1960 Sit-Ins: Two announcements

The Virginian Pilot newspaper is looking for first-hand accounts from participants in the February 1960 sit-ins. If you have a story to share, or know anyone who has a story to share, please send it to daily.break@pilotonline.com

I will be speaking on the Elizabeth City sit-ins of 1960 on February 17, at 3:30, in 107 Gilchist Complex. The title of the talk will be “A Sixty-Year “Counter” Reflection: The 1960 Sit-Ins at W.T. Grant’s Elizabeth City store.”

Marvin T. Jones of the Chowan Discovery Group coming to Elizabeth City

Just a heads up: Mr. Marvin T. Jones of the Chowan Discovery Group will be speaking at the Museum of the Albemarle on noon on Monday, February 3. Mr. Jones has done some research on those Hertford County natives who were members of the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. On this day he will be speaking on the mixed-race landowning community in Hertford County during the era of Jim Crow. The title of his presentation will be “A Community of Free People–The Winton Triangle.” The MOA is located at 501 South Water Street, Elizabeth City.

Hope to see you there!

Being property, receiving property

NOTE: This is part two of two in a series on slaves and wills.

 

During antebellum times in North Carolina, especially east, where many plantations slave labor camps (let’s not be afraid sometimes to call them what they were) existed, it was not uncommon to see slaves listed as property in wills and other such documents.  But on rare occasions, sometimes slaves actually received property through a will.

The Hollowell family had been landed gentility since the late 1600’s, when Thomas Hollowell received a grant of land on Little River in Perquimans County.  One of his descendants was John Hollowell (1782-1855), the original owner of Bayside Plantation in Pasquotank County.  The famous house on that plantation was built after his death.

(The Museum of the Albemarle possesses many items from this plantation.  We should all be grateful that the Hollowell family chose to donate these materials to the people of North Carolina).

In 1854 John Hollowell had an unusual will written up.  He had no children, so he made arrangements to have his estate, including his plantation, passed upon his wife’s death to his cousin, Christopher Wilson Hollowell (1821-1892).  The reason for this arrangement went beyond family ties: Christopher was the manager of John’s plantations.  He also was in charge of the plantations of the other major planter in the area, James Cathcart Johnston, whose plantation Christopher Wilson Hollowell also later inherited.  Today the U.S. Coast Guard Base is located on some of the nearly 800 acres that made up Hollowell’s Pasquotank plantation.

Included in this 1854 will is an unusual provision:

“it is my wish and desire that my slaves whose names follow shall be paid by my executor, the following sums of money… Miles Hollowell, $25; Dave Reed $25; Reuben Hollowell $25; Harry $20; Alfred $20; Aaron, $20; Dave Hunter $20; Joe $10; Charles $10; Davis $5; Venus $20; Cherry $20; Betsy $15; Fanny $15; Jane $20; Eliza $15; Sarah $10; Clarissa and her four children, $40; Charity and her three children $30.  I hereby request to my executor here in after named to see that the money bequeath to my Slaves Shall be properly and usefully laid out by them. And I further request my executor and devisees to treat my servants well and have them properly cared for as I have endeavored to do during my management of them.”

What does this interesting document suggest to us about slavery?

First, note the names of the slaves.  Reuben and Miles Hollowell were given the last name of their owner, a common practice.   Two had another name (Dave Reed, Dave Hunter). But the others had no stated last name at all.

A 2019 legal document that would identify a person only by the first name would be unacceptably imprecise.  Unless, perhaps, we are referring to the late Prince Rogers Nelson, Cherilyn Sarkisian, Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, or Gordon Sumner–better known, respectively, as the singers Prince, Cher, Beyonce’, and Sting.   In most cases, the only living creatures that usually get only first names are, well, pets (and tropical storms/hurricanes).

Does the fact that most of the slaves in this will had only first names suggest that these human beings were treated the same as we treat pets now?

Not really.

We generally treat pets today better than many plantation owners treated their slaves.

In all fairness, it would seem that this will implies that John Hollowell indeed had some care and concern for them.  He may well have, as the will states, “properly cared” for them.  After all, he did leave them some money in his will.  That says something.

That said, sometimes slave owners would free slaves when they had no children to which to distribute their slaves.  John Hollowell chose to keep them in bondage and to give them to his cousin/plantation manager.

