Urban slave quarters at the Bellamy Mansion in Wilmington, North Carolina
The Bellamy mansion slave quarters are a rare example of the antebellum urban building type. The two-story brick structure has five rooms, including two five-seat privies and a laundry.
The property lies within the boundaries of the Wilmington Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, Timothy B. Tyson, author (UNC Press, 1999)
Radio Free Dixie tells the story of Robert F. Williams (February 26, 1925 – October 15, 1996), an influential black activist who is considered by many the father of the Black Power movement.
In the late 1950s, as president of the Monroe, North Carolina, branch of the NAACP, Williams and his followers (most of whom were World War II veterans) used machine guns, dynamite, and Molotov cocktails to confront Klan terrorists. Advocating “armed self-reliance” by blacks, Williams challenged not only white supremacists but also the civil rights establishment.
During the 1960s, Williams fled the United States after being falsely charged with kidnapping a white couple. While living in Havana, Cuba, he broadcast “Radio Free Dixie,” a program of black politics and music that could be heard across the United States— and then China. In 1962, he published Negroes with Guns, a book that detailed his disagreement with pacifist civil rights activism.
Williams was allowed to return to the United States in 1969 and officially exonerated in 1976. He continued his involvement with the NAACP and at his funeral in 1996, Rosa Parks hailed him for his courage and commitment to freedom.
Dr. Tyson is an acclaimed author, civil rights activist, Senior Research Scholar at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, and Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at the Duke Divinity School.
Piedmont blues legend Etta Baker (March 31, 1913 – September 23, 2006) on the blues. Ms. Baker was born in Caldwell County, North Carolina. She worked in a textile mill and, along with her husband, raised nine children. She didn’t start performing on stage until she was 60 years old. She played and recorded her music until her death at the age of 93 in 2006.
![Church fan displaying portraits of African American mayors Howard N. Lee, Robert B. Blackwell, Carl B. Stokes, Clyde Foster, Charles Evers, and Walter Washington. On reverse of fan is an advertisement for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company; photographers unidentified. [ca. 1970 - 1980]
Howard Lee (b. July 28, 1934 in Georgia), a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was elected mayor of Chapel Hill in May 6, 1969. He was the first African American elected mayor in a predominantly white southern town since Reconstruction.
Mr. Lee remains active in public service and currently is executive director of the North Carolina Education Cabinet.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz6jdb6bvc1qd382lo1_1280.jpg)
Church fan displaying portraits of African American mayors Howard N. Lee, Robert B. Blackwell, Carl B. Stokes, Clyde Foster, Charles Evers, and Walter Washington. On reverse of fan is an advertisement for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company; photographers unidentified. [ca. 1970 - 1980]
Howard Lee (b. July 28, 1934 in Georgia), a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was elected mayor of Chapel Hill in May 6, 1969. He was the first African American elected mayor in a predominantly white southern town since Reconstruction.
Mr. Lee remains active in public service and currently is executive director of the North Carolina Education Cabinet.
Chavis Park Carousel
Chavis Park opened in Raleigh, North Carolina on July 2, 1937. Named after prominent educator and minister John Chavis, the park was the result of a WPA effort to improve recreational options for black citizens, who previously had very limited access to city parks. It was equipped with a swimming pool, picnic areas, a professional baseball field, tennis courts, a playground, and at its center, a beautiful Allan Herschell Co. carousel. The site drew black families from all over North Carolina.
After public facilities were integrated in the 1960s, the park was downgraded and attendance sharply declined. The carousel suffered from years of neglect. It was restored in 1982. On February 18, 2012, the city held a groundbreaking ceremony at Chavis Park to launch a $2 million upgrade. Among the improvements will be a new carousel house.
The carousel is listed on the National Register as a historic landmark and is one of two vintage carousels in the city of Raleigh.
