A Raleigh crowd, who in 1931 had not yet seen a helicopter (they weren't on the scene for a few years still) and were only a few years removed from the Wright Brothers first flight, were fascinated when the famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart "dropped in" in her Beech-Nut Autogiro.
Arriving in an autogiro, the first aircraft of the sort to be seen in Raleigh, Miss Earhart literally dropped down on the field. Other planes may hover and swoop and glide over the field, but the autogiro with a whirl of its propeller, made a vertical descent and came to rest close by the airport hangar, a strange looking air visitor.
[...]
It would be hard to say which was the bigger attraction, Miss Earhart or the autogiro, and during the three days that they are in Raleigh the city will have opportunity to see both a number of times.
... Miss Earhart will give a demonstration flight at the Curtiss-Wright Airport. The general public is invited to attend this demonstration. Saturday evening Miss Earhart will deliver a fifteen-minute talk over Radio Station WPTF.
At the Saturday demonstration, Miss Earhart will show all the remarkable possibilities of this newest type of aircraft. The flying features of the autogyro are most spectacular. It makes short take-offs, steep climbs, stands still in the air, flies backwards and makes vertical descents with little or no runs. Many aviation autorities consider that the new type plane will be safe, practical and popular aircraft of the future.-- The News & Observer 11/7/1931
While Governor O. Max Gardner sent State Auditor Baxter Durham with official greetings for Miss Earhart, the Democratic candidate for governor, J.C.B. Ehringhaus was on hand and with his wife took a ride in the aircraft.
Librarians from the State Library, East Carolina University, and other libraries recorded the names and events of statewide importance on index cards and later on computer. That alphabetical listing of names and subjects are now available in a searchable database. This is not a full-text database of articles. The index provides citation information to use in accessing back copies of The News & Observer on microfilm.
Many public and academic libraries across the state have N&O microfilm. Local libraries that don't have those back issues can borrow microfilm from the Government & Heritage Library at the State Library of North Carolina.
You can make it better!
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software was used to mechanically transcribe the original index cards as they were scanned. Because the typed text can be hard to read, the software sometimes "guessed" wrong.
State Library staff worked to clean the card topics to make them searchable, but in order to make the index available sooner, it was released with those guesses and with typos. Users who find typos can click on the "see a typo" link and submit the corrected information.
Indexes from 1978 to 1981 that were originally published electronically and in book form are not included in this index. Plans are underway to add those entries.
Fulltext searchable archives of The News & Observer are available back to 1990. Links to both the fulltext archive and the 1926-1992 index can be found under Research Tools to the right.
For one former vaudeville star, the thrills of the stage took a back seat to the excitement of Raleigh.
There's no business like show business," but there are more thrills in pushing a hack.
At least this is the opinion of Harry Russell (Bob) Luken, 55-year-old Raleigh cab driver.
Luken quit show business in the 1930's and came to Raleigh where he got a job driving a cab.
During his more than 25 years of pushing a hack in the Capital City, he has had many races with the stork, and only lost three.
He has been twice robbed at gun-point and on another occasion fought off a bandit armed with a "long switch-blade knife."
Luken has also raced with death numerous times. Once he lost, and his fare died en route to a hospital.
"I was born and raised in show business," Luken recalled. "Born in Philadelphia, went to school in Newark, N. J. and completed one year at N. Y. U. I was in vaudeville for years. Professional acrobat. Did the flying return. I was a flier, if you know what I mean...
"But in 1930 talking pictures came along and vaudeville folded. For a while I worked in outdoor shows. This was a summertime thing. In the winter of 1937 I came to Raleigh looking for work. A fellow gave me a job pushing a hack. I've been doing it ever since ..."
Luken said he would never forget the night he delivered the first baby.
"I got called to E. Worth Street," he recalled. "This woman said she wanted to go to the hospital. She said she was in a hurry, but all expectant mothers I've hauled seem to be afraid they won't get there in time.
"It was about 2 a.m. Suddenly she began screaming and moaning. I pulled over to the side of the road. She was right -- there hadn't been enough time.
"I delivered the baby in the back seat of the cab, then drove her to the hospital. She and the baby did fine," Luken beamed proudly.
