To celebrate 14 years of NCDHC (on May 12, 2009 our first blog post went live with our first scanned collection), the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center have all picked a favorite item from the collection to share. Check them out below – and then we invite you to visit digitalnc.org and find some favorite NC items yourself!
Lisa Gregory, Program Coordinator for the NCDHC
When pressed to pick one item (!) I have to go with the September 26, 1874 issue of the Fayetteville Educator. The Educator ran for a single year and was published by W. C. Smith who went on to publish a later title, the Charlotte Messenger. A few years ago while researching Black newspapers in North Carolina, I happened to run across a reference to the Educator as the earliest known Black newspaper in the state. Other sources generally cite the Star of Zion, which began a short time later and is still published today. With the help of some of our partners we were able to locate and add the Fayetteville Educator to DigitalNC. I picked this item because many 19th and 20th century newspapers written by and documenting the Black community are no longer extant or are extremely rare. For me, the fact that we can now share this online on behalf of our partners really encapsulates why we do what we do at NCDHC.
The educator (Fayetteville, N.C.) 1874-1875, September 26, 1874, Image 1, presented by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center in partnership with The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture and Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.
Stephanie Williams, NCDHC Programmer
Still from Wadesboro, 1938 film by H. Lee Waters
Movies of Local People (H. Lee Waters): Wadesboro, 1938
H. Lee Waters traveled around the state in the 1930s and 1940s setting up a camera on streetcorners and filming townspeople. There are a handful of these films available on DigitalNC, and one of my favorites is from Wadesboro in 1938. Waters captured people just going about their daily business, which is fun for so many reasons–but my favorite part is seeing peoples’ personalities, and realizing that the way we react when we realize we’re on camera hasn’t changed in 85 years.
Kristen Merryman, Digital Projects Librarian
“Adult feeding bear by Fontana Lake”
Adult feeding bear by Fontana Lake
This is a photograph in our collection I always come back to because it really pulls together many things I love – bears, the gorgeous lakes of the NC mountains, and a good cookout in a park. This obviously portrays something many a park ranger would shun but I love the NC Variety Vacationland vibes it gives off! We digitized this photograph as part of a larger batch from the Graham County Public Library in Robbinsville, NC when we were there for an onsite scanning visit in 2018 and ourselves got to enjoy many lovely views of Fontana Lake and the surrounding mountains.
One of the things I love about our site is how many yearbooks, student handbooks, and students newspapers we have—I love seeing family and friends’ photos from when they were in school. These materials are where I see my own life reflected the most because they capture so many familiar places and people. It’s interesting to see how our schools have changed over the last century but also how so many things are apparently inherent to being a teenager. While I think all of our student publications are fantastic, this handbook is special to me for a few reasons. Not only is it a glimpse at my alma mater (go Deacs!), but it also features an excellent photo of one of my favorite professors in his early years of teaching.
Geoff Schilling, Newspaper Technician
Cat’s Cradle The DigitalNC item I chose is of a Chapel Hill location that means a great deal to me. The first four photos in this set are of the Cat’s Cradle’s early to late ‘80s location at 320 W. Franklin St. (now The Crunkleton), but the last three images are the reason I’m sharing it. Down this alley is their previous location at 405 1/2 W. Rosemary St., which they started occupying around 1971. In 1983, after the Cradle moved out, it became a venue called Rhythm Alley and they stuck around until 1987. At the end of that year the Skylight Exchange took over the space and in 2003 the one-and-only Nightlight came into existence. The Nightlight is an experimental music oasis where you can see everything from outsider folk legend Michael Hurley to Detroit techno heavyweight DJ Psycho. In addition to being my favorite venue in the world, it’s also the preferred stop of touring musicians from all over the country. The landscape of this “Rhythm Alley” has barely changed over the last half-century (save for a healthy amount of graffiti), but its legacy has grown with each new chapter.
Last year I had the opportunity to digitize some amazing slide images that were taken during several Chapel Hill Boy Scout Troop 835 and Girl Scout Troop 59 trips over the years courtesy of our partner Chapel Hill Historical Society. Many of the slides from these trips feature beautiful scenery and fun, but this particular photograph from the August 1973 Quebec trip is one of my favorite items on our site. In addition to being a great candid, I think it’s the individual’s sense of jollity and peacefulness portrayed in this moment of the trip that really makes it a top-pick of mine.
