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The problem with hecklers

Submitted by tleonard on 09/04/2012 - 16:12

 

The political conventions of the 1960s have become associated with demonstrators and hecklers. In 1964, researchers had a theory about the psyche of the political heckler, as UPI's Bob Beckman Jr. reported.
 
The political heckler is really a mother hater. What's more, he's chicken.
 
That is the expert opinion of Dr. Allan Z. Schwartzberg, a Georgetown university psychiatrist, in casting some light on what makes the heckler heckle.
 
Dr. Schwartzberg says that the person who boos candidates, shouts them down, clubs them with placards and clouts them with eggs probably deep down hated his mother, detested his father or despised his Sunday school teacher.
Protesters at the Democratic National Convention 1986
Heckling, he says, really is secret hostility coming to the surface after years in the depths of the subconscious.
 
Furthermore, Schwartzberg is convinced the heckler is a coward. Only in the anonymity of the mob does he let his latent hostility show. The heckler needs the fever pitch of a political crowd to give him the nerve to act.
 
The heat of the 1964 presidential campaign is bringing out the heckler in what many consider record numbers.
 
Heckling runs the gamut from the gentle boo or witty quip to the most extreme form -- assassination.
 
[...]
 
No one really knows what effect the heckler has on a campaign. His abrasive outbursts may only serve to gain sympathy for the candidate -- or an arrest for himself. 
 
Whatever the effect, heckling tests the mettle of the candidate. If he manages to deflect the persistent heckler's barbs, he wins admiration for his quick wit if not for his policies.
 
But the candidate who orders a heckler from the hall, or puts him down in anger, risks public censure and faces cries of "free speech " or "fair play." -- The News & Observer 10/27/1964
1964 Democratic National Convention

NC State's first football game

Submitted by tleonard on 08/31/2012 - 10:36

 

As college football heats up, we take a look back at early games played by UNC, Duke (then Trinity College) and NC State (then North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts). Researcher Brooke Cain retrieved stories about the weekend the Tennessee Volunteers met all three schools. 
 
After playing a game of football at Chapel Hill on Friday, November 3d, the Tennessee boys came to Durham on Saturday morning and have remained here, stopping at the college, since that time. They leave this morning for Wake Forest where they will play that team this morning. 
 
The Tennessee team is small in weight yet they play a plucky game of ball. They came here expecting to be beaten, but they were desirous of learning the game and of becoming acquainted with Carolina's colleges and University. 
 
The students of Trinity were struck with the appearance of their visitors. Their conduct was gentlemanly and their spirit after defeat was of such a nature as to excite admiration. Throughout the game the friendliest feelings existed. There was no contention regarding the rulings of both referee and umpire, as both gave entire satisfaction.
 
[...]
 
The game was interesting throughout. The Tennessee boys reached Trinity's 25 yard line one time only. At the end of 30 minutes the first half of the game was called according to a previous agreement between the captains, the score being 34 to nothing in favor of Trinity. Trinity began with the ball in the second half and made a touch-down in a minute and a half. In the second half they played only 25 minutes, stopping the game by mutual consent, the score being 70 to nothing.
 
[...]
 
Chapel Hill played the Tennessee boys on Friday and defeated them 60-0, playing the full 30 min. halves. Trinity run the score over Chapel Hill 10 points and played it in shorter time. It seems that Trinity is destined to lead in the State, and who can help it? -- News Observer Chronicle 11/7/1893
 
Tennessee met a similar fate when they played North Carolina A. and M.
 
The game started promptly at 4 o'clock. By mutual consent the halves were 30 minutes. Tennessee took the ball and started with a V gaining 10 yards. Barches made a very pretty run around left and gaining 25 yards. Then tried centre without gain. A. and M. took the ball and sent Pritchett around left end for 30 yards. Tried centre without result and ball went to Tennessee. Tennessee tried end rushes without gain and kicked. Ball passed over to A. and M.  A. and M. lost ball on foul play. Tennessee sent Fisher around left end but lost ball on the third down. Tennessee rushed the ball through centre and neared their goal line, tried centre for touch down and lost ball. This ended the first half. Score 0 to 0.
 
The second half went a little better for the home team, and the game ended with a 12 to 6 victory for A. and M.
 
The teams were pretty nearly matched and a very good game was played. This is the first time the college has ever played a regular college team and her hard fought for victory should be much appreciated by all. -- News Observer Chronicle 11/8/1893

Free Ancestry for Labor Day weekend

Submitted by tleonard on 08/30/2012 - 16:14

Ancestry.com is opening all of its Census records for seaching through midnight September 3. Also, as you're exploring the newly indexed 1940 Census records, you can get a taste of life in the 40s with their 1940 Time Machine. 

1964 Republicans met at the Cow Palace

Submitted by tleonard on 08/21/2012 - 13:08

 

As the Republican National Convention gets underway in Tampa and preparations heat up for the Democrats to meet in Charlotte, here's a look back at the 1964 Republican National Convention in California's Cow Palace. The convention, which ran from July 13 to July 16, was only the second to be held on the west coast and included a rousing (and lengthy) speech supporting candidate Barry Goldwater by Ronald Reagan. (A speech by Ronald Reagan in support of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, which came to be know as "A Time for Choosing" was not part of the 1964 Republican National Convention, but was instead given before a television audience on October 27, 1964.)
 
 
AP reported that the convention site was "buzzing with activity."
 
The Cow Palace is no place today for cows. Or people.
 
Work is moving along briskly and noisily to transform the big exhibition hall and home of a professional ice hockey team into the arena for selecting the 1964 Republican ticket. ...
 
Flags of the states have been draped on both sides. A new electronic score board has been installed to flash a running total of the vote for the presidential nomination. Most of the delegation phones are in.
 
