New in the collection: Garners pepper sauce label

Though best known for Texas Pete hot sauce, concocted in 1929, the TW Garner Food Co. has produced a wide and oft-tweaked range of condiments. Among recent additions: Salsas and wing sauces.

Its minimalist pepper sauce has remained a staple, however. “When whole, green Tabasco peppers are soaked in vinegar and salt,” Garner promises, “the result is a tangy, spicy topping with flavor that’ll make you say ‘Heavens to Betsy!’ ”

Where would collards be without it?

Footnote: The four figures at the top of the label represent the company founders — Sam Garner and sons Thad, Ralph and Harold.

‘Sexual harassment’ at issue in the funnies, 1981

News of cartoonist Mort Walker’s death came not long after I happened onto a lengthy 1981 letter Walker wrote to Charlotte Observer features editor Bob Ashley defending a newly controversial character in Beetle Bailey:

“I’ve been using Miss Buxley once a week for about ten years and never got a complaint really until about three months ago when editors and women began calling me a sexist and the content of my gags ‘sexual harassment’…

“I wouldn’t want to call it a conspiracy, but there seems to be a ‘Concerted Effort’ to make me drop Miss Buxley….I’m not sure I should cave in to such a minority and deprive my mass readership of its enjoyment….”

Miss Buxley survived, although (eventually) in toned-down circumstances. As noted in the Washington Post’s obit: “In 1997, responding to criticism from feminists who objected to Halftrack’s longtime ogling of Miss Buxley, Mr. Walker had the elderly general attend sensitivity training. Gone were gags such as the one in which Halftrack approves of the three-martini lunch that enables him to see double Miss Buxleys.”

 

Spectators’ groping ‘defeated spirit of the streak’

“To the spectators at the streak Wednesday night:

“As loyal streakers to Carolina, who happen to be female, we do not feel that touching our breasts and/or other genitalia is necessary to the spirit of the streak. It was degrading both to us and the people who did it. We feel that it has defeated the spirit of the streak, which is to promote unity and togetherness of men and women.”

— From “Some degraded coed streakers,” a letter to the Daily Tar Heel from “The 64 Carolina Coed Streakers” (March 8, 1974)

 

AIDS Memorial Quilt panel visits UNC; an NCC photographic collection provides context

AIDS quilt panel display
AIDS Memorial Quilt panel display in the UNC Student Union

Thanks to the efforts of Carolina undergraduate Elizabeth Trefney, UNC is privileged to be hosting an exhibit featuring a panel from the historic AIDS Memorial Quilt. The panel will be on display in the Carolina Student Union Building through January 31. The exhibit serves as a powerful reminder of the devastating global impact of HIV/AIDS, a point also emphasized by a collection of photographs in the North Carolina Collection’s Photographic Archives.

Trefney’s interest in coordinating the Student Union exhibit is both universal and personal: She wanted to remind the UNC community of those whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS, and in particular to honor her late uncle, Jeremy Trefney (1957-1988), who passed away due to complications from HIV and is memorialized on a panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The quilt panel’s presence also celebrates the role of UNC’s School of Medicine and other medical research facilities in making groundbreaking advances in HIV/AIDS treatment.

The Jerome Friar Collection

Coincidentally, the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives in the Wilson Special Collections Library holds a collection of photographs that contains images of the quilt on the National Mall in Washington, DC on the Mall, starting with its origins in 1987 and depicting its subsequent periodic display through the late 1990s.

National Mall AIDS Quilt display, 1987
Demonstrations: AIDS: “AIDS quilt on mall,” 11 October 1987 (The first time the AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed on the National Mall.) Photograph by Jerome Friar Image from P0090/0586 – Black-and-White Kodak TMY 5053 35mm Roll Film

The photos were made by Jerome Friar, a North Carolina native and photographer who worked in DC in the 1980s and 90s. Friar worked for a stock photography group called Impact Visuals, which provided timely and relevant images to social justice organizations for use in their publications. (Our younger readers may be surprised to learn that such a service was necessary in pre-Internet days.)

AIDS Memorial Quilt display, National Mall
Demonstrations: AIDS: “AIDS quilt on mall,” 11 October 1989. Photograph by Jerome Friar. Image from P0090/0589: Color 35mm Mounted Slide

The Jerome Friar Collection contains approximately 240 (on 13 different rolls of film) images of the quilt on the National Mall. The images taken on October 11, 1987, 1989, 1992, and circa 1995-1997 show how the quilt’s display evolved as the numbers of HIV/AIDS victims grew, as the disease became more widely diagnosed/recognized, and as some of the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS began to recede.