The NDNP is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress with the intention of creating a vast, searchable database of newspapers and other historical documents. You can currently search all of the NDNP issues on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website. Those same issues will be available on our newspaper database, allowing you to search that content alongside the other papers on DigitalNC. The week’s titles are the following:
This concludes the list of newspapers that we are sharing from the NDNP. 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.
Today’s post is the result of a chance quote and a successful collaboration. We’re pleased to add to DigitalNC the earliest newspaper published by and for North Carolina African Americans – the Fayetteville Educator – along with another early African American newspaper, the Charlotte Messenger.
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s partners have shared a really robust collection of African American papers, and we’re always searching for more. In addition to what’s on DigitalNC, we’re familiar with other well known early papers like the Star of Zion — one of the oldest (1876) as well as the longest continuously running paper in the state. On DigitalNC you’ll find another early paper, the National Savings Bank. Published in 1868, the paper featured advertising and news related to the banking industry. It was published for African Americans from a number of locations around the U.S., including New Bern. The content is mostly syndicated across all of its issues and it was intended for a national audience.
An engraving of William C. Smith from Penn’s The Afro-American press and its editors.
Earlier this year, while reading about African American newspaper editor, William C. Smith, we ran across this quote:
He was one of the founders of The Fayetteville Educator, the first newspaper edited and published by colored men in North Carolina.*
The Educator wasn’t a paper we had run across before. After a few inquiries, we found two institutions who were familiar with the paper. The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte has been stewarding original copies of the Educator – possibly the only extant copies – as well as the Charlotte Messenger for years. They had shared microfilmed copies of both papers with one of our partners, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, which had cataloged that microfilm into their catalog allowing us to find it online. Thanks to the cooperation of both of those organizations, we’re happy to share these newspapers on DigitalNC today.
The Fayetteville Educator
Founded by William C. or W. C. Smith, the Fayetteville Educator ran for a single year – September 26, 1874 through September 25, 1875. The first issue states that the paper’s “efforts will be directed to training the intellectual and moral sentiment of our youth” and that it is “printed and edited by colored young men.” The paper does include reports of the actions and events of the A. M. E. Zion church in North Carolina as well as many moral and anecdotal stories, poetry, and lifestyle recommendations for young men. However, it is also Republican in sentiment during a time when the North Carolina Republican party was trying to stave off disenfranchisement of the African American community by their Democrat counterparts. In the first issue, the paper states that, while “indebted” to the Republican Publishing Company, the paper hoped that “others of different political faith show that they too are friendly.” The paper was eventually suspended because it considered its work complete and because it lacked patronage to continue:
“We are confident that we have done our duty, having stood by the party during the hottest campaign of the last decade, and witnessed success, even in redeeming our own and surrounding counties, we are assured that our work has not been in vain. We regret that our patronage is not sufficient to insure another year’s success…” September 25, 1875, page 2, pictured at right.
The work Smith refers to was keeping governmental control out of Democrat hands. Unfortunately, he called a premature success as less than a month after the final issue Democrats slyly eked out a narrow majority in the Convention of 1875. In the following years North Carolina Democrats implemented a number of laws that either overtly or obliquely upheld racism in the state’s political and social systems.
The Charlotte Messenger
While the Educator was never revived, William C. Smith went on shortly thereafter to begin another newspaper, the Charlotte Messenger. The same book cited above, which mentioned the Educator, describes the Messenger as a paper that fought “against intemperance, immorality, and all other evils coming its way.”** Reading from the salutatory message on the second page of the first issue you’ll see many similarities from the Educator.
In presenting this little sheet to our people, it is hoped that they will appreciate it as an honest effort on our part to promote the moral, intellectual and material standing of our people. We are aware of the difficulties and responsibilities attending the publication of a newspaper; but seeing the great need of an organ in this section to defend the principles of the Republican party; the need of an exponent of the rights of the colored people, we have undertaken the task and shall depend upon the wisdom and kindness of our friends to encourage and support us.”
The Messenger began on June 17, 1882 and continued at least until 1891. The microfilmed issues that we’re able to share last from the June 17, 1882 issue through January 5, 1889. Issues include syndicated news from big city papers and other areas of the south, as well as the traditional repeated poetry, short stories, and advice found in many newspapers at this time period. But you’ll also find the regular “Fayetteville Notes” and other areas of that paper highlighting local news. Temperance is a continuous theme, as are other tenets of the Republican party at that time. The editors occasionally commented on news printed in the Charlotte Chronicle, the Messenger’s contemporary, like the example at right which mentions the 1888 election of President Benjamin Harrison.
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.
