Contributions of Vance County People of Color now available on DigitalNC

The book Contributions of Vance County People of Color by Ruth Anita Hawkins Hughes is now available on DigitalNC.  Thanks to a request from a community member, the folks at Granville County Public Library, and UNC Libraries, we were able to digitize this book.  

Four black and white photographs, top left is a woman in a large white dress who is sitting posed, top right is a child in a white dress standing posed, bottom left is a woman on the phone and the bottom right is a woman in a white nursing outfit holding a dog

Photographs of people discussed in the book are included

Written in 1988, the book contains vignettes about many Black residents of Vance County during the 20th century.  The book is broken up into chapters about farm families, and town families, and then by different occupations in the county.  An amazing resource particularly for genealogists, Contributions… is full text searchable, making it easy to search names quickly!  

To view more materials about the Black community in North Carolina, visit our African American newspapers collection and our general collection here.


The Star of Zion newspaper now on DigitalNC

Thanks to funding from the North Caroliniana Society and from the UNC Libraries IDEA grants, one of the oldest African American newspapers in North Carolina, and the longest continuously published, is now online.  The Star of Zion, which is still published today, began publication in 1876 by the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church.  Issues covering 1884 through 1926 are now on DigitalNC, digitized from microfilm.  The earliest years we digitized are published in a few different places, including Petersburg, Va. and Salisbury, NC.  Beginning in 1896, the paper moved publication to Charlotte, NC where it is still published today.  

Front page of the Star of Zion paper, features several formal posed photographs

Issue highlighting the 1923 graduates of students at schools affiliated with the AME Zion Church

The topics covered by the paper are heavily focused on church activities, including reports from pastors across the country about their localities.  Other topics are also covered, including commentary on political issues of the day.  The papers in 1884 feature the full Republican ticket for the presidency and down, which the editors heartily supported.  The issues in the later years have a wider focus on both issues of the day and church news. 

Quote from Star of Zion paper

An editor’s note from the November 19, 1986 issue.

A rather interesting feature that also pops up often in the paper is a presence of a real rivalry with other denomination based African American publications in the state.  One particularly humorous note was posted by the editor in the November 26, 1896 issue of the paper, noting that the Africo-American Presbyterian was lauding the honorary degree Biddle University (now Johnson C. Smith University) had conferred on George White, elected to serve in the 2nd Congressional District from NC (and the last Black Congressman to serve before Jim Crow).  The editors of the Star noted that Livingstone College, the AME Zion affiliated school in North Carolina, had already given one to him in May of that year.  College and religious rivalries are timeless. 

Screenshot of text from a newspaper editorial.

 Note from the Editor of the Star of Zion in the November 26, 1896 issue

To view more North Carolina African American newspapers, visit our exhibit.  To view more projects supported by the UNC Libraries IDEA Action grants, visit these posts.  


33 Titles from NDNP now available on DigitalNC

The title image for the Progressive Farmer, a farming weekly based out of Raleigh, N.C.

Starting this week, we will have an update every Friday on new titles being added to our newspaper collection during a year-long project to bring already digitized content from the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) and Newspapers.com onto the DigitalNC newspaper platform. 

This week we are sharing a list of the many new titles on DigitalNC that were brought to us by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) in conjunction with the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries. 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. While you can currently search all of the NDNP issues on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website, adding those same issues to our  newspaper database will allow you to search that content alongside the other papers on DigitalNC.  The titles in this batch include:

Over the next few weeks we will be uploading more newspapers from 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.


Microfilmed Newspaper Nominations Selected for Digitization, 2021-2022

Back in August, 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 300+ nominated. This year we’ve chosen the following titles and years.

Title Years Nominating Institution
The Alleghany Times / News / Star-Times (Sparta, N.C.) 1933-1947 Alleghany County Public Library
The Charlotte Labor Journal and Dixie Farm News (Charlotte, N.C.) 1939-1953 UNC Charlotte
The Daily Record (Dunn, N.C.) 1963-1965 Campbell University
The Eagle (Cherryville, N.C.) 1942-1954 Cherryville Historical Museum
The Highlander (Highlands, N.C.) 1937-1978 Highlands Historical Society
The Kings Mountain Herald (Kings Mountain, N.C.) 1958 Mauney Memorial Library
North Carolina Catholic (Nazareth, N.C.) 1946-1968 Catholic Diocese of Raleigh
The Roanoke News (Weldon, N.C.) 1923-1944 Halifax County Library System
The Valdese News (Valdese, N.C.) 1938-1950 Burke County Public Library
The Yadkin Ripple (Fort Bend, N.C.) 1893-1944 Yadkin County Public Library

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 2022. 


St. Andrews University Yearbooks now available on Digital NC

Digital NC is happy to announce the 2012 – 2014 additions of the St. Andrews University Yearbooks. The yearbooks detail student club life, such as the Forensics Club, and student-athletes such as Women’s Basketball.

