Lew Powell

‘Weep No More’ yourself, Mr. Debnam

Just how abusive was Eleanor Roosevelt in her comments on the South? In “Weep No More, My Lady” (Miscellany Sept. 17) W.E. Debnam rendered her as Carry Nation gone radically chic. But the archives of her “My Day” column (http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/) reveal a far gentler and more tolerant Mrs. Roosevelt. Three examples from her surprisingly frequent missives from North Carolina:

April 17, 1941: “We visited two housing projects on the outskirts of Charlotte; one for colored people and one for white people in the low income group. They were nice houses and very much appreciated by the tenants. The rents are reasonable and everyone seems very happy.

“The playground for Negroes had very little equipment, but I hope that this is only temporary and that it is going to be possible to give the colored children a similar opportunity for recreation.”

Nov. 19, 1941: “I went to the NYA [National Youth Administration] resident center in Greenville and was tremendously proud of what these North Carolina boys had achieved, for they built all of their own buildings! They have some excellent shops in wood-working, sheet metal work, radio, photography, etc.

“Much of their work is, of course, done for the Army, because NYA  training is with a view of making these young men valuable in defense industries as quickly as possible.

“The health program is stressed in North Carolina…. Every boy is given a complete physical examination, and I was appalled to hear that somewhere around 70 percent were found to be undernourished.”

Aug. 15, 1942: “Cannon Mills has evidently been enlightened in dealing with its [16,000] employees. I was told it encouraged ownership of house and land by employees. If work is slack, the building and loan fund does not collect any payments during the layoff period.

“[Charles] Cannon told me most of the work is done on a piecework basis, and outside of a few people in the day laborer class the average earning power of a woman is $22 a week… so I was surprised to find the mill was not unionized.”

How ‘Soupman’ became Soupy Sales

soupy

Death noted: TV comedy pioneer Soupy Sales, born Milton Supman in Franklinton, where his parents Irving and Sadie ran a dry-goods store. According to today’s obituary in the New York Times, “His last name was pronounced ‘Soupman’ by neighbors, so he called himself Soupy as a youngster.” He was 83.

After joining the Navy, earning a journalism degree from Marshall College and working as a disc jockey, he found fame catching pies in the face and dodging paw swats from White Fang, “the biggest and meanest dog in the United States.” “The Soupy Sales Show,” first aired as “Soup’s On” on a Detroit station, made its network debut on ABC in 1955.

Score one for the ‘demon-worshippers’

“If you read ‘Paradise Lost,’ they think you’re a demon-worshipper.”

— Bill Flowers, owner of the Milestone Club in Charlotte, describing (in 1982) his neighbors’ reaction to the New Wave scene

This week the Milestone, still gritty but and now venerated, celebrates its 40th anniversary. Saturday: Raleigh’s Birds of Avalon. Among past acts: R.E.M., Nirvana, Melissa Etheridge, the Violent Femmes, the Go-Gos and Bo Diddley.

First woman to puff her way across the Atlantic

On this day in 1928: Exemplifying the cigarette industry’s effort to win over women, a full-page ad in Progressive Farmer magazine offers this testimonial from Amelia Earhart:

“Lucky Strikes were the cigarettes carried on the Friendship when she crossed the Atlantic. They were smoked continuously from Trepassey
[Newfoundland] to Wales. I think nothing else helped so much to lessen the strain for all of us.”

Four months earlier Earhart had become celebrated as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, as a passenger in a Fokker tri-motor piloted by two men.

Did Marion Butler father ‘The Boys on the Bus’?

Until William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 campaign against William McKinley, presidential candidates seldom left home in search of votes. Stumping was left to surrogates. Although Bryan lost (and then lost and lost again), his willingness to hit the trail changed American politics forever.

This passage from American Heritage magazine (April/May 1980) suggests that Marion Butler, the North Carolina Populist leader, helped to establish another campaign precedent:

“Butler, who accompanied Bryan during part of his Southern tour, was appalled at his absorption in such trivia as checking train schedules, buying tickets and arranging for baggage and mail. Bryan rose in the middle of the night to make train changes and connections, toting his own heavy grips. At Butler’s recommendation, the national committee provided Bryan with a special car, known inappropriately as ‘The Idler,’  in which the press and local committees could travel comfortably along with the candidate.”

Confederate generals found postwar work in D.C.