That also says something.

Was the amount of money willed to these slaves significant?  For the time, absolutely.

If we look at inflation records, we will see that $40 in 1854 would be worth nearly $1,200 today ($20 would be $600, and so forth).   $1,200 might not be able to buy us all that much in terms of modern comforts, but it could go a long way towards purchasing the barest necessities.   A starving student, for example, could enjoy a disgustingly large number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with that kind of money.

According to 1850 census data, in North Carolina a day laborer who received free board would be paid about $7.21 a month.  In that regard, $40 would represent almost six months of wages.

Not bad.

Would $40 have been enough for a slave to purchase his or her freedom?  Not even close.  By the 1850’s in North Carolina it cost nearly $1000 to purchase an able bodied slave.  In the Deep South, where cotton was king, the cost was higher, nearly double that amount.

Let’s put it this way: if all of the slaves who received money from the Hollowell estate had pooled their money together, they still likely would not have been able to purchase freedom for only one.

If we had the choice today between $1200 or our freedom, would any of us choose the money?

Is “escheat” another word for cheat?

The word for the day is “escheat.”
And by “day”, I probably should pick a day from a long time ago.  Let’s try January 14, 1324 (why not?), since the word “escheat” goes back to the days of feudalism, when kings (as powerful landholders) would grant land to nobles in exchange for certain duties and obligations.  If a noble died without a legal heir, that land could revert back to the king, so the process could start over again.
This process of reversion is referred to as escheatment, and the English crown held the right of escheat.
After the United States became a nation, in the state of (former English colony) North Carolina, escheatment was a right held by the state.  If a property owner died without heirs, the property reverted to the state.  What happened to this property is clearly described in North Carolina’s state constitution:
“all the property which has heretofore accrued to the State, or shall hereafter accrue from escheats, unclaimed dividends, or distributive shares of the estates of deceased persons shall be appropriated to the use of the University.”
This university was the University of North Carolina, which was established late in 1789 in the town of Chapel Hill.  This institution was the first public university in the United States.
From this time on, there existed an Escheat Fund containing the unclaimed or unclaimable assets of dead North Carolinians.  By 1971, the fund contained over $4 million.
Is this significant?  What does this have to do with African-American History in North Carolina, or with the title of this blog?
Good questions deserve answers.   Yes, this is significant, and it is definitely relevant in understanding the experiences of African Americans living and dying in the Tar Heel State.
First, the University of North Carolina included only one campus until 1931, when the Consolidated University of North Carolina was expanded to include the institutions identified today as North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina–Greesnboro.  This means that the Escheat Fund assisted only traditionally white schools until 1971, when the General Assembly established the modern day University of North Carolina system, adding other state institutions, including Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State, North Carolina Central, Winston-Salem State, and North Carolina A&T State University.
Throughout their histories, these five historically black public institutions received less than their fair share of state appropriations.  Not only that, but they could not enjoy in the Escheat Fund either.
In other words, for most of the history of the Escheat Fund in North Carolina, the state’s African Americans were, well, cheated.
Let’s take this one step further–UNC-Chapel Hill, despite its progressive reputation, actively resisted the matriculation of African Americans.  It was not until 1951 that the first African Americans were able to enroll in the university’s prestigious graduate programs, and not until 1955 that undergraduates of color were allowed to wear Tar Heel blue as students.
Such permission came only as a result of legal pressure.  It wasn’t as if these students were made to feel desired or cherished.  UNC wasted a great deal of resources trying to keep them out.  For many years African Americans were paying taxes in part to fund a flagship university that they were unable to attend.
How many were cheated out of a first-rate education?
Let’s take this one more (uncomfortable) step further.  And, yes, I do mean uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, that comes along with the territory that consists of past terrain.
As I said earlier, around $4 million had made its way into the Escheat Fund by 1971.  That was a lot of money in 1971 (still is!), but if one looks at the long history of the fund, much of that money came into the fund well before a quarter was seen as mere pocket change.   Throughout much of the time between 1789 and 1971, two bits MEANT something.   We can surmise, therefore, that the Escheat Fund consisted of a lot of estates, and a great deal of property.
When we think of property today, we generally picture homes, cars, and maybe boats.  Maybe some large chunks of land.   When people list items in their wills, they will include said items, and perhaps some family heirlooms, like rare and expensive collectibles, or even some one-of-a-kind items.  But there is one thing that we will NOT see in a will, or in a list of property.
Human beings.
Human beings indeed.
Yes, in 2019 we (thankfully) do not see human beings listed as property.  But that was not always that way, as we all know.
Fact is, wills in antebellum North Carolina often included slaves as property to be passed down to heirs.   And, correspondingly, we may properly surmise that sometimes property owners who owned slaves as property died without a will, and when that happened, that that person’s property reverted to the state to be sold, with the proceeds going to the University of North Carolina (at Chapel Hill).
To what degree did slaves help build the University of North Carolina?  Even if they never set foot in Chapel Hill.
I know of no study or dissertation that has properly studied the history of the Escheat Fund in North Carolina.  I cannot say for sure at the moment how many slaves were included as a part of the property that escheated to the state of North Carolina and ultimately to UNC.
I wish I knew.  I wish I had the time to find out.
We do know that over 350,000 slaves total were emancipated by the end of the Civil War.  Many more before them were cheated out of any opportunity to enjoy freedom.
What I do know, however, is that slaves WERE included as property whose value was added to a Fund that no African American could enjoy until the early 1950’s.   Those who want to learn more can click below:
This is part one of a two part series on slavery and wills.  Next time we will look at a will and see a different side of slavery in northeastern North Carolina.

