Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
Bailey, a town of 500-plus in Nash County, has been the museum’s home since its founding in 1967 by Josephine E. Newell, seventh in a line of country doctors. In 2003, however, local volunteers turned over stewardship to the Medical Foundation of East Carolina University.
Mecklenburg County has its own – much smaller — Mint Hill Country Doctor’s Museum.
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“Blacks in the Tar Heel State were at the heart of [Marcus Garvey‘s Universal Negro Improvement Association]. During the 1920 UNIA Convention in New York, a minister from Nash County gave a report about the ‘injustices and other troubles of our people’ and blamed the ‘complete submission and subserviency to the white man and his unjust, cruel and harsh domination over them.’
“Times were changing, though. Three months after the convention, the Negro World reported that UNIA members in Nash County had rallied to the aid of a prosperous black farmer’s son imprisoned on the false charge of injuring a white woman in a car accident. They had made clear their willingness to die in his defense.
“For Garveyites in North Carolina, the right to self-definition was just as inviolable as the right to self-defense. They joined the other ‘Negroes of the World’ at the 1920 convention parade. Under the red, green and black streamers strewn across the streets of Harlem, they carried banners declaring ‘Africa for the Africans,’ ‘Africa Must Be Free’ and ‘Africa a Nation One and Indivisible.’
— From “Tar Heels, Alive” by Brandon R. Byrd in The Point (Winter 2017)