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100 years of Girl Scouting

Submitted by tleonard on 11/22/2011 - 09:58

 

The NC Museum of history is celebrating the centennial year of Girl Scouting with At the Speed of a Girl — Celebrating 100 Years of Girl Scouting. The exhibit, which opened Friday, was developed by the Girl Scouts-North Carolina Coastal Pines.
 
Juliette Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scout meeting on March 12, 1912, in Savannah, Ga. Two years later, North Carolina’s first troop met in Eden. Today, nearly 70,000 North Carolina girls participate in Girl Scouts.
 
The At the Speed of a Girl exhibit will include items like Girl Scout badges from 1912 to 1928, uniforms, canteens and the Knife and Axe Skills Book from 1953. There is also an official Girl Scout box-type camera from the 1950s and a bugle that was advertised as a “must” for every troop in the 1920s and 1930s.
 
The exhibit also includes a letter from Eleanor Roosevelt following a 1942 visit to the Raleigh. 
 
As honorary president of the Girl Scouts, Mrs. Roosevelt spoke to Girl Scout leaders in March 1943, commenting on the benefits of scouting skills in wartime as well as in peacetime. 
 
The exhibit is free and runs through July 29. Learn more about the history of Girl Scouts with this interactive timeline. 

NC students joined in protest

Submitted by tleonard on 11/15/2011 - 14:19

 

The days following the 1970 Kent State shootings saw student protests on college campuses across the country. 
 
In response, President Richard Nixon held a conference with eight university presidents, including UNC's William Friday. According to Friday, "...we had rallies on all our campuses, ranging from 6,000 at Chapel Hill to three or four hundred on the smaller campuses, where there was no violence..."
 
 
On May 8, protesters gathered in Washington and San Francisco, and 4,500 students marched to the capitol in Raleigh.
 
The students marched to the Capitol, 20 abreast with arms linked, in a column that stretched down Hillsborough Street for five blocks. 
 
The marchers, who were orderly and well-behaved throughout the demonstration, included students from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, East Carolina University, Wake Forest University, Shaw University, St. Augustine's College, Meredith College and St. Mary's college.
 
Major H. T. Bailey of the Raleigh Police Department estimated 4,500 students and others participated in the march. "They were very orderly, well-behaved and appeared to be well-organized," Bailey said. "There were no violations observed and no arrests were made."
 
As the students marched from N. C. State University behind American and peace flag, they shouted, "Join Us! Join Us!" to workers and businessmen who came out of their offices along Hillsborough Street to watch.
 
[...]
 
Above Capitol Square the students looked like a sea of flailing arms waiving the two-finger peace sign beneath the Capitol oaks and magnolias.
 
"I'm here to give my two cents while I'm still a free man," said Lee Baker of Rocky Mount, who will be drafted on Thursday.
 
The giant march on the Capitol was organized on the various campuses earlier this week after (Governor Bob) Scott's support of Nixon's action in Cambodia had been announced. 
 
[...]
 
There were approximately 400 student marshals from N. C. State and other colleges and universities keeping order during the march.
 
Raleigh police accompanied the students as they marched the two miles from the N. C. State campus to the Capitol down half of Hillsborough Street.
 
The students began organizing at about 11 a. m. and the march began shortly after 2 p. m. when a 400-car motorcade of students arrived from Chapel Hill.
 
Before leaving State campus, march organizers cautioned the students that "everything depends upon our remaining peaceful" and led the students in singing the national anthem.  
 
The march was greeted by onlookers along the route, both supporters and detractors.
 
In the 1000 block of Hillsborough Street, a middle-aged lady stood stern-faced on the porch of her sedate residence. She observed the bobbing heads of long hair, the sandals, the bell-bottom trousers and the gaudy shirts and occasional broad ties and she said, "I wish they were mine ... I'd go out there and wring their necks ... I don't like war, but we've got our leaders ... They're (the students) not capable of leading themselves." 
 
[...]
 
As the marchers passed the cylindrical Holiday Inn, from a high balcony two women wearing hair curlers and apparently night gowns waved and gave peace signs. -- The News & Observer 5/8/1970
 
The purpose of the march was to convince Governor Bob Scott to withdraw his support of Nixon's decision to send troops to Cambodia and to promise not to use National Guard troops on NC campuses. While Governor Scott expressed  appreciation for their concerns, he did not agree to their demands. In response, student leaders at NCSU called for a class boycott.
 
Cathy Sterling, president-elect of the NCSU student body, called the strike Sunday. "The response from Gov. Scott, while it was more than expected, still is not enough." Miss Sterling said in a statement. "More can be done.
 
