Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
This is a nice example of why pinback buttons fall under the heading of ephemera. Who (well, besides me) would have held onto this teasing question from officials at Raleigh-Durham International Airport after they added an American Airlines flight to Paris in 1988 — a direct connection then lacking at Charlotte/Douglas International.
American dropped the Paris flight in 1994 and shut its RDU hub a year later.
“Grey-haired John Sprunt Hill rose from his desk in the Senate chamber at Raleigh, hunched his venerable shoulders and sang out loud & clear: ‘Chickadee, chickadee, chickadee-dee-dee.’
“No sudden madness had gripped the distinguished Senator…. North Carolina was one of only five States without an official bird. Winner of a Statewide newspaper poll had been the Carolina chickadee, and the State Federation of Women’s Clubs asked the Legislature to elect the chickadee.
“Senator George McNeill of Fayetteville trooped over to the State museum, brought back a stuffed chickadee to enlighten his urban colleagues. Someone told Salisbury’s veteran Representative Walter Pete Murphy that the chickadee eats insects. ‘For God’s sake,’ cried he, ‘don’t turn the chickadee loose on this House.’
“When legislative wit had run its course both houses conferred official status upon the chickadee. Then it was the State’s turn to have fun. The chickadee is a member of the titmouse family. Editors remembered ‘Little Tommy Tittlemouse’ who ‘lived in a little house,’ began to refer to the ‘Tomtit Legislature.’ Clubs and societies stirred uneasily at the prospect of North Carolina’s becoming known as the ‘tomtit State.’
“The legislators withstood the waggish barrage for ten days. Then another bill was quietly introduced. With no voice raised in opposition, North Carolina’s Senate & House last week repealed the chickadee.”
— Time magazine, May 29, 1933
Hill was more successful, of course, in his munificent advocacy of the North Carolina Collection.
“As chief justice, [John] Marshall was assigned by the Judiciary Act of 1802 to [hold court on] the North Carolina circuit, which convened in Raleigh…. The state government had moved to Raleigh from coastal New Bern, and the new capital had all the trappings of a piedmont frontier town as it struggled to accommodate the various legislators and state officials who descended upon it. Jonathan Mason, a former United States senator from Massachusetts, described the town as ‘a miserable place, nothing but a few wooden buildings and a brick Court House.’
“In 1803 Raleigh’s population numbered fewer than 1,000. Marshall found lodging in the boardinghouse of Henry H. Cooke — a rickety frame building about a quarter of a mile from the courthouse. The rooms were spartan, and Marshall had to gather his own wood and make his own fires. But for the next 32 years he stayed with Cooke whenever he held court in Raleigh.”
— From “John Marshall: Definer of a Nation” (1996) by Jean Edward Smith. Strange as it seems today, not until 1911 did Congress permanently free Supreme Court justices from circuit-riding duty.
This is a letter (with enclosure) that seems to reveal a plot against Rev. William Thomas Walker (1844-1895), a Disciples of Christ minister in Caswell County who ran for governor on the Prohibitionist Party ticket. Was Walker blackmailed? For what purpose? Did the doctor agree to attest to Walker’s opiate-induced stupor?
Can’t swear to the accuracy of my transcription, but I think I captured the gist. The letter is now in the collection, if anybody wants a first-hand examination.
Greensboro N.C. June 16 — 88
Dear —,
The importance of securing the signature of Dr. W.A. Drury [?] to a testimonial, a copy of which I herewith inclose, or something similar thereto, cannot be overestimated. For you can then write the communication and back it up with Dr. Drury’s affadavit. Of course it is not necessary for the affadavit to be published, and you can so state to Dr. Drury, but you may want it held in reserve to substantiate the charge after it appears, but I have no idea really that any of his friends will attempt a denial of the charge.
You re-write the affadavit or testimonial I send herewith before presenting it to Dr. Drury so that he will not detect my hand. Write me at once.
Frank [?] Whitehead
Brown’s Summit,N.C.June — 1888
I hereby certify that I was called to see one Mr. W. T. Walker, the present candidate for Governor on the Third party ticket about [blank] years ago on a professional call to administer physic to a man who had taken laudanum for whiskey. Upon my arrival Mr. Walker stated without soliticitation on my part, that he had mistaken a bottle of laudanum for a bottle of whiskey that was in his valise and requested me to do something for him and do it quick. I administered physic to the afflicted man and had two men to walk him all night to keep him from going to sleep, one on each side. By this means his life was prolonged….
Mr. Walker stated that he regretted the circumstances on account of his family as much as anything else, remarking that they would certainly find it out. I prefer not to go any further into the details of the matter.
Respectfully,
[unsigned]
On this day in 1977: Despite last-minute long-distance lobbying by President Jimmy Carter, the North Carolina Senate defeats the Equal Rights Amendment by a 26-24 vote.
It is the second time the ERA has failed in the Senate by that vote, each time falling victim to a switch by a Charlotte senator ostensibly committed to voting yes.
