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2017 yearbook from UNC Pembroke now online

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yearbooks

The 2017 edition of The Indianhead, University of North Carolina at Pembroke’s yearbook, is now available on DigitalNC. This edition joins many previously digitized UNC Pembroke yearbooks dating as far back as 1942.

The 2017 edition of The Indianhead documents many important moments from the academic year including graduation, sports games, performances, and more. This recent edition also contains a two-page spread documenting the effects of Hurricane Matthew, which struck North Carolina in October 2016,  on the UNC Pembroke community. The yearbook states, “UNCP campus [was] submerged in up to almost 2 feet of water in some areas… this collage includes pictures of the damage dealt, the community response to the aftermath, and reactions from students who were directly affected by the storm.”

Part of a collage documenting Hurricane Matthew’s effects on the UNCP campus.

To learn more about UNC Pembroke, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.

Mapping the path of eclipses of the past through NC newspapers

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newspapers

This afternoon, the western portion of North Carolina will experience a total solar eclipse and the rest of the state will experience almost a total eclipse.  A peak into the newspapers on our site show that the rhetoric around eclipses has not changed too much over the years.  

Danger to one’s eyes is still the number one warning about watching the eclipse.  The front page of the March 5, 1970 Warren Record in Warrenton shouts “Danger!” about looking directly at the eclipse that was happening on March 7.

 

The New Bern Mirror noted about the same eclipse that the safest place to watch it would be on your television.

The Mirror was not the only paper in 1970 to discuss watching on TV.  It was a topic in the Raeford News-Journal as well.

In 1923, many of the papers on DigitalNC ran a feature about the ability to watch the eclipse that year at the movie theater – a big innovation for the day.

Perhaps our favorite find – and what may be of particular interest to those out in the western portion of the state – is an article found in the January 29, 1925 issue of the Brevard News, which noted a partial eclipse visible the weekend before.  It also stated at the end that “Scientists tell us that not for 300 years will North Carolinians be able to see another one in their own state.”  So either it was a misprint or scientists have had to do some recalculations!

Wherever you watch today’s eclipse from – be careful of those eyes!  And to read more eclipse stories in DigitalNC’s newspapers, visit here.

UNC School of the Arts Bulletins Now Available

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campuspublications

A ballet class shown in the 1980-1981 catalog.

School bulletins and catalogs for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) dating from 1965-2002 are now available on DigitalNC. UNCSA, located in Winston-Salem, serves high school and college students around North Carolina and offers programs in areas such as dance, visual art, drama, and music. The bulletins and catalogs include descriptions of course offering and requirements for each area of study, faculty bios, entrance requirements, a section on the school’s history and purpose, and different rules and regulations of the institution.

Student smoking regulations in the 1965/1966 bulletin.

Looking back through the bulletins gives an interesting peek into life at UNCSA through the years. The 1965/1966 bulletin includes detailed information about aspects of student life such as how often students could leave campus, when high school students were expected to be in their dormitories, and who could smoke on campus and where. Later bulletins focus more on course offerings, with the scope and number of courses offered growing throughout the years with the growth of the school.

To check out all of the new and previously digitized bulletins, catalogs, and yearbooks from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, click here. To learn more about UNCSA visit their partner page or take a look at their website.

A Local History of the Civil War from Mauney Memorial Library

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memorabilia

The latest from the genealogy shelves of our partner institution Mauney Memorial Library can be found online at DigitalNC.  In his book, White Plains Goes to War: The Civil War Saga of Edward and Benjamin F. Dixon, David C. Neisler chronicles the Civil War experiences of his ancestors, brothers Edward and Benjamin F. Dixon.

Letter written by Edward Dixon

The first half of the book focuses upon the lives and experiences of the Dixon brothers as Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. Neisler’s research is based upon personal correspondence and a few other documents found in a relative’s attic. Copies of these materials and photos of the Dixon brothers are provided in the book.

 

The second part of the book looks at Company D of the Fourteenth Regiment of the North Carolina Troops, or the Cleveland Blues as they were known. Lead by Edward Dixon, the Cleveland Blues were primarily from White Plains, N.C. Following a brief historical sketch about the Cleveland Blues, Neisler provides an annotated roster of all 68 volunteers who enlisted at the White Plains Post Office on April 26, 1861.

