John Blythe – Page 6 – NC Miscellany

The story behind the children’s book Tobe

Benjamin Filene’s curiosity about a children’s book in the North Carolina Collection led him in search of the story behind its creation and the individuals portrayed in it. And this weekend Filene, an historian at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, will share his discoveries during a presentation at the Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough.

The 121-page book,Tobe, was written by Stella Gentry Sharpe and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1939. According to Filene, Sharpe, a longtime teacher in the Hillsborough schools who lived with her husband on a farm just north of Chapel Hill, wrote the book in response to a question from an African-American boy who lived near her. The boy, Clay McCauley Jr., wanted to know why there were no children’s books with boys that looked like him. Sharpe set out to prove McCauley wrong.

In crafting her story of a young African-American farm boy and his family, Sharpe consulted noted UNC sociologist Guy Johnson and Marion Rex Trabue, a former head of the School of Education at UNC. While the name of her main character, Tobe, was made up, other names in the book are those of McCauley’s siblings–Raeford, Rufus and twin boys Alvis and Alton.

The photographs that accompanied Sharpe’s stories were taken by Charles Farrell, the first professional photographer for the Greensboro Daily News. When Farrell was ready to shoot photographs for Sharpe’s book, the McCauley children had grown too old to serve as subjects. Instead, Farrell turned to children and adults in Goshen, an African-American township south of Greensboro. Tobe was portrayed by Charles Garner, who was known to family and friend as “Windy.” Garner, now 81 and living in Georgia, was seven-years-old when he posed for Farrell. Garner’s siblings, parents and cousin’s family were enlisted to portray other characters in Tobe.

Now Filene is trying to find out more about the McCauley family. He has spoken with Charles McCauley Jr’s niece, who was a child when the book was published. But Filene is hoping others can add to the story of Tobe. Meanwhile, the book lives on. In 1993, it was republished by a small press specializing in multi-cultural literature.

An online literary map of North Carolina

Congratulations to our library colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who are re-launching their website the North Carolina Literary Map today. The site includes 2,583 North Carolina authors and 4,808 titles set in real or fictional locations in North Carolina. The site’s creators note that their selection process was broad and inclusive. They write:

The criteria focuses on works written about North Carolina and authors who were born in North Carolina, who currently live or have lived in North Carolina, who have written about North Carolina, or who have made a significant contribution to the North Carolina’s literary landscape. The author must have at least one publication cataloged by the Library of Congress.

Wonder how many works are about or have been set in Northampton County? The answer is now at hand.

You can be a part of today’s launch festivities by joining the site’s creators for a webinar at 3:30.

The UNC-Duke game that was all charity and no football

Here’s a story you’re not likely to hear as the announcers rattle on during Saturday’s UNC-Duke football game. Among the schools’ past 98 meetings on the gridiron, there have been only two games that ended with both teams scoreless – in 1930 and in 1931.

Fans’ (or at least two reporters’) displeasure with the 0-0 finish to the 1930 game resulted in the playing of a second game. But no players turned out. The game was a radio drama of sorts–a 30-minute broadcast aired on WPTF 2 1/2 weeks after the real game was played. The play-by-play was provided by H.K. Carpenter, the radio station’s manager.

The first UNC-Duke meeting in 1930 happened at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill on December 6. Rain had fallen the previous evening and about an hour before kickoff a downpour erupted. In a column in the News and Observer the following day, Carl Goerch, later the publisher of The State magazine, described the day:

Eighteen thousand or more darned fools from all over North Carolina drove varied distances to Chapel Hill todqy in order that they might get their feet and other parts of their anatomy wet while watching a couple of score young men wallow around in the mud in what purported to be a football game. Despite the fact that Duke players presented a much muddier appearance than did Carolina, the score was 0-0. Whereupon the same eighteen thousand or more darned fools went back to their respective home to to tell their respective relatives and friends what a glorious time they had.

Anthony J. McKevlin, sports editor for the News and Observer, wrote that players “turned into mobile mud-casts of humans as they sloshed, slushed, slid, skidded, dove, swam, and whatnot through a layout which made this usually beautiful plant look like Kenan Memorial Swimming Pool.” Duke came the closest to scoring, at one point moving the ball to Carolina’s 2-yard line. But even without crossing the goal line, Duke, in a sense, ended the game victorious. The Blue Devil’s claimed the title of Big Five champions, having won two games and tied two others in matchups with in-state rivals (UNC, Davidson, Wake Forest and N.C. State). UNC and Wake Forest tied for second in the Big Five, with records of 2 wins and 1 loss.

