religious Training School Carolina Colored Volunteers. African Americans 1867, during Reconstruction, African American becomes one of the first were recruited at stations in Beaufort, New Bern, soldiers from the brigade were stationed at various African American tax- Plymouth, Roanoke Island, and Washington as sites in North Carolina and throughout the South. supported liberal arts well as four recruiting stations in Virginia. The African Brigade was unique because most of colleges in the nation. It is now North Carolina After only a few weeks in training, commanding its soldiers had been North Carolina slaves. Before Central University. officer James C. Beecher complimented the seven the end of the war, the three regiments of the North hundred men of the First North Carolina Colored Carolina Colored Volunteers were regrouped and 1928 Volunteers: “[I wish those] doubtful people at home renamed the Thirty-fifth, Thirty-sixth, and Thirty- North Carolinian Charles could see my three-week regiment.... Our discipline seventh United States Colored Troops. Waddell Chesnutt receives the NAACP Springarn Medal for outstanding Company E of the achievement. Fourth United States Colored Infantry posed 1930s An informal “Black for this photograph in Cabinet” responds to Washington, D.C., in African American concerns 1865. This company during the New Deal. The was formed in cabinet is not a formally recognized group, but Maryland, but consists of several like the African Brigade, influential African some of its members were Americans, including from Virginia. Mary McLeod Bethune, who meet as needed to educate white politicians and leaders about racial issues and establish a precedent for black Freedom after the war Unfortunately, progress came pitifully participation in As slaves, black North Carolinians were slowly, if at all, for most freedmen. Denied federal programs. determined to be free. Whether they “forty acres and a mule” as promised by the fought for the Union army or labored for the government, most African Americans were Eleanor Roosevelt invites Mary McLeod Bethune to government, the newly freed people worked forced to work tor “shares,” or a portion of a White House luncheon to carve out new lives for themselves. They the crop they raised, under white landlords. for women leaders. The set out to reunite their families, to own land, As sharecroppers and later as tenants, blacks two have been close friends since the 1920s. Through to receive education, and to support retained shares as payment for their labor but Bethune, Roosevelt hopes themselves by earning a living. rarely became landowners. Black North

16 to influence a link between the social and economic programs of the New Deal and the needs of not only white women but of all black citizens.

1935 The Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (DCNA) is founded to unite the city’s leading businessmen for the pursuit of social and economic justice for African Americans.

1936 African American Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Olympic games in Berlin.

Former slaves Mary Jane Connor (above, left) and “Sylvia" Carolinians would have to wait for true (above, right) were in New Bern by 1863. There, Connor economic opportunity until the “second was operating a boardinghouse and Sylvia had become a Reconstruction,” or the Civil Rights seamstress. movement, of the 1960s. Though their day of “Jubilo” had arrived, the road to genuine freedom would be a long and hazardous journey.

John David Smith is Graduate Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at North Carolina State University. His Definitions research focuses on slavery and emancipation during A contraband in the Civil War was a slave who became Jubilo is a time of celebration after a long fight. African the Civil War era. Smith free by running away from a master or who was left Americans celebrated a victory after fighting slavery for has written and edited behind as slave owners ran from advancing Union troops. generations. many books, including Window on the War The dreg (sometimes called the “dregs") is the last remaining Liberators are people who give liberty, or set enslaved (1976), Black Slavery in part of something, usually the least desirable part. persons free. the Americas (1982), An Old Creed for the New Entrepreneurs are people who operate businesses. Teamsters were persons who drove wagons pulled by South (1985), Dictionary teams of horses or other animals, in this case probably of Afro-American Slavery Racism enveloped society at that time—in a negative to move supplies or weapons. (1988), and Anti-black way, it defined people’s stereotypes and characterized Thought (1993). their thoughts about other races of people. The petitions underscored complaints by placing emphasis on them and bringing them to public attention. All photographs and Fortifications workers erected or repaired military documents in this article are structures. The Union was made up of the states who were fighting from the North Carolina to reunite all the United States. Soldiers in the Union Division of Archives and Grievances are complaints. army were sometimes called Yankees. History.

17 Discovering the past through cultural traditions by Alice Eley Jones

Following emancipation, as beliefs and needs of the new, freed Look at these pages to discover African Americans began communities of the 1860s and traditions that carry on ideas and new lives as free individuals, 1870s, of the better-educated black create objects that are based on they continued to use certain communities of the 1910s and African traditions but use traditions from their pasts. Many 1920s, and of African Americans American influences and raw of these traditions were first created in search of civil rights in the 1960s materials. The objects you see within the freedom of their native and 1970s. Some traditions are a part of African influences on West African homelands. Those continue to influence our culture American culture: objects from the traditions were then adapted to the today. Do you know how African past that we can study today to confines of slave communities and traditions have affected the world discover our histories. gradually changed to reflect the you live in? As you look, remember that Africa is a large continent and that its cultures and traditions are even more varied than the regional differences of our state or even our country. Along the West African coast, where most of America’s enslaved people came from, many countries have always spoken languages different from those spoken in neighboring countries. To communicate with each other, West Africans developed a pidgin language that used simplified grammar rules and mixed vocabulary words. They made this language largely during their passage on slave ships to America and after arriving here, but some influences still exist.

oods and cooking may be Slave cooks took great -L some of the most common pride in their recipes and the African traditions with which preparation of their meals. you are familiar. Though rarely Much of their reputations recognized as African in origin, arose from their use of certain many foods were imported into varieties of African spices, North Carolina along with especially red pepper and enslaved West Africans. sesame seeds, and from some Grains like rice, vegetables of their methods of food such as okra, peanuts, and preparation, like using yams, fruits like watermelons vegetable broth, or “pot and some types of gourds, and liquor,” instead of plain water fowl such as guinea hens were to add flavor to dishes and not native to North America frying foods in oils. but were brought on the earliest slave ships.

18 Perhaps more than other African traditions you will read about here, African wood-carving skills, like weaving and other craft skills, show the variety and diversity of African cultures. One indicator of African carving traditions is carving a shape from one piece of wood, like this chain (left). Another trait of some West African carvings is the use of sharp angles to suggest shapes for head and neck, arms and torso, knees and legs, and other parts of a human body. Some cultures then exaggerate body parts (right) to personalize an image. For example, a head may be enlarged to represent a knowledgeable person, larger- than-normal lips can signify a storyteller, or bent knees and oversized feet might suggest calm strength. African American carvers today continue to use African-inspired traits and symbols (below) to create objects that are obviously both African and American.

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Strip quilts like this one are based on the African textile tradition of sewing narrow strips of cloth together to create wraps or blankets. These strips were usually made of brightly colored cloth.

19 Thomas Day Thomas Day, a cabinetmaker, was Assembly granted Day’s request. born in Virginia around 1801, the Day trained white apprentices and by Jeffrey J. Crow son of Morning S. Day. His father is owned slaves—two in 1830 and six in unknown. Day was a free black, and 1850. He and his wife were members of around 1823 he moved to Milton in the Milton Presbyterian Church and sat in Caswell County, North Carolina. one of its front pews, which he had carved. By 1827 he had set up business as a In 1848 Day purchased Union Tavern to cabinetmaker. An advertisement in the serve as his home and workshop. The 1850 local newspaper stated that he kept on industrial census valued Day’s business at hand “a handsome supply of mahogany, $5,800. The black cabinetmaker was then walnut, and stained furniture, the most employing twelve workers. fashionable and common bedsteads, &c. For nearly forty years Day maintained which he would be glad to sell very low.” a successful business, making furniture and In 1830 Day married Aquilla Wilson producing architectural interiors for homes from Halifax County', Virginia. Like Day, in Virginia and North Carolina. His early she was also a free black. But an 1827 work was simple and elegant. His later North Carolina law barred free blacks from work was more expressive, following the entering the state. Day asked the General most popular styles of the day. Assembly to pass a special act to allow his Day died around 1861, but his son, wife to join him in Milton. Thomas Jr., operated the business for at A petition to the legislature, signed by least another ten years. Union Tavern is sixty-one white citizens, described Day as on the National Register of Historic Places “a free man of colour, an inhabitant of this and is a National Historic Landmark. town, cabinet maker by trade, a first rate Unfortunately, it suffered a devastating workman, a remarkably sober, steady and fire in 1989. Efforts to restore the tavern industrious man, a high-minded, good and are now under way. valuable citizen, possessing a handsome property' in this town.” The General

By the 1870s “shotgun” houses were being built in North Carolina as cheap rental houses in towns and cities and as easy-to-build sharecropper houses in rural areas. One story speculates that these narrow houses got their name because a shotgun could be fired in the front door and the shot would pass straight through every room of the house and out the back door: the houses were only one room wide, and their doors were placed at the gable end, as you see in these examples from the East Wilson Historic District (right). The ancestral home of the shotgun house can be found all along Africa’s Guinea Coast, from Senegal down the western coast of central Africa. Today many shotgun houses across the United States still serve as homes. Africa. Probably because of their experience with Maybe you are more familiar with a more common tropical heat and humidity in their homelands, Africans element of architecture whose roots can be traced to had developed porches (left) and verandas—outside rooms that were roofed but had no sides to block breezes. Many southern homes, especially Victorian styles of the late 1800s, included wide verandas and large, wraparound porches.