Oral histories and photos from Edgecombe County now available

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oral histories photos

The cover of the Agriculture in Edgecombe County event program

New materials from Edgecombe County Memorial Library are now online and include additions to the M.S. Brown Photography Collection as well as sound clips, transcripts, and photographs from the Oral History of Agriculture in Edgecombe County project.

The Oral History of Agriculture in Edgecombe County project was completed in 1987 and is comprised of interviews from farmers and those who worked in farm-related industries in Edgecombe County. This project culminated in a live event held at the Edgecombe Community College Auditorium on October 11, 1987 that included a lecture and discussion about topics covered in the oral history interviews. The event program reads, “the interviews vividly tell the story of how the country’s farmers, farm women, merchants, manufacturers, and extension agents helped shape farm life during a period of time characterized by involvement of the federal government, mechanization, the growth in size of farms, the decline of tenancy, and the loss of farm-related jobs.” The original cassette tapes containing the interviews have been digitized and transcripts are available for many of the interviews. These oral histories give a wonderful glimpse into the daily life of farmers in Edgecombe County, and speak to how farm life changed from the Depression-era through the late 1980’s.

Additions to the M.S. Brown Collection include more images of school life, events and parades, and houses and businesses in Edgecombe County, all taken by Tarboro citizen M.S. Brown.

To view these materials visit the links below:

To see more materials from Edgecombe County Memorial Library, visit their partner page or take a look at their website.

A photograph from the M.S. Brown collection showing people at the Tarboro tobacco market.

Central Carolina Community College’s latest batch of photos features images from the Nursing, Paralegal, Secretarial Science, Telephony and Associate Arts and Science Programs.

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Another batch of photos from Central Carolina Community College is now available on DigitalNC. This new batch brings the exhibit, A Pictorial History of Central Carolina Community College, to just over 2,400 photos.

Photo of first graduating class from CCCC's Licensed Practical Nursing program

First graduates of the CCCC’s Nursing degree program

This batch documents the Nursing, Paralegal, Secretarial Science, Telephony, Associate in Arts and University Transfer Associate in Science programs.

Featuring photos from as early as their first graduating class in Lee County on March 25, 1964 and on into the 1990’s, the images from the Practical Licensed Nursing degree program demonstrates the evolving student body, curriculum, technology and, of course, nursing uniforms.

Secretarial Science student using a floppy drive

Likewise, the Secretarial Science program gives viewers a glimpse into how this profession evolved as technology did. In particular, these collection of images capture the exciting transition from typewriters to early desktops.

Telephony students training on telephone pole, 1966

In contrast to these programs, the Central Carolina Technical Institute Telephony and Electrical Linemen program’s set of photos display the waning profession of telephone linemen and women. These set of photos present the hands-on training students received as they worked with lines, wires, circuits and telephone poles.

Hands-on training is further demonstrated in many other class photos. One of interesting example, comes from a Psychology class that appears to be engaging in some kind of simulation activity that included persons in costume and law enforcement officers. While it is unclear exactly what the activity entails, it is clear that the students were having fun participating.

Pyschology class exercise

 

 

To learn more about Central Carolina Community College, please visit their contributor page or their website. To see more photos like this, check out the Images of North Carolina Collection.

Students help bring new light to the Wilmington riots of 1898

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behind the scenes newspapers underrepresented

In July, the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center was pleased to welcome a group of middle school students from Williston Middle School and Friends School Of Wilmington. With them were writers Joel Finsel and John Jeremiah Sullivan and staff from the Cape Fear Museum, all of whom worked with the students over the past semester.  This visit was the culmination of a project for the students who had studied the Wilmington riots of 1898 and worked specifically with original copies of the Daily Record, held by the Cape Fear Museum. 

