87 films have been digitized out of Mars Hill University‘s Southern Appalachian Archives and are now widely accessible on DigitalNC. The films primarily are of the Byard Ray Folk Festival and Bascom Lamar Lunsford Festival, which is still held annually today in Mars Hill. Thanks to our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection, these audiovisual materials were digitized utilizing funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
To view more materials from the Mars Hill University, visit their partner page. To learn more about our partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection, read this post. And to view and hear more audiovisual materials on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Sights and Sounds collection.
A variety of Hilltop mastheads used over the years. Top to bottom: June 18, 1927; March 18, 1948; August 29, 1975; October 1, 1976; May 1, 1992. Left: February 2, 1995.
Mars Hill University is located in Mars Hill, a town in Madison County approximately 20 minutes north of Asheville in the mountains of western North Carolina. According to the university’s website, it is “the oldest institution of higher learning in western North Carolina on its original site.”
Image of the first building at Mars Hill College taken from the October 27, 1934 issue of The Hilltop.
The university is a private four-year liberal arts institution founded in 1856 by Baptist families to provide an education for their children based on the Baptist faith. While no longer directly associated with any religious organization, the university identifies as “an academic community rooted in the Christian faith.”
An article introducing the new Mars Hill College newspaper from the first issue dated September 25, 1926.
First founded as the French Broad Baptist Institute, the name was not long after changed to Mars Hill College. In 2013, it became Mars Hill University to reflect the institution’s growth in enrollment and the variety of educational offerings. Students began publishing The Hilltop when the institution was still Mars Hill College. It is the official student newspaper created to cover campus news for the students, faculty, and staff.
Articles cover a wide variety of topics. The first issue from 1926 reports on campus beautification efforts, student enrollment, activities of campus organizations, the upcoming football season, and more. Faculty and staff news is also covered, with reports on new hires, retirements, and milestone events. To read these and thousands of other articles, visit and browse the Mars Hill University Student Newspaper page.
List of staff members for The Hilltop from the September 25, 1926 issue (left) and March 30, 1995 issue (right) who worked to bring news to the campus community.
The Mars Hill University yearbook, The Laurel, is also available on DigitalNC with editions from 1917-2016. For more information about these and other materials from Mars Hill University, check out their partner page or their official website.
5 editions of The Laurel, the yearbook from Mars Hill University, are now available on DigitalNC. These editions span 2012-2016 and join previously digitized copies of The Laurel dating back to 1917.
Mars Hill University was founded in 1856, and is located in Mars Hill, a town in western North Carolina, 15 miles from Asheville. The University is home to around 1,200 students and offers 7 undergraduate and graduate degrees. The most recent yearbooks document student life and activities, and include photographs of sports, clubs, performances, and events.
Since almost 100 years of The Laurel have been digitized, it’s fun to see the differences from the most recent 2016 edition and the 1917 edition. While the 2016 edition features glossy full-color photographs and shows a much wider range of academic and campus life activities, certain features, such as student portraits and photographs of sports teams, are present in both.
Student yearbooks from Mars Hill College (now Mars Hill University) are now available on DigitalNC. Eighty volumes of The Laurel, ranging in date from 1917 to 2008, can be searched and browsed online.
The yearbooks are from the collections of the Renfro Library at Mars Hill University.
Thanks to our partner, Mars Hill University, over 40 audio recordings which discuss the history of the Appalachia region and old-time music are now available on our website. These recordings include oral histories with singers and musicians such as Dellie Norton; solo and group performances from the Lunsford Festival as well as the Mountain Dance and Folk Festivals in the 1960s and 1970s; jam sessions; and a university talk about the history of old-time music from the Appalachia region.
New issues of The Carolina Times are now available on Digital NC thanks to our partner, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The Carolina Times, based in Durham, was North Carolina’s preeminent Black newspaper from its inception in 1921 to its final publication 2020.
Recently uploaded issues cover major events of the early 1990s. These events include Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the fight to end apartheid, the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the ensuing protests over police brutality, the AIDS crisis, the death of Thurgood Marshall and contested confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and Mae Jemison’s historic mission into space. Additionally, these issues provide insight into the concerns, local news, leaders, and social events of Durham’s Black community.
The Carolina Times‘ dedication to Black empowerment and civil rights is evident in these pages, as it has been in previous years. The many op-eds speak to the social issues of the time and are evidence of the ongoing struggle for equality in 1990s America. These newspapers are a rich resource for researchers and historians, and can be accessed here.
A couple of weeks ago UNC’s university archivist tweeted about finding articles in the Daily Tar Heel about a flu epidemic on UNC’s campus in early 1941. Intrigued – and figuring it was in no way contained to UNC’s campus – we did some digging in other newspapers on our site to find other stories about the epidemic’s impact on other campuses in NC at the time. A topic that is feeling quite relevant now, we found mentions scattered throughout the papers in January and February 1941 (for context – what would have been a year that started with an epidemic for these students and ended with the country involved in a World War) about how students were reacting to this sudden uptick in the flu.