20 heard as children 1938 double-Dutch jump Lincoln University graduate Lloyd Gaines rope and play an is denied admission to the endless array of University of Missouri law school because of his race. hand games, all to While demand does not an African-inspired warrant a separate black law school in his home beat. This rhythm state of Missouri, and even also carries into though the state regularly pays tuition for African dances like Americans at out-of-state buckdancing law schools that do accept blacks, Gaines exercises his and step shows at right to sue for admission. historically black In Missouri ex ret. Gaines v. Canada the United States colleges and Supreme Court rules that universities. Gaines indeed has a right to admission at the The banjo predominantly white is an African- school in his home inspired musical state in the absence of another “separate but instrument that was equal” black institution first mentioned in within the state. The court’s ruling implies that North Carolina in states have to provide equal Tarboro in 1787. opportunities regardless of demand or expense. It is a good, early example of American influences and the use of American raw materials on an African-inspired object. Since Africans could not Alice Eley fones is a bring possessions freelance writer and Musical instruments and styles of music with them when they were brought to North education and history and dance provide many examples of Carolina, they learned to improvise—the consultant. She is proudest African contributions to contemporary body of the banjo could no longer be made of her research and design contributions for the popular culture. Rhythm, whether kept by from an African gourd. Enslaved Africans Addy Walker doll in the voice, movement, or an instrument (above), substituted American materials that were American Girl Collection was of central importance to African people. easier to find. of historic dolls, fones lives Today, on countless elementary and middle in Durham, where she has school yards, that African rhythm can still be worked at Center for ten years and where she earned her bachelor's and master’s degrees from Definitions North Carolina Central To speculate is to base an idea on theory rather than University. She is currently In this use, contemporary means present-day. experience or documentation. writing a history of slaves at and a Culture is a community’s combination of tradition, The chest and trunk of a human body are the torso. book about black builders knowledge, and behavior in all parts of its life. and architects for Traditions are the ways things are typically done by Preservation/North Diversity is the difference between two or more ideas the people of a community. Traditions are handed Carolina, Inc. or people or things. down fom that communitys past.

All photographs and To improvise is to adapt, or make a substitution work, Wraps are coats or blankets that can be wrapped around documents in this article are often on the spot. a person for warmth. from the North Carolina Division of Archives and History.

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What one young African American woman could do: The story of Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown and the Palmer Memorial Institute by Charles W. Wadelington

almer Memorial Institute, located east Palmer was so impressed by Brown’s 1938 P Pauli Murray applies of Greensboro, began in 1902 as a rural diligence at pursuing an advanced education for admission to graduate school at the University African American school and that she helped sponsor Brown’s schooling. of North Carolina. Her succeeded as a unique private school Palmer also introduced Brown to many application is rejected because “members of your for more than sixty years. Dr. Charlotte important people in Boston society—people race are not admitted to Hawkins Brown was its founder and leader she would later approach to help with her the University.” Governor Clyde R. Hoey justifies for fifty of those years. school. this stand (as opposed to the Gaines decision earlier She was born in Henderson in 1883 to in the year) because descendants of slaves. In 1888 the family The beginning of a dream “separate” black schools are considered “equal” in moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, near After a year of junior college, Brown her field. Boston, to escape Jim Crow practices of the accepted a twenty-five-dollar-a-month job South and to obtain a better chance at social, from the American Missionary Association A law school for African economic, and educational growth. Though (AMA) and returned to her home state to Americans is founded at North Carolina Central she was one of few blacks in Cambridge’s teach poor, rural blacks. University in response to the Gaines decision of 1938. schools, young Brown was an excellent She arrived at a run-down Bethany student, and by chance she met educator Institute in Sedalia in 1901. Her desire to

During World War II the Alice Freeman Palmer, who became her help African Americans in the South drove mentor. her to begin repairs, but the AMA decided to

22 close the school. Without a job, Brown was encouraged by local African Americans to start her own school. The young eighteen year old virtually single-handedly made it happen. She secured money and encouragement from her friends in the North and moved the school across the street to a blacksmith’s shed. Brown soon raised enough money to build a campus with more than two hundred acres and two new buildings. She selected an initial board of trustees who were all African American, unlike the trustees at other schools of that era—even African American-oriented schools. After hiring a small staff and securing the additional support of local black and white leaders, Palmer Memorial Institute (Palmer) began operations.

Palmer offered to rural African American and romance languages. Students were Tuskegee Airmen, a black youth an unusual opportunity for cultural divided into small circle groups with teachers aviation squadron trained at segregated facilities in learning. The school’s goal was to provide who served as counselors and advisers. Each Tuskegee, , break a facility where blacks could escape the then student received personal training in character some of the color barriers in the armed forces. The common assumption that African Americans development and appearance. All students group’s exceptional record were innately inferior to whites and did not had to work one hour per day for the school. no doubt helps contribute to the demise of Jim Crow need any schooling beyond vocational discrimination in the training. Troubles and victories military. In 1900 North Carolina had more than By 1915 Palmer had gained support from 1942 two thousand privately operated schools for national figures such as educational leader President Franklin D. African Americans. But, most teachers had Booker T. Washington, Harvard University Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 prohibits only an elementary school education and president Charles William Eliot, and Boston discrimination in could instruct their students only up to that philanthropists Carrie and Galen Stone. government departments and defense industries and level. After a major fire destroyed two of six creates a committee to Palmer was different because Brown was main buildings in 1917, Brown’s determina¬ investigate violations of the order. While the offering college preparatory instruction in a tion to raise enough money to offset the armed forces remain junior and senior high school setting. Classes loss prevented the school’s closing. This segregated throughout World War II, the order included drama, music, art, math, literature, successful effort also encouraged increased is widely accepted without resistance. In 1905, when this photograph (opposite page) was taken, 1943 Brown would have been only twenty-two years old, and she Durham resident Doris had already been at Palmer Memorial Institute for three Lyon refuses to move to a years. Palmer was different from other African American seat in the back of a city junior and senior high schools of the time because it offered bus. When a detective college preparatory classes. It also provided individual tries to move her forcibly, Lyon defends herself and is training in character development, appearance, and self- arrested and found guilty confidence and pride as reflected in her quotation at the of assault and battery. top of page 22 and this photograph of poise practice (above) in the mid-1940s. Brown also taught her students to 1944 dignify labor with their hands and to place high value on The United Negro College Fund is started with work that was well done: “To be able to work is one of God’s twenty-seven black colleges greatest blessings. ” Palmer was one of the earliest schools in and universities. Today, North Carolina to include physical education as a regular more than forty class. Here (left), part of the 1927 girls’ tennis class institutions benefit prepares for class. Brown also began teaching Aflican from the fund’s financial support, public relations American history before any other school in the state. efforts, and other assistance.

