Thanks to our new partner, Martin Community College (MCC), a North Carolina audio series focused on the history of Martin County and videos showcasing Martin Community College are now available on our website. The recordings detail the history of Martin County beginning all the way from the Upper Paleolithic (~50,000 to 12,000 years ago) to the 1980s. Included in the chronicling of the county’s history is information on early burial practices in northeastern North Carolina (including humans and dogs), hunting practices, Indigenous culture, colonization of the area, agricultural economy of the region, transportation, and much more.
Videos in this batch feature a look at the MCC campus in the 1990s and provide information about the various programs offered by the college at the time. These programs included basic skills, equine management, and medical assisting. The remaining videos highlight the exciting MCC Stampede in the Park rodeo event. This event, which continues to be held annually, raises money for Martin Community College student scholarships.
Stampede in the Park, Rodeo, 1992
Martin Community College is located in Williamston, North Carolina and was established in 1968 as Martin Technical Institute. On June 26, 1975, the college was granted community college status by North Carolina’s General Assembly. The MCC library serves not only the faculty, staff, and students of the college, but the citizens of Martin, Washington, and Bertie counties. Their local history room features books on the history of Martin as well as other surrounding counties, North Carolina history, narratives and photographs of historic buildings, and the Easter Rogerson Mizell Family Genealogy Collection.
To learn more about Martin Community College, please visit their website.
To listen or view more of North Carolina’s sights and sounds, please click here.
We have added issues of the Martin County Enterprise & Weekly Herald and the Bertie Ledger-Advance thanks to Martin Community College and the Bertie County Public Library. Coverage includes December 2019-December 2020 issues of the Enterprise & Weekly Herald and January 2022-November 2022 issues plus a special edition issue from March 15, 2000 of the Ledger-Advance.
The majority of newspapers on our site date from the early to mid-19th century, so we’re always interested in adding more recent issues when possible. In the Enterprise & Weekly Herald issues shared today you can read about the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and how a more rural county navigated national, state, and local regulations and concerns.
The issues of the Ledger-Advance cover a later date and talk about the lingering effects of COVID-19. The last issue in this batch mentions Bertie County’s Tricentennial celebrations in November 2022. Bertie County, originally part of Chowan County, was one of the first formed in the state as larger counties were split into smaller portions. Also included in this batch is a special edition from March 15, 2000 that offers reflections on recovery from Hurricane Floyd.
Through our partnership with the Bertie County Public Library and Martin Community College, we now have many more editions of the Bertie Ledger-Advance. This batch of the Windsor, N.C., paper ranges from January 2016 until December 2021, meaning that it covers many of the major news stories still in memory.
March 11, 2020
Perhaps one of the most obvious topics that appears in these issues is the impact of Covid-19 in one of North Carolina’s small towns. The front-page coverage starts where you might expect: March 11, 2020.
Initial articles focus on preparedness; the March 18, 2020 issue announces Governor Roy Cooper’s mandate to close schools for two weeks and end gatherings of more 50 people. That was also the week that Bertie County declared a State of Emergency in order to receive resources for public health measures.
“The fact that we are so rural here in Bertie County gives us an edge. …We are not like Raleigh as it relates to populations,” Bertie County Emergency Services Director Mitch Cooper said.
Bertie County begins holding church services outdoors (March 25, 2020)
These issues go on to document the progression of the pandemic in a rural area. On March 25, 2020, Bertie County sees its first confirmed case; the state begins “Phase 1” re-opening on May 10, 2020; Bertie and surrounding counties experience spikes in the number of cases, including one from September 10, 2020. At the end of 2020, the paper also published a recap of the year’s major stories, noting that the “Pandemic dominated headlines.”
The coverage continues through 2021, when schools are finally scheduled to reopen for in-person learning in March 2022. Through each of these stories, its clear what a huge impact Covid-19 had on the lives of Bertie County residents—as it did for people across the state, the nation, and the world.
March 25, 2020
To see more news stories from this batch, you can browse by date:
The Enterprise was published biweekly and focused primarily on community news such as town meetings, citizen’s achievements, deaths, festivals, and more. A frequent feature in issues published during the World War II years are articles highlighting Martin County citizens who joined the war effort and their accomplishments while in the service.
To learn more about Martin Community College, please visit their website.
To view more newspapers from around North Carolina, please click here.
Back in December, we announced our annual call for microfilmed newspaper digitization. We asked institutions throughout North Carolina to nominate papers they’d like to see added to DigitalNC. As it is every year, it was an incredibly tough choice – we are typically able to choose between 40-60 reels out of over 500+ nominated. This year we’ve chosen the following titles and years.
For our selection criteria, we prioritize newspapers that document underrepresented communities, new titles, papers that come from a county that currently has little representation on DigitalNC, and papers nominated by new partners. After selection, we ask the partners to secure permission for digitization and, if that’s successful, they make it into the final list above.
We hope to have these titles coming online in the first half of 2021. If your title didn’t make it this year don’t despair! We welcome repeat submissions, and plan on sending out another call in Fall 2021.
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.
The quote in this post’s title comes from a student who participated in a 1989 protest at UNC-Chapel Hill, pictured below.
One of the most historic student protests in the United States happened on this day in 1960 right here in North Carolina. NC A&T students protested segregation by sitting down at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro. The first images in this post were taken at that event and come from the 1960 Ayantee yearbook. Other images come from schools in all parts of the state, and date from 1960 through 2012.
North Carolina college students have passionately protested a variety of issues and events over the years. Looking back through yearbooks and student newspapers, you’ll find editorials with strong opinions and photographs of students standing up and speaking out in this most public of ways. Today we’re sharing the tradition of protest by students over the years, as reported in their own media.
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, 1960, Segregation (Woolworth’s Lunch Counter, Greensboro)
North Carolina Central University, 1960, Segregation (Woolworth’s Lunch Counter, Durham)
Wake Forest University, 1969, Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Saint Augustine’s, 1970, Vietnam War
UNC-Chapel Hill, 1977, B-1 Bomber and Nuclear Armament
UNC-Chapel Hill, 1989, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Mitchell Community College, 1990-1991, Hazardous Waste and Environmental Pollution
UNC-Chapel Hill, 1993, Racism
UNC-Asheville, 2012, Hate Crimes
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.