The other two races with the stork in which Luken placed second occurred in much the same way. The mothers and babies also "did fine."
Luken picked up a man at the bus station in 1940.... At the end of the line the man asked how much was owed.
"I told him 35 cents," the cab driver said. "He said he wasn't going to give me 35 cents, that he might give me 25 cents. We had just gone up from 25 cents to 35 cents for anywhere in Raleigh.
"He pulled a long switch-blade knife on me. I pulled a 25 caliber automatic from my shoulder holster. He threw 50 cents on the floor, jumped from the cab and dived into some bushes.
"I shot the bushes. I didn't have any idea of hitting him. He jumped about six feet in the air, yelled and took off again ..."
Other bandits were more successful, however.
Luken picked up a fare at the corner of Dawson and Martin streets who appeared to have a stiff leg.
"I didn't think much about it. We haul all sorts of people," Luken said....
"We were near Chavis Heights when I felt the muzzle of a rifle against the back of my head.
"The guy ordered me to stop the car. I was slowing down when the guy yelled 'I said stop this car or I'll blow your head off.'
"I told him I wasn't about to stop suddenly while he had his finger on the trigger ... He really cleaned me. He took $14.85 cents, my little pocket knife, my cigarette lighter.
"Then he asked what I had in my shirt pockets. I told him my cigarettes. I had about a half a pack. He took the cigarettes. The other shirt pocket contained matches. He took those too.
"I told him how much trouble it was to get a chauffer's license reissued, and asked him to please leave mine on the seat. He took the papers out of my wallet, left them on the seat. But he kept my wallet ..." The News & Observer 7/14/1964
Triangle Home Movie Day on Saturday October 20 from 1 pm to 4 pm. kicks off a week of activities in recognition of Archives Week in North Carolina. All activities will take place at the State Archives of North Carolina at 109 E. Jones St. in Raleigh.
The theme of this year's Archives Week is "Journeys to Justice: Civil Rights in North Carolina."
On Monday October 22 from 10 am to 3 pm, documents, letters and photographs will be on display in the Archives Search Room. From 10:30 to 11:30, archivist Ashley Yandle will present "Armchair Historians: Tools You Use At Home or on the Go."
On Thursday, October 25, from 9 am to noon, the Friends of the Archives will sponsor "Digitizing and Remote Sharing of Family Materials" a workshop about digital preservation of family papers and photographs and the ease of sharing family information through digital formats. This workshop is free for Friends members and is $10 for non-members. Register for this event at 919-807-7310.
The State Archives in Raleigh will host this year's Triangle Home Movie Day Saturday October 20 from 1pm to 4pm.
Starting in 2002, Home Movie Day gives families a chance to view and share their home movies and to learn how best to care for them. Local film archivists will be on hand to discuss the long-term benefits of film versus video and digital media and the role that home movies play in preserving our cultural history.
In the days before recording moving images was as easy as whipping out your cell phone, communities across North Carolina were excited by the arrival of the Camera Man, Lexington's Herbert Lee Waters. Waters, who died in 1997, made a few extra dollars during the Depression by filming local communities and then showing the films in local movie houses with an admission fee of five or ten cents. Many of these films still exist and housed in the H. Lee Waters Film Collection at Duke. Some are housed at the State Archives and are viewable online.
In 1986, The Charlotte Observer's David Perlmutt profiled Mr. Waters.
They called him the Camera Man, a one-man, traveling movie studio who wanted to put every man, woman and child in the Carolinas on the silver screen. He went from one dusty town to the next, on the road sometimes six days a week, his Pontiac loaded with clothes and camera equipment, maneuvering thousands of miles of mostly dirt stretches full of bends and ruts. In small-town theaters, his films had to compete with the likes of Bogey, Gable or Myrna Loy and Will Rogers.
But Herbert Lee Waters perhaps had a bigger draw. He filmed local people, doing local things, like working in the cotton mills and factories or marching in a Veterans Day parade in Salisbury, gabbing at the Feed Well Cafe in Roxboro and dancing outside a Great Falls, S.C., school. Then there was the local football team butting heads with the cross-county rival in York, S.C. Things that die, but never grow old.