23 1946 President Harry S.Trumans The Three Bs attended an Executive Order 9808 creates a fifteen-member interracial conference held committee to determine at Tuskegee Institute in how the powers of 1938 (left). From left to federal, state, and local right, Charlotte Hawkins governments can be Brown is third, Mary improved to protect civil rights. The orders primary McLeod Bethune is value is in recognizing, at fourth, and Nannie the presidential level, that Helen Burroughs is sixth. a problem exists. Brown's The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, 1946 The U.S. Supreme Court's to Wear was published in Morgan v. Virginia decision 1940 (below). These are uses interstate commerce only two of the five pages legislation to attack state that discuss school etiquette. segregation statutes. The entire book has Virginia law currently requires African Americans twenty-four sections like Irene Morgan to move dealing with manners at toward the back of a bus home, at the movies, or on whenever a white the telephone; boy-and- passenger, man or woman, girl relationships; needs a seat. The Court rules that a state can introductions; and dress. require segregation on routes that begin and end biracial, or both black and white, combined education, religion, and deeds; within that state but not cooperation lor Palmer and its community. Bethune’s triangle was “the head, the heart, on routes that cross state borders. Morgan’s bus was The Stones, white northerners, became and the hand”; Burroughs’s was “the book, the en route from Richmond Palmer’s largest donors. They were the first Bible, and the broom.” By the mid-1920s to Baltimore. large donors to support Palmer because of its Brown was a nationally known speaker who 1947 wholistic approach to total education and its stressed teaching these concepts through Jackie Robinson breaks the major league baseball color quality liberal arts programs to educate black culture and liberal arts for racial uplift. barrier by playing on the Americans beyond basic training levels. At the state level, she helped create the Brooklyn Dodgers team. After only two seasons in Renewed biracial support and fund-raising first school for delinquent African American the majors, Robinson is efforts and increased contributions from girls. As time passed, Brown started a junior voted MVP in 1949 and will become the first across the nation resulted in Palmer’s first college and built a new boys’ dormitory. African American inducted major brick building and a new status as the Palmer’s growing reputation increasingly into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1962. only accredited rural high school, for African drew middle- and upper-class students from Americans or whites, in Guilford County. outstanding families in the United States, 1947 In one of the earliest When another key building burned in 1922, Africa, , Central America, and Cuba. campaigns by the Congress a financially stronger and more community- In 1937 Brown closed the elementary and of Racial Equality (CORE), black and white men travel oriented Palmer continued normal operations junior college departments and convinced by bus through the Upper South to test Morgan v. Brown introduced more liberal arts classes Guilford County officials to open the Virginia (see 1946). Four and advanced math and science courses to county’s first public rural high school for men are arrested outside Chapel Hill and sentenced students at Palmer. She introduced the study African Americans. She became known as to time on a road gang. of African American history at a time when the “first lady of social graces” after appearing

1947 no other high school in North Carolina was The Truman administration teaching it. THE CORRECT THING AT SCHOOL S7 releases To Secure These sort of reply Don't sit dumbly In the seat and Rights, a report to the say nothing. Don't even think too long. Valu¬ Ourm rv able minutes are wasted thus president on racial 4 When standing or sitting, hold yourself erect A holistic education to AT SCHOOL Don't slouch Talk clearly and sufficiently loud violence, past progress for everyone in the room to hear. How empty learning, how vain ii art, but as it 5. Don't make a habit of laughing at the mistakes in race relations, and uplift the individual mendi the Itft and guides the heart.—VOUNC. of others. This often hinders a person from doing hii best. new racial directions. Every school has a certain definite set of regula¬ 6 Don't deface property Writing on or cutting into Brown took a year off to travel and study. In tions which iu students are required to follow in desks and chairs, writing and drawing in books, breaking the barks or turning down The report will become the order to maintain discipline and assure the smooth running of the schedule Persons with varying de¬ the comers of pages of texts are evidences of poor training basis for civil rights change Europe she shared ideas with black educators grees of power are charged with seeing that the regulations are kept. Aside from this, however, 7 Make it your business to keep the room in order. Straighten the shades, keep the lloor over the next several years. there is a standard decorum that the student himself Mary McLeod Bethune and Nannie Helen should foxier in order to express himself to the belt and desks free of waste paper and erase the advantage, and exhibit the right attitude toward the boards when they need it. other fellow. The cultivation of traits of honor, 8, Don I cheat. You will never learn by "copying* Burroughs. Together, these three women thoughtfulness, politeness, honesty, order and from your neighbor or from the book proper appreciation of values is just as much a part of 9. Do not argue with or contradict the teacher education as is the storing up in one's mind of a in class. If you think that she has made a mis President Harr)' S.Trumans were known as the “Three Bs of Education.” vast accumulation of historic, mathematical and take, wait until the hour is over and discuss it scientific Tacts. with her quietly at the desk- Executive Order 9981 10 Do not yell out the answers to questions; wait The Three Bs believed in combining a THE UAWIOOM until you are called upon. The teacher will let directs the armed forces you know when concert recitation is desired 1. Always greet the teacher when meeting for the 11. Don't mistake the classroom for a lunchroom to provide equal “treatment holistic triangle of ideas and lessons to first time, whether it be morning or not. or a bedroom. 2. lie sure that you have everything you need—text, paper, pen, etc. Don't be a m Tin ooaat tints achieve racial equality: Brown’s triangle carpenter without tools. 3. When called on to recite, always make some I If there are monitors, respect them and obey their orders. 24 on national radio and publishing the book have been influenced by Palmer’s philosophy: and opportunity for all The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear in “Educate the individual to live in the greater personnel without regard to race, color, religion, or 1940. In the mid-1940s Brown raised a world.” They have become known around national origin.” The one-hundred-thousand-dollar endowment, the globe as writers and singers, teachers Korean War (1950—1953) probably speeds the and Ebony magazine published a feature and professors, doctors and lawyers, actors process, and by 1954 the article on prestigious Palmer as “the only ... and actresses, scientists and mathematicians, armed forces have become school of its kind in America.” and government officials. the most integrated part of American society. In 1952 Brown retired after fifty years. She handpicked Wilhelmina M. Crosson 1950 After the United States of Boston to succeed her as Palmer’s next Supreme Court’s Missouri president. Following a long illness Brown ex rel. Games v. Canada ruling (see 1938), the died in 1961 and was buried with great University of Texas Law honor on the campus she loved. School tries to prohibit Heman Marion Sweatt Palmer Memorial Institute has become from being admitted by a state historic site. It was the first state- swiftly building a separate African Aunerican law supported site to honor the contributions school on the campus of African Americans and women. Ongoing of the Texas College for Negroes. But the Court programs depict the history and development rules in Sweatt v. Painter of African American education in North that even though a separate Carolina. law school does indeed exist within the state, The school’s legacy also lives on through Sweatt will not receive generations of students and graduates who an equal education and has to be admitted.

1951 Federal courts order the University of North Carolina to admit African Americans to its law, medical, and graduate schools. Edward O. Diggs, Dresses for this mid- to late-1940s senior prom (above) in the medical school, and could not be bought—each girl was required to make her Floyd B. McKissick, in the law school, are among the own. Brown (left) remained at Palmer until 1955. The first to attend. school remained a strong educational institution until

desegregation of public schools and poor management 1954-1955 resulted in fewer students and increased debts. The The United States weakened schoolfinally closed after afire destroyed Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision its classroom building in 1971. sets into motion one of the most important social transformations of the Wilhelmina M. Crosson 1900s. In its 1954 decision the Court recognizes that by Charles W. Wadelington an excellent student and was a star player on even with the financial her school’s basketball team. assistance of numerous From an early age, Crosson dreamed of becoming philanthropic funds a teacher. She began her teaching career in 1920 and supporting African began Boston’s first remedial reading program. She American education, most further distinguished herself by becoming one of grade schools are separate but rarely equal. Boston’s first African American women to teach The justices concur English and history. Crosson learned about the unanimously that “in the triangle of education from Charlotte Hawkins field of public education Brown. Crosson’s triangle focused on achieving the doctrine of‘separate educational efficiency, cultural security, and but equal’ has no place ... [African American religious sincerity for all students. schoolchildren have] With a desire to help children of her own race, been deprived of the equal she accepted the responsibility for teaching African protection ... guaranteed American students whom the school system was by the Fourteenth ready to give up on. To the surprise of many, Amendment. Separate facilities based on race Crosson reformed those forgotten children. [are] inherendy unequal.” Wilhelmina M. Crosson (1900-1991) was the She gained national prominence in 1952 when she In 1955’s Brown U, the second president of Palmer Memorial Institute. became the second president of Palmer Memorial court declares that Born in Warrenton, she moved with her parents to Institute. She maintained the prestige of the school implementation of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1906, where she became for fourteen years.

