Thanks to our partners at The University of North Carolina at Asheville, DigitalNC is proud to host over 200 new issues of UNCA student newspapers, with years ranging from 1948 to 2018. This upload includes issues from the following titles:
The Blue Banner continues as the current student newspaper, but the previous iterations formed the building blocks it still adheres to. While these titles all kept UNCA students abreast of current events happening around the campus, city, and world, The Rag and Bone Shop didn’t shy away from controversy (click here for the Easter cover and here for the response cover) and Kaleidoscope wrote weekly entertainment reviews on local and national music. The Blue Banner continues these themes today, frequently reporting on current politics such as The Woman’s March, school shootings, and DACA recipients. Other periodic articles of note include Ink of the Week and Beat from the Street.
To learn more about the student newspapers of UNCA and see all issues, click here. For more information on UNCA and to view their other contributions, click here.
About six months ago we asked our partners to help us increase the diversity of voices shared on DigitalNC. We had an outpouring of interest, and partners have shared a number of rich collections from the African American and LGBTQ communities. Here’s an update of what has been added to DigitalNC as a result of this call.
This 1903 Census Report for Morton Township, Alamance County, lists names, ages, and the names of parents of African American students.
Diversifying DigitalNC isn’t a one-time event – it’s ongoing every day. If your institution has or will be targeting collections that document racial, ethnic, or geographic communities who are underrepresented on DigitalNC, and you’re interested in sharing these materials online, get in touch.
Issues of CLOSER and it’s successor, Community Connections, have been shared online thanks to Buncombe County Public Libraries and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The issues date from 1987-2002.
CLOSER is the acronymn for Community Liaison Organization for Support, Education and Reform. According to a newspaper article from April 2020 published in the Mountain Xpress, this organization’s mission was “to serve as a liaison organization between the gay/lesbian community and the larger population, to provide mutual support, education and information regarding problems and concerns of the gay/lesbian community, to work for reform of social prejudices and discrimination practices and attitudes, and to foster for individuals and the community a sense of gay/lesbian identity.”
The paper, particularly in the earlier issues, includes very heartfelt reflections over the accomplishments of those involved in CLOSER. There are always announcements about events, and even lists of birthdays for that month. Coverage of the community members grappling with and documenting discrimination and hate speech is unfortunately a thread. However the paper shows local efforts to mobilize and provide mutual support. Through the 90s and early 2000s, the paper covers even more statewide and national news of impact to those in the community.
Many issues were scanned by the Pack Library in Asheville, which houses the organization’s archives. Some additional issues from the early 90s were added from the collections at UNC-Chapel Hill. You can view other newspapers on our newspaper landing page. Additional materials from the Pack Library can be found on our site as well as in their own digital collections.
The State Gazette was founded by Abraham Hodge and Andrew Blanchard in 1785. Hodge, born 1755 in the colony of New York, worked as a patriot printer during the American Revolution and even operated George Washington’s traveling press at Valley Forge in 1778. While stationed there, he printed official orders, commissions, and recruitment posters for the Continental Army. Seeking a warmer climate after the war, Hodge relocated to Halifax, N.C., where he would go on to own printing presses in Edenton, Halifax, Fayetteville, and New Bern. In addition to newspapers, he was named printer of the North Carolina General Assembly and printed the state’s laws in 1786. He was also one of the first people to contribute to the library of The University of North Carolina.
March 5, 1795 issue of The State Gazette of North-Carolina. Less than a month after The University of North Carolina opened its doors to students.
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
May Day, 1940s, from the Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection
This May Day, we’re pleased to introduce a collection contributed to DigitalNC from the Special Collections and University Archives at UNC-Asheville’s Ramsey Library. It’s the Heritage of Black Highlanders, a group of 216 photographs that document African Americans from the Southern Appalachian Mountains, particularly Asheville, in the early 20th to mid 20th century.
These photographs include many group and individual portraits, with a little less than half related to education (school classes, teachers, and administrators). Other photos are of important community leaders or those working for local organizations and businesses. To a lesser degree are snapshots of events and daily life, like awards being given to boy scouts, an early parade in downtown Asheville, or this visit by Marion Anderson to Stephens-Lee High School.
If you head over to the Special Collections site at UNC-Asheville, you’ll be able to see the full scope of this collection. Ramsey Library has shared these photos with us as part of our call to increase the diversity of voices available through DigitalNC. You can see more from Ramsey Library on their contributor page or in their own collections.
In today’s blog post I offer a break from the current election year with a trip back to the 1968 presidential election. Looking at the political landscape of 1968 is like looking at an earlier but familiar view of the same neighborhood we’re in now. It’s issues resonate today: striving for social and racial equality, debates over America’s place on the world stage. The late 60s were boiling with the turmoil of the Civil Rights Era and the Vietnam War. 1968 alone saw the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in early April and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June.
In April 1968, Time magazine held a mock presidential primary at colleges and universities to take the temperature of young Americans during that election year. Dubbed “CHOICE 68,” the event was covered in many of the student newspapers that can be found on DigitalNC, and I wanted to see what this nation-wide event looked like here in North Carolina.
