1. Dress up like a character from your favorite cult classic.
This is a perfect excuse to re-watch low budget movies from the ’80s!
Ocracoke School Halloween Carnival [1995]
2. Dress like your future self.
Pull out your cardigans, print button-downs, and homemade cookies!
Cedar Mountain Community Club Scrapbook [1985]
3. Embrace the classics and dress your baby like a pumpkin!
The Kings Mountain Herald [2004]
Cedar Mountain Community Club Scrapbook [1992]
The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.) [1984]
4. Dress like something unintentionally creepy.
On Halloween night, even something as simple as a Cabbage Patch costume can look unsettling!
Cedar Mountain Community Club Scrapbook [1985]
Cedar Mountain Community Club Scrapbook [1982]
5. Relive your childhood and dress like a beloved childhood character.
Take inspiration from the Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, and Dora the Explorer costumes below!
Albemarle High School Student Newspaper [1987]
Ocracoke School Halloween Carnival [1995]
The News-Journal (Raeford, N.C.) [2002]
6. Match with your friends.
Pick a movie, character, or theme for everyone to follow!
University of North Carolina at Asheville Student Newspaper [2018]
The Transylvania Times, May 3, 1956.
Thanks to our partner, Transylvania County Library, new issues of The Transylvania Times are now available on our website. This batch includes issues from the years 1941 to 1975, adding over 1,000 issues. Published weekly, the paper focuses on education updates (such as at Brevard College and high school), music camps and performances, local and national news, and community events. Featured articles and topics from this batch include the end of World War II and the fight against polio.
Present in many issues of The Transylvania Times are advertisements and articles highlighting polio—information on the disease, how to keep your household safe and sanitized, and March of Dimes fundraisers. In 1955, the poliomyelitis (polio) vaccine was made available in the United States. In the same year, the March of Dimes organization had one of its largest fundraising efforts with the hopes of raising enough money to vaccinate nine million 1st and 2nd graders throughout the United States. In the Brevard branch of the organization, citizens were encouraged to donate what they could and to donate again. The more that the community donated to the organization, the more doses of the vaccine could be created and distributed across the country. Unfortunately the Cutter Incident (where some batches of the vaccine contained live polio virus) significantly decreased the distribution and the American people’s faith in the vaccine. Eventually that faith was restored with a revamped system of regulating vaccines and development of more polio vaccines such as the Sabin oral vaccine. Twenty-four years after the release of the first vaccine, in 1979, the United States was declared polio-free.
The Transylvania Times, January 9, 1964.
To learn more about the Transylvania County Library, please visit their website.
To view all issues of The Transylvania Times, please click here.
To view more newspapers from around North Carolina, please click here.
Today we’re taking a look at the most-viewed items on DigitalNC.org for 2018. Yearbooks and newspapers are the most populous and popular items on our site, so it’s no surprise that they took four of the five slots. What rose to the top and why? Take a look below.
#1 Pertelote Yearbook, 1981
Contributing Institution: Brevard College
This year our most viewed single item on DigitalNC was the 1981 Pertelote yearbook from Brevard College.
The Pertelote was popular due to the apprehension of a mailbombing suspect in October of this year and his ties to several North Carolina schools. Cesar Sayoc was a student at Brevard College in the 1980s and his photograph can be found in several locations within the 1981 yearbook, including this club photo from page 134.
#2 The Outer Banks Fisherman
Contributing Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
On a lighter note, the second most popular item on our site was a film from the early 1980s entitled “The Outer Banks Fisherman.” It features Freshwater Bass Champion Roland Martin fishing on the Outer Banks. This film had a few particular days of internet popularity when it was mentioned on a couple of North Carolina hunting and fishing forums.
#3 North Wilkesboro Journal-Patriot Newspaper, December 8, 1941
Contributing Institution: Wilkes County Public Library
The third most popular single item on DigitalNC was the December 8, 1941 issue of the North Wilkesboro Journal-Patriot newspaper. You can tell from this striking headline that it was published the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. This paper generally received referrals via Google all year, but we’re not sure which search terms were leading users to this page so consistently.
#4 The Franklin Press and Highlands Maconian Newspaper, April 23, 1953, page 9
Contributing Institution: Fontana Regional Library
Many of our referrals come from Facebook, and that was the case with this fourth most popular item. It was featured in the Facebook Group “You May Be From Franklin NC If…” The original poster stated that Group members had looked for photos of the Old County Home over the years, and that they had recently uncovered this newspaper page which includes pictures of the Home’s state in 1953.