572 Stedman

“From the end of Reconstruction until 1890, Confederate veterans held a majority of the best offices in the Southern states…. Confederate generals held 18 of the seats in the 45th Congress, 1877-1879, with 49 other seats from the South held by lower-ranking soldiers and sailors….

“The last Confederate veteran to serve in Congress was Major Charles M. Stedman of North Carolina, who died in 1930 [at age 89].”

— From “The Last Review”  by Virginius Dabney (1984)

Charles Manly Stedman was elected to the House of Representatives 10 times by his Greensboro district. This pinback must be from Stedman’s second  unsuccessful run for governor (1903), rather than his first (1888), since such celluloid political buttons weren’t introduced until the McKinley-Bryan presidential campaign of 1896. And of course he looks more like 62 years old  than 47.

After Charlotte the circle wasn’t unbroken

I hadn’t known the Original Carter Family performed together for the last time during a stint on WBT in Charlotte in 1942-43.

According to Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music (2002) by Mark Zwonitzer, with Charles Hirshberg, “When the Carters moved to Charlotte…there wasn’t a house or apartment to be rented, so A.P., Sara, Ezra, Maybelle and the girls moved into the Roosevelt Hotel.

“Their radio show aired live, as the farmers got up and got going, from 5:15 to 6:15. Monday through Saturday, the Carters wakened before dawn, fixed biscuits and gravy in the little kitchenette and made their way to the station. After the morning show Helen and June would take the Piedmont & Northern railroad out to Paw Creek High School.”

In her 1979 autobiography June Carter Cash recalled that she had gone on her first date in Charlotte: “That young man just marched right into the Roosevelt Hotel, straight up to my daddy, and asked him.”

When their contract at WBT expired in March 1943, the Original Carter Family disbanded forever. June wrote that she left Charlotte  “kicking and screaming and clinging to friends I’d never forget.”

Come home, Dare Stones, all is forgiven

Sorting through some of the late Noel Yancey’s terrific “As I Recall It” columns in the Spectator weekly, I happened onto this passage in a recap of the Dare Stones episode (Miscellany, Aug. 19):

“In 1973, Brenau [College] sought to give the stones to the state of North Carolina. Dr. H. G. Jones, then director of Archives and History [was asked] ‘if your department would be interested in having them, or if there is a museum in conjunction with the Lost Colony which would find these stones of interest’…

“Jones wrote the superintendent of the Fort Raleigh Historic Site suggesting that the stones would make  an interesting exhibit and that both he and William S. Powell felt  that ‘even though the stones appear to be apocryphal, they might well be preserved to illustrate the nuances of history.’  However, the Brenau offer fell though…”

Might it be time to reconsider repatriating the Dare Stones? The very dubiousness of their origin continues to intrigue. As Yancey quoted Paul Green: “If it is a fraud, it is a magnificent fraud. Whoever did it, they should build a monument to him.”

The 1918 flu, as witnessed by Thomas Wolfe

“Perhaps none but a gifted novelist can tell what death from the 1918 flu looked like, how the stricken person appeared in those last hours of life when the horrors of the illness are fully unfurled. One of the few who attempted this was Thomas Wolfe. [While] a student at the University of North Carolina he got a telegram summoning him home immediately. His brother, Benjamin Harrison Wolfe, was ill with the flu. He tells the thinly fictionalized story in Chapter 13 of ‘Look Homeward, Angel.’

“Wolfe came home to a deathwatch. He went upstairs to the ‘gray, shaded light’ of the room where Ben lay. And he saw, ‘in that moment of searing recognition,’ that his beloved 26-year-old brother was dying…

“Nothing could be done for Ben. No one knew how to treat the flu. There was no medicine to quell the raging fevers, no way to get oxygen into sodden lungs.”

— Condensed from “Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It” by Gina Kolata (2001).

(Is there an award given for the pairing of shortest title and longest subtitle?)

A star is born in Winston-Salem

On this day in 1913, Old Joe, a dromedary in the Barnum & Bailey circus passing through Winston-Salem, posed for the Camel cigarette package.

Because the camel image on the existing pack didn’t suit R.J. Reynolds, Roy Haberkern, his secretary, went to the circus in search of a replacement. Haberkern found the trainer unwilling to allow photographs—until he threatened to end the company’s tradition of closing its factories when the circus came to town. Even then, Old Joe balked until the trainer slapped him on the nose, motivating him into his soon-to-be world-famous stance.

This is a lithographed metal fan pull, about 4 inches in diameter, used to operate the ceiling fans typical in stores before air conditioning.