 

Back from Vacation, Ready for a New Season

Labor Day is behind us (and Hurricane Dorian is coming up behind us).  And that means that this blog is back in business.  In business once Dorian has left–and the power is back on.

Between now and Memorial Day, I will have at least ten (maybe twelve) new posts based on primary source research, including

  • A multi-part series on a rogue cop whose crimes against African Americans would lead to something somewhat resembling justice;
  • The early history of African American Catholicism in northeastern North Carolina;
  • Slavery and wills–two unusual discoveries;
  • A New Bern school that succeeded well before the first Rosenwald School was ever built;
  • Something from Gates County;
  • And more, including some research from my students.

 

African American Roman Catholics in North Carolina

During the summer vacation I have been working on my research on the history of secondary education for African Americans in northeastern North Carolina, 1865-1969.

That, as well as some landscaping and some other “This Old House” kind of amateurish home improvement work.  Hopefully the book will turn out better than the home stuff.

One might think that my research would cover only public education.  Not true.  I am looking at ALL schools that offered a secondary education (post-primary through high school).  And that includes Roman Catholic instruction at the St. Catherine’s School, a ministry of  St. Catherine’s Church, which was opened in 1940 by the Society of St. Edmund.   At that church Fathers Anderson and Robinson were truly community servants.

Useful archival materials can be found at both the Archives at the Diocese of Raleigh and also on the campus of St. Michael’s College, located outside of Burlington, Vermont.

St. Michael’s has placed many of its photographs on its Digital Collections Page.  Below is the link to pics from both St. Catherine’s (historically black) and St. Elizabeth’s (historically white).  Holy Family Church on North Road Street opened in the early 1980’s as an integrated parish, thereby closing down the already desegregated St. Catherine’s and St. Elizabeth’s.

https://cdm15819.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15819coll4/search/searchterm/elizabeth%20city

 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s 1966 visit to Edenton: Another “lost” primary source

From the May 6, 1966 Daily Advance.  Thanks to the editor of the 108 year old daily newspaper, Michael Goodman, for permission to reprint snippets from the past.
                                             “King to be in Edenton Sunday”

“Southern Christian leadership conference head, Dr. Martin Luther King, will appear in this eastern North Carolina town in connection with a progress report to be issued by the state Good Neighbor Council Sunday.
“King’s Speech, which has been billed as a major civil rights policy statement, will be to encourage “the citizens of eastern North Carolina to continue their struggle for human dignity and first-class citizenship, and to motivate them to seek a greater political and social justice,” according to a representative of the SCLC.
“D. S. Coltrane, chairman of the state’s Good Neighbor Council, will deliver the progress report on his agency. A brief news conference will proceed to the report.
“The speech will be given at the Edenton Armory. Dr. King is scheduled to speak at 8 p.m. after arriving from South Carolina.
“Charles Dunn, assistant to Governor Dan Moore; Dr. Walter Ridley, president of Elizabeth City State College and William Mitchner, Edenton mayor, will be on hand to greet King.”

