September 2011 – Page 4

‘Literary, commercial, normal’ — and barely remembered

Despite its undeniable gift for self-promotion, the Whitsett Institute (1888- ?), a boarding school in Guilford County, didn’t leave a big footprint in the educational terrain. But the collection does have this pinback button and 10 campus postcards, including wish-I-knew-more images of Gov. W. W. Kitchin and a contingent of Cuban students.

Idle thought: Were postcard inscriptions — “Hello! Maud, how are you these fine days. Say why didn’t you let me know Miss Angle was going to be visiting, didn’t know it until after she left…. Guess it is as dry a time around there as usual” — simply predigital tweets?

So how often do you happen onto “a verbal concision that can rise to a high level of eloquence”?

No break for ‘stately, plump black Packard’

“North Carolina’s Governor Robert Gregg Cherry had automobile trouble. His stately, plump black Packard was one of the first cars to be examined under the state’s new compulsory-inspection law. It flunked. Faulty lights.”

— From Time magazine, Jan. 26, 1948

Jessie J. Lossie, the proud Cherokee

We recently surpassed 9,000 images on our North Carolina Postcards website. The card above is among the lot that took us over the mark. It stood out to me because of the man’s proud bearing. The caption reads:

JESSIE J. LOSSIE–Cherokee Indian–on the banks of the Oconaluftee River, Cherokee Indian Reservation, North Carolina. The Qualla Reservation on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the home of more than 3000 Cherokees belonging to the Eastern Band.

Curious about the story behind the image, I searched around for information on Jessie J. Lossie. I haven’t been able to find much. According to the Social Security Death Index, Jesse Lossie (note the spelling of the first name) was born April 1, 1906 and died in August 1961. His Social Security card was issued in North Carolina. Are Jesse Lossie and Jessie J. Lossie one in the same?

My search also suggests that W.M. Cline Company of Chattanooga,Tennessee, the postcard’s publisher, sold a lot of copies of this card. Numerous websites offer the card. Prices range from 90 cents to $12.90. This information provoked more questions. How was Jessie J. Lossie chosen for the photograph? Did he dress in such Native American finery all the time? And, considering our state’s and nation’s troubled relation with the Cherokee, was Jessie Lossie sufficiently compensated for posing? If you can add to the story, please do so.

Ngram knew LSMFT before it went PFFFT

More phrase-frequency charts from Google Books Ngram Reader:

— Krispy Kreme vs. Dunkin Donuts

— Wrightsville Beach vs. Myrtle Beach

— LSMFT (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco)

— Reynolds Price vs. Anne Tyler

— Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence vs. Protocols of Zion

Republicans wary of Southern hospitality

On this day in 1886: The New York Tribune responds to North Carolina’s efforts to attract Northerners and their investment capital:

“Every such movement is deserving of and receives the heartiest encouragement. . . . But [Northerners must know] that if they cast in their lot with the people of North Carolina they will be perfectly secure in all their political rights and privileges. Everybody knows that in portions of the South unless one swears by the Democratic party the community in which he resides will make it unpleasant for him. He may not be positively maltreated, but he will be let alone in an emphatic manner.

“We rejoice at the assurance that comes to us that North Carolina has set her face against this un-American, suicidal policy; that she welcomes alike Republicans and Democrats and proposes that they shall have equal rights. Inviting immigration in this spirit and offering superior inducements, there is no reason why she should not increase and multiply.”

New faces of 1960: Carolina Cronkite, handy Andy

” ‘Eyewitness to History’ (CBS), which takes up the top news story of each week and analyzes it in respectable detail, is a good example of the sort of first-rate service television can perform. … As impressive as the show itself is its young analyst-narrator, Charles Kuralt, 25, who wrote a human interest column for the Charlotte, N.C. News before CBS hired him. A deep-voiced Carolina Cronkite with more than a little Murrow in his bones, he has one of those low-ratchet, radioactive voices that sound like a roulette wheel stopping….

” ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ (CBS) sets up the fellow who had ‘No Time for Sergeants’ as a sort of one-man Southern town: he is the cop, justice of the peace, jailer, newspaper editor, coroner, sheriff, mechanic and mailman. As a drawling, broad-shouldered, curly-haired, grits-filled, engagingly handsome example of the U.S.’s vast natural resource of undeveloped intelligence, talented Comedian Griffith is often good for laughs, all of them canned.”

— From Time magazine, October 10, 1960

As the show developed, Griffith soon shed all his jobs except sheriff.

UNC-Charlotte Digital Collections

The J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC-Charlotte has a nice new digital collections site at http://digitalcollections.uncc.edu/.

The site contains images from local photographers, aerial photos of Charlotte, and a fantastic collection of Charlotte area postcards. Where else can you find more than 50 different images related to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence?

R.J. Reynolds Building: Make Your Offer Now

Winston-Salem’s Art Deco landmark is still on the market. But a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco says the building is attracting interest from potential buyers.

Its sky-high cafeteria sure did churn out a tasty and inexpensive lunch back in the early 90s. More than a few Winston-Salem Journal employees filled their bellies there (this writer included).

Jefferson loved free press (papers, not so much)

In 1819 Thomas Jefferson, retired at Monticello, wrote Sen. Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina that “I read no newspaper now but Ritchie’s, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing.” (from “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Volume 15)

For 41 years Thomas Ritchie was the influential editor and publisher of the thrice-weekly Richmond Enquirer. On another occasion Jefferson referred to the Enquirer as “the best that is published or ever has been published in America.”

Despite his disappointment with newspapers and his preference for books, Jefferson was an unwavering advocate of journalistic freedom. “The only security of all is in a free press,” he wrote Lafayette in 1823. “The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”

Link dump demands tenure for statues

— Agree or disagree, Silent Sam disputants? “We honor people for the good they do, and for their honorableness, and not for their mistakes.”

— Speaking of Sam, I’m reminded of another contentious piece of campus statuary — one that was sent into exile and stripped of two of its figures.

— Capturing Hatteras gave Union a disproportionate morale boost.

— Clingman’s last stand?

— When targeted for jihad, hope for “the only terrorist in the world ever deterred by gun-control laws.”