#5 The Daily Tar Heel Newspaper, September 2, 1986
Contributing Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Facebook sharing also boosted this item’s rating, after the UNC-Chapel Hill University Archives asked for memories of the legal drinking age being raised to 21 in 1986 and the “send-0ff” on Franklin Street before the law came into effect. They shared a quote from a police officer as well as a link to the article below, which documents the damage and disgruntlement caused by the downtown party.
Thanks for coming on our tour of the top DigitalNC items from this year. For the curious, we topped 4 million pageviews and 400K users in 2018! We’re looking forward to working with partners to share even more of North Carolina’s cultural heritage in 2019.
33 issues of The Transylvania Times have been newly added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Transylvania County Library. These are the first issues of the Transylvania Times digitzed on DigitalNC, covering from January to August 1933. The Times joins other newspapers that cover Brevard and Transylvania County, including the Brevard News, the Sylvan Valley News, and the Echo.
At that time of publication, the Times was a weekly newspaper, including local news, some national news, comic strips, brief prayers, and news about the local schools and colleges. In the article to the right, the Times announced the creation of Brevard College, a private college in Brevard, North Carolina. It was created after Weaver and Rutherford Colleges were merged to create a single co-ed Methodist Junior College on the property of the Brevard Institute. Judging from the article, the townspeople were very enthusiastic about the decision, with congratulations pouring in from as far as Charlotte. Brevard College eventually opened in the fall of 1934.
Gaining the Transylvania Times to our collection is invaluable to helping us learn about the life of North Carolinians in Appalachia in the beginning of the 20th century. To browse through other materials from the Transylvania County Library, take a look at their partner page, or check out their website.
In today’s blog post I offer a break from the current election year with a trip back to the 1968 presidential election. Looking at the political landscape of 1968 is like looking at an earlier but familiar view of the same neighborhood we’re in now. It’s issues resonate today: striving for social and racial equality, debates over America’s place on the world stage. The late 60s were boiling with the turmoil of the Civil Rights Era and the Vietnam War. 1968 alone saw the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in early April and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in June.
In April 1968, Time magazine held a mock presidential primary at colleges and universities to take the temperature of young Americans during that election year. Dubbed “CHOICE 68,” the event was covered in many of the student newspapers that can be found on DigitalNC, and I wanted to see what this nation-wide event looked like here in North Carolina.
Sample Choice 68 Ballot, printed in Asheville-Biltmore College (now UNCA) newspaper The Ridgerunner, March 1, 1968.
Every American college and university was asked to participate in CHOICE 68. The event was governed by a group of eleven students representing a variety of campuses around the country. Campus groups were in charge of publicizing the event with their peers, under the direction of a campus coordinator. Each ballot (an early draft is shown at right) asked students to rank their top three choices for president and also asked for them to weigh in on Vietnam and the “urban crisis,” the latter of which referred to pervasive concern over poverty, crime, and general unrest in high population urban environments. Write-in candidates were also allowed. Votes from all campuses were tabulated by a UNIVAC computer in Washington, D.C. and the results were supposedly announced on television, with each school’s individual totals being returned during the first week of May.
Before the vote, student newspapers urged their readers to rally against apathy, to prove that young voters could impact the national arena. One Brevard College editorial called on moderates to vote, expressing frustration that liberal and conservative activists had been “hoarding the headlines.” An accompanying editorial talked about the conservatives still being committed to rooting out Communism, revealing lingering echoes of McCarthyism from the late 50s. It predicted a 1968 election win for then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan.
Campuses with active student government associations and/or political groups tended to have more events and publicity associated with CHOICE 68. North Carolina Wesleyan College’s student body listened to speeches in support of Senator Eugene McCarthy (D), former Vice President Richard Nixon (R), and current Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D), three of the most prominent contenders in early 1968. Voting booths, borrowed from the City of Rocky Mount, housed students punching out chads of computer cards to cast their votes.
Headline from the April 25, 1968 issue of The Twig, Meredith College.
Some schools had hundreds of participants, with 500 Elon students voting in the mock election. Others had fewer; thirty students were questioned at Meredith College. The Twig quoted opinions from four of those 30 (two Republicans and two Democrats) in the issue seen at right.
Salem College appears to have been one of the most enthusiastic participants, with articles about CHOICE 68 found in issues spanning January through May and a voter turnout of 73% of the eligible student body. The February 23 issue of The Salemite talked about how President Lyndon Johnson endorsed the national mock election despite the fact that “student dissent over the past year ha[d] been directed primarily against White House policies.” The April 12 issue asserted that “massive student participation in CHOICE 68 can and will affect the course of American politics in 1968.”