"I am calling for a general strike of the University as an extension of the march Friday," she said.
 
Later, Miss Sterling changed the wording of her statement so that, she said, it would not seem she was calling for the closing of the university. She changed the words "general strike" to "peace retreat." -- The News & Observer 5/11/1970
 
A similar strike was underway at UNC-CH, but classes continued at Duke, ECU and Wake Forest. ECU students had demanded that  the American flag on campus be lowered to half-mast in memory of the Kent State students. After a three-hour confrontation with university administrators and police, the flag was lowered. At Duke University Law School, a portrait of Richard Nixon that hung in the school's moot courtroom, was removed to a "safe place."

Remembrance

Submitted by tleonard on 11/11/2011 - 08:17

 

A.C. Snow, columnist and former editor of The Raleigh Times, wrote in 1968 about the 50th anniversary of the Armistice ending World War I.
 
Fifty years ago this morning, three Raleigh men stood on a hill overlooking the plains in Metz, France. 
 
Their ears were ringing from the bombardment of a night's artillery barrage.
 
Precisely at 11 a. m., 50 years ago, the world's greatest silence settled over the hills and the plains. And then, as in the case of all wars that end, all hell -- of the happiness kind -- broke loose.
 
World War I. It was a war 50 years ago. The first big war, it was a war to end war, to make the world safe for democracy. It was the first of the big wars in a long time.
 
[...]
 
"We knew the night before the war was to end at 11 o'clock the next morning," recalls William Y. Collie, local real estate executive.
 
"I was at an observation post overlooking the plains outside Metz in Alsace-Lorraine. "I was to look for a signal from the infantry for another barrage from our guns. Our artillery had been very busy during the night.
 
"At precisely 11 o'clock, everything stopped. There was a great stillness. Then everyone started yelling. We ran forward to meet the Germans to exchange souvenirs."
 
Collie traded a package of cigarettes to a German for his cigarette lighter. "He seemed to be as happy as I was."
 
Collie was 18 at the time, a freshman at the University of North Carolina, where another member of his outfit, the 113th Field Artillery, was a sophomore. All members of the 113th were volunteers.
 
Earl Johnson, insurance executive, ... was in Samur, France when the French went wild in celebration at the armistice
 
"Most everybody volunteered that I know," recalls Johnson. "We didn't burn draft cards in those days. We didn't have draft cards."
 
"World War I was a different kind of war than the kind we know today.
 
"The infantry really had it rough," he said. "They lived in trenches knee deep in water with rats for company."
 
He said there probably was less body contact then than in more recent wars.
 
"Mostly it was just out of the trenches, over the top and shooting it out with the Germans for the next line of trenches."
 
[...]
 
"You could have heard a pin drop," said E.M. (Skinny) Taylor of Commercial Printing Company here.
 
"We were in position to back up the infantry and we were headed for Metz 15 miles away. We had camped out in the woods all night," said Taylor. "I understand that some of the boys up in the trenches were ordered over the top that morning and many of them died."
 
Taylor and Col. William T. Joyner, local attorney, were together during much of the War.
 
[...]
 
World War I was a vivid contrast to later wars, Colonel Joyner notes.
 
"It was mostly trench fighting. There was almost a complete absence of airplanes and there were very few tanks.
 
"Our 75 millimeter guns were pulled by horses -- six-horse teams. Officers and non-commissioned officers escorted them on horseback. We would go in support of the artillery and were from 200 yards to half a mile back of the enemy.
 
"I suppose you might say that World War I saw the end of the cavalry and the advent of the air force -- on a very limited basis."
 
Colonel Joyner said the planes were used primarily as aids in observations. They were used to protect observation posts and that's usually what the highly fictionalized dogfights in the air were about.
 
"The air balloon was unique to this war. It was used to spot artillery. Anchored to the ground, the balloon would carry a parachutist aloft. It was the object of the enemy aircraft to shoot down the balloon. If the observation man was lucky, he floated to earth safely in his parachute if the enemy pilot so chose."
 
Col. Gordon Smith of Raleigh fought in the trenches during World War I in Northern France.
 
He engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
 
"The English put a lot of emphasis on the bayonet," he recalled.
 
"You might say that the bayonet came of age then..."
 
Those 50 years later, the veterans still met downtown for coffee and remembrance.
 
... the raise their cups in a toast to peace -- if not in their time, at lest in some future generation's time.

