Month: July 2015

NC Klansmen had limits to their anti-Catholicism

“….Moderate, fraternal-minded or skittish Klansmen… had no stomach for the vituperative anti-Catholicism promoted by Klan lecturers…

“Even some hooded officials harbored reservations about the bigoted logic of white Protestant nationalism….In 1927, Imperial Wizard [Hiram Wesley] Evans tried to force North Carolina Klan officials to place bills before the state legislature invalidating ‘prenuptial agreements regarding education of children’ in mixed Catholic-Protestant marriages and outlawing membership in the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus. Tar Heel Klansmen rebelled against the directive, and some cut their ties with the national organization….”

— From “One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s” by Thomas R. Pegram (2011)

 

Blueberries, and melons, and pears oh my!…recipes from the collection

It’s summer in the south and that means fresh fruit!  So run to your local farmers market or grocer, grab your favorite fruit, and try out a new to you recipe.

USED 7-9-15 Fruit cocktail poem - Kitchen Kapers

 

Fruit Cocktail poem from Kitchen kapers.

USED 7-9-15 Fruit Cocktails - Nightingales in the Kitchen

Fruit Cocktail from Nightingales in the kitchen.

USED 7-9-15 Cantaloupe Pond Lilies - Heavenly Delights

Cantaloupe Pond Lilies from Heavenly delights.

USED 7-9-15 Blueberry Pineapple Float-Cooking with Berries

Blueberry-Pineapple Float from Cooking with berries.

Watermelon Ice - Pass the Plate

Watermelon Ice from Pass the plate : the collection from Christ Church.

USED 7-9-15 Pear Relish - A Taste of the Old and the New

Pear Relish from A Taste of the old and the new.

USED 7-9-15 Broiled Grapefruit - Given to Hospitality

Broiled Grapefruit from Given to hospitality : a cook book.

USED 7-9-15 Cold Peach Soup - Pass the Plate

Cold Peach Soup from Pass the plate : the collection from Christ Church.

Slaves could die from ‘moderate correction’

“Black codes and slave courts in the North American colonies, like those in the Caribbean, focused intensely on protecting the bodies of slaves while masking the extremities of mutilation….

“In John Haywood’s A Manual of the Laws of North Carolina (1808), a person would be judged ‘guilty of willfully and maliciously killing a slave’ except when the slave died resisting his master or when ‘dying under moderate correction.’

“To style the ‘correction’ of a slave that causes death ‘moderate’ is to assure that old abuses and arbitrary acts would continue to be masked by vague standards and apparent legitimacy.”

— From “Cruel and Unusual: The end of the Eighth Amendment” by Joan Dayan at Boston Review (Oct. 7, 2004)

 

A history lesson for Pasquotank County commissioners

“….In their reactions to last week’s call by the Pasquotank NAACP to remove a Confederate monument from the county courthouse property, several Pasquotank commissioners said the Civil War was fought more over the issue of states’ rights than slavery.

“That’s just not so, said Michael Hill, a historian with the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, who called the states’ rights justification for the South’s secession a ‘bogus argument’….

“ ‘That debate was long settled among historians,’ Hill said in a phone interview. ‘Slavery was central to the debate that preceded the war.’

“Hill said that when Southern states declared their causes for seceding from the Union, many said point-blank it was because of the North’s perceived hostility to slaveholding. Shortly after the Civil War ended in 1865, he said, many Southern leaders and writers tried to redefine, and even rename, the Civil War — one of those names was in fact the ‘War Between the States’ — but he said there’s no doubt about the ‘centrality of slavery’ in causing the war…”

— From “Historian: Slavery, not states’ rights, caused Civil War” by Jon Hawley in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance (July 4)

Of course, this misconception isn’t limited to northeastern North Carolina.

 

A Southerner views ‘old maids’ and women’s rights

” ‘I suppose you have already heard of the woman’s rights convention a few weeks ago in Worcester, [Mass.]’ Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick of North Carolina told his fiancee, Ellen Thompson. ‘I used to think all that was said about such things was mere talk. But there are a number of persons now in Cambridge who were at that the other day.

” ‘The members and delegates are mostly of that peculiar class, called sometimes for distinction “old maids.” These individuals abound more at the North than at the South. What is the reason I cannot tell.’ ”

–– From “Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860″ by Michael O’Brien (2004)

 

Chapel Hill’s (debatable) reign as the new Seattle

“The ‘Seattle’ phenomenon spawned a series of imitators in the music press…. For some time, Chapel Hill appeared to enjoy frontrunner status and a spate of pieces appeared touting central North Carolina as the place to watch….

“The most notable of the Chapel Hill pieces was certainly Mr. Eric Konigsberg’s for Details…. Konigsberg does yeoman’s work in fabricating a Chapel Hill to suit his fantasies: ‘In the Chapel Hill-Raleigh-Durham triangle of sleepy, left-leaning college towns, English lit students argue structuralism on their front porches while listening to hardcore songs like “Wheel-chair Full of Old Man.” ‘

“Yes, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham are in fact replicas of the same town…. Amazing that the fiction of them being distinct municipalities endured so long. And never mind that structuralism has not been a topic of compelling academic interest for 30 years, because state law does in fact mandate that the graduate stipend for studying literature include a house with a front porch….”

— From “Brain Dead in Seattle: A Jeremiad” by Eric Iversen in the Baffler (1993)

.