The South has witnessed unspeakable historical violence, hardship, and unrest. Whether it is a system developed over hundreds of years or the single act of one person, Southerners have used these circumstances as fuel to protest for a better reality and a better future.
At first blush, an archive might seem like an unusual place to learn about current events. We can’t provide the latest headline, updated numbers, or 24-hour news coverage. What an archive can do, though, is help explain how we got here in the first place. It can provide context, it can set the scene, and it can fill out a timeline. It can help draw comparisons, and it can bear witness to cycles, to repetition, and to causes and their effects. It can show what has worked in the past, and what has not.
We continue, as we always have, to collect the stories of those who stand up against violence and hardship. Below are just a few of our many collections that highlight how people have confronted difficulties in the past and fought for a South they could believe in.
On June 19th, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order #3 in Galveston, Texas. It read, in part:
THE SLAVES ALL FREE.
GENERAL ORDERS, No. 3. — The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, “all slaves are tree.” This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.¹
Though Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army in April of 1865, it took some months for hostilities to cease and for word to travel to the western arm of the Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation, which went into law on January 1st, 1863, was supposedly difficult to enforce in Texas due to the weak Union presence in that state at the time.
June 19th, 1865 saw more confusion than celebration, but the following year marked the first-ever celebration of the Juneteenth holiday – a combination of “June” and “nineteenth” – commemorating emancipation. The Southern Historical Collection has few holdings related to Juneteenth celebrations in particular, but we have many items that recorded how Freedpeople recognized and built new lives after emancipation.
The image gallery below features two sharecropping contracts (1866 and 1868) signed by a number of Freedpeople from Green, Hale, and Marengo counties in Alabama. Click on a thumbnail to expand and learn more about the contracts.
“Contract of W[illia]m M. Johnston Adm[inistrator] of Estate of R.H. McFaddin and Freedmen on Canebrake place 1866”
“Contract / This agreement and contract made and entered into this the first day of January AD 1866 by and between Thomas M. Johnston Adm[inistrator] of the estate of R.H. McFaddin or his agent W[illia]m E. King party of the first part, and the following Freedmen laborers, parties of the second part.”
It was customary for people of any race or legal standing who could not write their own names to sign an “X” next to where someone else had written their name. Here are the Xs of a number of sharecroppers from January of 1866.
The full list of Freedpeople who entered into this sharecropping contract as paid laborers for the year 1866.
“This agreement made and entered into between Thomas M. Johnston of the first part and the undersigned Freedmen employed to work on the canebreak Witherspoon plantation in Hale County State of Alabama for the year AD 1868 of the second part.”
“The said employees & laborers agree that they will faithfully and industriously work on said plantation from the date of signing this contract untill the crop of the above named year shall be gathered and housed.”
A close up of the Xs these individuals used to sign a labor contract in 1868. Note that a number of people signed for their wives, children, or families. For instance, the last signature is Harriet Broadnax “for self,” but her X extends down to include “& son Robert” and “& daughter Hester Ann.”
The front and back of a January 1868 sharecropping contract signed by Freedpeople.
Library lore says that Carolyn Wallace, Director of the Southern Historical Collection from 1975-1987, once declared that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was the single most valuable item in our entire collection.
A quick “Meck Dec” crash course, for those unfamiliar with this corner of Southern history: On April 30th, 1819, the Raleigh Register published an article by Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander. In it, Alexander said that his own father was present for the signing of the very first Declaration of Independence ever written in the Colonies – dated May 20th, 1775, more than a year before the other Declaration of Independence. He went on to explain that, though the original version of the document was lost in a fire, he owned an exact copy of it. Thomas Jefferson scoffed, but Mecklenburg locals claimed they had witnessed the original declaration with their own eyes.
While scholars still disagree over the document today, each May 20th is celebrated with much enthusiasm in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. This past “Meck Dec Day” was particularly exciting, as the document was able to make the 140-mile journey from our secure storage in Chapel Hill to a public exhibit in Charlotte. Present for the one-day event was McKnitt’s own great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, along with descendants of many other Meck Dec signers.