Now, at 83, Waters - who still runs the second-floor H. Lee Waters Studio in downtown Lexington that he bought 60 years ago - is considered something of an important documentarian, at least of his day and region. His films, shot from 1936 to 1942, were simple, with no sound or story line. But they showed life as it was and the sensitivity, vibrancy and neighborly ways of Carolinas towns in the last days of the Depression.
"All of his photos and films were documents, " said Tom Whiteside, himself a filmmaker and visiting artist at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro who has taken a recent interest in Waters's work. "His films give a very faithful document of what small towns in the Carolinas looked like 50 years ago. And they're all very personal, because one guy made them."
Waters is a wiry, gentle man who stands about 5 feet 2, still climbs the 28 stairs to his studio two at a time and often rides a Honda 400 motorcycle to get around town. Nearly a half-century later, his films are popular. And the smaller the town the better, H. Lee Waters always says. Everybody knows each other in small towns, he says. The big cities are full of strangers.
Waters seems delighted with all the attention, but humbled by the notion his films possess importance.
"I saw it as a business and I had a lot of fun doing it, met a lot of wonderful people, " he said. "I was like everybody else during the Depression looking for business. But I never gave it too much thought that my films would be valuable or important.
"I not only made a little money to make ends meet, but it seems like it has turned out to be a service to these towns."
Earlier this month, Waters's films of Great Falls were shown at the town's branch of the Chester County Public Library. People left reminiscing - many crying, said librarian Kay Evans.
"We must have had over 200 people show up, some from as far away as Spartanburg and Columbia, " Evans said. "We're a small branch library, and I had to show it four times so everyone could see it. The film has brought life back to Great Falls.
"The film is a part of history that needs to be preserved. It's got everybody talking."
It is that way everywhere in the 100 or so towns that Waters put on film. He was - and still is - primarily a still photographer, snapping portraits, group shots and wedding photos. But his studio was seeing hard times in the midst of the Depression, and a photography friend suggested he take still photos of babies and flash them on the screen between features at the local theater. Waters liked the suggestion, but thought motion pictures of local people would be a novel idea.
It was. He tried it first in the mill village of Cooleemee near Mocksville, and it worked. The local folks flocked to the theater. After that, it was just sheer hustling that brought him regional fame. He turned the studio over to his wife, Mabel, and hit the road. By 1942, Waters had shot more than 100,000 feet of film in towns like Cliffside, Concord, Kannapolis, Forest City, Mebane, Chapel Hill, Rutherfordton, Monroe and Kings Mountain in North Carolina and Chester, Rock Hill, York, Lancaster and Gaffney in South Carolina.
The early films were black and white, the last two years shot mostly in color.
Waters was born near Shelby. His parents, Tom and Gertrude Waters, were millworkers. In 1912, the family moved to Lexington, and soon he was hanging around J.J. Hitchcock's photography studio. In 1925, Hitchcock sold him the studio and thus began Waters's cinematic romance with Lexington and the Carolinas. The studio cost him $2,000, but it was ill-equipped, with no artificial lighting, not even an enlarger. For years, Waters used the light from a skylight in the back of the three-room studio and bought a monstrous enlarger that he still uses. Now he has a good set of strobes. For movies, he bought the best 16mm camera Eastman made.
Waters has built a reputation as a restorer of old, faded photographs. His studio is a clutter, dimly lit and full of street scenes, portraits and work orders and records everywhere - on the walls, taped to an antique cash register and stacked on shelves.
Waters is a meticulous record keeper. He kept a detailed ledger of all the dates and ticket sales in the towns that he filmed. For instance, at the Majestic Theater in Fort Mill, he grossed $163.85 in ticket sales and $55 in advertising on May 7, 1942. Filming was prearranged by the local theater manager, days before Waters would arrive. On site, he normally spent two days filming, staying in local boarding homes to keep down costs. He sent his film to New York for processing. And a week or so later - after he'd passed out handbills, hung up posters and urged attendance using a loudspeaker bolted to his car - the film was shown at the local theater as an added attraction. Called "Movies of Local People, " they were advertised on the glittery theater marquee alongside the Hollywood pictures.
He left the road for good when his daughter Mary Elizabeth was born in 1942.
