As we chip away at newspaper digitization with the North Carolina Newspapers digital project, we often marvel at the amount of work left to be done. We’ve made great progress so far — digitizing well over 60,000 pages in the past year and a half — but there are many millions more to go.  However, we sometimes come across especially rare titles that remind us that we should be grateful for those papers that we do have: there are many historic papers from North Carolina that simply have not survived.

Issues of the Louisburg College Student Newspaper are now online at DigitalNC.org. The available issues date from 1908 to 1998, covering the school’s transformation from an all-female institution to a coeducational one in 1931. The student newspaper underwent a number of title changes throughout the years, publishing as “Louisburg Echoes”, “The Gull”, “The Sea Thean” (a play on the two literary societies – the Sea Gift and the Neithean Society – that co-published the newspaper), and my personal favorite, the “Lo’ Co'”, before finally settling on “Columns” in the early 1940s. “Columns” is still published today as the school’s alumni magazine.

The issue of the News-Journal from Raeford, N.C. published on this day in 1969 includes photos of the entire graduating class from Hoke County High School.  It’s a great example of a small-town paper reaching out to the local community, and also gives visual evidence of Hoke County’s success in finally integrating its public school system.

Judging from a battle of the ads between Camel cigarettes and Chesterfield cigarettes in the Maroon and Gold, the student newspaper of Elon University, the 18-24 demographic was a priority target for ad men as early as 1936. Throughout Volume IX of the Maroon and Gold, spanning the 1935-1936 academic year, Camel regularly placed ads on the penultimate page of an issue, while Chesterfield secured space on the back page.

Camel and Chesterfield were a North Carolina tobacco rivalry. The R.J. Reynolds Company, which produced Camel cigarettes, was based in Winston-Salem; operations of Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, which produced Chesterfield cigarettes, at the time were located in Durham. Since the debut of Camel cigarettes in 1913, the Chesterfield brand had emerged as a strong competitor.

 

In these 1936 ads from the Maroon and Gold, Camel appealed to college students’ strained budgets and even suggested that smoking Camels improved stamina while studying. Chesterfield, on the other hand, attempted to entice college men and women alike with their cigarettes’ smooth taste and sexually suggestive ads.

 

 

“Camel’s money-back offer still open to college smokers!” Maroon and Gold, February 15, 1936, p. 3.

 

 

“The Call for a Milder better tasting cigarette.” Maroon and Gold, February 22, 1936, p. 4.

 

“I know Miss Hepplewhite but I venture to say that by 1937 all the girls will be smoking them…They’re mild, you see and yet They Satisfy.” Maroon and Gold, March 21, 1936, p. 6.

A selection of historic issues of the Marion Progress, a weekly paper from Marion, N.C., are now available in the North Carolina Newspapers collection.

There are over 150 issues online, from the years 1916, 1929, and 1940.  These years were selected by the McDowell County Public Library because of their coverage of major events in the county.  There were devastating floods in the area in 1916 and 1940 and a major textile strike in 1929.