Several campuses seemed to have a newfound appreciation for the infirmary, with an “Ode the Infirmary” published in Mars Hill College’s student newspaper.
From the Montreat College paper, a look “Through the Infirmary Door”
The social lives of the Belles of Saint Mary’s were put on hold for the flu that struck campus in mid January. Their society pages in their student newspaper detail such and the following flurry of activity as they were able to come out of quarantine.
At the high school level, reports of basketball games and academic competitions were cancelled or put on hold as school was cancelled for several days to prevent the spread of the flu virus. Both the students at Greensboro High School and High Point School reported such.
Other social and academic events were also cancelled – all citing the epidemic as the cause.
Other college campuses did not seem to have large effects from the flu but did report on students who were travelling from other areas of the state who then had to quarantine upon arrival on campus. For example, in an article in Montreat College’s student paper, they reported on students who had to quarantine upon arriving back to campus.
All in all, nothing quite as dramatic as what appears to have happened at UNC was going on at other North Carolina schools, perhaps another echo of what has happened in 2020. A brief perusal of the community papers from the time show that the flu epidemic was something affecting the whole state for sure, with mentions of it in papers from as far east as Beaufort, NC and as far west as Franklin, NC in Macon County.
Clipping from The Beaufort News , January 16, 1941
Clipping from The Franklin press and the Highlands Maconian, January 23, 1941
Several articles note that this particular epidemic was moving from the western part of the state to the eastern part of the state, which was apparently unusual, and overall cases had been fairly mild (which likely explains in part why it rarely pops up as an event in history).
January 22, 1941 issue of the State Port Pilot discussing the effects of the flu across the state.
The following microfilmed newspapers were selected for digitization in 2017-2018. Thanks to supplemental funding from the State Library of North Carolina, we were able to complete more reels than in previous years. Reels were chosen from nominations according to our Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm.
Mascots are a complicated phenomenon. They inspire a spectrum of reactions: ridicule, ambivalence, or fierce loyalty. With thousands of yearbooks online, all of us here at the Digital Heritage Center have probably spent more time looking at yearbooks than anyone else you’re likely to meet. Mascots are a common theme.
I’ve been working on today’s post for quite some time; unable to find a history or comprehensive list of mascots in North Carolina I decided to compile one myself. So here’s a stab at a college mascot overview, drawn from yearbooks and other campus publications. Let me know what I’ve missed or gotten wrong!
Children
In the early 20th century, schools frequently chose children as mascots or sponsors, whether for a sports team or for a particular class. The earliest example we’ve found on DigitalNC is from a 1910 publication by Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College) in Wilson, which shows Elizabeth Settle Caldwell as the Senior Class sponsor.
Elizabeth Settle Caldwell, First North Carolina Mascot? From the 1910 Pine Knot yearbook, Atlantic Christian College.
Ms. Caldwell was the daughter of Jesse Cobb Caldwell, the college president. From what we’ve been able to tell, children mascots were frequently younger siblings of students, teachers, or others associated with the school. Students mention that Ms. Caldwell brought “solace to many a lonely, homesick heart” and this may be why children were chosen – to foster a feeling of family and comfort among students. We’ve seen several references to mascots being elected or being chosen through competition, although what this might be we haven’t been able to discover. The trend of choosing children as mascots seems to continue through the 1960s. The latest one we found is Dawn, the Senior Class mascot at Peace College (now William Peace University) in 1966.
Animals
Animal mascots span schools across the state, whether it’s Rameses at UNC-Chapel Hill or WCU’s Catamount. The bulldog and different types of cats win out as most frequently adopted. Pictures of live animal mascots start to appear in yearbooks in the early 1900s, and continue today although much less frequently. For a variety of reasons, including concerns expressed by animal rights activists, schools have shifted away from actual animals to students dressing up like animals, as you’ll see later on in this post.
“Buc” is described here as East Carolina University’s first mascot. From the 1959 Buccaneer yearbook.
Characters
While about half of the four-year college mascots in North Carolina are animals, most of the others are characters that are historic, mythical, or extraordinary in nature. From what I’ve seen in NC yearbooks, humans dressing up as the school mascot really got traction in the 1960s. Initially, these costumes weren’t the fuzzy creations we think of today, but rather less complicated ensembles where the mascot’s identity (his or her face and body) was often apparent. Yosef the Mountaineer, beloved icon of Appalachian State University, was created sometime around 1942 and looked like this in the 1960s:
Yosef the Mountaineer, aka James Randle Tedder (we think). From the 1969 Rhododendron yearbook, Appalachian State University.