"After Pearl Harbor, everybody had money and weren't shy about spending it, " he said. "They needed me at the studio."
Waters refuses to quit working, climbing the stairs to his studio 30 times a week. In a hallway last week, he set up the same Bell & Howell projector he used to show his films decades ago. He threaded a color film taken of a Veterans Day parade in Salisbury in 1940. As the silent movie rolled and the projector clattered, he reminisced: "The color is beautiful; it's amazing how well it's held up, " he said. "This is a grand projector. When I was on the road, I didn't see any reason to be slipshod. I wanted to have the best there was, and I wanted to make the pictures look as sharp and vivid as the boys in Hollywood did it." -- The Charlotte Observer 5/11/1986
For the nearly 50 years of their marriage, one Raleigh couple had quite a story to tell about their wedding day. Writer Betsy W. Forrest told about the wedding all of Raleigh was invited to.
A strictly private wedding ceremony open to the public!
That's just what will take place next Saturday evening at Station WPTF in Studio No. 1 when Miss Margaret Fussell, staff pianist, and H. Felton Williams, radio engineer, speak their marriage vows before the microphone. Rev. E. Gibson Davis pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, will officiate.
The studio ceremony comes as the culmination of a real radio romance which began about a month ago.
It will be the first wedding to be broadcast over radio in Raleigh, and so far as H. K. Carpenter, head-man at the Station, is able to determine, it will be the first time it has been done in the South.
The first marriage ceremony to go on the air was that of Wendell Hall, the "red-headed music-maker" of Station WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, which took place in 1924. His bride was a member of the staff of that station.
[...]
The program of the wedding will consume 30 minutes of the day's broadcast, being on the air from 6:15 o'clock until 6:45 o'clock. After the ceremony, regular programs scheduled for the evening will continue from the studios.
The staff orchestra, The Blue Birds, will play the wedding music, Claiborn Mangum singing the nuptial numbers, Kingham Scott will preside at the organ, playing the wedding march.
Since the ceremony will be witnessed only by staff members and the families of the contracting parties, the studios will be closed to the public from 5 o'clock until 10 o'clock Saturday evening. The studio with its decoration, altar, and wedding setting will be open for inspection from Saturday at noon until 5 o'clock and all day Sunday so that those who would like to view the scene of the event may do so.
Following the ceremony, the bridal couple will be feted at a studio reception tendered them by their co-workers. During the ceremony there will be no one in the studio except those who have, of necessity, to be there. Staff members will view the scene from the reception hall.
Miss Fussell and Mr. Williams are not the ones who conceived the idea of having their wedding broadcast. It was Mr. Carpenter who had the happy thought. And if it hadn't been for Mr. Carpenter's detective ability, or his insight into the hearts, so to speak, of those with whom he comes into daily contact, there would be no studio ceremony.
"You know," said Mr. Carpenter, "I had a notion that something was up between those two, and it was just a few days ago that I got it out of Williams. He was back at the controls and I had him where he had to stay put, and so I gave him the third degree -- put him on the spot. I even accused him of being married already and told him I was going to announce that fact when I went on the air.... Well, he came across all right, not right at that moment, but he made me promise that I would not say anything that night and he'd tell me the truth of the whole situation. So, here you are, or rather, here they are."
Miss Fussell and Mr. Williams were rather non-committal concerning the affair. It seems that the announcement has had a devastating effect upon the morale of the staff. "We've hardly been able to get anything done," said Miss Fussell, "and our plans are by no means complete."
"We don't in the least mind having the ceremony go on the air," said Miss Fussell. "We're both so much at home here that it seems the natural thing to do. Of course, the folks here have kidded us a good deal and all of us are pretty much excited about it."
Mr. Williams, when told by Mr. Carpenter that the newspaper wanted a story on the affair ... said, "I'd better look out or I'll have to go around this town wearing black glasses and a mustache."
Kingham Scott, staff organist and funny-bone tickler, has written a clever parody on the broadcast of the ceremony. This, of course, is entirely aside from the actual ceremony and will probably be used in the Wupetyfuf Revue this week. ...