The tie score fueled calls the following day for a rematch between the two teams, with proceeds from ticket sales directed to aid the state’s growing population of unemployed. Proponents of the idea suggested the second game take place the following Saturday or on New Year’s Day. Athletic officials from both schools met and rejected a second game, pointing out that Southern Conference rules prohibited post-season games. Additionally, “the University of North Carolina faculty is committed by a faculty resolution against post-season games and that the sentiment here is that for academic reasons there should be no game after Thanksgiving,” according to an account in the December 9 News and Observer. Exams were slated to begin at UNC on December 18 and “the players and students generally are all set for intensive concentration on their work during the closing days of the fall quarter.” The paper added that President Frank Porter Graham “took full responsibility” for the school’s decision and that the President’s office reported “but few telegrams and telephone calls endorsing the proposed game.”

With university officials’ refusal to hold a second Duke-UNC game, McKevlin and Goerch used the pages of the News and Observer to promote a fantasy matchup–the “Duke-Carolina Charity Football Game–ALL CHARITY and No Football.” Fans were encouraged to send $2 to the News and Observer to attend the December 23rd game, which was scheduled for broadcast on Raleigh’s WPTF Radio. In exchange for their $2 contribution, fans were sent a souvenir ticket (see the image above). Proceeds from ticket sales were turned over to Annie Kizer Bost, the head of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Bost, in turn, directed the money to the Salvation Army or another charitable organization in the home county of the ticket buyer.

Goerch and McKevlin wrote playful pieces promoting the fantasy game, describing team workouts and listing ticket buyers. On the first day of ticket sales, buyers included Josephus Daniels, Frank Daniels and Governor O. Max Gardner. Goerch, a resident of Washington, N.C., sought to stir up interest in the eastern part of the state. “I was over in Greenville yesterday and thought maybe I’d hear some talk about the sale of tickets over there,” he wrote. “But it seems that the folks in Pitt County had other things to think about. Two of their banks busted right square in their faces. That seems to eliminate Greenville as a competitor of Washington in the sale of tickets.”

On game day Goerch continued to gin up ticket sales, issuing a call for North Carolina Baptists, of which he counted himself a member, to send in their $2. Episcopal, Presbyterian and Methodist ministers had contributed to the appeal, he wrote. “I’m still hoping that at least one Baptist will come to the front before the sale of tickets is called off. Any kind of Baptist will do, Missionary, Primitive or Free Will.”

At 6:15 pm on December 23, H.K. Carpenter took to the airwaves, reading a script prepared by McKevlin and Stanley Wohl, a Greensboro resident, football fanatic and one-time member of the North Carolina Securities Commission.

“They’re rushing the start,” Carpenter said. “Captain Nash of Carolina won the toss and chose to receive. Captain Davis of Duke selects the west goal for defending. The Tar Heels are out in orange jerseys, and Duke has the usual white garb. They’re lining up. Kid Brewer with kick off for Duke. There goes the kick-off–it’s deliberately short and travels only to Carolina’s 45…”

And so it went for the next 1/2 hour. At game’s end the score was again tied. This time both teams had made it on the board. The 33-33 finish seemed to leave most everyone happy. Although a final tally of ticket sales does not appear in the News and Observer, on game day McKevlin and Goerch’s efforts had yielded $646 for charity.

An earlier Romney visit to the Carolinas

As Asheville readies for a visit by Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, it seems fitting to recall another Romney’s visit to the Carolinas some 35 years ago. George Romney, Mitt’s father, was governor of Michigan when he toured South Carolina’s Williamsburg County on September 27, 1967. The senior Romney was several months shy of announcing his run for the Oval Office. In fact, according to an account of his visit in The Charlotte Observer, he denied a published report that he planned to seek the Republican nomination, telling reporters “I haven’t decided yet.” Observer reporter Jack Bass reported that Romney was seeking to understand why blacks were migrating north. “Everywhere the reply was–lack of jobs,” Bass wrote.

In Williamsburg County, at the time South Carolina’s poorest county, Romney visited with 84-year-old “sharecropper” Joe Chandler (pictured above) and his relatives. Five of Chandler’s seven children had followed a familiar route for blacks of Williamsburg County and had moved north to Rochester, N.Y.

Romney’s visit was captured on film by Don Sturkey, a 36-year-old photographer for the Observer. Sturkey shot eight rolls of film that day as he followed Romney on his tours of Florence-Darlington Technical Education Center, a renovated downtown shopping mall, Williamsburg Memorial Hospital and Baxter Laboratory, the county’s major employer. The images below are the cropped photo as it appeared in the Observer and the uncropped original.

