Category: From the Archives

Delivering the Bicentennial: Postal Commemorations of UNC’s 200th

From fall 1993 to spring 1994, the University celebrated its bicentennial with a year of special events. One way the University commemorated its 200th anniversary was through the Bicentennial Postal Series. The first item in the series was a post card issued by the U.S. Postal Service, featuring a watercolor of Playmakers’ Theatre by Bob Timberlake. Five postal cachets—commemorative printed designs on envelopes bearing a custom UNC Bicentennial cancellation and postmark—followed. Click on the thumbnails in the gallery below to view the card and cachets in full.

Post card and cachets from University Relations: Bicentennial Observance Office Records (#40135), University Archives.

Caption Contest Winner!

And we have a winner, folks!  Thank you to everyone who submitted captions for our latest Caption This! contest and to everyone who voted for their favorite.

This round’s winner was Matthew Farrell, a UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus!  Congrats Matthew!

Ambiguously worded dress codes lead to all sorts of problems...
Ambiguously worded dress codes lead to all sorts of problems…

Stay tuned for our next round of Caption This! in the coming weeks!

Caption This! Vote For Your Favorite!

Thank you everyone for your submissions to our latest caption contest! We had a ball reading all of the captions! Now it’s time for you to vote for your favorite. We’ll announce the winner next week!

Click on the captioned photographs to view larger images.

Vote for your favorite!

UNC Students Call for Health Care Reform!

It’s not what you think. We are not discussing the Affordable Care Act or even paying for health care. This is a historical look at just one health care issue at Carolina. In the 1980s, the question for some students was not what they would pay for health care but whether or not they would receive it with equity.

From Box 1:1:15, Records of the Office of the Dean of the School of Medicine, #40118.
From Box 1:1:15, Records of the Office of the Dean of the School of Medicine, #40118.

In November of 1983, Brian Richmond wrote to the Daily Tar Heel to reprimand the School of Medicine for turning down the opportunity to offer a scholarship to medical students who had come out as gay or lesbian. Richmond, the acting director of the Sexuality Education & Counseling Service, condemned the decision because as a sex counselor on a college campus, he had come to realize how difficult it was for lesbians and gay men to find good doctors for a variety reasons including prejudice, misconceptions, malpractice, anti-gay laws, and fear of AIDS. Richmond believed that supporting gay men and lesbians in their pursuits to become health care providers would be a step in the right direction. In his letter, he called on the Dean of the School of Medicine, Dr. Stuart Bondurant, to work with the gay and lesbian community on his campus.

A student's letter expressing his willingness to serve on the Committee. From Box 1:1:15, the Records of the Office of the Dean of the School of Medicine, #40118
A student’s letter expressing his willingness to serve on the Committee. From Box 1:1:15, the Records of the Office of the Dean of the School of Medicine, #40118

Dr. Bondurant stood by the decision not to offer a scholarship exclusively to gay and lesbian medical students, but he did acknowledge that the School of Medicine could better respond to the health care needs of gay and lesbian students. So, the idea for a Committee for Gay/Lesbian Health Concerns was born. The Committee would be composed of students, School of Medicine faculty, and Student Health Services staff. Due to scheduling conflicts in the Spring semester of 1984, however, the committee failed to meet and was put off until the following semester.

The next interaction we found between the School of Medicine and the gay and lesbian community occurred in 1985 when North Carolina’s Lesbian and Gay Health Project called upon the school to update their curriculum. The Project asked for health care issues unique to gay men and lesbians to be incorporated into study. The idea was to improve doctors’ understanding of health concerns particular to the homosexual community while dispelling common misconceptions.

Another Caption This! Contest

From the records of the Institute of Latin American Studies (#40089) comes this week’s funny photo and another opportunity for a Caption This! caption contest.

Department members got a behind-the-scenes visit with the actors of the Lost Colony.
Department members got a behind-the-scenes visit with the actors of the Lost Colony.

Leave us a note in the comments with your caption suggestion.  You can caption as many or as few of the gentlemen in the picture as you like, but be sure to give your man’s number so we know who you’re captioning! Like last time, we’ll hold a vote for the best captions!

Now let’s see what you’ve got!

February 11, 1926: The Playmakers Meet the President

 

The Carolina Playmakers at the White House following their visit with the President. (Dramatic Art Department Records #40080, University Archives.)
The Carolina Playmakers at the White House following their visit with the President. (Dramatic Art Department Photographs, P0035, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archive).

In February 1926, the Carolina Playmakers embarked on their second Southern Tour, performing across North Carolina and Virginia, in Baltimore, and Washington DC. Led by founder, professor Frederick Koch, the theater company performed three of their signature “folk plays”—plays intended to reflect real North Carolina life—at each stop on the tour. The plays were Quare Medicine by Paul Green, Fixin’s by Paul and Erma Green, and Gaius and Gaius, Jr. by Lucy M. Cobb. The troupe received positive reviews throughout their tour, despite setbacks—near Sweetbriar, Virginia, their truck overturned and many set pieces were damaged.

