Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
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As early as 1913, North Carolina municipalities were empowered to collect local taxes by issuing license plates. The most recent I’ve seen: Blowing Rock 2010.
Most only named the town, but some took the opportunity to self-promote. Take that, Wilson and Tarboro and Rocky Mount!
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.
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!
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.
“Largest payroll per capita” may be a meaningful metric to economists, but it seldom appears in Google — and nowhere attached to Conover. Among those bragging: Coos Bay, Oregon, and Frankfort, Michigan.
This promotional license plate likely dates to World War II, when metal shortages inspired Montana, Virginia and other states to make their official plates from a soybean-based fiberboard that proved more popular with goats, horses and mice than with motorists.
Conover has a diverse manufacturing history — including the delightfully named Picker Stick and Handle — but its population during the 1940s barely topped 1,000, so the per capita distinction may also grow out of small sample size.
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Moonshine mini-jugs were once found in souvenir shops coast to coast, but nowhere as commonly as in — how did you guess! — North Carolina.
State Capitol? Check. Mount Mitchell State Park? Check. USS North Carolina? Check….
This jug from the Cherokee Reservation seems less comical than poignant, given Native Americans’ long struggle with alcoholism and addiction.
. . . was the first-page headline of The Herald-Sun, Durham’s newspaper, on July 9, 1997. At noon the previous day—twenty years ago today—family and friends buried and memorialized Charles Kuralt on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives is home to The Herald-Sun photographic negatives, so today we honor that anniversary by featuring the two photographs, cropped as they were then, that accompanied the newspaper’s story.
Kuralt’s connections to Carolina were long and deep. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1934, his family moved to Charlotte in 1945. He attended UNC between 1951 and 1955, and he worked on the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, as a reporter and columnist. In April 1954 he won the student election for the position of editor. After his time at UNC he wrote for two years for The Charlotte Observer before joining the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1957 as a news writer for radio. He became a CBS News correspondent two years later at the age of 25. Kuralt spent nearly his entire career at CBS, retiring May 1, 1994 at the age of 59. He was best known for “On the Road,” the long-running series of Americana short stories that he started in 1967 as segments aired during The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Others may recall him as the fifteen-year anchor of CBS Sunday Morning, which first aired in 1979. Throughout his celebrated career and wanderings across the country, Kuralt maintained lasting love for his home state.
Charles Kuralt died on July 4, 1997. To mark that anniversary, sister blog A View to Hugh published an account of his passing and memorial service that features photographs by Kuralt’s friend Hugh Morton and documents from the Charles Kuralt Collection and the William C. Friday Papers in the Southern Historical Collection. Morton and Friday were two of the speakers at the memorial service attended by 1,600 people in UNC’s Memorial Hall. UNC’s social media Spotlight webpage republished a short excerpt of that blog post along with the University News Services’ July 8, 1997 story, “Life and legacy of Charles Kuralt honored during service at UNC-CH’s Memorial Hall.”
If you’re already fed up with the 2016 presidential campaign and aching for a new candidate to shake things up, our December Artifact of the Month is for you!
The artifact is a pinback button reading “Dizzy Gillespie for President.” Dizzy Gillespie, of course, being the jazz trumpeter who earned his place in the pantheon of masters in the 1940s and 50s. Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, less than 15 miles from the North Carolina border. He spent two years in North Carolina studying at the Laurinburg Institute as a young man on a music scholarship, before his rise to fame and long before this button was made.
Now, if you’ve never thought of Gillespie as a politician you may be wondering why this button was made.
The practice of printing joke items reading “___________ for President” has long been a promotional tool for performers and other celebrities. That’s what the “Dizzy Gillespie for President” slogan was initially — just a funny tool for promotion. Gillespie’s booking agency, Associated Booking Corporation, created the buttons as merchandise for fans, probably in the late 1950s.
But several years later, with the fight for civil rights taking on increasing urgency and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom serving as inspiration, Gillespie decided he would, in fact, launch a presidential campaign. He had a political platform, a campaign manager, and a slate of jazz greats shortlisted for his cabinet.
Gillespie pitched his candidacy as a third choice in the 1964 presidential race between Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater. And although he never got on the ballot in any state, his campaign did serve as a valid — if sometimes lighthearted — critique of the issues.