Nearly all of our collections are available to access within the library, but we are particularly pleased when we have a chance to let the items come out to the public. If you were in the Charlotte area, we hope you were able to swing by and see this treasure from the collection.
The Academy of American Poets marks each April as National Poetry Month, and it did not take much digging to find poetry among our many collections.
North Carolina Poet Laureate, Dr. Shelby Stephenson, came to mind very quickly. We are honored to be the repository for his personal and professional papers, with over 120,000 individual items in the Shelby Stephenson Papers (#04653). Materials in this collection range from personal letters, to literary rejection notices, and even conversations on bluegrass and jazz (Stephenson had an early love for the guitar).
His papers also contain many working versions of poems. Below are two drafts – one handwritten and one typed – of “Gathering Scattered Corn,” both dated November 7, 1975. The handwritten copy even includes a time (10:15 am). Click to view a larger image of each.
“Gathering Scattered Corn” (longhand), in the Shelby Stephenson Papers #4653, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.“Gathering Scattered Corn” (typed), in the Shelby Stephenson Papers #4653, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A pioneering online archive about student activism in the 1960s and 70s goes public on Thursday, March 31, 2016. The website (studenthealthcoalition.web.unc.edu) is the digital home for video clips, historic photos, and personal profiles from former activists in the rural south with a focus on health care.
The archive is the outcome of a partnership between the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Student Health Coalition.
The Southern Historical Collection encourages the study and appreciation of the history and culture of the American South by collecting, preserving and promoting the use of unique documentary materials of enduring historical value. The Collection does this to enable users to derive meanings from the southern past and to support the University’s mission of teaching, research and service.
The Student Health Coalition was a student-run organization based primarily at Vanderbilt University and eventually at other colleges around the south. They were active over several decades beginning in the late 1960s. Student activists and rural community leaders worked together on issues related to health care and empowerment.
The new website unveiled on March 31 is a unique community-driven archive of historical documents and other treasures. Its goal is to encourage the study of the Coalition’s public health and community organizing work throughout the Appalachian region. The online archive is by design interactive, dynamic, and open to the public.
Circa summer 1971: Student Health Coalition participants gather in front of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Photograph from the Richard Davidson Photographic Collection, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill.
Discoveries and advantages have already begun to surface even as the site was in development. The Southern Historical Collection has uncovered little-used archives in their collection whose relevance has been magnified by the interactive site. Links to other archival resources throughout the region, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center, are beginning to shed new light on old stories about health care issues in the rural south.
According to Biff Hollingsworth, Collecting and Outreach Archivist at UNC, “Scholars are often drawn to a project or area of research because of the depth of resources available to them. So sometimes marketing those opportunities is tantamount to developing them further.”
North Carolina’s organic farming celebrity Bill Dow was a co-founder of the Student Health Coalition and a graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. His newly-published memoirs, What I Stand On, received acclaim around North Carolina. The memoirs contain stories from the Coalition days as well as from Bill’s farming innovations.
Just after Bill Dow died in 2012, his family made arrangements for his collection of historical documents about farming to be left in a conventional archive at UNC. When archivists learned about Dow’s early work in health care, they engaged with a reunion of the Coalition to explore this new model for interactive, community-driven archive building. Beginning March 31, the public is invited to explore and engage.
If you were part of the Student Health Coalition or would like to learn more about this project, please contact Biff Hollingsworth at the Southern Historical Collection, by phone at 919-962-3353 or by email at biff@unc.edu.
In addition to his work as a doctor, William (Bill) Dow became the first organic farmer in North Carolina and the founder of the Carrboro Farmer’s Market (among many other accomplishments).
Before his death in 2012, Dr. Dow recorded his thoughts on sustainable farming with the hope that it could be compiled into a book. His friend, Fred Broadwell, and his partner, Daryl Walker, completed this project resulting the book titled: What I Stand On: Practical Advice and Cantankerous Musings from a Pioneering Organic Farmer. It is now available for order at your local independent bookseller.