AIDS Quilt display on National Mall
Demonstrations: AIDS: “AIDS quilt on mall,” 11 October 1992. Photo by Jerome Friar. Image from P0090/0605 – Black-and-White Kodak 5063 TX 35mm Roll Film
Hands linked in front of AIDS Quilt display
Demonstrations: AIDS: “AIDS quilt on mall,” 11 October 1992. Photo by Jerome Friar. Image from P0090/0607 – Black-and-White Kodak 5063 TX 35mm Roll Film

Friar was most likely assigned to cover the quilt when it was first displayed on the National Mall in 1987 because it was one of the first large public events organized by AIDS activists. In addition to the images of the quilt, Friar’s photographs also depict numerous HIV/AIDS-related demonstrations organized by groups such as ACT-UP, intended to raise awareness of the disease among politicians in Washington in the 1980s and 90s.

Activists holding signs and shouting
Friar’s photographs of HIV/AIDS-related activism span the 1980s and 90s. Photograph by Jerome Friar. Image from P0090/0587 – Black-and-White Kodak 5053 TMY 35mm Roll Film
hands flipping through envelopes of photographs
Friar’s photographs are available for research in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

A rare opportunity

If you’re on or near the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, don’t miss the chance to see the quilt panel while it’s in the Student Union, through January 31.

Photographs from the Jerome Friar Collection are available for research in the Wilson Special Collections Library at any time. Come visit us!

So you think you know North Carolina….No. 4

1. Contrary to plans, the 1928 silver anniversary commemoration of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk didn’t feature a fly-over by squadrons of Naval airships from Virginia. Why?

2. “There is not a modern New York hostess, scarcely even an old-fashioned one, who does not have cigarettes passed after dinner.” This social advice was offered by Emily Post, Amy Vanderbilt or Gloria Steinem?

3. The granddaughter of what president died in North Carolina in 2008?

4. Encouraged by the Soil Conservation Service, Rutherford County farmers in 1942 set out 50,000 of what kind of plants?

5. Which Wilmington has more population, North Carolina’s or Delaware’s?

Answers below….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Complaints from duck hunters.

2. Emily Post, author of the 1922 classic “Etiquette,” who also appeared in ads for Old Golds.

3. Teddy Roosevelt. Theodora Roosevelt Keogh O’Toole Rauchfuss had been a ballerina and novelist before settling in obscurity in rural Caldwell County. She died Jan. 5 at 88.

4. Kudzu. Until its invasiveness made it unwelcome, this Japanese vine was widely used to combat erosion across the South. The Forest City soil conservation agent recommended carrying plants to the field “between wet sacks or in damp sawdust.”

5. North Carolina’s, by 117,525 to 71,442, according to recent census estimates.

 


Check out what’s new in the North Carolina Collection

Several new titles just added to “New in the North Carolina Collection.” To see the full list simply click on the link in the entry or click on the “New in the North Carolina Collection” tab at the top of the page. As always, full citations for all the new titles can be found in the University Library Catalog and they are all available for use in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

New in the collection: Senatorial place cards


I’m stymied. I obtained these place cards from a collector who was breaking up a full set of U.S. senators said to have attended a presidential — perhaps — dinner.

If so, because of the long and nearly simultaneous tenures of Lee Overman (1903-1930) and  Furnifold Simmons (1901-1931), the hosting president could have been Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge or Hoover.

Overman was from Salisbury, Simmons from New Bern — simple enough. But what about “Via Charlotte” and “Via Wilmington”? Railroad connections? Why would that be worth mentioning?

And what might the initial “B” stand for?

Thoughts welcome!

So you think you know North Carolina…. No. 3

1. True or false: Among the crimes requiring the death penalty in early 19th-century North Carolina were burglary, bigamy, sodomy, highway robbery, dueling where death occurs and hiding a slave with intent to free him.

2. In three years FDR’s Works Progress Administration built 63,311 of these in North Carolina — what were they?

3. In 1932 a crowd of 15,000 turned out in Goldsboro to watch what event?

4. The otherwise obscure Ervin T. Rouse, a native of Dover in Craven County, wrote what has been called the best-known fiddle tune of the 20th century. What was it?