25 Chesnutt’s father, a storekeeper, town integration plans will be Charles Waddell Chesnutt commissioner, and county justice of the peace, gradual and influenced by by Raymond Gavins local conditions. helped to start the Howard School, forerunner of Charles Fayetteville State University. There, under a black 1955 Waddell mentor, Chesnutt read widely, excelled in writing, Marian Anderson and taught. As principal (1880-1883) he admired is the first African Chesnutt American to perform (1858-1932) former slaves for making great sacrifices to educate at the Metropolitan Opera was born in their children and used some of their stories and House in New York City. Cleveland, Ohio, experiences to create fictional characters such as where his parents, the slave narrator Uncle Julius. 1955 The University of North free blacks from He won national fame as a storyteller, novelist, Carolina admits its first Favetteville, North and essayist who protested injustice. His Conjure African American Carolina, had gone to Woman (1899), The House behind the Cedars (1900), undergraduates. escape the oncoming and The Marrow of Tradition (1901) put North 1955-1956 Civil War. In 1866 Carolina racial themes into the mainstream of Seamstress Rosa Parks they returned to American literature. becomes a simple but their hometown, Chesnutt was a pillar of the early National powerful symbol of where Chesnutt, whose light skin color allowed him Association for the Advancement of Colored People African American protest (NAACP). He received the NAACP leadership against segregation. On to pass for a white person, grew up during the first December 1,1955, Parks generation of black freedom. award in 1928. boards a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Spartanburg, S.C., July 3rd 1875 wrinkled),] highly painted, wore false teeth),] and Finding no seats in the black section at the rear of I left Charlotte yesterday on the frieght-train ... was very talkative. She had a little girl along who the bus, she takes a seat The accommodation was wretched. The car was was very precocious, and was always uttering some closer to the front. When old and dirt)', and full of dust. The cinders flew in pert but seldom smart remark. The lady, I have she refuses to give her seat to a white man, she is the windows, and in all it was pretty disagreeable. since learned),] is “Miss Belle Boyd, the arrested and jailed. I took notice of some the passengers ... There was confederate spy.” The little girl was “Miss Elmo Community leaders, including Martin Luther one couple which attracted me particularly, a ladie Boyd).]” The lady lectures, and the little girl King Jr., organize the and gentleman. I took them for a young couple in recites verses of “original poetry” I arrived at citywide Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott lasts their honeymoon The little looks and smiles, the Spartanburg at about 4 o’clock, and sought out for 381 days. gende touches, and all the outward signs which Mr. Lewises] Boarding place.... I am going to

mark the influence of the “tender passion” ... teach about 10 miles from here in the country....

There was a lady on board. She was faded and —from a journal entry

Charles W. Wadelington Definitions know manners and perform community service to be researches, documents, and a wholly educated person who contributed to society. preserves African American An accredited school has been recognizedfor meeting roles in the history of the Tar At one time, a common philosophy among white persons Heel State for the North basic academic requirements. was that African Americans were innately inferior (or Carolina State Historic Sites The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a had an innate inferiority). In other words, whites Section. He is a graduate of religious antislavery organization established in 1846. thought blacks were born with a limited ability to Winston-Salem State The AMA provided schools for African Americans in learn and could not be expected to learn above a certain University and Miami task level regardless of their amount of education. University in Ohio and is the South. currently working on a Philanthropists are people who give away money manuscript about Charlotte Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) founded Bethune- to improve surroundings or ways of life. Hawkins Brown. Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida. Nannie Helen Burroughs (1883-1961) founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, Just like a pillar, or column, in a building, the pillar The photograph from the D. C. These two women and Brown promoted similar of a group is a strong leader or supporter of that group. interracial conference at educational beliefs that led African Americans into a new Tuskegee is used with the Palmer Memorial Institute was prestigious because it permission of the Southern age of education and racial uplift in the early 1900s. had earned a good reputation based on its achievements. Historical Collection (Jesse Daniel Ames Papers), An endowment is money that is given to an institution to invest. That money is not used for expenses but A remedial class provides follow-up lessons and practice, University of North Carolina sometimes with a tutor, to improve on skills that were Library at Chapel Hill. All provides income in the form of interest that can be used. not adequately learned in regular class. other photographs and docu¬ ments in this article are from A holistic approach integrates parts of many different Uplift is the improvement of social, intellectual, the North Carolina Division aspects to make a whole. For example, Brown did not of Archives and History. teach just classroom lessons but felt a person also needed to and cultural conditions.

26 Middle-class Durham during the age of Jim Crew by Beverly W. Jones

Durham, like most southern cities in the 1800s and 1900s, had rigidly segregated communities. The majority of African Americans resided in the southern and southeastern sections known as Hayti, pronounced “hay-tie.” In 1920 W. E. B. Du Bois, a prominent By the late 1920s Durham boasted many African American institutions. This collection African American historian, referred to of photos includes scenes of (from top left) the Wonderland Theatre, present-day North Carolina Central University, a public library, a “typical residential scene in the Negro Durham, specifically the Hayti area, as the section” of town, Hillside High School, John O 'Daniel Hosiery Mills, the home office of “Negro business mecca of the South.” He North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, Lincoln Hospital, White Rock Baptist wrote, “There is in this small city a group of Church, and the Nurses Home at Lincoln Hospital. five thousand or more colored people, whose social and economic development is perhaps more striking than that of any similar group in the nation.”

27 1956 Booker T. Washington, the noted The Mutual To end the Montgomery African American leader and educator at Three leaders of the African American bus boycott, three federal judges rule on Browder v. Tuskegee Institute, agreed with Du Bois that community helped to create and sustain the Gayle. They find that Durham provided an opportunity for African community’s social, economic, and political P/essy v. Ferguson (see Americans to excel economically. But structures—John Merrick, Aaron M. Moore, 1896) has been overruled in several recent decisions Washington also recognized the existence of and Charles C. Spaulding. Their most noted by the United States friendly relations between African Americans joint achievement was the reorganization of Supreme Court and no longer stands as a legal and whites. He stated, “Of all the Southern the North Carolina Mutual and Provident foundation for “separate cities that I have visited I found here the Association, later known as the North but equaTJim Crow legislation. On sanest attitude [among] white people Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company December 21, the toward the Blacks.” (Mutual), in the late 1890s. Originally United States Supreme Court upholds that With this interracial and economically established to provide sickness and burial decision and rules that progressive environment, Durham emerged insurance (which African Americans could segregation on public transportation violates the as one of the centers of the African American not get from white-owned companies then), Fourteenth Amendment. middle class in North Carolina and the it expanded within a half century into the

1957 South. Many members of this middle class largest black-owned business in the United Congress passes the resided in impressive large residences in the States and subsequently the world. Civil Rights Act of 1957. Perhaps its chief Hayti district. The architecture of the houses importance is its message was Victorian. They had spacious porches Durham’s “Black Wall Street” to African Americans: and large lawns. Also located in Hayti were Although Hayti was the residential and while this is the first civil rights action churches, stores, a hospital, a library, a college, social center of African American life, taken by Congress since clubs, and fraternal lodges. Parrish Street, in the very center of Durham’s Reconstruction, more might come. business district, became the hub of African American business and commerce. 1957 Durham introduces Here, in 1911, Merrick and his associates North Carolina to the built a brick building to house the offices of sit-in movement when seven students sit at a their rapidly expanding insurance company, lunch counter at the which by then had associated itself with the Royal Ice Cream Parlor and wait for service. Mechanics and Farmers Bank, another black- owned enterprise chartered in 1907. Within 1957 The Southern Christian two years, the Mutual purchased additional Leadership Conference (SCLC) is formed to coordinate nonviolent protests in the South. The group's key leader is Martin Luther King Jr., who continues to promote the use of nonviolent resistance (see 1955-1956 and 1958).