The bride-to-be is popularly known as "Peggy" Fussell. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Fussell, of Goldsboro. She lived in Raleigh for several years before becoming associated with the radio station. She studied music under Mrs. W. J. Ferrell of this city and from the Southern Conservatory of Music in Durham. She made her radio debut in the fall of 1928, appearing from time to time on special programs. For about a year she has been a staff pianist and is well known to radio fans, and some time she has been singing before the microphone, playing her own accompaniment. The radio audience has been frequently entertained by Miss Fussell's own compositions which are of the popular type.
Mr. Williams is the son of Mr. and Mrs. H. E. Williams of this city and has between 8 and 9 years' experience in radio work. He is audio engineer at WPTF and has been with the local station about a year and a half.... His duties at the station consist of working at the control board, switching studios, checking remote control broadcasts and keeping the sound output at a constant level.
Controlling the volume of the tone of various speakers before the microphone, Mr. Williams has to increase and decrease the power according to the voice of the person broadcasting. "I told them," he said, "to be sure to get Peggy up close to the mike during the ceremony because her volume is low."
The engineer who will be at the controls when the wedding takes place jokingly said "When Felton says 'I do" I'm going to turn the volume up as low as possible, and when Peggy says it, I'm going to make it very low."
"We think it's going to be pretty nice having the wedding broadcast," said Miss Fussell, "especially since Mother and Dad may not be able to get there, then they can hear it all, even if they can't see us."
Mr. Carpenter is very enthusiastic about the whole plan and thinks it should prove a big success. "I hope," he said , "that the audience will get the spirit of this thing as we mean for them to get it and not look upon it as some publicity stunt, because it isn't"
And it isn't. To these two young people so perfectly at home among the staff of the station consider it the perfectly natural thing to have their wedding attended by their friends and heard by those to whose moods they cater each day. -- The News and Observer 2/22/1931
Before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1955, every summer brought new fears to North Carolina. Through repeated outbreaks in the 1940s and early 1950s, public swimming pools were shut down to discourage the spread of the virus. Movie theaters banned children, and families stuck close to home. The opening of school was delayed until summer outbreaks died down.
In 1944, the Catawba County town of Hickory worked with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to turn a local camp into an emergency hospital - in 54 hours. Officially, it was known as the Hickory Emergency Polio Hospital, but it lives in history as the Miracle of Hickory.
Another enterprising Catawba County effort was described by reporter Marse Grant in 1953.
The polio epidemic in Catawba County which has hit nearly 100 isn't preventing children at the Highlands Baptist Church from attending Sunday school even though the assembling of children in large groups has been banned.
Their resourceful pastor, the Rev. Roger E. Williams Jr., came up with a practical solution to the problem which was halving attendance in most churches. Why not have Sunday school and preaching services out of doors, at a drive-in theatre for instance? Management of the Hickory Drive-In Theatre thought the debris of the Saturday night crowd could be cleaned up in time for services Sunday morning.
Two weeks ago the first service was held and it was a resounding success. Beginning at 9 a.m., with the Sunday school lesson for children and adults, and ending with the pastor's sermon, the entire service was over by 10:30 a.m. The folks liked it and last Sunday morning more of them came - 303 to be exact, in 80 cars. By lifting the speakers in their cars, each family could hear well and vision was not made difficult by some woman with a big hat in front.
"It's a little unusual preaching under these circumstances, " Pastor Williams said, "but the response of the people has made every effort worthwhile. We plan to continue the practice as long as the polio ban is in effect. Our attendance is running better than it normally does in the summer at our church and folks stay for preaching here, " he added with a smile.
Cars are greeted at the entrance by "ushers" who pass out church bulletins, record slips, and a copy of Charity and Children, Baptist Orphanage paper which is usually given out in Sunday School. Early arrivals are treated to recordings of well-known hymns. The offering is taken in a systematic manner and it totaled $621.87 the first Sunday.
The roof of the projection booth and concession serves as the rostrum. After sweltering in the hot sunshine the first Sunday, an awning was stretched over the group last Sunday and it was much more comfortable.