Back from vacation…ready for a new season

Labor Day is behind us (and Hurricane Dorian is coming up behind us).  And that means that this blog is back in business.  In business once Dorian has left–and the power is back on.

Between now and Memorial Day, I will have at least ten (maybe twelve) new posts based on primary source research, including

  • A multi-part series on a rogue cop whose crimes against African Americans would lead to something somewhat resembling justice;
  • The early history of African American Catholicism in northeastern North Carolina;
  • Slavery and wills–two unusual discoveries;
  • A New Bern school that succeeded well before the first Rosenwald School was ever built;
  • Something from Gates County;
  • And more, including some research from my students.

 

 

 

 

 

“Martin King” (?!) comes to the Albemarle–another “lost” primary source

What appears below is a word-for-word transcription of the article “Martin King Will Visit Albemarle on Thursday” and is from the Wednesday edition, December 19, 1962 edition of the Daily Advance.  I would like to thank Mike Goodman, editor of the Daily Advance, for giving me permission, under fair use, to reproduce some of these forgotten primary sources that appeared in the paper.

I found it interesting, if not odd, that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was referred to in the title as merely “Martin King.”  (kind of like “Frank Roosevelt” or “Tom Jefferson”–accurate but just unusual).  One wonders if this was simply a space issue.

We DO know that some Elizabeth City State Teachers College students did attend that Edenton rally, as did ECSTC president Walter Nathaniel Ridley.    One of those students, Norris Francis (RIP), was a leader of the October 1963 sit-ins at the Central Restaurant.

“Martin King Will Visit Albemarle Thursday”

“Dr. Martin Luther King of Atlanta, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and integration leader, will appear in Elizabeth City, Hertford and Edenton on Thursday, it was announced today.
“King’s visit is being sponsored by the Albemarle Improvement Association, Dr F. C. Cook, president; Pasquotank chapter of the NAACP, with John Maben as president, and the SCLC, headed by the Reverend J. E. Trotman.
“A motorcade, representing churches, clubs, fraternal groups and interested citizens, will meet Dr. King on US 17 south of Morgan’s Corner at 2:45 p.m. and escort him to Elizabeth City.  He will appear at St. Stephen Baptist Church at 3:30, Mount Lebanon AME Zion Church 4 p.m. and Corner Stone Baptist Church at 4:30 after which he will confer with ministers of the area.
“King is scheduled to appear at First Baptist Church in Hertford and then go to Edenton where he will speak at a rally in the National Guard Armory at 8 pm.
“King is a graduate of Harvard University and has traveled extensively.”

Special Presentation in Washington, D.C. this Saturday: U.S.C.T. from Winton, N.C.

For readers who live in the Washington D.C. area, I would like to call to your attention a presentation this Saturday, May  4, by Mr. Marvin Tupper Jones.  His presentation is entitled “The Winton Triangle’s Civil War and Its Soldiers of Color.”

A native of Hertford County, N.C. and a proud graduate of the C.S. Brown High School, Mr. Jones is the executive director of the Chowan Discovery Group (http://chowandiscovery.org/).  This organization researches, documents, preserves and presents the Winton Triangle’s history.

I met Mr. Jones recently at a national-level conference.  His talk on the identities of U.S. Colored Troops who lived in the Winton area impressed me for its attention to detail; I presume that his talk on Saturday will rehash much of what he shared in April.  The contributions of those approximately 198,000 African Americans (179,000 in the Army, 19,000 in the Navy) who fought for the Union during the Civil War have barely begun to be recognized.  After all, Robert Shaw (remember the movie “Glory”?) was only one commander.

Mr. Jones will be speaking at 9:30 am, at the Rock Creek Nature Center, 5200 Glover Road NW, Washington, D.C.  After the presentation there will be a pay-as-you-go lunch at Ledo’s Restaurant at 7435 Georgia Avenue NW.   If you live in the area, please feel free to attend.  I am sure you will be as impressed as I was.