The Carolina Playmakers on the road during their second Southern Tour, 1926. (Dramatic Art Department Records #40080, University Archives.)
The Carolina Playmakers on the road during their second Southern Tour, 1926. (Dramatic Art Department Photographs, P0035, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archive).

The day after their performance in Washington, the theater company visited the White House and had the opportunity to meet President Calvin Coolidge and his wife, First Lady Grace Coolidge. The President and First Lady were unable to attend the Playmakers performance, but expressed interest in their work.  Professor Koch presented the Coolidges with two volumes of the Playmakers’ folk plays, which the President said looked “very interesting indeed.”

Caption This Photo! Caption Contest

Have you ever seen a picture and thought, I bet that person/cat/dog/inanimate object is thinking/saying…? Well if you’ve been wanting to creatively caption a photo, here’s your chance with University Archives’ caption contest!

Take a look at the photo below and the kid circled in red on the left.  Doesn’t look too thrilled to be at his grandfather’s reunion, does he?

From Image Folder 10, Records of the News Services of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, #40139, University Archives, Wilson Library. Click image for a larger view.
From Image Folder 10, Records of the News Services of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, #40139, University Archives, Wilson Library. Click image for a larger view.

Taken at a 1946 reunion supper, the photograph above shows the “Old Students Club” and their guests. The club was comprised of students who had graduated 50 or more years previously. The circled child, Billy Turrentine, was the grandson of another man on the second row, Dr. Samuel Bryant Turrentine of Greensboro. Dr. Turrentine graduated from UNC in 1887 with both an AB and MA (presumably in journalism).

What's on Billy's brain?
What’s on Billy’s brain?

If you have an idea of what Billy might be thinking, leave us a comment below.  We’ll post the winning caption next week along with a few of our favorites. 

Inspired by the New Yorker Magazine’s cartoon caption contest. See the contest and past captions here. 

The Scientific Revolution as Cock Fight

[Update 2/15/2017: A 1904 article in the Daily Tar Heel reveals that the cartoons, drawn in the late 1870s, were made in reference to an incident on campus. Read more here.]

Recently, I came across an old hand-drawn cartoon in the University Papers (#40005) that depicts the struggle between physics and chemistry for scientific supremacy as both a train wreck and a cock fight. There’s nothing I can see to date the cartoon—though it’s probably later than 1830 (the earliest railways in the US) and certainly later than 1804 (the invention of the steam locomotive).

Chemistry_vs_Physics_2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hard to say if there’s any significance to the artist’s inclusion of light rays emanating from the headlamp of the train labeled “Physics.” This drawing appears to have been made prior to Einstein’s 1905 Gedankenexperiment involving light emitted from moving trains, but it certainly could have been made after 1865, when Maxwell discovered that light is an electromagnetic wave and therefore travels at a constant speed. It’s also difficult to interpret an intention behind leaving out the connecting rod on the “Physics” train (see where a second artist, or critic, has penciled in, “You forgot to put your connection rod on this one”), though that might have been mere lack of attention to detail on the part of the artist. Regardless, the game of chicken seems to have solved nothing, and second cartoon depicts the two train operators going head to head.

Chemistry_vs_Physics_1

The same bepenciled critic—who has conscientiously labeled each opponent and the air pump and hastily scribbled a little grass to denote the field of combat—has place in a speech bubble hanging from the lips of “Chemistry” the repudiation, “I’ll be damned if you shall!” Such fierce animosity. Who will win?

Unfortunately, there is no third drawing illustrating the outcome of this heated confrontation. Some say it rages still, and the rumor is you can sometimes catch a glimpse of these two combatants-in-tails struggling with one other on the lofty walkways bridging Murray and Venable.

[OPF-40005/16 in the University of North Carolina Papers #40005, University Archives, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.]

 

Love It or Hate It? Snow at UNC

Most North Carolinians have a love/hate relationship with snow. We love snowy days, but hate the havoc just a dusting of the white stuff can wreak on our lives.

We’ve found some images illustrating our love of snow in our sister collection, the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. Enjoy these photographs from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection of a huge student snowball fight in McCorkle Place, probably taken in the early to mid-1900s, and the Arboretum during a snowstorm on February 2nd, 1921.

[Selected photographs from folders 0910 and 0191, in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection Collection #P0004, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.]

On the other hand, we’ve also found evidence of snow-hating in the archives.

The university was hit so hard with snow in January of 2000 that classes were canceled for three days. Not wanting to take away reading days or to infringe on spring break, Chancellor William O. McCoy made the unpopular decision to schedule make-up days on a few weekends later in the year.

Needless to say, his records contain more than a few letters of complaint from students and staff describing the weather conditions. In one letter regarding the administration’s initial reluctance to cancel classes, the writer asked “What kind of sadistic people are you?”

Click for a larger image.
[Letter of complaint, in the Office of Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: William O. McCoy Records #40227, University Archives, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.]

But whether you love or hate snow, I think we can all agree that UNC is a beautiful place to be anytime of year.