5. In 1895 after the N.C. legislature passed a resolution honoring the recently deceased abolitionist Frederick Douglass, protesters demanded a $10,000 loan for what purpose?

Answers below….

 

 

 

 

 

1. True. One explanation for such an extensive list: The lack of a state penitentiary left no suitable alternative to capital punishment.

2. Outhouses. Typically built with concrete floors and ventilation shafts, they were an effective deterrent to hookworms and other public health concerns.

3. A “Hoover Cart Rodeo,” a parade of 300 cannibalized, mule-powered automobiles. Hoover carts, like shanty-town Hoovervilles, linked the Depression to President Herbert Hoover. Each parade entrant received a three-pound bag of grits and a pass to see the Marx Brothers in “Horsefeathers.”

4. “Orange Blossom Special,” composed in 1938, along with the less successful “(I’ve Got Those) Craven County Blues.”

5. To build a Confederate monument on the Capitol grounds. After organizing first to bring home and rebury the state’s dead from Gettysburg, Confederate widows broadened their cause to building monuments and otherwise glorifying the Lost Cause.

 

New in the collection: Martin Luther King hand fan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This humble, well-used cardboard hand fan combines three key elements of black history in North Carolina:

— Dr. King.

North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance, the state’s preeminent black business.

— The typically un-air-conditioned churches that accommodated not only worship services but also civil rights meetings.

 

“. . . to arouse the dozing conscience of our nation.”

This photograph by Herald-Sun staff photographer Jim Thornton appeared on the front page of the 17 February 1960 issue of The Durham Morning Herald. Pictured here is a scan made from the original negative, shown without cropping.
This photograph by Herald-Sun staff photographer Jim Thornton appeared on the front page of the 17 February 1960 issue of The Durham Morning Herald. Pictured here is a scan made from the original negative, shown without cropping.

A few days ago on January 9th, The Herald-Sun published a story online titled, “When Martin Luther King Jr. came to Durham.”  The article included a photograph of King and others walking on Durham’s West Main Street on February 16, 1960.  They were on their way to the F. W. Woolworth & Company lunch counter, which the store had kept closed after the February 8th sit-in by North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) students protesting against segregated seating.  That protest came on the heels of the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in at Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1st.

The North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives is the home of The Herald-Sun negatives.  There are two sets of negatives in the collection that document King’s 1960 trip to Durham: twelve negatives by Jim Thornton of King’s walk to Woolworth’s, and twenty negatives attributed to Harold Moore (based upon a caption in The Durham Sun) that depict two views of sidewalk picketers and twenty-one negatives of King visit to White Rock Baptist Church.

Photographer Jim Thorton's selected negative, which was not published, of Martin Luther King and others as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others walked to Woolworth's.
Photographer Jim Thorton’s selected negative, which was not published, of Martin Luther King and others as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others walked to Woolworth’s.

The above negative by Thornton has a punch-hole beneath the image area, which typically designates the photographer’s or editor’s choice images.  Neither The Durham Morning Herald nor The Durham Sun published that view.  Instead, the latter published a cropped view of the following negative . . . removing the young bystander of history on the far left.

The full frame of Jim Thornton's published photograph of Rev. Douglas Moore, pastor of Asbury Temple Methodist Church; Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; Ralph Abernathy; and Lacy Streeter, North Carolina College student and president of the NCC chapter of the NAACP.
The full frame of Jim Thornton’s published photograph of Rev. Douglas Moore, pastor of Asbury Temple Methodist Church; Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; Ralph Abernathy; and Lacy Streeter, North Carolina College student and president of the NCC chapter of the NAACP.

During the evening, King spoke at a filled-to-capacity White Rock Baptist Church.  King’s speech has been dubbed informally his “Fill Up the Jails” sermon.  As The Durham Sun reported:

‘Let us not fear going to jail if the officials threaten to arrest us for standing up for our rights.’  Negroes must be willing ‘to fill up the jails of the South’ to gain their point. . . . Maybe it will take this willingness to stay in jail to arouse the dozing conscience of our nation.’

Martin Luther King, Jr. during his speech at White Rock Baptist Church on 16 February 1960.
Martin Luther King, Jr. during his speech at White Rock Baptist Church on 16 February 1960.