Reliving a lifetime of ministry

Submitted by tleonard on 11/08/2011 - 00:07

Evangelist Billy Graham, who marked his 93rd birthday today, can now be heard back through the six decades of his public ministry. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has made available nearly 1,700 audio files of sermons at Graham's famous crusades,  radio broadcasts, and public remarks. The archives are searchable by location, date and topic.

The father of North Carolina History

Submitted by tleonard on 11/07/2011 - 17:06

 

The vast new exhibit at the N.C. Museum of History, covering 14,000 years in North Carolina, would have been a dream come true for Frederick Augustus Olds, the "father" of the museum. 
 
Born in 1853, Olds later wrote about visiting the camps of Civil War soldiers when he was a child. He served in the State Guard in the 1870s under Governor Zeb Vance, where he came to be called Colonel. He became a reporter for the Raleigh News, and after it merged with the Observer to become The News and Observer, he served as city editor. 
 
While journalism provided his income, Olds developed another interest that was to become his life's work as well as his recreation. On a volunteer basis, he began collecting historical materials for the state Museum [in the old Agriculture Building, current location of the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences]. By the turn of the century he had accumulated so many items that a special section of the museum was designated the Hall of History.
 
Then, when in 1914 the historical collection was transferred to the N.C. Historical Commission, Colonel Olds went along. During the next 30 years of his service, the Hall of History grew to more than 30,000 items, nearly all of them collected by him. 
 
But the colonel was more than a collector: he was an interpreter who captivated audiences, particularly school children. Not content to have them come to Raleigh to see him, he traveled over the state. From 1922 to 1924, he toured all of the 100 counties and visited 392 schools. -- The News & Observer 11/22/1984
 
Olds was a fixture in Raleigh, giving tours of the city to countless tourists and school children.
 
Soldier, historian, writer and true friend of people, Colonel Olds, who for decades has been as much a part of Raleigh as the historic State Capitol, has devoted the majority of his spare time -- and many business hours -- to lecturing to school children on North Carolina history and the natural wonders of the land. 
 
[...]
 
Colonel Olds is never happier than when, surrounded by a group of children, he makes his way around Raleigh to the Capitol Building, the State department buildings, the museum, Andrew Johnson's home and other interesting spots.
 
He used to be know as the champion out-of-doors man in these parts. He could outwalk everyone. For many years, he conducted camps on North Carolina's coast during the summer months. Sometimes he would take the campers -- usually school children -- to the majestic Blue Ridge ranges. 
 
[...]
 
Colonel Olds took an early to an interest in the youth of the State. He organized the "Raleigh Sunshiners" in 1903 and later that club became the nucleus for Boy and Girl Scout organizations here. 
 
His interest in children has never diminished. Today, he will stop whatever task he is engaged in and lead them on tours of the capital city. -- The News & Observer 10/29/1933
 
At age 78, Olds gave some of his opinions to a newspaper reporter.
 
He is still sprightly and active. He has lived long, and he has enjoyed living. He will tell you so. He will tell you that people -- youth and age -- are what makes life worth while. He denies that the country is headed for hell, as many writers bemoan, yet --
 
"What is your attitude toward the machine age, Colonel Olds?"
 
"I loathe it! Machinery is not very near to God. People are living too fast -- that has become a commonplace saying ... No, I do not anticipate any great catastrophe, abruptly wiping out our present civilization."
 
He thinks people have softened. They have forgotten the spirit of '65.
 
"There is no question but that we are on the decline, but that does not prove we'll drop over the precipice. If people will fill their craws with sand -- and fight for better things -- the world will improve. If we continue to whine and jump frantically from our own shadows, we are doomed. Our people in this State haven't half the grit they had in 1865." -- The News & Observer 6/21/1931
 
Olds' later years were visited by sadness. By 1905, his wife and two sons had died. In 1934, he was forced to retire after a "breakdown" in his own health.
 
He was carried on the State pay roll for the regulation period of sick leave. Now, he is a patient in the State Hospital here where no charge is made to him.
 
State laws do not allow pensions for employees except by special act of the legislature. It is expected that some action will be taken at the next General Assembly to recognize Col. Olds' long service. -- The News & Observer 10/3/1934
 
Olds died at the State Hospital on July 2, 1935 at age 81. Historian H.G. Jones wrote, "At the burial in Oakwood Cemetery the next day, not a single relative was present. Nor were there any of the hundreds of thousands of children whom he had charmed. They were kept away by the polio epidemic."

Find out all about North Carolina

Submitted by tleonard on 11/04/2011 - 12:43

The N.C. History Museum kicks off the completion of its largest exhibit ever, The Story of North Carolina, with its Celebrate N.C. History Festival tomorrow from 11 to 4 in Bicentennial Plaza.