Though much of the book contains Dr. Dow’s pioneering farming philosophies, small mentions of the Student Health Coalition are peppered throughout.
Broadwell and Walker will be doing readings from the book at local bookstores during the next few months. If your interested in a pioneering farmer’s wisdom and philosophy, or perhaps enjoy homegrown food, please join them at:
McIntyres Books in Pittsboro on Feb 27, 2016 at 2:oopm.
Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Feb 29, 2016 at 7:00pm .
Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on March 8, 2016 at 7:00pm. With an appearance by
Isaiah Allen, the chef of The Eddy in Saxapahaw and owner of Rocky Run Farm, who wrote the book’s introduction.
Regulator Bookshop in Durham on March 10, 2016 at 7:00pm.
We are a manuscript collection, meaning that much of our materials are black and white, paper and ink items: letters and ledgers, deeds and diaries, wills and writs. However, if you know where to look, you can come across many bright, bold, beautiful items.
“Jesters” by Hale Woodruff. Linocut and screenprint.
Our current exhibit in the Wilson Special Collection Library’s fourth floor gallery space is Tiny Paintings: Handmade Artist Cards from the Charles Alston Collection. Charles Henry Alston (1907-1977) was an artist, educator, and arts advocate in the middle of the twentieth century, and kept up vigorous correspondence with his many friends, students, and colleagues.
This exhibit, created in concert with UNC Art Professor Dr. John P. Bowles, selects cards from the Charles Henry Alston Papers #04931. Learn about ways that artists in the 1940s-1960s used handmade greeting cards to share work with distant colleagues, to test new techniques, and to question social, political, and artistic norms.
“Merry Christmas Haiti” by unknown artist, 1949.“Prehistoric Images” by Hale Woodruff. Linocut.
Coincidentally, Alston and many of his close friends are better known for their work at the other end of the size spectrum: murals. Just across campus, the Ackland Art Museum is hosting Beyond Walls: Designs for Twentieth-Century American Murals (open through April 10th, 2016) featuring some of Alston’s large-scale mural work.
This unique opportunity to view Alston’s work – from miniature to immense – on UNC’s campus is only available until March 31st, 2016.
Tiny Paintings: Handmade Artist Cards from the Charles Alston Collection is free and open to the public during Wilson Special Collection Library’s regular business hours.
In our ongoing quest to engage audiences in new and different ways, we are pleased to unveil a project that we have been working on for the past few months. In partnership with the Google Cultural Institute’s series on Black History and Culture, we have developed an online exhibit of original collection materials titled Before I’m 25… Stories of African American Youth.
Before I’m 25 is a multimedia exhibit that uses our diverse collections to highlight the ways African American youths have shaped Southern history. Spanning over 150 years, it examines the lives of young African Americans through the lenses of freedom, military service, the pursuit of education, entertainment, and activism.
The Google Cultural Institute allows museums and archives throughout the world to share their collections with the online using sleek, innovative technology. As part of the Google Cultural Institute’s series on Black History and Culture, The Southern Historical Collection is in good company with partners ranging from the National Museum of African American History and Culture to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Each of over forty exhibits covers one niche of Black history and culture, from Alvin Ailey to Frederick Douglass, and from Black comic books to African American inventors.
We are excited to share this digital exhibit with you and hope that it enhances discussions by and about African American youth, and how history shapes our present day.
To provide some context, this image was taken by Otis N. Pruitt in Columbus, Mississippi. Pruitt was a photographer who moved to Columbus to work with Henry Hoffmeister who owned a photography business there. After buying Hoffmeister’s business, Pruitt became the only photographer in Columbus. Most of the work included in this collection was done by him during 1920s through the 1950s. In the 1950s, he went into business with Calvin Shanks, who was once his photography assistant. He sold the business to Shanks in 1960.
Their photographs depict life in Mississippi: the town, its people, and local businesses. The image in this post depicts men with turkeys, and was likely taken in the 1930s or 1940s.
is work as a doctor, William (Bill) Dow became the first organic farmer in North Carolina and the founder of the Carrboro Farmer’s Market (among many other accomplishments).