1958 Martin Luther King Jr. publishes Stride toward Freedom to explain his philosophy on nonviolent jflllfinunil resistance.

1959 Durham mothers Jocelyn McKissick In October 1921 this impressive building (left) became and Elaine Richardson the home office of the North Carolina Mutual Life successfully sue to have their daughters admitted Insurance Company and the cornerstone for Durham's to the city’s predominantly African American business district, Black Wall Street. white high school. John Merrick, Aaron M. Moore, and Charles C. Spaulding (above, left to right), known as the “Triumvirate, "were partly responsible for the progressive economic atmosphere CORE emerges as a major civil rights force when it that drew the attention of such nationalfigures as W. E. B. responds to the first lunch Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Spaulding, who counter sit-ins in North outlived Merrick and Moore, continued to fightfor equal civil rights until his death in 1952.

28 North Carolina'* W GREENSBORO DAILY NEWS Fine*! Newspaper lots and added to its offices, forming an VOL CVIIJ, 124 African American business complex that included two clothing stores, a barber shop, Police Arrest 420 Demonstrators a real estate company, a large drugstore, a Sit-In Laws Group Urges tailoring shop, offices of the Durham Negro Attacked Boycotting Observer, the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, By Court __ Of Stores and a hosiery mill. Shopkeeper's D-gal Position Large Number Of Juvenile* Is Not Clearly Spelled Out Are Taken Into Custody More African American businesses tVASHLVGTO.V, JIi; M if) _ TV Supmc«i rfrt today tfett » *ut* ur dtjr my swt jsUr-: !m, ir. tr.y flufc.on, with p«o*/ul ncitl Integrities- ia p«Mic of Sxas.am. i were founded: the Banker’s Fire Insurance B-: tfc» multiple rvlis** did not dtariy .peil oot l P<* voc of tie fealivt&ai sk>K>ix*7Buyj wuh to mtrtrt hi. riiestri* without ttw .apport of! Lut njfiit't iklti.utntii.' ■ •>• before Company in 1910, the Durham Textile Mill i******** ”n’' tnbwai ^ ttTOcit joarBl : ned after * cm sureties at t> ••••> • •*. »■,*■ iprmed. It I t ari'-.t r.uaber of - f.<* ScThrTUfiSState Law in the 1920s, and Commercial and Security Governor WFT Believed Company in 1921, which aided in the Rap jail i : ; - IvHTfAi Valid Protests financing of numerous additional black Mm™ businesses. The part of Parrish Street that housed the Mutual and its neighbors Durham became known as the “Black Wall Street.” Vote Set Today Negroes On Wheat Issue Arr!tt

Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, "r: V !->i* '■ i* • _ K V» \PQ1> ftl>H)K\T founded in 1869, and White Rock Baptist - airy? . Probe Continues f..-.h: EiFlU:r?F ' -t\nwn cives tows Church, organized in 1875, were among In Womans Death , h iui.ollion f True Reliei Bx Assembly the earliest. This issue of Greensboro’s paper details many of the Schools also shaped the community. civil rights activities taking place in May 1963. Carolina. Its strategies In 1885 Durham County records reported are credited with ending Jim Crow segregation at thirty-two African American schools with Musicians like Blind Boy Fuller and lunch counters, on interstate 1,133 pupils. Thirty white schools enrolled Gary Davis made much of their early transportation, and in election booths. 1,082 pupils. In 1889 a grade school for money singing on the streets of Hayti. African American children opened in the 1960 Four North Carolina city of Durham. It was named the Whitted A Civil Rights movement begins Agricultural and Technical School in honor of James Whitted, a noted African Americans living in Durham College students stage a sit- in at the Woolworth’s lunch educator from Durham. enjoyed a strong and independent social, counter in Greensboro. James Edward Shepard, a pharmacist, economic, and cultural life. But they could 1960 founded the National Religious Training not escape from Jim Crow. Outside of their One section of the new Civil School and Chautauqua in 1910. This communities blacks were still treated as Rights Act of 1960 allows institution’s original objective was to inferiors. prosecution for interference with court orders regarding provide religious training for African All that began to change in 1935 when school desegregation. American ministers. The school changed the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs 1960 to a state normal school, or school for (DCNA) was founded by Durham’s leading In Boynton v. Virginia, teachers, in 1923. In 1925 it became one businessmen, including Shepard and the United States Supreme Court extends its decision of the first African American tax-supported Spaulding. against segregation in liberal arts colleges in the nation. It is now The purpose of the DCNA was the pursuit interstate travel to include accommodations in rail and North Carolina Central University. of social and economic justice for African bus terminals. Sounds of blues music dominated the Americans. Its strategies of boycotts, voter 1960-1961 streets of Hayti, where the Biltmore Hotel registration, and court battles helped to usher The Student Nonviolent played host to entertainers such as Bessie in the nonviolent Civil Rights movement. Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Smith, Cab Calloway, and Count Basie. Some Durham African Americans criticized

29 With lifestyles this good, why change? With the strong social, economic, and cultural lives that African Americans were enjoying in cities like Durham, why do you think they wanted a change? One reason was a feeling of Truman K. Gibson Jr. disappointment and abuse that black soldiers faced when they Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War returned home from fighting wars overseas. They got that feeling Washington, D.C. when they returned from World War I (1917-1918) after fighting November 5,1943 to spread democracy with rights and privileges they could not enjoy in their own homeland, and it happened again following World Dear Mr. Gibson: War II (1941-1945). In World War II, American soldiers fought

... I am a member of the armed forces of the USA.... I am to stop the rise of leaders who advocated types of racism. forced to learn to be ready to kill or be killed—for “Democracy.” I But in reality, America’s armed forces were still practicing their own racism—Jim Crow segregation: the army integrated the learned early in life that for the Negro there is no Democracy.... I battlefields of Europe only after suffering unexpected losses in all- found that a Negro in civilian life has [a] very tough time with white rifle companies at the Battle of the Bulge; the air forces segregation in public places and discrimination in industry.... I trained blacks to fly and sent them into battle, but only in racially thought that white people would react differently toward a colored segregated units; the navy' boldly integrated the crews of a few fleet soldier.... I couldn’t understand how white people could be so auxiliaries to boost morale; but the Marine Corps remained down on one who wears the uniform of the fighting forces of their thoroughly dedicated to separating the races. country.... now I prepare to fight for the continuation of African American soldiers who served overseas were exposed to

discriminator)' practices against me and my people.... I prepare to more equal treatment. In Europe, many' people accepted black fight for a country where I am denied the rights of being a full- soldiers as American soldiers without regard to race and color. Soldiers began to hope and to some degree expect equal treatment fledged citizen. as they faced death on the battlefield. They wrote letters home to I have long known that the fighting forces are composed of the war department, to influential, friendly' businessmen, and to the two divisions. Namely, a white division composed of... all white Airican American media. people ... [and a] Negro division composed of... all dark skin The black press in America started a “Double V” campaign to people. The American Negro has fought in ever)' war since the promote not only a victory for human justice in the world but also Revolutionary War. There can be no question as to his loyalty. He a victory for civil rights in America’s armed services. The African is put into a division composed of the members of his race not American editors who ran these newspapers and magazines vowed because of his educational qualities, his fighting qualities, or his to continue their campaign until blacks in the military received full

inability to live with others, but he’s put into a separate division constitutional rights as soldiers. They hoped these rights would continue when the soldiers returned home at the end of the war. because of the color of his skin. ... Listen, Negro

America ... the light on the battlefield is for your twiijftelfo 1 1tttdh existence, not for Extra! Johnston County^ s Oldest and Best Newspaper- E » t a b 1 i • b ed 1882 Peace! Democracy. It is upon you tw> TMKter rrtday Smithfield, X. C, Tuesday, August 14, 1945 that each soldier depends.

In my fight my thoughts will . .. return to you who

can fight for Democracy You must do this for the

soldiers because Democracy will be ... and must be

won at home....