This is the completion of the exhibit which opened with Part one in April. Part two leads  museum-goers through the antebellum era, the Civil War, the rise of industry, the Great Depression, the two World Wars, and the Civil Rights movement. It contains artifacts, such as the state’s fourth-oldest house, which was built in 1742 in Pitt County, objects recovered from the shipwreck of Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge; uniforms and weapons from the Civil War and two World Wars; and agricultural tools and equipment. It includes several hands-on displays that show you what if felt like to work in a cotton mill or what a lunch-counter sit-in looked like.

Saturday's festival will include music, food, stories, and of course, 20,000 square feet of history.

Get all the details on the festival here and read more about the exhibit here.

Tar Heel worked for the right to vote

Submitted by tleonard on 11/03/2011 - 12:54

When the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to vote in 1920, it was without the help of North Carolina legislators.

The women's suffrage amendment, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, had been ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 states when 63 of the 120 North Carolina House members signed a telegram sent to the Tennessee legislature urging them to vote NO.

 We, the undersigned members of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of North Carolina, constituting a majority of said body, send greetings to the General Assembly of Tennessee, and assure you that we will not ratify the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, interfering with the sovereignty of Tennessee and other States of the Union. We most respectfully request that this measure be not forced upon the people of North Carolina.
COURTESY OF THE NC STATE ARCHIVES
Two days later, Tennessee did ratify the amendment, and women's right to vote became law. The North Carolina House went on to reject the amendment, but the Senate tabled their vote. And there it sat for the next fifty years.

Goldsboro's Gertrude Weil had been in the forefront of the suffragette movement and was undeterred by the struggle.

Her father had arrived in Goldsboro from Germany shortly after the Civil War. She was born in 1879 in the West Chestnut Street house her father had built and where she would live her entire life.

Gertrude Weil in 1896.Her parents infused her with a sense of social responsibility  that was strengthened by her education at Horace Mann, an exclusive prep school in New York City, and Smith College in Northampton, Mass. In 1901, Miss Weil became the first North Carolina graduate of Smith.

In college, Miss Weil read John Stewart Mill, Henry George, Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels.

Her philosophy blended a critique of capitalism with the Progressivism of muckraking journalists and labor leaders.

[...]

In 1914, she played a vital role in establishing the North Carolina Equal Suffrage League and was president of the organization from 1919 to 1920. She later founded the North Carolina League of Women Voters and went on to fight for a study of the harsh labor conditions in North Carolina factories. Her efforts continued through bloody strikes at factories in Marion and Gastonia in 1928.

[...]

"I have never understood," she said, "why we have to work so hard for things that seem so obvious. Why should you have to get up and make speeches to treat people right?"

She believed that racism and poverty had deep roots. It was the job of an activist not only to help solve individual injustices, but to attack the roots of social ills. -- The News & Observer 3/16/1984

In 1965, N&O writer Betsy Marsh interviewed Miss Weil about the many awards and honors she had received and found her characteristically modest.

Back in the early years of the 1900s Miss Weil became active in efforts to get the vote for women. She has been credited with initiating the suffrage movement in North Carolina, but she insists she was only a small part of it.

"Please make it clear that I didn't start all the organizations I've been credited with," she said.

"The North Carolina Suffrage League was organized in 1916 or thereabout by Mrs. Archibald Henderson in Chapel Hill," she recalls.

Miss Gertrude worked at it with such enthusiasm that she was elected president of the state organization -- serving in 1920, the year that the North Carolina General Assembly considered -- and failed to ratify -- the woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution.

When the legislature met in special session that year, Miss Weil and her suffragettes went to Raleigh to plead their cause. "I guess I never was a politician," she confides. "I never could tell after I talked with a lawmaker whether he was for us or against us." Apparently they were against them.

The legislature failed to ratify the amendment, and the opportunity for North Carolina to make suffrage for women the law of the land slipped by. "Only one more state was needed to make it law," said Miss Weil. "The honor went to Tennessee." -- The News & Observer 3/14/1965

North Carolina finally did ratify the amendment on May 6, 1971, just 24 days  before Miss Weil's death at age 91. 

See more photos and writings of Gertrude Weil at the Jewish Women's Archive.

New office building had its own red carpet

Submitted by tleonard on 10/27/2011 - 13:22

Starting life as a bank and then serving under the name of the county's first manager before coming down to make way for the new Wake County Justice Center, the old Garland H. Jones Building opened as "Fancy First Federal" fifty years ago this week.

