“At precisely the same moment that Southern Appalachia was being irrevocably altered by widespread industrialization and immigration, social reformers and travel writers insisted on depicting the region as a remote outpost inhabited only by rawboned and coon-capped Anglo-Saxon Celtic (today’s Scotch-Irish) mountaineers. “Harding Davis published a short story in 1875 in Lippincott’s Magazine that excoriated […]
Archive for May, 2011
‘Faculty of generalizing’ trumps mountain reality
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged appalachian sterotypes, asheville nc, harding davis, jeff biggers, lippincott's magazine, the yares of black mountain, travel writing, united states of appalachia on May 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
What race should a talking cow be?
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged billy graham library, michael mcfee, southern cultures, talking cows on May 30, 2011 | 3 Comments »
“The first stop on the tour [of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte] is Bessie, a big Holstein waiting in her stall … to talk about Reverend Graham as a child. Bessie’s head mooves left and right, her lower jaw mooves up and down to approximate speech. She describes young Billy Frank’s cold hands on […]
Editors hung up on hazardous holiday highways
Posted in History, Just A Bite, Tar Heelia, tagged holiday highway toll, national safety council, wilmington star-news on May 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“The StarNews continued its odd fascination with traffic-fatality predictions with the main headline on Page 1: ‘Memorial Day Weekend Traffic Toll Promises to Reach Appalling Mark.’ ” ‘Safety experts,’ the story said, ‘stuck to their grim prediction that the period threatened to be “one of the most deadly we have ever recorded.” ‘ The article […]
“Something Doing Every Minute. Miss It And You Will Regret It”
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Memorabilia Moment, Tar Heelia on May 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
1916 was an eventful year for the town of Spruce Pine located in Mitchell County in western North Carolina. Not only did “the burgeoning town” witness the construction of its first brick building in Dr. Charles Peterson’s Spruce Pine Pharmacy, but major flooding of the Toe River on the edge of downtown occurred during the […]
Back of the end zone = back of the bus?
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged unc chapel hill segregation on May 27, 2011 | 1 Comment »
“The University of North Carolina’s first Negro students found that they were free to eat and study with whites, but not to cheer. At football games, they were barred from the cheering section, herded into special end-zone seats.” — From Time magazine, Oct. 8, 1951 “The University of North Carolina, overwhelmed with protests, changed its […]
Labor vs. capital showdown never came
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged forbes magazine, jason sokol, north carolina unionization, progressive magazine, there goes my everything on May 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“A 1976 advertisement in Forbes symbolized the state’s priorities. ‘North Carolina has a commitment to provide the most favorable climate to industry that is possible.’ By that year previously agricultural North Carolina had become the eighth most industrialized state…. Only 6.8 percent of its nonagricultural workers belonged to unions…. “A writer for The Progressive believed […]
Roger Maris no fan of N.C. sportswriters
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged durham nc, greensboro nc, harmon killebrew, jim gentile, raleigh nc, roger maris, sportswriters, wilson nc on May 25, 2011 | 11 Comments »
“Roger’s long torturous season [1961, in which he hit a record 61 homers] was over…He had committed to a traveling, postseason home-run-derby exhibition that also featured Harmon Killebrew and Jim Gentile…. He had a miserable experience. Again, the press was at the heart of his problems. Gentile recalls: ” ‘We went to Wilson, Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro […]
Where are you, Daughters of United Sons of N.C.?
Posted in History, Memorabilia Moment, Tar Heelia, tagged black fraternal organizations, daughters of sons of north carolina, sons & daughters of north carolina, sons of north carolina on May 24, 2011 | 4 Comments »
This eBay item caught my eye. Handsome badge, grand name — but Google returns no mention of the Daughters of the United Sons of North Carolina (and only a 1932 tax reference to the United Sons themselves). I’m skeptical of the seller’s “Civil War Confederacy” designation. Complicating the question is a ribbon in the collection […]
When Shelby Foote met Ambrose Burnside
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged ambrose burnside, battle of fredericksburg, shelby foote, the civil war: a narrative, unc chapel hill alumni, walker percy on May 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Work goes slow and well, particularly on little-known events, like Roanoke Island, whose neglect I cannot understand…. Loss of that island lost the Confederacy the whole NC coast, both Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds and Norfolk to the north. “Also it began the career of Ambrose Burnside — so perhaps it was a Southern gain after […]
Cumming Collection Maps Now Available on North Carolina Maps Digital Project
Posted in Tar Heelia on May 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Big map news! Forty-one maps from the renowned William Patterson Cumming Collection at Davidson College are now available online through the North Carolina Maps digital project. Cumming, a longtime faculty member at Davidson College, was an authority on the early mapping of the southeastern United States. His book, The Southeast in Early Maps (UNC Press, […]