Sample Choice 68 Ballot, printed in Asheville-Biltmore College (now UNCA) newspaper The Ridgerunner, March 1, 1968.
Every American college and university was asked to participate in CHOICE 68. The event was governed by a group of eleven students representing a variety of campuses around the country. Campus groups were in charge of publicizing the event with their peers, under the direction of a campus coordinator. Each ballot (an early draft is shown at right) asked students to rank their top three choices for president and also asked for them to weigh in on Vietnam and the “urban crisis,” the latter of which referred to pervasive concern over poverty, crime, and general unrest in high population urban environments. Write-in candidates were also allowed. Votes from all campuses were tabulated by a UNIVAC computer in Washington, D.C. and the results were supposedly announced on television, with each school’s individual totals being returned during the first week of May.
Before the vote, student newspapers urged their readers to rally against apathy, to prove that young voters could impact the national arena. One Brevard College editorial called on moderates to vote, expressing frustration that liberal and conservative activists had been “hoarding the headlines.” An accompanying editorial talked about the conservatives still being committed to rooting out Communism, revealing lingering echoes of McCarthyism from the late 50s. It predicted a 1968 election win for then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan.
Campuses with active student government associations and/or political groups tended to have more events and publicity associated with CHOICE 68. North Carolina Wesleyan College’s student body listened to speeches in support of Senator Eugene McCarthy (D), former Vice President Richard Nixon (R), and current Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D), three of the most prominent contenders in early 1968. Voting booths, borrowed from the City of Rocky Mount, housed students punching out chads of computer cards to cast their votes.
Headline from the April 25, 1968 issue of The Twig, Meredith College.
Some schools had hundreds of participants, with 500 Elon students voting in the mock election. Others had fewer; thirty students were questioned at Meredith College. The Twig quoted opinions from four of those 30 (two Republicans and two Democrats) in the issue seen at right.
Salem College appears to have been one of the most enthusiastic participants, with articles about CHOICE 68 found in issues spanning January through May and a voter turnout of 73% of the eligible student body. The February 23 issue of The Salemite talked about how President Lyndon Johnson endorsed the national mock election despite the fact that “student dissent over the past year ha[d] been directed primarily against White House policies.” The April 12 issue asserted that “massive student participation in CHOICE 68 can and will affect the course of American politics in 1968.”
Almost all articles about the vote mentioned the UNIVAC computation of results, which was seen as heralding a new era in which computers could make generating results faster and more secure. The Meredith College Twig published a photo of the computer tabulating results in its April 25 issue (shown above). Dr. Hammer of UNIVAC posited a time when “a huge data bank may contain ‘voice prints’ of eligible voters” to authenticate those phoning in their votes (“A Letter from the Publisher,” Time, May 10, 1968, page 21).
Of the North Carolina schools* whose CHOICE 68 results I could locate, McCarthy came out on top for all except North Carolina State University, where Nixon prevailed and McCarthy came in second. Nixon was the second choice for 7 schools, and Nelson Rockefeller (R) carried second choice at the remaining 3.
The national CHOICE 68 vote also saw McCarthy in the lead with 286,000 out of 1.7 million votes from 1,450 campuses. Robert Kennedy (D) and Nixon followed behind McCarthy. Students voted to reduce the United States military presence in Vietnam, and saw education as the biggest key to solving the “urban crisis.”
Though he won the CHOICE 68 vote and continued to be bolstered by student support through the primaries, McCarthy was beaten by Humphrey to gain the official Democratic nomination. The November election was won by Nixon, however the CHOICE 68 voters’ preference for a Democratic candidate was somewhat predictive: Humphrey prevailed with voters under 30 in the general election.
As far as I can tell, no nationwide poll quite like CHOICE 68 has been held since, though speculation over how college-aged Americans will vote certainly hasn’t changed. If you’re interested in other historical election news and opinion as reported by student newspapers, visit the North Carolina Newspapers collection.
November 5, 1968 issue of the Louisburg College Columns student newspaper. Students picked Nixon in a straw poll held close to the general election.
*It appears that the following schools also participated in CHOICE 68 based on mentions in newspapers and yearbooks, but no results were found: Appalachian State University, High Point College, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Queens College, and University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
One of our more recent yearbooks, the 1903 Sword and Rifle of the Bingham School in Asheville, caught my attention because the students added a lot of additional cartoons and illustrations. With photography not as convenient as it is today, the pages are instead filled with hand-drawn snapshots describing private jokes and school life. Here’s one of the Rats — a term the Old Boys used as they hazed the newest students (see page 21):
Their school clubs and activities also have accompanying illustrations, like these two for the football team and the Nick Carter Club. (The Nick Carter they’re talking about was a dime novel detective from the late 19th, early 20th century.)
And, as might be expected in an all-boys school, many of their illustrations are of women — like this Gibson Girl penned by Robert Rodney Dale.
There were a number of Bingham Schools in Asheville. This is the only yearbook we currently have for this school so I can’t be sure if the illustrative tradition continued. But the illustrations have given the school a very playful character in my mind, revealing more about the students than most of our other yearbooks from that time period.
These volumes are shared online by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