In his memoir, To Be, or not… to Bop, Gillespie writes, “Anybody coulda made a better President than the ones we had in those times, dillydallying about protecting blacks in the exercise of their civil and human rights and carrying on secret wars against people around the world.”
How would a Gillespie presidency have been different? He would have had NASA send at least one black astronaut to space. Transformed the White House into the Blues House. Revoked the citizenship of Alabama Governor George Wallace and deported him to Vietnam. Required the Senate Internal Security Committee to investigate “everything under white sheets” for un-American activities.
Gillespie acknowledged later that the campaign “had its humorous side,” but the media attention he received shed light on critical issues like segregation and employment discrimination. He writes:
There were pressures on me to withdraw from the race after the press began to show some interest, and they found out that I was a serious candidate. Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee, an arch conservative, tried to split and draw away my support from the jazz community by naming Turk Murphy as his favorite musician. I replied, ‘All I can say is don’t blame Turk for that. I’m glad he didn’t pick me.’
The election took place on November 3, 1964. And — spoiler alert — Gillespie didn’t win. But his campaign was a media-savvy way to bring important ideas into the national conversation.
This pinback button is part of a recent donation of objects from donor and longtime friend of the NCC Lew Powell, along with a trove of other buttons, three-dimensional artifacts, and paper ephemera from North Carolina. We look forward to sharing more from the Lew Powell Memorabilia Collection in the new year!
As the days grow humid, who doesn’t yearn for some cool mountain air? Our June Artifact of the Month is an early-20th-century booklet advertising Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, a historic resort hotel that first opened in 1913. Built by Edwin Wiley Grove and his friend and son-in-law Thomas Seely, the Inn “was built in the old-fashioned way — full of rest, comfort, and wholesomeness.”
The inside of booklet, which features black-and-white photographs of the hotel’s lobby and various rooms, describes the luxuries of the hotel. No detail is too minute for this sixteen-page publication. It addresses plumbing: “The toilet seats are celluloid. No pipes are visible anywhere.” Lighting: “No electric bulbs visible. All lighting indirect.” Furnishings: “Not a double bed in the Inn. Double rooms have two three-quarter beds and single rooms have one.” Ice: “All refrigeration is artificial. Ice not used.”
The place is kept pristine and they insist on maintaining a homelike atmosphere. “The cleaning is done with Hoover Vacuum Cleaners,” the booklet declares. In the “Big Room,” or lobby, you will be greeted by the “world’s finest Orchestral Organ,” a description of which appears on the back cover of the booklet.
“One of the curses of the ordinary hotel,” reads one of the pages, “is the lack of consideration for guests who need rest or care to retire before midnight.” But Grove Park guests need not worry: the Inn has the art of comfort perfected as “employees wear rubber heels.”
Maids report for service at 8:00 a.m., but are provided with comfortable chairs in their corridors for reading until quiet hours end at 9:00 a.m. And the ceilings of the Big Room are one foot thick so no noise will penetrate into the rooms of sleeping guests.
Amongst these extravagances, Park Grove prides itself on being “Absolutely Fireproof”:
“It is absolutely fireproof built of the great boulders of Sunset Mountain, at the foot of which it sits.”
With this extreme focus on comfort, it’s no wonder ten U.S. Presidents and countless luminaries from the worlds of art, entertainment, sports, and politics have stayed at this hotel.
In an atmosphere that prides itself on luxury and affording every opportunity for a good time, one rule comes across as surprising:
A little sleuthing reveals that this nifty little booklet was published in 1920 — at the dawn of Prohibition.
You may consider adding Grove Park to your list of NC vacationing spots, as the hotel is still open today – although in 2013, on its hundredth birthday, the classic Ashville Inn was purchased by Omni hotels. If the luxury isn’t enough to lure you, here’s some additional enticement: “The altitude forbids humidity and heat even on the warmest summer days,” tempts the booklet, “There are no mosquitos.”
Fans of the North Carolina State Fair (and those who are emphatically not fans) may associate the fair with bright lights, outrageous fried foods, and giant plush bananas inexplicably dressed like Rastafarians.
It can be difficult to imagine the state fair as an elegant event, but just take a look at this 1878 fair pass, our October Artifact of the Month:
Just for fun, here are two other passes, from regional fairs: one from the 1881 Sampson County State Fair, and one from the Great Albemarle District Fair in 1923.
If you’re going to the state fair this year, we trust you’ll keep it classy.
