Winston-Salem left impression on Lombardi

“The [Packers’] final preseason game [of 1960] was held in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, against the lily-white Washington Redskins. According to Lombardi lore, an event took place there that solidified the coach’s decision to no longer submit his team to the segregation policies of the South. Lombardi, his naturally tawny skin further darkened by a month of practice under the summer sun, entered a local restaurant the night before the game and was refused seating by a hostess who mistook him for a black man.

“There are many apocrypha in the legend of St. Vincent of Green Bay, but this story rings true. Lombardi told it to his family later, and … the black players often joked among themselves that by the end of summer camp their coach was a secret ‘brother.’ ”

— From “When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi” (1999) by David Marannis

Wouldn’t ESPN do well to consider this scene for its recently announced “Lombardi” biopic? Robert De Niro has the title role.

Fatal error: Smallpox mailed to Tarboro

“[In 1813] Congress established a National Vaccine Agency as part of the Act to Encourage Vaccination (promoted by former president Jefferson). The Vaccine Agency was closed, however, and the Act to Encourage Vaccination repealed, in 1822, after [agency director James] Smith mistakenly mailed smallpox virus instead of cowpox to a vaccinator in Tarboro, North Carolina. Dr. Smith’s error caused at least 10 deaths.”

— From “The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History” (2002) by Donald R. Hopkins

The ill-starred bird call of John Sprunt Hill

“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.

In Raleigh, chief justice had to fend for himself

“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.

A black and white photo like none before

omaxgardner

“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

Jump-starting Jugtown broke with tradition

“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.


Where there’s smoke, there’s… steam

“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?

Lena Horne: Too hot for Durham to handle

“In Durham, North Carolina, the Morning Herald ran an ad for the [local premiere of the 1946 movie ‘Ziegfeld Follies’]. It listed [Lena] Horne among the players. Scores of black patrons bought tickets for the first showing — and saw a jagged splice where [her rendition of] ‘Love’ should have been.  Many of them complained angrily and asked for refunds. Within 24 hours, Horne’s name had vanished from ads. The Pittsburgh Courier tried to investigate, but no one would take responsibility.”

— From “Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne” (2009) by James Gavin

Mad Men made mountains ‘Great’

“Community leaders in Knoxville and Asheville got on the bandwagon — some out of a love of the mountains, some on the belief that tourism would bolster the local economy, some on the hope that a national park would result in better roads for the region.

“A New York publicity firm, brought in by the Knoxville Automobile Club, suggested the group call itself the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association. Soon the mountains themselves were referred to as the Great Smokies.”

— From “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” (2009) by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns

‘Ma, I’m goin’ no’th to git me a job….’

“Since nothing travels in the direction of hungry men like news of  work, they started to roll in on foot and in old Model Ts as soon as the contract… to build the world’s biggest smokeless powder plant in Charlestown, Indiana… was announced in the newspaper….

“A man from a small town in North Carolina said, ‘I seen this paper lyin’ there on top of bag o’ potatoes. Well, since the cotton mill shet down, I ain’t seen no kind of decent job. My wife was always takin’ sick, an’  then we had a cyclone come into town. Blowed some families all to pieces, geese, bedstead, fences, ev’thing. We was just skeered near ’bout to death. That was in ’36 or ’37, understan’. So when I seen this thing in the paper, I said, Ma, I’m takin’ th’ automobile ‘n goin’ no’th  to git me a job in that dee-fense factory. Next day I was on my way.’ ”

— From “The American Homefront: 1941-42” by Alistair Cooke (2006). If Cooke’s interview notes ever turn up, surely they belong in the North Carolina Collection.