Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
I just noticed on eBay a 1946 edition of the rare, important and viscerally affecting “The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide” (1936-1964).
As noted here almost six years ago by Jason Tomberlin, the North Carolina Collection is holding shelf space open for its first copy.
Current bid: $999.99.
Final price: $4,551.99
“Jerry Moore, who paints houses in Black Mountain, had just bought his first computer, and he Googled ‘Stonewall Jackson Training School.’ Up popped a UNC Chapel Hill website with a grainy black-and-white photograph of boys cultivating a corn field at the school in 1937. Linked to that was another website with a glowing description of Stonewall Jackson.
“Moore, 60, was so upset by what he read, he broke years of silence and posted a comment: ‘I remember severe cruelty.’ He accused his adult caretaker of hitting him in the face, kicking him in the ribs and slapping his penis with a rubber strap.
“Other men found Moore’s lament and added their own, launching a painful conversation that continues today.”
— From “Stonewall Jackson secrets: ‘Children against monsters’ “ in today’s Charlotte Observer
Building on the scores of vivid — and often shocking — responses to Jason Tomberlin’s Miscellany post of May 27, 2010, Elizabeth Leland has put together a powerful indictment of how North Carolina tortured generations of misfit boys, often guilty of nothing more than bad luck.
Who knows how long this story would have remained buried without Jason’s post to provoke, however inadvertently, such an outpouring of horrendous memories?