Don Sturkey photograph of George Romney visit with Chandler family — Copyright Don Sturkey, 1967

Don Sturkey photo of George Romney visit with Chandler family - uncropped — Copyright Don Sturkey, 1967

The tie between plankton and Obama’s 2008 victory

Look at this map, and notice that deep, deep in the Republican South, there’s a thin blue band stretching from the Carolinas through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. These are the counties that went for Obama in the last election….Why? Well, the best answer, says marine biologist Craig McClain, may be an old one, going back before the Civil War, before 1776, before Columbus, back more than 100 million years to the days when the Deep South was under water. Those counties, as he writes here, went for Obama because trillions and trillions and trillions of teeny sun-loving creatures died there. He’s talking about plankton. That’s why the Republicans can’t carry those counties. Blame plankton.

— Robert Krulwich, “Obama’s Secret Weapon In The South: Small, Dead, But Still Kickin,'” Krulwich Wonders: An NPR Sciencey Blog, October 10, 2012.

W.A. Simpkins and the State Fair

The North Carolina State Fair is set to open for its 145th year tomorrow in Raleigh. The event has changed over the years. Electricity arrived in 1884 and the first Midway ride was erected in 1891. The first food booths opened in 1900. And the first airplane exhibit was held in 1910, almost seven years after the Wright brothers first successful flights on the Outer Banks.

One constant in the early 1900s was an exhibit by William Alonzo Simpkins. The Wake County native boasted of his Simpkins Prolific Cotton Seed, which was reported to double yields and have strong resistance to the boll weevil.

Born in 1868, Simpkins worked as a manager on the cotton and truck farm of V.C. Royster. He remained there for several years, according to Moses N. Amis’s Historical Raleigh, “proving himself to be most industrious, highly capable, and a man thoroughly familiar with his business in all its details.”

Simpkins eventually began farming on his own, working land about two miles southwest of Raleigh. As Amis wrote in 1913, Simpkins’ farms were “models, in all respects, of agricultural skill, and exemplify in an eminent degree the high perfection to which agriculture may be brought when under the care and supervision of a master mind and hand.”

In 1907 Simpkins was awarded a gold medal at the Jamestown Exposition for his truck crop. According to an obituary in the January 26, 1941 edition of the Raleigh News and Observer, the medal proved one of Simpkins’ most prized possessions.

Amis records that one of the keys to the success of Simpkins Prolific Cotton Seed was the plant’s maturation before the emergence of boll weevils each year. “The Prolific is exclusively planted by the North Carolina A. & M. College [later known as North Carolina State University] on its cotton farm, and for the past seven years has taken first premium on best stalks, best seed, best lint and best acre,” he wrote.

A contest Simpkins held annually at the State Fair may help explain the caption in the postcard above. He offered $15-$35 prizes to Wake County boys who produced the best cotton and the single stalk with the greatest number of bolls. Could S.J. Betts, mentioned in the caption above, be a boy who didn’t win the prize? If so, Simpkins clearly placed self-promotion above a gentle encouragement of the young. Perhaps, instead, Betts was actually Batts (see other exhibitor in top postcard). In that case, Simpkins was engaging in the ages-old practice of business–deride your competition. Of course, both explanations may be wrong. What do you think?

In addition to farming and seed sales, Simpkins devoted himself to his church. He served as a minister to a host of Primitive Baptist churches in North Carolina and Virginia for more than 25 years. Simpkins died on January 24, 1941, eight months after suffering his fourth stroke. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

Tift Merritt: Her Undergraduate Writing Days

One-time Raleigh resident Tift Merritt is back in the Triangle today for a live performance at Carrboro’s Town Commons. And on October 2nd, she’ll release her fifth studio album. Merritt has already received some press attention in advance of the album’s release. And, in at least one interview, she’s talked about her love of writing.

Merritt earned an undergraduate degree in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000. During her student days she published several works of prose and poetry in the Cellar Door, the UNC undergraduate literary magazine. In 1997 her short story “The Delicate Sound of the City” won first place in the Cellar Door‘s annual writing contest and was featured in the Winter 1997 issue of the magazine. Merritt also published the short story “Volvo” in the magazine’s Fall 1996 issue. Merritt’s poem “The Mourning” won 2nd place in the writing contest in 1998 and was included, along with two of her other poems, in the Spring 1998 issue.

Merritt, now 37, was in her early 20s when she published in the Cellar Door. She may regard these works as freshman efforts. But we think they show signs of a writer with great promise.

Dirty Dancing at Lake Lure This Weekend

There will be lots of recalling Baby and Johnny this weekend as the town of Lake Lure holds its 3rd annual “Dirty Dancing Festival.” Parts of the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, featuring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey as star-crossed lovers Johnny and Baby, were filmed in and around Lake Lure. Scenes of Johnny, Baby and the hotel staff thrusting their hips and locking their bodies provocatively were shot in the old gymnasium of the Chimney Rock Camp for Boys and Girls (girls were not yet campers at the time the postcard above was printed). Sadly, the gym burned down several years after the film was shot. Although the inn featured in the film is in Virginia, the Lake Lure Inn (see postcard below) served as lodging for Swayze, Grey and other cast and crew members.

