Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
“I am opposed to gay and expensive dressing, and I am opposed to balls — or hugging schools, I call them. I warn all boys against marrying ball room girls. I tell them if the girls practice hugging strange men before marriage they are likely to have the same taste afterwards.”
— Carry A. Nation, quoted in “‘Smashes’ Everything in Sight” (News & Observer, July 30, 1907)
“Nearly overlooked in the hubbub [over the 2010 National Book Awards] was the first-time nomination of an under-recognized author who [was born in Gastonia and] grew up in Raleigh — Lionel Shriver, for her novel ‘So Much for That.’
“Shriver was raised in Raleigh until high school, when her family moved to Atlanta. Since 1987, she has spent most of her time in the United Kingdom; she now lives in London and Brooklyn. Her fifth novel, ‘A Perfectly Good Family’ [2007] was set in an historic house on Blount Street in downtown Raleigh.”
— From “Raleigh native’s [sic] book picked” in the News & Observer (Oct. 18, 2010)
“Her father [Donald Woods Shriver Jr.] was a Presbyterian minister and, later, a professor and president of Union Theological Seminary…. At the age of 8, she decided that she did not want to have children of her own. When she was 12, she announced she would not be going to church any more. Her father dragged her into the car by her hair. ‘I have a rebellious streak a mile wide,’ she says, ‘and admire people who get away with things.’
“She changed her birth name Margaret Ann to Lionel when she was 15: ‘I was a tomboy. I grew up with brothers. So I chose a boy’s name…. A friend tells me that if I am so perverse as to change my name to Lionel, then I deserve the tedium of having to explain it to everyone I meet.’ “
— From “Time to talk about her big brother“ by Viv Groskop in the Observer [of London] (April 21, 2013)
“Officials at an Australian writers festival were so upset with the address by their keynote speaker that they publicly disavowed her remarks….
“[Lionel Shriver] had defended her right to depict members of minority groups in any situation, if it served her artistic purposes.
“ ‘Otherwise, all I could write about would be smart-alecky 59-year-old 5-foot-2-inch white women from North Carolina,’ she said.”
— From “Lionel Shriver’s Address on Cultural Appropriation Roils a Writers Festival” by Rod Nordland in the New York Times (Sept. 12, 2016)
“Proponents argued that an Afro-American exhibit would encourage black participation in the [Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition]. Blacks laid plans to rely on the Southern Exposition in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1891 as a gathering point for black exhibits to be sent to the world’s fair two years later. But the idea of a separate exhibit aroused opposition as de facto surrender to segregation.
“The issue became moot when fair directors ruled against racially separate exhibits. Instead, they encouraged blacks to participate in existing state displays [as] approved by all-white committees of the various states. Few black exhibits made their way through the screening process…..
“In North Carolina resistance to the planned black exhibit from the state [in the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895] was so strong that the state’s commissioners to the fair had to inform interested fairgoers that a better display of achievements by North Carolina blacks could be found at the state’s annual ‘colored fair.’ ”
— From “All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916” by Robert W. Rydell (1984)
“Fanaticism in the North is rampant….On yesterday, the godly city of Boston, built up and sustained by the products of negro slave labor, went into mourning, fasting and prayer over the condign punishment of a negro stealer, murderer and traitor….
“In all the Noo England towns and villages, we may expect to hear that mock funerals have been celebrated, and all kinds of nonsensically lugubrious displays made. (It is a pity that they haven’t a witch or two to drown or burn, by way of variety.)….
“The Yankees have no objection to mingling money making with their grief, and they will, unless Brown’s gallows is known to have been burned, set to work and make [from it] all kinds of jimcracks and notions… and sell them. Let the rope which choked him, too, be burned or we shall see vast quantities of breast pips, lockets and bracelets… for sale. Barnum is already in the market for Old Brown’s clothes….”
— From an editorial in the Raleigh Register, December 3, 1859
“Henry Evans, a free man and shoemaker by trade, was licensed as a local preacher by the Methodists toward the end of the 18th century. Evans was responsible for ‘the planting of Methodism’ in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Originally preaching to black people only, he attracted the attention of some prominent whites, and ironically ‘the white portion of [his] congregation increased till the negroes were crowded out of their seats.’ Evans was displaced by a white minister but continued as an assistant in the church he founded until his death in 1810.