St. Andrews University is located in Laurinburg, North Carolina. The university was established as a merger in 1958 between two schools and has since grown to now include a graduate degree program.

Women's Basketball

Women’s Basketball at St. Andrews University

To view from St. Andrews University, including additional yearbooks and student newspapers, visit them here.

To view our collection of North Carolina Yearbooks, visit here.


New Additions of the Green Line Newspaper Now Available!

GreenLine Newspaper

Title of GreenLine Newspaper

Digital NC is happy to announce the new additions of the Green Line Newspaper, 1987 – 1994. The Green Line newspaper was a local newsletter in Asheville, North Carolina, part of the North Carolina Green Party for the Western NC Green Movement. While many of their initiatives surrounded environmental causes within the community and the state and aligned with the NC Green Party, the newsletter was editorially independent. Within the newsletter, stories ranged from discussing the local election and potential candidates to environmental issues such as water issues and conservation within the community.

The newsletter was released once a month to interested parties. Individuals could also write into the newsletter and submit their thoughts and questions as part of the “The Green Line Effect.” The newsletter was free to individuals in 70 different locations or could be mailed for the year.

To learn more about the Green Line Newspaper, check them out here. To view more newspapers, visit our North Carolina Newspaper Collection.

Special thanks to our partner, the Buncombe County Public Library. To view more from Buncombe County Public Library, please visit their partner page.


Variety of Person County Materials Now Available

Thanks to our partner, Person County Public Library, a batch of materials including a variety of North Carolina maps, a video of Bill Clinton’s visit to the state in 2008, pamphlets and books about North Carolina history, and more are now available on our website.

An older Black woman sits on the porch of her home.

Morse Gardner

An interesting work from this batch is the book, Let me tell you ’bout … when I was growing up. It contains transcribed interviews with older members of the Person County community which were conducted by elementary school students using tape recorders. The recordings were later transcribed and published into this book. The interviewees in this book were quite a diverse and exciting group. The interview with Morse Gardner (pictured above) being one of the most gripping. In her interview, Morse Gardner goes into great detail about her education and family, old medicinal remedies, her thoughts on segregation, and her community growing up.

To learn more about Person County Public Library, please visit their website.

To listen to oral histories available on our website, please click here.


1960s era yearbooks from Columbia High School now on DigitalNC

Seven yearbooks from Columbia High School in Columbia, NC are now online, thanks to our partner Tyrrell County Public Library.  The yearbooks, which cover several years in the 1960s, help to fill out the set from Columbia already on DigitalNC, with now almost a full set running from 1947 to 1972.  

Black and yellow plaid cover of a yearbook

1964 yearbook cover

Yearbook cover for 1966 Columbian with orange paw prints

1966 yearbook cover

Blue text on a gray background for the 1967 Columbian

1967 yearbook cover

To learn more about Tyrrell County Public Library, please visit their partner page.  To view more yearbooks, visit our North Carolina Yearbooks Collection.


Videos from Mitchell Community College now on DigitalNC

Over 30 videos from Mitchell Community College are now on DigitalNC.  They include fall convocations, variety shows from the 1990s, and even a set of commercials that promoted Mitchell Community College programs such as computer technology that aired in 1990.  

Two students sit at a table looking at notebooks with bookbags on the table.

Two students in the library in a clip from footage shot around Mitchell Community College’s Statesville campus.

To view more content on DigitalNC from Mitchell Community College, visit their partner page.

To view more community college content from across NC, visit our Community College exhibit here. 


New Issues of UNC Charlotte’s The Carolina Journal Now Available

The Carolina Journal header. The subtitle reads: the student newspaper of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Charlotte, North Carolina.

Thanks to our partner, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), 55 new issues of UNCC’s student newspaper The Carolina Journal are now available on our website. This batch expands our current holdings of the newspaper to include issues from 1976 to 1978. The Carolina Journal covers topics such as college athletics, social events, problems and issues related to campus, and more. 

One problem reported on by The Carolina Journal was the lack of beer at the Jam-Up UNCC event. Traditionally, the event had included “bare legs, bare feet, good music, sunshine and beer,” according to writer Brad Rich. But that year, 1977, the beer was missing and students were curious as to why.

Rich’s investigation into the problem did not yield any definitive answers, but created even more questions. According to the Dean of Students, student fees were considered state money and since they were considered the state’s money, it was against state ABC laws for the University to buy alcohol. The Dean says the reason they were allowed to buy beer before was simply because no one was held directly responsible for the purchase of the alcohol. The former Attorney General, however, stated that the administration at UNCC did not definitively know if student fees counted as state money, but were afraid if they asked that all the money, such as what they earn on athletics, could fall under the control of the Board of Governors. To read the “Why No Beer? article in its entirety, please click here.

To learn more about the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, please visit their website.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click 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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