Almost all articles about the vote mentioned the UNIVAC computation of results, which was seen as heralding a new era in which computers could make generating results faster and more secure. The Meredith College Twig published a photo of the computer tabulating results in its April 25 issue (shown above). Dr. Hammer of UNIVAC posited a time when “a huge data bank may contain ‘voice prints’ of eligible voters” to authenticate those phoning in their votes (“A Letter from the Publisher,” Time, May 10, 1968, page 21).
Of the North Carolina schools* whose CHOICE 68 results I could locate, McCarthy came out on top for all except North Carolina State University, where Nixon prevailed and McCarthy came in second. Nixon was the second choice for 7 schools, and Nelson Rockefeller (R) carried second choice at the remaining 3.
The national CHOICE 68 vote also saw McCarthy in the lead with 286,000 out of 1.7 million votes from 1,450 campuses. Robert Kennedy (D) and Nixon followed behind McCarthy. Students voted to reduce the United States military presence in Vietnam, and saw education as the biggest key to solving the “urban crisis.”
Though he won the CHOICE 68 vote and continued to be bolstered by student support through the primaries, McCarthy was beaten by Humphrey to gain the official Democratic nomination. The November election was won by Nixon, however the CHOICE 68 voters’ preference for a Democratic candidate was somewhat predictive: Humphrey prevailed with voters under 30 in the general election.
As far as I can tell, no nationwide poll quite like CHOICE 68 has been held since, though speculation over how college-aged Americans will vote certainly hasn’t changed. If you’re interested in other historical election news and opinion as reported by student newspapers, visit the North Carolina Newspapers collection.
November 5, 1968 issue of the Louisburg College Columns student newspaper. Students picked Nixon in a straw poll held close to the general election.
*It appears that the following schools also participated in CHOICE 68 based on mentions in newspapers and yearbooks, but no results were found: Appalachian State University, High Point College, Lees-McRae College, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Queens College, and University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
From the Brevardier [1965], page 97
7 new yearbooks from the Transylvania County Public Library are now available on DigitalNC. The yearbooks document the lives of students and teachers from Brevard High School, Rosman High School, and Brevard College.
The yearbooks from Brevard High School may be of particular interest because of their many humorous photos and captions. While all of the yearbooks on DigitalNC document the distinct character of a given school, some are a bit more dramatic than others. The editors of this batch of yearbooks from Brevard definitely had a sense of humor!
Brevardier [1964], page 49
You can see all of the newest yearbooks at the links below:
To see more yearbooks or learn more about the Transylvania Public Library, please their contributor page or the website.
April Fool’s Day is upon us. (We thought Google Chrome’s support for emoji translation could be really useful for transcribing some of our newspapers!) These days it seems April Fool’s is mostly played out online, with websites jockeying for the best prank. Taking a look through DigitalNC’s Newspaper Collection shows that pulling pranks on April Fool’s via [print] media is nothing new.
The oldest reference found to April Fool’s Day in the newspapers is from The Wilson Advance in 1897, which reminded its readers which day it was and to be on the alert for pranksters. The small news item gives a glimpse of what April Fool’s jokes entailed in the late 1890s. (for context, $10 in 1897 would equal approximately $268 today)
Starting with the 1937 April Fool’s Day issue of the Clarion from Brevard College, which is the first appearance of an April Fool’s themed paper in NC Newspapers, it appears that special April Fool’s Day editions of student newspapers were popular across North Carolina, as they remain today if you browse through some campus newspapers online. Some of the funnier news headers we found included a color by number of Elon’s Pendlelum in 1999 and the 1991 Goofordian [regularly the Guilfordian] from Guilford College, which also noted that you can read all about the debate over the sweatiest professor on page 2.
To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, visit the North Carolina Newspapers collection and to view specifically more papers from April 1 through the years, check out the “Today in North Carolina History” section on the right side of the page.
Elon’s The Pendulum staff publishes their ACC picks in 1991.
As you scramble to fill out your brackets, we at the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center thought it would be fun to see how the ACC tournament has been discussed across the state throughout the years since the tournament started in the 1950s. While we all know the big names in the tournament who call North Carolina home, many of the state’s smaller institutions have had a lot to say on the tournament over the years as well, even if their own school or anyone from their town is not participating. A look through the newspapers we have in DigitalNC shows that North Carolina is truly basketball country, especially in March.
The columnist from the Clarion, Brevard’s student newspaper, in 1979 describing the tournament atmosphere in NC much as one finds it today.