The ERA will die in 1979, the deadline set by the U.S. Senate for winning ratification by the required three-quarters of the states.
Pictured: From the collection a pinback button worn by ERA advocates.
On this day in 1865: Prisoner of war A.O. Abbott, first lieutenant in the 1st N.Y. Dragoons, records the POW train’s stop in Goldsboro, en route to Wilmington:
“There was also a camp of enlisted men about a mile from us, and they were suffering all it was possible for them to suffer and live. Many of them did not live. Some of the ‘ladies,’ God bless them, loyal women of North Carolina, heard of the sufferings of these poor men, and, regardless of the ‘order’ of the commandant of the post, visited them, ministering to their wants as best they could.
“Some of them came eight miles on foot, through the mud and wet. And one old lady and her two daughters came in an ox cart, twenty miles, to do what they could.”
“To combat agricultural depression and the hand-to-mouth cash crop system, North Carolina has been conducting what its able Governor Oliver Max Gardner calls a ‘Live-at-Home’ campaign. The economic theory is that the home-living husbandman raises his own food and feed, patronizes local production plants, reduces his dependence upon extrastate sources of supply. [Included in the campaign] was an essay contest among 800,000 North Carolina school children. Last week Governor Gardner awarded prizes in the House of Representatives.
“Before him, crowded cheek to jowl, sat whites and blacks, men and women, boys and girls, for the ‘Live-at-Home’ movement included Negroes. Newsmen remarked with astonishment upon the sudden evaporation of race prejudice. Negroes spoke from the same rostrum as Governor Gardner about the ‘recovery of their race’s self-respect.’
“To Leroy Sossamon, blond and blue-eyed, of Bethel High School and to Ophelia Holley, chocolate brown, Governor Gardner awarded two silver loving cups for their essays. Then, with them, he walked out before the statue of Governor Charles Brantley Aycock to be photographed. His political friends, suddenly apprehensive, reminded him that no southern Governor had ever had his picture taken publicly with a Negro, warned him that such a photograph would be used against him in future campaigns. Undaunted, Governor Gardner ranged the black girl on his right and the white boy on his left, ordered the photographer to proceed. Said he: ‘If I ever get into politics again, I’ll use this picture for myself.’ ”
— From Time magazine, July 7, 1930
“It was disgusting, but you learned to expect to lose a certain amount of pottery. I don’t know why people thought there’s nothing could be done about it. If you grow up thinking that is the way it is, then you accept it. It’s a funny thing that people have made pottery around here for years and years, and they still didn’t have any idea about any technical thing about it. They just dug clay and turned pots. …
“Till the late 1960s I didn’t really care that much….You could lose some and still get enough money to eat, so — let it break. I just made pottery cause Daddy made pottery, you know, and I didn’t put any value whatsover on it. ”
— Vernon Owens, quoted in “Raised in Clay: The Southern Pottery Tradition” by Nancy Sweezy (1984)
Sweezy, who in 1968 took on the revival of the moribund Jugtown pottery tradition, died Feb. 6 in Cambridge, Mass. She was 88.
My expertise is limited to the chicken pie dish in our kitchen cabinet, but I’ve always been fascinated by Jugtown’s confluence of tradition and innovation, craft and commerce. One of many changes under Sweezy’s stewardship: clay mixtures less prone to breakage.
“Nature destined woman to be the home maker, the child rearer, while man is the money maker.
“I am unwilling, as a Southern man, to force upon her any burden which will distract this loving potentate from her sacred, God-imposed duties. I am unwilling to force her into the vortex of politics, where her sensitiveness and her modesty will often be offended.”
— Congressman E. Y. Webb of Shelby, speaking against the proposed women’s suffrage amendment (1915)
“In 1942 the North Carolina crowd at Reynolds Tobacco invaded American Tobacco’s headquarters town and put up a huge sign for Camel in Times Square. Overnight it became the nation’s most famous billboard.
“Two stories high and running half a block… the sign had just three elements: the brand name, its old slogan ‘I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel’ and the head and shoulders of an American serviceman — a soldier one season, a sailor the next, an airman the one after that — who had for a mouth a perfectly round hole about a yard wide. Behind the hole was a chamber with a synthetic rubber backing that a cam would pull taut as the chamber filled with piped-in steam; a second gear would then cause the elastic membrane to relax with a whooshing sound and propel out the hole several times a minute a perfect simulated smoke ring that would grow to about 15 feet in width as it wafted over the heart of the nation’s premier entertainment district. Countless millions gawked at the Camel ‘smoking’ sign during the 25 years it remained in place, serving as the prototype for some two dozen smaller versions around the country.”
— From “Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris” (1996) by Richard Kluger
Although a 1999 New York Times obituary of Douglas Leigh, who designed the Camel billboard (and many other Times Square “spectaculars”), refers to its having been “duplicated in 22 other cities,” San Francisco is the only one I’ve been able to confirm. Might North Carolina have had one or more?