The letter above was signed Japanese Quit On Our Terms A loyal Negro Soldier. ” It ¥ voices the confusion African Peace Is Americans faced infighting to defend a lifestyle they, Q?v Event Announced themselves, could not take Of WnsCtir Ne9ro part in even if the war was Rill: Jr,[a.t,°n For won. The two articles to the right appeared within a kln9 His Life Public Water month of each other afier Private Fri Fountains Are £*••! S?na^Sp,aZed urn Installed Here the end of World War II. s '■****"-. Xa - i&sxJzHs: Public water fountains have One of them illustrates too been installed by the town of Smithfield at the corner of Mar¬ realistically what kind of life °°"mwr,Wr ftoror rukJfi com®g of .“‘"’V during th for whites is located at Hood’s awaits this decorated soldier popped by thethel^ y^od 0ded bomb® / f1- - —«te Fri — u'epolDepot drug store and one for colored in r°P*"> wne “ «>• Eu deptb otoore t£ers°" d“g to . nnTbZ^.',ct,leE“ front of Gregory’s five and ten.

tenon' ^nSofPEVLetJ"®e» K Dr. WJ. Massey Jr., mayor, ®oventh Stree, /T. Fnor»n of said installation of the fountains filled a need long felt by farmers C„3fd Ordna^ea“.ach«,tot h, and others who visit Smithfield. Company. A®muniti0„ *rnvafi, r*vate Fri a (July SI, 1945)

*oQGrtj^Cato cflfajp* awa^doa seen ser^ . brothen k 30 filialon Fri? m Worldpi:-; Wap0/? «ervod Z*UU- the DCNA for being too conservative. Raleigh to provide As a result, in the mid-1950s and 1960s they communication among southern college campuses began joining local chapters of more radical and student groups. By groups like the National Association for the late 1961, more than 70,000 students have participated Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in sit-ins at segregated the Congress ol Racial Equality (CORE), the lunch counters, wade-ins at segregated beaches and Southern Christian Leadership Conference pools, and pray-ins or (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent kneel-ins at segregated churches. Such leaders Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Still, as Marion S. Barry and the DCNA continued to follow a course In spite of Durham's “good life, ”all was not equal. Once Stokely Carmichael are associated with SNCC. that had proved productive in promoting African Americans stepped outside of their neighborhoods, their businesses, or their institutions, they were still treated as interracial communication. May—November 1961 inferiors. In Durham, as well as other cities across the country, In spite of their nonviolent philosophy, Thousands of interracial residents were becoming impatient with this discrimination. Freedom Riders risk their actions by the DCNA and the more radical Public buses oflen became thefocus of nonviolent protest lives while riding interstate buses to test the enforcement views of other groups led to racial incidents against Jim Crow. In 1943 Doris Lyon refused to give up of Morgan v. Virginia (see in Durham as African Americans challenged her seat and move to the back of a bus like this one. After she 1946) and Boynton v. the South’s Jim Crow laws. In one incident, hit a detective who tried to force her to move, she was arrested, Virginia (see 1960). tried, and fined for assault and battery. Doris Lyon refused to observe Jim Crow and move to a seat in the back of a bus in 1943. On June 23,1957, Douglas E. Moore, Beverly W. Jones is professor After she hit a detective when he forcibly pastor at Ashbury Temple United Methodist of history at North Carolina moved her, she was arrested, found guilty Church, and seven students from ages seven¬ Central University. She has of assault and battery, and fined. teen to twenty sat at a lunch counter at the published books and articles about the impact of race, Following the United States Supreme Royal Ice Cream Parlor in Durham and class, and gender on the lives Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision waited for service. Moore and six students of African Americans and in 1954, the Durham school system used were arrested and fined twenty-five dollars about the experiences and every possible method to slow the for trespassing. struggles of black North Carolinians. Her titles desegregation of its schools. African The struggle for civil rights was at include Stanford L. Warren Americans looked to the courts for assistance. he same time taking place in other cities Library: A Phoenix in the In the fall of 1959 the mothers of Jocelyn throughout North Carolina, even across the Durham Community and McKissick and Elaine Richardson country. From the fight for equal access to In Their Own Words: successfully brought suit to have their buses, restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels Tobacco Workers in Durham, North Carolina, daughters reassigned to Durham High to efforts to desegregate schools and other 1920-1940. School, a predominantly white school, institutions, the nation watched the African after they had been denied admission American quest for equality. All photographs on page 27 by the school board. and the circa 1942 bus are Another aspect of the civil rights struggle from the Durham Historic Photographic Archives, was desegregation of public accommodations. Durham County Library, with the cooperation of Elizabeth Moorman. The Definitions progress. Radical groups, on the other hand, tend to be Triumvirate is used with the disobedient, or outspoken and active, in their approaches, permission of the Heritage looking for quick results. Room, North Carolina Many of the brick church buildings still standing in Mutual Life Insurance Aftican American communities across the country are An enterprise is a business organization, usually a plan Company, Durham. Letter for a new venture. African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) churches. The on page 30 is excerpted from A.M.E. organization was one of the largest black Taps for a Jim Crow Army denominations in the mid-1800s and late 1800s. With interracial cooperation, race and color differences edited by Phillip McGuire. are ignored and everyone cooperates toward the same Excerpts from the A style of African American music that typically reflects a goal. Smithfield Herald are used feeling of longing, oppression, or melancholy is the blues. with its acknowledgment. Singer Bessie Smith said, “The original blues songs are The nonviolent Civil Rights movement focused on the All other photographs and deep, emotional melodies, bespeaking of a troubled heart. ” use of passive resistance like sit-ins and civil disobedience documents in this article are Ethel Waters always said, “One mustfeel the blues, not instead of violence to get attention and prompt change. from the North Carolina just sing them. ” Division of Archives and Tax-supported, or public, institutions get their funds History. Conservative groups are usually obedient, or cooperative from taxes paid by taxpayers to city, county, state, or and passive, and often take time to achieve goals and see federal governments.

31 "We were all brot The grassroot Civi in Hyde County by David S. Cecelski

Today we think first ofMartin Luther King Jr. when we reme movement in America. But the Civil Rights movement was a citizens who have never become famous. These citizens school and junior high school here in North Carolina.

r

August 28,1963 During the 1960s schoolchildren were and integrating their black students into Martin Luther King Jr. in the forefront of a Civil Rights white schools and classrooms. They drew delivers his “I Have a Dream” address from movement that swept across North attention to the widespread trend of taking the steps of the Lincoln Carolina. They stood up for voting rights, for away jobs for teachers and administrators Memorial in Washington, D.C. While participating better schools, and for racial equality. They who had been serving at those closing in the March on lived in cities such as Charlotte, Greensboro, schools. They also drew attention to the Washington, 170,000 black and 30,000 white Raleigh, and Wilmington but also in smaller trend of changing team mascots and school Americans watch his towns and rural areas like Hyde County. names and storing trophies and plaques that speech. Fringed by swamps and marshlands, Hyde honored local black culture and leaders. 1963-1964 County is made up of quiet farming and The televised brutality fishing communities surrounded by Pamlico Historically black schools in Hyde County of Birmingham, Alabama, police chief Eugene Sound. Even Swan Quarter, the county seat, To understand the Civil Rights movement Connor; Martin Luther has fewer than five hundred residents. Most in Hyde County, we need to understand King Jr.’s “1 Have a Dream” speech; North Carolinians know the county best as something about the times. Under Jim Crow President John F. the site of Lake Mattamuskeet, the state’s law, African American children could not go Kennedy’s assassination; and President Lyndon B. largest natural lake, where thousands of to school with white children. Black citizens Johnson’s commitment all ducks, geese, and swans migrate every winter. therefore built their own schools. While combine to end a threc- and-a-half-month Senate Twenty-five years ago, though, young those schools were never treated equally, filibuster and lead to people brought Hyde County to the nation’s and in spite of decades of underfunding, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This attention—and wrote an important chapter racial discrimination, and official neglect, legislation primarily makes in the history of America’s Civil Rights Hvde County African Americans had discrimination illegal in public businesses offering movement. worked hard to make their two schools, the food, lodging, gasoline, or In 1968 and 1969 young people in Hyde O. A. Peay School and the Davis School, into entertainment and by employers or labor unions County drew national attention to the trend strong educational institutions that the entire of closing existing African American schools community could be proud of.