The quote from the article above, from 1979, goes to show that the hyper-attention on the tournament is nothing new. Productivity in North Carolina during this week in March has always been rather low!
Elon’s student newspaper sports columnist in 1994 brushes off criticism for focusing on the ACC tournament by noting Elon doesn’t participate in any yet.
It seems that all the sports columnists in both town and other institution’s student newspapers had an opinion to offer on who they think will win the tournament that year and overall commentary on the tournament and how it stands up to others for the sport. Many of the columnists remark that having grown up in North Carolina they always followed the tournament, and so brush off any criticism over the fact their own school isn’t participating so why offer commentary?
Headline for an article from Louisburg College’s “Columns” student newspaper in 1964, arguing the ACC tournament does not properly reward the best team in the ACC.
The other student newspapers across the state don’t tend to pick between the big blue rivalry. This is from the Clarion, Brevard College’s student newspaper, in 1979.
Duke and Carolina is the repeated rivalry throughout the sports columns discussing the tournament. There is even a column from Raeford’s The News-Journal that laments that North Carolina State University beat Duke in the first round of the tournament, noting that Duke was clearly the best team in the country.
The airlines got in on the ACC fun too. This photograph from Piedmont Airlines’ company paper shows the winner of their ACC trivia contest, with a prize of roundtrip tickets to the tournament in 1981.
To view more ACC tournament news from the past and check out more North Carolina newspapers in general, visit the North Carolina Newspapers page. And as the NC Digital Heritage Center staff’s only bias is for all things North Carolina, we wish the Wolfpack, Deacons, Blue Devils, and Tar Heels well this week!
Today is May Day, the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. In pre-Christian Europe, May Day celebrated springtime fertility with festive community gatherings, and the tradition has continued into the Christian era. Later, European settlers to America brought May Day celebrations across the Atlantic.
Here in North Carolina, May Day was especially celebrated on college and university campuses by crowning a May Queen and sometimes even by dancing around a May pole.
The May Queen and her court at Bennett College. From the 1963 edition of the Bennett Bell, the Bennett College yearbook.
When Montreat College was a women’s college, students sometimes dressed as both male and female members of the May Court. From the
1936 edition of
The Sundial, the
Montreat College yearbook.
May pole dancers at Montreat College would weave over and under each other until the ribbons were tightly braided around the May Pole. From the
1936 edition of
The Sundial, the
Montreat College yearbook.
The following microfilmed newspapers were selected for digitization in 2017-2018. Thanks to supplemental funding from the State Library of North Carolina, we were able to complete more reels than in previous years. Reels were chosen from nominations according to our Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm.
Title |
Years |
Nominating Institution |
Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.) |
1927-1947 |
Alamance County Public Libraries |
Carolina Indian Voice (Pembroke, N.C.) |
1977-1995 |
UNC Chapel Hill |
Carteret County News-Times (Morehead City, N.C.) |
1948-1960 |
Carteret County Public Library |
Charlotte Post |
1971-1987 |
Johnson C. Smith University |
The Cherokee Scout (Murphy, N.C.) |
1944-1988 |
Murphy Public Library |
Duplin Times (Warsaw, N.C.) |
1962-1985 |
Duplin County Library |
Enterprise (Williamston, N.C.) |
1934-1942 |
Martin Memorial Library |
Farmville Enterprise |
1942-1947 |
Farmville Public Library |
Franklin Press and the Highlands Maconian (Franklin, N.C.) |
1943-1960 |
Fontana Regional Library |
The Franklin Times (Louisburg, N.C.) |
1925-1944; 1963-1969 |
Louisburg College |
Hertford County Herald (Ahoskie, N.C.) |
1914-1923 |
Chowan University |
Journal-Patriot (North Wilkesboro, N.C.) |
1947-1950 |
Wilkes County Public Library |
Mount Airy News |
1917-1929 |
Surry Community College |
News-Record (Marshall, N.C.) |
1976-1988 |
Madison County Public Library |
Perquimans Weekly (Hertford, N.C.) |
1944-1989 |
Perquimans County Library |
Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.) |
1948-1965 |
Southern Pines Public Library |
The Roxboro Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) |
1927-1935 |
Person County Public Library |
Smithfield Herald |
1901-1911 |
Johnston County Heritage Center |
Transylvania Times (Brevard, N.C.) |
1933-1940 |
Transylvania County Library |
Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) |
1950-1963 |
Watauga County Public Library |
Waynesville Mountaineer |
1952-1956 |
Haywood County Public Library |
Winston-Salem Chronicle |
1997-2016 |
Forsyth County Public Library |