One of my favorites has to be this picture of Duke Blue Devil, from 1950:
The Blue Devil. From the 1950 Chanticleer yearbook, Duke University.
Perhaps it was too hard to maintain a degree of consistency as students graduated over the years, and mascot anonymity seemed like a better idea. Whatever the reason, you start to see fuzzy, oversized costumes with gigantic headpieces in the late 1970s.
The Big Costumes
Whether animal or character, plush mascots that include a single piece body suit with a large plastic or cloth-covered head is something most Americans can identify with, thanks to professional sports. Colleges in North Carolina really embraced these costumes through the 1980s. Here’s what the UNC-Wilmington Seahawk looked like in 1987:
The Seahawk. From the 1987 Fledgling yearbook, UNC-Wilmington.
Some schools have developed multiple mascots dedicated to different audiences. It seems like the difficulty with these types of costumes is how to pull off a fierce facial expression that doesn’t come off as goofy or too scary for children. I think this picture from Davidson College sums it all up:
The Davidson Wildcat and … friends. From the 1983 Quips and Cranks yearbook.
I will also take this opportunity to mention a mascot that routinely makes the “wait … what?” list – the Campbell University Fighting Camels:
The Campbell Camel. From the 1983 Pine Burr yearbook.
Even the humans and human-like creatures are clothed in oversized costumes these days. Wake Forest University’s Deacon is a dapper chap:
Wake Forest’s Deacon poses with fans. From the 1985 Howler yearbook.
In addition to the Demon Deacons and the Blue Devils, North Carolina boasts a number of other spiritual mascots: North Carolina Wesleyan’s Battling Bishops, Belmont Abbey’s Crusaders, and Guilford College’s Quakers. Meredith College’s teams are known as the Avenging Angels (formerly just the Angels). While Elon University’s mascot is now the Phoenix, before 2000 they were the Fighting Christians:
The Elon Fighting Christian mascot with cheerleaders. From the 1986 Phi Psi Cli yearbook.
Two schools break with the animal/human tradition in North Carolina. The Brevard College Tornadoes and the Louisburg College Hurricanes. Weather phenomena mascots are always difficult to pull off. I couldn’t find one for Brevard, but Louisburg, which currently has a bird mascot, had “Louie” up until 2006:
Louie, the former Louisburg College Hurricanes mascot. From the 1996 The Oak yearbook.
Who knows when the next mascot sea change will happen. Below is a list of mascots in North Carolina; let us know if we got anything wrong. Which one is your favorite?
School
Mascot
Notes
Appalachian State University
Yosef the Mountaineer
First appeared in the yearbook in 1942
Barton College
Bulldog
Belmont Abbey College
Crusader
Bennett College
Known as the Bennett Belles
Brevard College
Tornado
Campbell University
Fighting Camels
The Hornets in the 1920s-1930s
Catawba College
Catawba Indian
Chowan University
Hawks
The Braves until 2006
Davidson College
Wildcats
Also a bulldog (1929) and a bobcat (1939)
Duke University
Blue Devil
East Carolina University
Pirates
Formerly Pee Dee the Pirate
Elizabeth City State University
Vikings
Elon University
Phoenix
The Fightin’ Christians until 2000
Fayetteville State University
Broncos
Gardner-Webb University
Runnin’ Bulldogs
Greensboro College
The Pride
Formerly the Hornets
Guilford College
Quakers
High Point University
Panthers
Johnson C. Smith University
Golden Bulls
Lees-McRae College
Wily the Bobcat
Lenoir-Rhyne University
Joe and Josie Bear
Louisburg College
Hurricanes
Mars Hill College
Mountain Lion
Meredith College
Avenging Angels
Formerly the Angels
Methodist University
Eagles
Montreat College
Cavaliers
Mount Olive College
Trojans
North Carolina A&T
Aggie Dog (Bulldog)
North Carolina Central University
Eagles
North Carolina State University
Wolfpack
North Carolina Wesleyan College
Battling Bishops
Formerly the Circuit Riders
Peace College
Pacer
Pfeiffer University
Falcons
Queens University of Charlotte
Rex the Royal
Saint Augustine’s University
Mighty Falcons
Salem College
Spirits
Shaw University
Bears
St. Andrews University
Knights
UNC Asheville
Bulldog
UNC Chapel Hill
Rameses the Ram
Also known as the Tar Heels
UNC Charlotte
Norm the Niner
UNC Greensboro
Spartans
UNC Pembroke
Braves
UNC Wilmington
Seahawk
UNC School of the Arts
Fighting Pickle
UNC School of Science and Math
Unicorn
Wake Forest University
Demon Deacons
Warren Wilson College
Owls
Western Carolina University
Catamount
“Paws”
Wingate University
Bulldog
Winston-Salem State University
Ram
About
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.