Sunday night services are held at the church as usual. While the polio ban is in effect, children will not attend this service, but they do not normally attend in large numbers at night anyhow. - The News & Observer 8/2/1953
Turns out not everybody was impressed with early-20th-century Raleigh, In 1937, Former State Commissioner or Public Charities and Welfare Kate Burr Johnson spoke about conditions in the city.
(Johnson's) assertion ... that "Raleigh is the dirtiest city I've ever seen," drew a promise from one city commissioner to remedy the situation and a denunciation from another official, who termed the statement "uncalled for and unfair."
Mrs. Johnson, who is now superintendent of the New Jersey Home for Girls at Trenton, commented on the appearance of Raleigh's parks and streets during a talk at a luncheon meeting of the Wake County Council of Social Agencies.
Mrs. Johnson denied published reports that she had described the city as "the dirtiest in the world."
"I couldn't have said that, for I've never been outside the United States," she said later.
Returning here for a visit, Mrs. Johnson said she was distressed at the appearance of Nash Square and streets of the city, which she said she found littered with paper and trash.
Public Safety commissioner T. K. Fountain, whose department is in charge of street cleaning, was at the luncheon meeting and followed Mrs. Johnson on the program. He promised that "we will do everything in our power to see that the streets are kept cleaner."
S. J. Ferguson, Public Works Commissioner, who did not attend the meeting, later said he thought Mrs. Johnson's criticism was unfair.
"Raleigh has the nicest people in the world," Mrs. Johnson told those attending the meeting. "but I was shocked to see that the city has not capitalized on its asset of natural beauty."
Commissioner Ferguson, who is in charge of the city's parks, said that bad weather had much to do with the condition of public squares. He added that steps would be taken to keep trash out of the parks when the weather clears.- The News and Observer, 1/15/1937
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Sydney Porter. Writing as O. Henry, he became one of the country's most famous short story writers. Edward Garner wrote about him in 1962.
More than five million copies of O. Henry's books were published, and some of his magazine stories brought him 25c a word.
His "Gift of the Magi" is probably the best-known Christmas story with the exception of Dickens' memorable classic dealing with Scrooge and Tiny Tim.
"I'll give you the whole secret of short story writing," said O. Henry... "and here it is: Rule one, write stories that please yourself. There is no rule two," and, he added, "if you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you'll never please the public."-- The News & Observer 9/9/1962
Growing up in Greensboro, Porter "experienced boyhood adventures to match those of Tom Sawyer. One was his "'whaling expedition.'"
A Greensboro youth returned from a long absence with tales of having sailed on a whaling ship. His stories inspired Will to leave home for a like career. He took a friend with him.
"Our money gave out at Raleigh, and after spending all we had for something to eat, we decided to go home if we could get there," his chum related.-- Greensboro Daily News 8/10/1952
But though he grew up in Greensboro and spent much of his adult life in Texas, there's more to the story. According to the Austin American-Statesman in 1998, "O. Henry isn't really from any of these places. O. Henry is from a penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. He went in near the end of the last century and emerged at the beginning of this one. He went in W.S. Porter, became prisoner No. 30664 and came out O. Henry."
Porter was accused and convicted of embezzling about $1,000 form the Texas bank where he worked and served 39 months of a five-year sentence. He spent his time in prison writing and took the pen name O. Henry when he was released.
In the 1980s, Greensboro businessman Seth Macon enlisted Senator Jesse Helms to try to win a pardon for O. Henry, but the try was unsuccessful. According to the attorney general's office, "Federal policy does not authorize presidential pardons of dead people.... The policy is based "in large part (on) the legal principle that a pardon, like a deed, must be accepted by the person to whom it is directed."
In lieu of a pardon, the group did receive a "warm letter" signed by President Reagan:
The pleasure this favorite son of Greensboro has given can never be calculated, if only because he never stops giving it. His message is irresistible and even instructive: that interesting things are happening all around us, and that every one of our neighbors is someone special. Anybody is a candidate to be an O. Henry hero or an O. Henry heroine."-- The Raleigh Times 4/3/1985
To commemorate the anniversary of O. Henry's birth, the Post Office today unveiled the O. Henry Forever stamp, the 28th in its Literary Arts series.
