New in the collection: Blotter from Palms Restaurant

Blotter with words "The Palms Restaurant, Food at its best," and urging customers to "try our 35 cent lunch."

“The Palms restaurant at 305 E. Chapel Hill Street was an institution in Durham from about 1920 until it closed in 1983. An early proprietor of the establishment was Norman O. Reeves, who served ‘sizzling steaks’ and claimed ‘We never close.’

“The Palms was frequented by downtown employees (lawyers had their own table) and was dubbed ‘the bellybutton of Durham.’ ”

— From “Durham, North Carolina: A Postcard History” by Stephen E. Massengill (1997)

This ink blotter is undated, but “Try Our 35c Lunch” seems to narrow the possibilities.

New in the collection: Fertilizer company letterhead

Full sheet of stationery with letterhead for Virginia-Carolina Chemical Corporation

Close up of letterhead of Virginia-Carolina Chemical Corporation. It includes an image of a bag of fertilizer and a flag that reads "Make every crop a Victory crop."

Samuel Tate Morgan (1857-1919)… established the Durham Fertilizer Co. with partners Eugene Morehead and L. A. Carr in 1881. The company capitalized on tobacco stems, [which were] waste to smoking-tobacco manufacturers but a rich source of the nutrient phosphorus. Quickly successful, Durham Fertilizer opened branches in Virginia and South Carolina, and in 1895 Morgan combined all fertilizer manufacturing in North Carolina and Virginia. The Virginia-Carolina Chemical Co. became the largest industrial firm in the South, with headquarters in Richmond.

“Morgan lived out his later years in Richmond, but had an avid interest in his former hometown and its history. He bought the former James and Nancy Bennett farm from Brodie Duke (a Continue reading “New in the collection: Fertilizer company letterhead”

New in the collection: People’s Alliance pinback

Pinback with words "People before Profits" and "People's Alliance NC"

“At a retreat last year, members of the People’s Alliance picked as the organization’s crowning achievement one of its earliest battles, a fight that won concessions for residents of Crest Street when the black neighborhood was threatened with destruction by the extension of the Durham Freeway.

“That was the mid-1970s. Two decades later, Durham’s best-known liberal political organization is faced with new fight: how to overcome a deeply entrenched white-bread reputation, acquired because so few of its 750 members are minorities….”

— From “Vanilla People’s Alliance seeking Neapolitan look” by Paul Brown in the Raleigh News & Observer (Sept. 7, 1994)

Despite its name and its longevity, the People’s Alliance has never made much of a dent outside Durham, but it continues to advocate for a wide range of progressive causes such as affordable housing, living wage and mass transit. 

 

Tobacco ignited growth of Durham, Winston

“Much of the limited urban growth in post-Civil War North Carolina owed to the  increased manufacturing of tobacco, the South’s oldest staple crop. “In the late 19th century the state’s dominance of the expanding tobacco industry resulted from several factors — declining cotton prices that induced farmers in the Piedmont to plant more tobacco, technological developments that initiated the mass production of cigarettes, improved railroads that connected North Carolina with national and international markets, and the bold entrepreneurship of men like James B. Duke and R. J. Reynolds, who formed vast monopolies and drove less ruthless competitors from the field. The success  of Duke and Reynolds brought Durham and Winston, the communities in which they located their enterprises, to the forefront of the state’s emerging urban network.”

— From “Tobacco Towns: Urban Growth and Economic Development in Eastern North Carolina” by Roger Biles in the North Carolina Historical Review (April 2007)

New in the collection: anti-Depression ink blotters

Message on Seeman Printery blotter. It reads "Things we have learned since 1929." And then lists seven things. They are "That trying to keep pace with the Joneses isn't essential to happiness." "That a man may be broke and yet be intelligent and a gentleman. That the largest fortunes can collapse very easily." "That the deflation of our conceit has been considerable." "That no one of us is so terribly important." "That we are all very dependent upon each other for our welfare" "And that these things learned make us more fit for the future and more deserving of the ultimate return of true American standards of living." The list is ascribed to Daniel Rand.