The Selective Buying Campaign began in July 1968, as an organization called the Black Solidarity Committee for Community Improvement demanded changes in welfare, housing, and employment practices in the city of Durham, North Carolina. The boycott ended on February 16, 1969, by all accounts, successfully.
Chapel Hill native Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten (January 5, 1895 – June 29, 1987) was a self-taught blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter. She is best known for her timeless song “Freight Train.” Ms. Cotten was declared a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts and was later recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as a “living treasure.” She received a Grammy Award in 1985 when she was ninety, almost eighty years after she first began composing music.
Video: ”Washington Blues” and “I’m Going Away” by Elizabeth Cotten (1965) (by humbatron)
Malcolm X speaks at a rally in Durham, April 18, 1963. The event was originally scheduled for the N.C. Central University campus but was banned there and moved to a lodge on N. Roxboro Street.
Photo courtesy of the Durham Herald Sun.
Two years later, on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan. He was 39 years old.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The story of black presence in America is as rich and about as old as America itself. From the lesser known names like the Bucks of America, who defended Boston during the American Revolution, to Mum Bett, the slave who sued her slave owner and won her freedom — plus back wages — in 1781. And it continues on to the better known names of former slaves and abolitionists like Lewis Hayden and Frederick Douglass. Now add this name: Mary Walker. Walker was an enslaved woman who fled north to freedom and ended up owning one of the more famous houses in the Boston area. It’s one of the best known houses on Brattle Street in Cambridge, in the heart of Harvard Square, immortalized in poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who lived not far away. (via Harvard Square’s Blacksmith House Has Untold Connection To Runaway Slave | WBUR)
Mary Walker, born a slave in Durham County, North Carolina. In 1848, she escaped from the state’s wealthiest slave-holding family, the Camerons of Raleigh.
(via minorjive)
Walter Fenner “Buck” Leonard (September 8, 1907 - September 27, 1997) was a celebrated first baseman. The Rocky Mount, North Carolina native began his career in 1933 with the Brooklyn Royal Giants. He moved on to the Homestead Grays in 1934, remaining there until his retirement in 1950. The Grays were considered one of the greatest baseball teams— of any race— of all time. Leonard and Gibson helped the team win nine straight league championships from 1937 to 1945, with a repeat performance in 1948. The legendary Negro League players were both inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.
In 1952, a 45-year-old Leonard was offered a Major League contract. He declined.
“I was not ‘bitter’ by not being allowed to play in the major leagues,” said Leonard. ”I just said, ‘The time has not come.’ I only wish I cold have played in the big leagues when I was young enough to show what I could do. When an offer was give me to join up, I was too old and I knew it.”
Hotel Alexander, one of the Nation’s Finest and most Exlusive and Newest Negro Hotels, Charlotte, N.C., McDowell at Ninth Street.”
Postcard published by Tichnor Bros., Inc., Boston, Massachusetts
The Hotel Alexander was the only hotel serving blacks in Charlotte during the 1940s. Visiting celebrities such as W.E.B. Du Bois stayed there. It was a hub for African American social life in the community.
North Carolina Postcard Collection, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Pauli Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985)
North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill (photographer, date unknown)
The Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray was a civil rights activist, women’s rights champion, lawyer and writer. In 1965, she became the first African American to receive a JD degree from Yale University. In 1977, she became the first black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray was sent to live with family members in Durham, North Carolina after her mother’s death in 1914. Her 1956 memoir, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family, chronicles the history of her extraordinary family from the mid-nineteenth through mid-twentieth century.
Most of what I post here is history. These are the images and accounts of how people worked, raised families, built communities, worshiped, maintained relationships, expressed themselves and coped with changes and challenges in the past. The subjects of these posts are usually people of color.
Martin Luther King jr with his mother & wife Coretta Scott. OR Coretta Scott King with her husband...
Pyrographic image of a woman carrying a drum. Reads “Sierra Leone.”...
United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from...
Chinese workers picking olives on the Quito Ranch, California, 1905.
