The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has now digitized over 1,000 yearbooks. Fourteen different colleges and universities have participated in the program to date, and many more are scheduled to participate over the next year. The yearbooks on the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection range in date from 1890 (UNC-Chapel Hill) to 2009 (Elon University, Campbell University, and Meredith College). Whether you’re researching family history, looking up old sports teams, or reliving your college years, the online yearbook collection is a great place to spend some time.
Student yearbooks from North Carolina Central University are now available on DigitalNC. The yearbooks, from the James E. Shepard Memorial Library, cover over a half-century of the school’s history, from 1939 to the present, with one early volume from 1929 also available. The image displayed here shows the yearbook staff from 1929.
We are excited to announce that the final issues of The Carolina Timesare now available on the DigitalNC website! Our site now hosts 3,811 total issues of the Durham-based African-American newspaper spanning from 1937 to 2020. With the publication of its final issue in 2020, The Carolina Times cemented its long legacy of promoting the interests of the Black community in Durham and across the nation. Thanks to funding from UNC Libraries’ IDEA grants over the past 3 years, we have been able to complete this work and expand access to this important piece of North Carolina history.
The paper shuttered after the death of its longtime publisher Kenneth Edmonds at the age of 66. Edmonds was the grandson of founder Louis Austin. Described as “the most important voice for freedom in Durham and in North Carolina” from the 1920s through the 1970s, Austin was a staunch advocate for Durham’s Black community and a powerful force behind local voter registration and school integration efforts. His descendants continued his work, as Edmonds and his mother Vivian “didn’t miss an edition” in the 1970s, even after a fire believed to be a result of arson destroyed the Carolina Times‘s building. Read more about Louis Austin, Kenneth Edmonds, and the family’s powerful legacy here.
In its final years, The Carolina Times continued to be a voice for social justice, especially through the fraught presidency of Donald Trump and the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Below is one example of the Carolina Times’s reporting that focuses in on the experience of the Black Americans.
One exciting find in these final issues is a shoutout to none other than DigitalNC! As the below article suggests in what can only be described as a full circle moment, these uploads of The Carolina Times are invaluable to researchers, genealogists, and anyone interested in exploring local issues in Durham’s Black community.
While the closure of The Carolina Times is a loss for North Carolina and the larger Black press landscape, we are honored to make these issues available digitally and contribute to the paper’s preservation. To explore all available issues of The Carolina Times on our website, click here. For a look at other local North Carolina newspapers, click here.
We are excited to welcome a new partner and announce our first batch of materials from Tri-County Community College! Founded in 1964, TCCC is located in Murphy, NC in mountainous Cherokee County. The materials in this upload include over 40 course catalogs and 8 yearbooks from 1975-1985, providing researchers with a trove of information on the programs and students of TCCC from 1967 to the present day.
We are happy to announce the addition of three new yearbooks from King’s Mountain High School in King’s Mountain, N.C., contributed by our partner the Mauney Memorial Library! These issues of Milestones cover the years 1970, 1971, and 1973 and depict classic ’70s fashion, hair, and wisdom. These yearbooks are full of snarky captions, allusions to the political issues of the era, and insights into the state of modern life.
Located just outside of Charlotte, King’s Mountain High School is still active today. Its rich history is well-represented on our site, with yearbooks dating from 1939, photographs, and programs. Do you recognize anyone you know? To view more yearbooks from other schools across North Carolina visit The North Carolina Yearbook collection linked here.
Three Charlotte-area high school yearbooks are now available on DigitalNC, thanks to our partners at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library! 1953 and 1954 yearbooks from West Mecklenburg High School have been added to our existing collection of West Mecklenburg High yearbooks. These volumes are now the earliest West Mecklenburg High available on the site. We are also excited to upload a new yearbook from Paw Creek High School. This 1951 yearbook depicts a slice of North Carolina teenage life in the early 1950s, and is our first from that decade.
Thanks to our partners at the Davidson County Public Library, we have made available a new batch of materials from Churchland School, Lexington High School, and various churches in Davidson County. These include yearbooks from Churchland School and Davidson County Community College, which give researchers a glimpse of life in mid-century North Carolina and may include familiar faces! Additionally, we have added new issues of The Lexhipep, Lexington High School’s student newspaper, as well as one 1944 issue of an anti-alcohol newspaper titled To-Morrow.
While we have several Kittrell College bulletins available on DigitalNC, this batch brings us our first yearbook issues for the college which are from 1960, 1968, and 1969. In addition, the yearbooks in this batch from Middleburg High School fill in previous gaps on DigitalNC with issues from 1938, 1939, 1947, 1948 and 1949.
To learn more about the Granville County Public Library, visit their website here.
Thanks to our partners at Campbell University, you can now explore Buie’s Creek High School yearbooks on DigitalNC’s website. This batch has materials from 1948- 1977, that’s almost thirty years worth of memories. These high school yearbooks are a great way to see what school was like for students in Harnett County. Yearbooks are popular because of they contain so many photographs, and have a level of organization and labeling that is helpful in identifying folks. Not to mention, flipping through an old yearbook is nostalgic.
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.
