Farewell, The Clock Tower [1970]

The North Carolina School for the Deaf was founded in 1891 in Morganton, NC, located in the western part of the state. In a move to separate hearing impaired students from vision impaired students, whom all had a place under one school in Raleigh that went by the demeaning name of the North Carolina Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind, funds were established for the school at Morganton. The first brick laid for the school (with a name close to it’s sister school; the North Carolina School for the Deaf and Dumb) was by two future pupils, Maggie LeGrand and Robert C. Miller, on May 16, 1892. Doors were opened to 100 pupils on October 2, 1894. In 1907, the name officially changed to The North Carolina School for the Deaf (Class Book, images 17-18).

Graduating class, Class of 1915

Funds from the state’s building program and a W.P.A. grant in the early 1940s allowed the school to construct cold storage, fencing, barns, a poultry house, playgrounds, an athletic field, as well as renovate school buildings to be properly fireproofed and ventilated (The Deaf Carolinian, image 22). Fast-forward to 1965, and the school has a large campus, with buildings both original and new.

Arial view of the campus made in 1965, The Clock Tower [1970].

References:

North Carolina School for the Deaf. Class Book, Class of 1934 North Carolina School for the Deaf. https://lib.digitalnc.org/record/237179?ln=en#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=17&r=0&xywh=77%2C118%2C2410%2C1464

North Carolina School for the Deaf. The Deaf Carolinian. https://lib.digitalnc.org/record/237183#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=21&r=0&xywh=455%2C2058%2C2900%2C1762

Thanks to our partner, Rowan Public Library, Boyden High School and Livingstone College yearbooks are now available on our website. This batch includes yearbooks from 1941 for Boyden High School and 1930, 1946-1947 for Livingstone College.

Livingstone College is a historically Black college located in Salisbury, North Carolina. In 1879, the college was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church and was just a single building on 40 acres of land. In 1887,  the school was renamed from Zion Wesley College to Livingstone College in honor of David Livingstone—a philanthropist, explorer, and Christian missionary. Today, the college consists of more than 15 buildings on over 300 acres of land with over a thousand enrolled students. 

In 1904, Salisbury High School was founded in to educate children of the area. Twenty-two years after its founding, in 1926, the school’s name changed to Boyden High School after a new school building was built. The school remained Boyden for almost 50 years until the name was reverted back to Salisbury High School in 1971. 

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

To view our North Carolina African American high school yearbooks, visit our African American high schools collection.

For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.