"In the stamp art, the author's portrait is set against a background image of the elevated rail in New York City, where many of O. Henry's stories were set. The portrait is based on a photograph of the author as a young man that dates to the late 1880s. Art director Ethel Kessler worked with artist Cap Pannell on his first stamp illustration for O. Henry." -- US Postal Service
WHAT IS IT? A conference on significant political campaigns in North Carolina history.
WHEN IS IT? September 14-15, 2012
WHERE IS IT? Pleasants Family Assembly Room, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
SCHEDULE:
Friday
Presenter: Richard Starnes, professor of history, Western Carolina University
Presenter: Joe A. Mobley, lecturer in history at North Carolina State University and former administrator of the Historical Publications Section of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History
Presenter: Robert G. Anthony, curator of the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Presenter: Julian M. Pleasants, professor emeritus of history at University of Florida
12:30 pm: Registration
1 pm: Welcome
1:10 pm:“He is killed, dead, now”: William A. Graham, the Election of 1852, and the Beginning of the End of the Whigs in North Carolina
2 pm:Contrasting Campaigns: Zebulon B. Vance and the North Carolina Gubernatorial Elections of 1862 and 1864
2:50 pm: Break
3:10 pm: “Next to Nebraska”: North Carolina and William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 Presidential Campaign
4 pm:A New Day for N.C.: Kerr Scott and the Gubernatorial Campaign of 1948
Saturday
Presenter: Karl E. Campbell, professor of history at Appalachian State University
Presenter: T. Evan Faulkenbury, PhD. candidate, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Paper written by Ned Cline, former managing editor of the GreensboroNews and Record. Paper presented by Martin H. Brinkley, attorney, Smith Anderson, Raleigh, N.C.
Presenter: John Blythe, special projects and outreach coordinator, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
8:30 am: Coffee
9 am: From Resurgence to Realignment: The Shelby Dynasty, Luther Hodges, and the Election of 1952
9:50 am:“Telenegro”: Reginald Hawkins, Black Power, and the 1968 North Carolina Gubernatorial Election
10:40 am: Break
11 am:Surprise of the Century: The 1972 Holshouser-Bowles Gubernatorial Campaign
11:50 am:The Little Old Lady Grabs the Mayor’s Shoes: Isabella Cannon, Neighborhood Activism and the 1977 Raleigh Mayoral Election
EXHIBIT: In conjunction with the conference, Wilson Library will feature “Who May Vote? Disenfranchisement in North Carolina, 1865-1900.” The exhibition will examine both systematic attempts to limit voting and instances of intimidation and political rhetoric that discouraged African-Americans, women and poor voters. Campaign literature, letters and political cartoons from the Southern Historical Collection and North Carolina Collection will be on view.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:
Registration/Check-in: 12:30 pm, Sept. 14 in lobby of Wilson Library
Presentations: 1 pm-5 pm on Sept. 14 and 9 am-1 pm on Sept. 15. A schedule with exact times will be posted soon.
REGISTRATION: Conference fee is $10 per person. Friday night event is an additional $50 per person. Pre-registration required. Please address check to:
North Carolina Collection
P.O. Box 8890
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3930
Chapel Hill, NC 27515-8890
Please include an email address and phone number for confirmation of your registration and additional conference details. Registration forms are availablehere.
OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS:
The Carolina Inn is holding a small block of rooms for the evening of September 14. The special room rate is $179 (plus taxes). You can bookvia the web. Or, if you prefer, telephone the Inn at 800-962-8519 and request a room reserved for the UNC Library conference.
Courtyard by Marriott, Chapel Hill is is also holding a small block of rooms for the evening of September 14. The rate is $109 (plus taxes). Rooms are available for booking via the web with a King-size bed and sofa or two Queen-size beds. You can also telephone the Courtyard at 919-883-0700 and ask for the “Historic Political Campaigns” block.
QUESTIONS? Telephone (919) 962-1172 or email jblythe@unc.edu
Arriving in an autogiro, the first aircraft of the sort to be seen in Raleigh, Miss Earhart literally dropped down on the field. Other planes may hover and swoop and glide over the field, but the autogiro with a whirl of its propeller, made a vertical descent and came to rest close by the airport hangar, a strange looking air visitor.
Before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1955, every summer brought new fears to 