Original issues of the Record, which was the Black-owned newspaper in Wilmington in the late 1890s, are incredibly hard to find: their offices were destroyed during the riots.  (Learn more about the riots on NCpedia.)  The museum staff brought along their copies of the paper, as well as original copies of the reaction to the riots as found in both Black-owned and white-owned papers across the country.  We scanned all of the materials on site with help from UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries’ Digital Production Center staff. Students watched and got to learn more about our work.  Now all of those materials are online not only for future students to work with, but for anyone from the general public to access.  

To learn more about the students’ work, read this great article from the Wilmington Star News . As the article states: “The project is still looking for any more copies of the Record that might turn up… Anyone who finds one is urged to email dailyrecordproject@gmail.com.”

And to view more newspapers on our site, visit our newspaper site here. 

New partner and new yearbooks – Winchester Avenue High School from Union County Public Library

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underrepresented yearbooks

Thanks to our new partner, Union County Public Library, DigitalNC now features 3 yearbooks [1956, 1958, and 1962] from Winchester Avenue High School, which was the Black high school in Monroe, North Carolina.  Winchester first opened as a K-12 school serving the Black community in the 1920s.  It was an important institution in Monroe’s Black community, serving as a community center and point of pride for the many students who graduated from the school.  That all changed in March 1966 when a fire heavily damaged the school.  The high school students and teachers were sent to Monroe High School for the remainder of the 1965-1966 school year, making it the first fully integrated high school in the state. Though plans were already in place for the students to attend Monroe in the 1966-1967 school year, the fire forced the time table for this to speed up. It was particularly hard on some of the seniors of Winchester, who thought that they would be the last graduating class of the historic school. The extra celebrations that were being organized for the “last” class never took place. The lower grades of Winchester were able to continue the school year in the building that was undamaged as well as the gymnasium. It is also believed that the community center and some area churches housed some students.*  

 

One of Winchester’s graduates is a trailblazer whose story has been highlighted very recently, Christine Darden. Darden is a retired engineer and executive from NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, and her story is one of the one’s highlighted in the book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.”  Darden [Christine Mann is her maiden name] attended Winchester School through sophomore year before transferring to the Allen School, a boarding school in Asheville in 1956.  She served as a sophomore class officer while at Winchester. 

To learn more about our new partner, Union County Public Library, visit their partner page here.  To see more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit here.

*Thanks to Patricia Poland for additional information related to the school fire and its aftermath.

Meeting minutes and newsletters from Raleigh’s Oakwood neighborhood now online

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Newsletters and meeting minutes from our new partner, The Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood, are now available on DigitalNC. The Oakwood neighborhood is located in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, and is known for its historic Victorian era housing. The neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

The digitized meeting minutes cover 1972-2001, and document various board and committee meetings of the Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood. These minutes give insight into neighborhood initiatives through the years including event planning,  building preservation projects, board elections, and fundraising.

Part of a feature on how to attract bluebirds in the July 2002 newsletter.

The digitized newsletters cover 1973-2006, and were created to keep everyone in the neighborhood up to date with local happenings. Becoming longer and more elaborate over time, the newsletters include messages from the SPHO president, event calendars, club meetings, neighborhood awards, and short articles about municipal issues. Popular annual events that are covered include the candlelight and garden tours, the neighborhood jazz brunch, the July 4th picnic and parade, and an annual pig pickin’.

Event info in the October 2002 newsletter.

To browse the collection of meeting minutes and newsletters, click here.

To learn more about The Society for the Preservation of Historic Oakwood, take a look at their partner page or visit their website.

 

Francis B. Hays tells the story of Hurricane Hazel

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memorabilia scrapbooks

Included in the latest batch of Francis B. Hays scrapbooks from Granville County Public Library is one entirely about North Carolina’s devastation from Hurricane Hazel which struck in October 1954.  The scrapbook mostly contains newspaper clippings from the aftermath of the storm, which is still one of the biggest hurricanes to ever hit the state.  The focus of the clippings are not only on the Oxford area, where Hays lived, but across the state, particularly the Raleigh area and the coast, which were especially hard hit.  

To see more scrapbooks from Francis B. Hays, visit the exhibit page here and learn more about them in previous blog posts here, here, and here.  To see other Hurricane Hazel related materials on DigitalNC, visit here.  

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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.

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