The building was in vogue in 1961, when the First Federal  Savings and Loan Association of Raleigh declared its new headquarters the city's "newest and finest office building." The building was one of the first in the city to feature a curtain wall -- of glass, blue panels and vertical strips of aluminum -- attached to the building's frame but not bearing its weight. At one corner, a four-story panel of white marble appears to float above the sidewalk, which is shaded by a low overhang.

In keeping with the times, the building also featured a drive-up banking window and a bomb shelter in the basement. -- The News & Observer 1/10/2009

The fallout shelter, which would accommodate 100 people, was stocked with food, blankets, first aid equipment and water, with cots and radiation detection equipment on the way. Such precautions must have seemed necessary given the front page headline the day before the building's October 31 dedication. The Soviets had just set off "the biggest man-made explosion in history, a blast that may have topped the power of the 50-megaton bomb forecast by Premier Nikita Khrushchev" above the arctic testing ground.

But the building was not without its controversies. "Another Raleigh landmark will bite the dust" is how newspapers reported that the "ultra-modern office building" would replace the Academy Building, which was built in 1893. Even the sidewalk caused a fuss.

The new building is the only one in Raleigh that has colored sidewalks -- red concrete.

Time was when a colored sidewalk in the business downtown area caused such a furor that the city's governing boy ordered it ripped out.

W. N. H. Jones of Raleigh, whose family owned property at 130 Fayetteville St., recalls when a "pink" sidewalk put down there had to be torn out and replaced with regular concrete.

Beatus Shops, a woman's wearing apparel chain, opened a shop on Fayetteville Street ..

William Beatus, owner of the chain, had workmen pour a sidewalk in front of the store which consisted of pink stone chips embedded in concrete.

Jones said the sidewalk was pink and resembled terrazzo, but was actually cement mixed with pink stone chips.

Records show that the Board of City Commissioners of that day ordered the pink sidewalk torn out for these reasons:

Beatus had not obtained a proper permit for such a sidewalk; it didn't meet specifications; and the other merchants complained the pink sidewalk would offer unfair competition.

"Following protests from other merchants," records show "commissioners condemned the walk on October 26."

Beatus appealed for a reconsideration, but was told to remove the fancy sidewalk. -- The News & Observer 10/22/1961
 

Baseball's curve ball born in the Carolinas

Submitted by tleonard on 10/25/2011 - 15:35

The historians at the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources have posted a 1933 obituary of baseball pitcher Alphonse Martin, including his connection to North Carolina. 

While stationed at Fort Reno on the northern end of Roanoke Island during the occupation of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Union soldiers often had free time. Martin, a native New Yorker, had played on a pre-war team called the Unions, one of 16 teams that competed regularly in the metropolitan New York area. Union soldiers brought baseball down South during the war, as it had originated in Maine as “town ball” and spread through New England. 

Martin was known for a slow, curved pitch that was incredibly difficult for batters to hit, and he earned the name “Phoney Ball.” After the war, Martin returned to New York and pitched for the New York Mutuals and the Brooklyn Eckfords. Although Martin pitched the curve during the Civil War, Arthur “Candy” Cummings is credited with inventing the pitch in 1867, playing for the Brooklyn Excelsiors. 

A plaque for Cummings at the Baseball Hall of Fame states “Inventor of the Curveball,” but Cummings admitted to baseball historian Alfred H. Spink that he felt Martin had first pitched a curve ball. Cummings reportedly said of other pitchers, “But none of those pitchers knew they had a curve, and I suppose it is fair to say I was the first to find out what a curve was and how it was done.”

Civil War items highlight Archives Week

Submitted by tleonard on 10/20/2011 - 16:26

Governor Perdue has proclaimed next week Archives Week in North Carolina.  In celebration, the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources' State Archives has a couple of events planned to highlight the archive collections.

On Monday October 24, the public is invited to browse some rarely exhibited items from the Civil War collection. These include the 1863 letter bearing the last words of the mortally wounded Col. Isaac Avery from Burke County and a map of General Sherman's Carolinas Campaign, as well as a letter from a young mother asking her husband what to name the new baby and including a paper cutout of the child's tiny hand. Archivists will be on had to provide context and further information about the items.

These Civil War treasures will be on display from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the State Archives Search Room at 109 East Jones Street.

On Wednesday October 26, a collection of historical films will be showing in the State Archives Conference Room from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. These films include footage of small town North Carolina from the 1930s and 40s filmed by Lexington photographer and filmmaker H. Lee Waters.

The schedule for this mini film festival can be found here. All events are free to the public.

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