32 when hiring, promoting, dismissing, or making referrals. It also authorizes government agencies to withhold federal money from programs that permit discrimination and allows the attorney general to force desegregation of schools, parks and playgrounds, libraries, and swimming pools.

1964 Martin Luther King Jr. receives a Nobel Peace Prize.

Summer 1965 CORE leads a successful protest The African American desire for education goes back to the against the Jefferson Bank first days of freedom from slavery. As Phillip Greene, a Peay in St. Louis for not hiring African American workers. School principal, said, a commitment to education had “been in our bloodfrom way back. " Hyde County’s oldest black 1966 residents could recall their grandparents’ stories about Stokely Carmichael attending school in tents right after the Civil War. This delivers his Black Power slate (above) was used by Sallie Blake Arrington at a speech. Carmichael wants to change the focus of the freedman school in Wake County about 1866. Civil Rights movement away from the nonviolence In the 1920s a group of talented to get to know their students at home, in the and integration strategies African American educators, led after 1930 community, and at church. The church and of conservative groups like the NAACP and SNCC. by Oscar A. Peay, organized the county’s the school, “the preacher and the teacher,” He advocates self-defense first black high school. Originally called together formed the foundation of the against the violence African Americans are the Hyde County Training School, it was African American community. Teachers set facing in the South and renamed the O. A. Peay School in 1963. high standards and always put new challenges emphasizes that blacks The Peay School, near Swan Quarter, was in front of their students. They also instilled reject the racist values of American society and a special place. Black educators worked hard in them a sense of mission to contribute define their own goals, lead something back to their own organizations, and control their own Hyde County—and movement. Rosenwald Schools to the black struggle 1967 for a better life. Thurgood Marshall Few public schools for blacks provided the same quality of education as The struggle becomes the first African schools for whites. In fact, schools with strong financial backing, like Palmer American justice to sit on Memorial Institute (discussed in the article by Charles W. Wadelington was not easy. Hyde the United States Supreme Court. Already familiar to beginning on page 22) were the exception for most African American County was this Court as chief counsel students through the first half of the 1900s. To help make the schools better, desperately poor for the NAACP from 1939 Booker T. Washington helped develop the Rosenwald Fund, a program to in those days. Even to 1961, his most famous help build new elementary schools for black children in rural communities. and influential argument schools for white The program was funded primarily by Julius Rosenwald, then president of was certainly Brown v. Board of Education (see Sears, Roebuck and Company. To promote biracial cooperation, contributions children suffered 1954-1955), which were also required from the local black community and from local school from neglect, so the effectively overthrew boards. Between 1915 and 1931 more than seven hundred Rosenwald scarcity of county or Jim Crow. Once Schools were built in ninety-three of North Carolina’s one hundred counties. state funds required appointed to the Court, This model of the Yadkinville Rosenwald School was built by members of the Marshall continues to fight for individual rights. He Yadkinville Tar educators to rely will resign his seat in 1991. Heel Junior heavily on the local

Historians. Their community. Donating 1968 project resulted in land, labor, and money, The Hyde County Board a paper that won of Education decides to community volunteers desegregate its schools by the Youth closing the county’s two Preservation improved school historically black schools Award and this facilities in many ways and transferring all African scale replica that and helped to create American schoolchildren won a first place to its white Mattamuskeet caring, nurturing School. Supported by the in the art project competition at classrooms. Awards Day 1993. 33 SCLC, black residents This community involvement inspired a Hyde County’s black citizens likewise launch a boycott of fierce school loyalty, especially to the Peay began to fear that school desegregation classrooms that lasts the entire school year. School. When alumnus Golden Mackey was threatening, rather than enhancing, their heard that school desegregation would shut educational heritage. They suspected that the 1968 down the Peay School, he declared that they school board might unfairly demote black The Civil Rights Act of 1968 passes Congress. Its “did not have the right to take something principals and fire black teachers. They main provision prohibits belonging] to us.” were also concerned that, if the two African discrimination in rental property or home American schools were closed, the white ownership. It also Had they lost something by schools might not respect black parents provides criminal penalties for interfering winning the fight? or the special culture and needs of African with or injuring anyone Hyde County’s black citizens had long American children. Thev had wanted school who is exercising rights J such as voting, using supported school desegregation. Local desegregation—but at what price to the public accommodations, or National Association for the Advancement African American community? attending school or college or for harming anyone who of Colored People (NAACP) members had Supported by the Southern Christian is encouraging or assisting even endured death threats and violent Leadership Conference (SCLC), Hyde a person exercising those rights. attacks in order to send the first African County’s black residents launched an American children to the Mattamuskeet extraordinary boycott to save their schools. 1968 Henry E. Frve of School, the county’s white school. But in For the entire 1968/1969 school year, African Greensboro is the 1968, after reluctantly accepting court- American schoolchildren refused to attend first African American ordered school desegregation, the Hyde classes. Inspired by the nonviolent legacy elected to the state’s General Assembly since County Board of Education decided to shut of Martin Luther King Jr., who had been the 1890s. He later will down the Peay and Davis Schools and assassinated in the spring of 1968, they become a justice on the state supreme court. transfer all African American children organized peaceful protest marches almost to the Mattamuskeet School. every day for five months. At night they had 1969 Howard Lee is elected to At the time, school boards and community meetings enlivened by song and his first of three terms as communities across the nation had two prayer and often held workshops on topics mayor in Chapel Hill. Lee will also serve as reactions to integrating schools. First, they like civil disobedience. That winter they head of the North Carolina shut down black schools, even if they were also held two long marches to Raleigh. Department of Natural Resources. newer and more modern, and bused their former students into white schools, as far Children and the Civil Rights movement 1970-1971 The court ruling in away as forty miles. Second, they stripped At first, school boycott leaders included few Swann v. Charlotte- Mecklenburg Board of remaining black schools of their cultural children. Parents brought them to protest Education orders crosstown importance to the local black community meetings and made the decision to withdraw busing to integrate the city and county schools. After by remodeling, renaming, and reducing them from school. Early on, though, this case, busing spreads them into elementary schools or offices. hundreds of young people became throughout the South and the nation as the answer to activists and leaders. Sometimes the children Civil rights protests and marches often ended in the school desegregation. attended “movement schools.” Their parents state’s capital at Raleigh. This group encircles the Legislative Building. were concerned that the children were missing so much school, so they conducted their own classes in seven local churches. Retired schoolteachers and college students helped to teach them. Younger citizens also led civil rights marches. More than half of the county'’s black high school students were jailed for civil disobedience. Several dozen junior high school students were also arrested. One protest was even led by elementary school students and their grandparents. Often a little afraid, the young people were proud to go to jail for the fight to gain civil rights and to save their schools. Children had many responsibilities during the school boycott. Linda Sue Gibbs was one

34 of the most committed activists. She directed a young people’s choir that sang “movement songs” at church meetings and civil rights marches.

What they learned by living life Hyde County’s African American children realized that they were living in a historic moment. They felt that, in one child’s words, they had to “stand up once in our lifetimes.” They had gotten the nation’s attention. “If we do not do something now,” a visiting educator remembers the children saying, “it will never happen.” He was impressed that “they had become convinced that they owed it to future generations.” The young people devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the Civil Rights movement. “You walked, talked, ate, thought, lived for the movement,” explained Alice Spencer. “It was all you did.” Thomas Whitaker, who would have been a senior that For a decade before the year at the Peay School, later described how The civil rights activists finally did save desegregation protests in he “felt like he was giving himself completely both the Peay School and the Davis School. Hyde County., other protests were taking place to something larger and more important than Black and white children now attend all of elsewhere in the state. himself.” Like so many young civil rights Hyde County’s schools together. Hyde Th is group of white activists, he discovered energy, ability, and County’s schoolchildren provided an students heckles two black commitment in himself that he could never important lesson in racial justice to all students as they enter Charlotte’s Harding High have imagined before. “We were all brothers of America. School in the late 1950s. and sisters then,” he proudly recalls today.