Another part of the blotter. It includes calendar for May 1932 and the message "Stop Talking Deptression: When all the world seems gone to pot and business is on the bum, a two-cent grin and a lifted chin, helps some, my boy, helps some." An additional message reads, "Try a stiff dose of self confidence and see what happens."
The Seeman Printery, whose products included the labels for Bull Durham tobacco, dispatched these promotional blotters into the teeth of the Great Depression.

Despite the Printery’s longevity the best-remembered Seeman may have been Ernest — son of the founder — who left the family business in 1923. He went on to head the Duke Press, to lose his job after doing battle with the administration and to write the Durham/Duke roman a clef American Gold.

 

Joan Didion got an education in Durham

“In Durham [one of the places Joan Didion’s parents lived during World War II] we had one room, with kitchen privileges, in the house of a fundamentalist preacher and his family who sat on the porch after dinner and ate peach ice cream, each from his or her own quart carton. The preacher’s daughter had a full set of Gone With the Wind paper dolls, off limits to me.

“It was in Durham where the neighborhood children crawled beneath the back stoop and ate the dirt, scooping it up with a cut raw potato and licking it off, craving some element their diet lacked.

Pica.

“I knew the word even then, because my mother told me. ‘Poor children do it,’ she said, with the same determinedly cheerful expression. ‘In the South. You never would have learned that in Sacramento.’ ”

— From “Where I Was From” by Joan Didion (2012)

 

New in the collection: Montgomery Ward employee badge

Pin back badge for Montgomery Ward in Durham

South Square Mall in Durham was opened in August 1975 as a 790,000-square-foot regional shopping mall at a cost of about $25 million.

“The original anchors were Belk-Leggett (later renamed Hudson-Belk) and J.C. Penney.   Montgomery Ward was built as the middle anchor several years after opening — only its second location  in North Carolina.

“Montgomery Ward closed in 1985 as part of a corporate downsizing.  A year later that space would be filled by Ivey’s (later Dillard’s).  South Square closed in 2002 due to competition from the newly-opened Streets at Southpoint mall.”

— From southsquaremall.com

Montgomery Ward closed the last of its stores in 2001. This badge has a pre-’70s look, but I’m not finding evidence of an earlier presence of Montgomery Ward in Durham. 

 

New in the collection: Durham Soap Box Derby pinback

Pinback button that reads "Go 'Lucky Seven,' Kenny Walker, Durham, 1978

 

Soap Box Derby used to be be big, both nationally and in North Carolina. Today the derby apparently survives in the state only in Morganton, where it has its own track at the Burke County Fairgrounds under the sponsorship of the Morganton Optimist Club.

Newspaper archives offer a look back at the race’s glory days in Raleigh and in Charlotte.

In 1970 a Durham contestant won the national championship. Less illustriously, a 1993 champion from Huntersville — perhaps influenced by the local culture? — was stripped of his title for using unapproved materials.

 

Durham sees exodus of blacks because of Jim Crow

On this day in 1917: Black business leaders C.C. Spaulding and Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore tell the Durham Chamber of Commerce that 1,500 to 2,000 blacks have left the city in the previous 90 days.

The exodus of black Southerners to the North, begun during Reconstruction, has accelerated since 1900, when white supremacists resumed legal and political dominance.

.

Former VP receives rude welcome in Durham

 On this day in 1948: Former vice president Henry Wallace, now presidential candidate of the left-leaning Progressive Party, attends its state convention in Durham. The convention nearly turns into a riot as anti-Wallace demonstrators march with signs, explode firecrackers and pelt Wallace with eggs.

Running against Harry Truman, Thomas Dewey and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, Wallace fares poorly in North Carolina and everywhere else; he receives no electoral votes.

[Wallace’s unlikely North Carolina ally.]

.