“John Chavis, another free black, was appointed by the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1801 to work in Virginia and North Carolina ‘as a missionary among people of his own color’…. Chavis did not confine his ministry to Negroes. In 1808 he opened a school in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the instruction of white children by day and black children at night. In 1832 Chavis was barred from preaching by a North Carolina law which forbade slaves and free Negroes to exhort or preach in public.”
— From “Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South” by Albert J. Raboteau (2004)
“Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow to our Pacific possessions…. Radio makes surprises impossible.”
— Josephus Daniels, publisher and former Navy secretary, dedicating station WLAC at North Carolina State College, Oct. 16, 1922.
“After [Nina Simone’s 1961 concert at Memorial Hall, UNC Chapel Hill student] Frank Craighill arranged for dinner at one of the area’s newest steak houses, the Angus Barn. Craighill [president of the social club that sponsored the concert] had picked the restaurant with care… and when Nina and the trio walked in as guests of the university, a big round table was already set and waiting for them. It was easily one of the most elegant meals any of them had eaten on the road….
“[But] an encounter later at the train station in Raleigh left no doubt they were in the South. As they waited for the train to New York, a white woman claimed she had lost her purse. The station manager found the purse in the men’s restroom. One of the waiting passengers asserted that [drummer Bobby Hamilton] had been the last person to use it, and in a flash police… zeroed in, all but accusing him of theft. But Nina leapt to his defense. ‘She just went crazy,’ [bassist Chris White] remembered. ‘She read them the riot act…. She was just as black as she could be with these guys and they left us alone.’ ”
— From “Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone” by Nadine Cohodas (2010)
A footnote: Frank Craighill went on to become a pioneer in the field of sports marketing.
On this day in 1979: A Bob Timberlake exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh brings protests that he is an illustrator and a promoter rather than an artist. One reviewer calls his work “a contrived world of plastic nostalgia.” Critics also contend Timberlake’s limited-edition prints fail to satisfy professional criteria.
The show draws huge crowds, however, and Timberlake’s standing as the state’s most popular artist is unshaken.
On this day in 1942: Alice Broughton, wife of Gov. J. Melville Broughton, orders a rubber mat ripped off the servants’ staircase in the Executive Mansion to donate to the war effort.
Accompanied by a reporter and photographer from the Raleigh Times, she then delivers the 58-pound mat to a service station for recycling. “Either the attendants never heard of the drive,” the Times reports, “or they didn’t care whether the nation got the rubber as a means of whipping the Axis. . . .
“So the rubber was placed back in the box and carted across the street. There the fellows seemed to know what it was all about, and gladly accepted the rubber.
“Perhaps it is because of stations like the first that more rubber has not been turned in.”
Thanks to Michael Hill for this list of state highway historical markers approved by the advisory committee May 25:
— Pea Island Lifesavers. Only U.S. Lifesaving Station manned by black crew. Led by Richard Etheridge, 1879-1899.
— George H. White, 1852-1918. Represented the state’s “Black Second” district, U.S. House, 1897-1901. Last black Southerner in Congress for 72 years. Lived two blocks east. [Tarboro]
— Anna J. Cooper, 1858-1964. Educator, orator & early black feminist. Graduate, St. Augustine’s. Author, A Voice from the South (1892). Grave 2 1/2 blks. S. [Raleigh]
— Fairgrounds Speedway. After 1928 popularized Indy-style car racing. Site hosted the last NASCAR race on dirt track, 1970. Half-mile oval was 250 yds. SW. [Raleigh]
— Lewis Leary, 1835-1859. Free black abolitionist & conspirator in 1859 with John Brown in attack on U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Killed in assault. Lived in this vicinity. [Fayetteville]
— Omar Ibn Said, ca. 1770-1863. Muslim slave & scholar. African-born, he penned autobiography in Arabic in 1831. While living in Bladen Co., worshipped with local Presbyterians. [Fayetteville]
— Nimrod Jarrett Smith, 1837-1893. Principal Chief, Eastern Band of Cherokee, 1880-1891. Led incorporation of Band & centralization of Tribal government on his property, here. [Cherokee]
Expected by week’s end: Details on each marker.