David Cecelski a segregated America in 1951. Proud Shoes: The Story Pauli Murray is the author of Along of an American Family (1956) uses the Fitzgeralds to by Raymond Gavins Freedom Road: Hyde uncover black North Carolina’s forgotten but rich County, North Carolina, history from slavery times to 1926. An Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a famous activist for and the Fate of Black autobiography, Song in a Weary Throat (1987), shows African Americans, women, and workers during the Schools in the South that her voice was a major influence in the modern age of Jim Crow. as well as many articles Civil Rights and women’s movements. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, but raised in on coastal North Carolina Murray pushed through racial and gender walls Durham, North Carolina, she learned from her in the 1700s and 1800s. in 1977 when she was ordained as a priest in the proud grandparents, aunts, and uncles, members of He is currently a Protestant Episcopal Church. Her first ceremony Durham’s influential Fitzgerald family, “those traits research associate with after her ordination was held in the same Franklin of character expected of a Fitzgerald—stern devotion the Southern Oral History Street church building in Chapel Hill where her to duty, capacity for hard work, industry and thrift, Program at the University great-grandmother, once a slave, was baptized. and above all honor and courage.” of North Carolina at These ideals inspired Murray to finish Hunter Chapel Hill. College in 1933 and serve on the Workers’

Education Project. She worked to challenge The photograph of students Jim Crow after her 1938 graduate school application outside Harding High was refused by the University of North Carolina. In School is provided by the 1940 she was arrested in Virginia for defying bus Charlotte Museum of segregation laws, and in 1943 she was a leader of the History and Alexander first sit-ins against Washington, D.C., restaurants. Homesite. All other While overcoming race and gender bias, she photographs in this article earned three degrees in law and one in theology are from the North between 1944 and 1976. She also taught at four Carolina Division of universities, including one in Africa. Archives and History. Her book States’ Laws on Race and Color exposed

35 1970-1971 High school students in THJH Essay Contest Wilmington protest what they feel are unfair school award winner policies. Ben Chavis, an by Jerrian Elizabeth Brooks educator and civil rights leader from Oxford, is called in for assistance, The fight for civil rights has involved many battles but a series of violent clashes occurs, anyway. over many years. It is a struggle that began before During one armed and has continued since the Civil Rights movement standoff a grocery store of the 1960s. Jerrian Elizabeth Brooks interviewed is firebombed and several her mentor, Herman G. Thompson, to discover one police officers and battle that he took part in, a nine-person protest firefighters are fired upon. The “Wilmington Ten,” group in St. Louis, Missouri. primarily African “I would have protested, too, if I had been there,” Americans, are tried and said Jerrian in a telephone interview after receiving convicted of arson and her winner’s plaque at Awards Day 1995. “If you other charges, though want to create change, there is an opportunity to do much of the testimony presented in the case it.” is contradictory and Jerrian was a junior at North Moore High School questionable. Each of the and a member of the North Moore Historians, Vince ten is sentenced to serve Greene, adviser. about twenty-eight years. “Before I worked on this project, I was familiar This case draws national attention and is even with the Civil Rights movement. I knew about written about in Soviet Martin Luther King Jr. My family went to Atlanta newspapers. A federal and saw the church where he was pastor and his court will overturn their museum, the Martin Luther King Jr. [National convictions in 1980. Historic Site and Preservation District], I also

1972 knew about Thurgood Marshall and I read African Shirley Chisholm becomes American literature. Maya Angelou is my favorite Acting director of the North Carolina Division of the first African American author.” Archives and History Jeffrey J. Crow presents Jerrian and the first woman to Jerrian has worked in Thompson’s law office make a serious bid for Elizabeth Brooks a plaque for winning this year's for two summers. “He takes me to court sometimes. the presidency of the Tar Heel Junior Historian Essay Contest. United States. I plan to become a lawyer, too.” The Civil Rights movement may have started sparked not only local but national changes 1976 before Jerrian was born, but it has helped her life. The Democratic National in the treatment of minorities. “I am able to attend school with many different Committee selects United ethnic groups and learn about their cultures.” Many personal battles also aided in the Civil States congresswoman Barbara Jordan to be the That is one battle that Jerrian is glad was won. Rights movement. A notable African American first African American Her essay follows. of this time was Herman G. Thompson. woman to present a keynote address at the Thompson is presently the only African he development of many African American national Democratic T American lawyer in Moore County. Many civil convention. communities depended largely on civil rights rights battles have faced Thompson through the battles of the 1960s. These community battles 1976 years. But one very important battle to him was Author Alex Haley the Jefferson Bank protest in St. Louis, Missouri. publishes Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The Jefferson Bank had refused to employ any African Americans. The bank made money from

Pauli Murray breaks racial many of the black communities in St. Louis. and gender barriers when Jefferson Bank wanted their money but did not she is ordained into the Protestant Episcopal Church. want them as employees. In the summer of 1965 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) led a 1977 Andrew Young becomes protest against the bank. the first African American The bank president went to the court system ambassador from the and acquired an injunction, which restricted the United States to the United Nations. protesters to picketing outside of the bank. It named Thompson [as] the president of CORE. November 1979 An anti-Ku KJux KJan So when nine professional blacks entered the rally in Greensboro, bank under the leadership of Thompson, [the planned by the biracial Communist Workers Party, erupts in violence when a In February I960 these youths were arrested group of KKK members and jailed following a protest in Raleigh.

36 and Nazis show up. Five injunction] was being violated. All nine members members of the workers were arrested, went to trial, and were found guilty party are killed. Six Klansmen are tried of trespassing. They were sentenced to sixty days and released. in jail and fined fifty dollars. The case was later January 28,1986 appealed, and all were found innocent of the African American charges. astronaut Ronald Erwin Many minority leaders were outraged at the McNair, who graduated from North Carolina treatment of the nine members of CORE. They Agricultural and Technical sparked protests in St. Louis that involved some State University in Greensboro in 1971, white priests and nuns. Although some African dies in the explosion Americans still did not agree with what was of the space shuttle Challenger. going on, all blacks in St. Louis were forced to take sides. Labor Day Weekend 1986 As a result of the Jefferson Bank protest, Descendants of enslaved persons from Somerset the bank began to employ minorities. Minority Place converge on the communities began to become more involved former plantation for a “Somerset Homecoming” in the struggle for civil rights. Many strong reunion. African American leaders [arose] from this 1991 demonstration. Two were Herman G. Thompson Clarence Thomas and William Clay, currently a congressman from becomes the second African American justice Missouri. to sit on the United States As more people begin to explore the This 1964 sit-in at a Chapel Hill drugstore Supreme Court. possibilities of equality, the better our way of life stretched into the night. 1992 will become. Until our social and ethnic clashes Eva Clayton and Melvin developing a sense of respect for all people. can be resolved, the healing process in this Watt are elected to Congress Until this is [achieved] our direction cannot from North Carolina. They country cannot begin. The future of minority are the first African American be determined. communities depends on education to aid in representatives elected from this state in the 1900s.

Definitions A mentor is a person that you admire as an example and can influence you in your choice of careers and attitudes.

An alumnus is one graduate of a school. A group Movement schools were temporary schools that were set of graduates make up the school's alumni. up during the Civil Rights movement protests to help students stay current in their studies. Movement songs A person who is assassinated is murdered in a sudden were written and sung to build a sense of camaraderie. and often planned secret attack. The National Association for the Advancement of

Civil disobedience is a form of nonviolent protest Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 as a nonviolent, Christian organization to fightfor the that usually involves a group that collectively and abolition of allforced segregation, equal education for intentionally refuses to obey a government regulation black and white children, equal voting rights, and itfeels is unjust. enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Court-ordered rulings are enforceable by law, although appeals can delay enforcement for lengths of time. Sixty black leaders from ten southern states founded the All photographs in this Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in article are from the North Defying a law is challenging it by physical resistance, 1957. Martin Luther King Jr. was the first president of Carolina Division of or bluntly disobeying it through your actions. this Atlanta-based, nonviolent, civil rights organization. Archives and History.

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