Although some, including this writer, may find Dirty Dancing‘s love story overwrought, the dance scenes have ensured the film’s place on classic movie channel schedules and popular movie rental lists. The film’s popularity has also guaranteed a steady stream of visitors to Lake Lure, as fans search for the spots where their favorite tear-jerking scene occurred. As for whether you’ll have the time of your life this weekend at Lake Lure, that likely depends on who you’ve got on your dance card.

EXTRA CREDIT: Can you name another North Carolina connection for actress Jennifer Grey?

Coming Soon: More 19th and Early 20th Century NC Newspapers Online

Big news from Washington, D.C. And it doesn’t involve tax cuts, jobless numbers or the Presidential campaign. We recently received word from the National Endowment for the Humanities that we’ll receive $303,192 over the next two years to make available online North Carolina newspapers dating from 1836-1922. We’ll be joining the National Digital Newspaper Program, which is a partnership between NEH and the Library of Congress to provide access to historically significant newspaper titles from states around the nation. The newspapers are available through a Library of Congress website, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.

Although Wilson Library in Chapel Hill will serve as the project’s base, this is a joint effort with the Office of Archives and History in Raleigh. We’ll be digitizing from copies of microfilm master negatives created by Archives and History over the past 50 years. In 1959 the Office of Archives and History (at the time actually known as a Division rather than an Office) had the great foresight to begin microfilming hundreds of North Carolina newspaper titles. In some cases, those microfilms are the only remaining evidence of 18th and 19th century newspapers. We will also benefit from the cataloging and additional microfilming performed by the State Archives and State Library in the 1990s as part of the United States Newspaper Project.

The newspapers we make available online through Chronicling America will augment those already available online through the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, a Wilson Library-based initiative to digitize and publish online historic materials from cultural heritage institutions around the state, as well as the early colonial and 19th century newspapers available through the online digital collection of the State Archives. Rest assured that we’ll be planning ways for you to view all North Carolina newspapers at one online location. Please give us some time to work out the details.

Mind you, the NEH grant will allow us to make available online only a small portion of the more than 1,185 N.C. newspaper titles that the State Archives has microfilmed in its collections. Our advisory board will make some tough choices when it meets this fall to select the titles we plan to include. We’re hoping that this grant is merely the beginning of a sustained effort to publish historic NC newspapers online. Please note, that’s our hope. But we can’t promise such.

We’ll be kicking the project into full gear in the next month or so. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and let you know when North Carolina newspapers titles are available on Chronicling America.

Politicians: Flip-Flopping is Out. Twisting and Turn is In.

The Raleigh Register‘s description of campaigning à la 1850s could spur today’s campaign strategists to return to some methods of old.

At the polls, there was a slight lack of that calm Roman dignity ascribed to us by our Fourth-of-July orators—inasmuch as the voters skipped about with the vivacity of Frenchmen, and exercised their tongues with the unanimity of old women. If some staid sober citizen was observed making his way to any spot where votes were to be taken and brandy given, he was immediately surrounded by a number of the more particularly devoted lovers of country, who were employing their talents, energies, and lungs, in the work of conversion, and mobbed, and twisted, and turned by them in a very hackney-coachman like style, in order to gain his attention to their various claims, until the four points of compass became with the said citizen a matter of doubt and uncertainty. First, one politician would plant him his face towards the ‘sweet south’—then, a second, by a dextrous manoeuvre (sic), would bring him directly north—then a third worthy, by the assistance of his coat-collar, would twirl him towards the orient east, thrusting in his face ‘the true ticket, free,’ as the orator observed, ‘of all bribery and corruption’—while a forth personage, rather dirty and very tipsy, once more reversed his position towards the west, and solicited his attention to another true ticket, ‘supported,’ as he averred, ‘by all the lovers of order and decency.’ True the coats, vests and other garments of various citizens did somewhat suffer —but what of that? Who is not above such paltry considerations in the discharge of his duty? Besides, some men did this from principle, as all the damage they inflicted upon the woolen cloth of the outward man, afforded a direct and practical proof of their zeal for the encouragement of domestic manufactures.

—Raleigh Register, August 7, 1850

We’ll talk flip-flopping, twisting and turning and any number of other campaign methods at our conference “To Gain Attention to Their Various Claims”: Historic Political Campaigns in North Carolina (If you read closely, then the origins of the conference title should no longer be a mystery). We hope you’ll join us in Chapel Hill on September 14-15, 2012. Details are at bit.ly/nccampaigns.