[...]
 
Members of the convention arrangements committee made their way through the lumber and wires ... to assess the progress.
 
"It's working out very well," said Clare Shank of St. Petersburg, Fla., a GOP national committeewoman and a former assistant national chairman.
 
Mrs. Shank said she was delighted that so little room of the 1,308 delegates had been sacrificed in enlarging the platform space allowed for the 1956 Republican convention in the same hall. 
 
Back at the headquarters hotel, there were happy tidings for people who'd like to attend the "GOParty Gala" convention eve but don't have $500 in cash for a ticket.
 
Just charge it, the sponsors said.
 
More specifically, the national Republican senatorial and congressional committees announced they'll accept credit cards for the foremost social event of the convention.
 
What will the guests get for their $500?
 
-- An engraved ticket, the size of a calling card, engraved in silver and blue, and packaged in a dark blue leather jewelry box. The box also will contain a tiny silver pin in the shape of the Capitol dome.
 
-- A chance to get a close look at all party presidential possibilities and dignitaries and to mix with what advance publicity bills as numerous movie and television personalities.
 
-- An elaborate buffet and drinks, dancing to two orchestras and banjo entertainment.
 
Proceeds will help finance election expenses for Republican candidates for the Senate and House in the fall campaigns. -- The Raleigh Times 7/8/1964

Curtain falls on the Wake Theater

Submitted by tleonard on 08/20/2012 - 14:21

 

Fifty years ago this month saw the death of one of downtown Raleigh's historic movie theaters. Clay Williams gave readers of The Raleigh Times a taste of the theater's rich story.
 
The last curtain came down a few days ago in the old Wake Theater on Fayetteville Street. It was rung down not by a stagehand as in bygone days, but by a member of the demolition crew making way for expansion of facilities of Raleigh Savings and Loan Association.
 
Almost grudgingly the old building, which was once the focal point of entertainment for Raleigh residents for years, gave way to pounding of sledge hammers and the prying of wrecking bars. Only the shell of the once proud structure stands now, but oldtimers still hold vivid memories of the drama, humor, and near-tragedy that marked its history.
 
Indeed, one particular event that occurred at the Revelery, as it was known during the early years of the century, would be hard to forget -- for it was here that many of the town's theatrical enthusiasts saw the first silent movie ever shown in a commercial theater in Raleigh.
 
The man mostly responsible for pioneering movie houses in Raleigh and North Carolina, is Ollie R. Browne.... Browne, a kindly gentleman, whose keen mind and sharp eyes belie his 83 years, came to Raleigh in 1908 from Henderson. He, along with Barney Arronson, had purchased the Revelery Theater.
 
One of the first acts of the partnership was to change the name of the theater to Almo -- fitted the marquee better, it appeared. "It took more than a flashy marquee, however, to convince me that there was much future in the movie business," Browne pointed out. He was so skeptical, in fact, that it was three years later before he moved his family to Raleigh.
 
"There were no seats or elevated floor in the Almo in those days," Mr. Browne recalls: "movie goers stood by the walls to watch the one-reelers. The operator who was situated in the middle of the crowd, would show the film and then rewind it backward on the screen -- much to the amusement of the audience."
 
[...]
 
"Heat generated by the machines and the weather, was terrible," Mr. Browne remembers, "but we did our best to make them comfortable by placing ice in a vat and blowing fans over it."
 
"Movies were a long time attaining technical perfection," Browne mused. "So it wasn't much of a money-making business. Matter of fact, our best profits came during the week of the State fair when seats were rented for 25 cents each for sleeping after the theater closed."
 
Tragedy struck the Almo on a hot summer night in 1925. Soon after the theater closed, a fire, which was believed to have started in the projection room, was reported. While helping fight the fire, James A. Briggs, one of the city's leading citizens, ... came close to plunging through the burning roof. He was snatched from sure death when a fireman grabbed his shirttail -- which ripped to his collar, but held. The Almo, however, was completely destroyed.
 
A few years later, after another business had failed in the location, the theater was reconstructed under different ownership -- this time it was named the "Wake." The movie industry fairly leaped to the forefront in the entertainment field in the 30's and 40's -- as production and acting improved and the technical quality of equipment was perfected.
 
The Wake thrived, too, until the early 50's when television came on the scene. The Industry entered into the era of competition with bigger, more expensive productions -- but still had to settle for only a share of the entertainment dollar.
 
For the Wake Theater, this was the beginning of the end. Its once regal status now relegated to second rate features and westerns as part of a chain. Its facilities and equipment dated, the Wake, like many small-town theaters, found competition from television and the finer movie houses too keen. Then, in early 1961, Raleigh Savings purchased the property for an expansion program, and the doors at the Wake, the Almo, and Revelery, were closed for good. -- The Raleigh Times 8/11/1962

Keeping folklore alive

Submitted by tleonard on 07/31/2012 - 16:04

 

This weekend's Annual Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville marks the 85th festival since Bascom Lamar Lunsford organized the event in 1928.
 
In 1955, N&O writer Herbert O'Keef profiled Lunsford for the Tar Heel of the Week column.
 
Bascom Lamar Lunsford swears he can remember riding a horse across Big Ivy River when he was only 18 months old.
 
That would be some remembering, but Lunsford is sure he does remember it all. And, people who know him believe he really does, because it seems that he also remembers almost everything else that ever happened in his beloved North Carolina mountains. Especially the music the mountain people have been singing and playing for so many generations.
 
In his busy years, he has been teacher, lawyer, salesman, G-man and ... folklorist. 
 
[...]
 
He was born on March 21, 1882, at Mars Hill College in Madison County on the waters of Banjo Branch, one of the eight children of James Basset Lunsford and Arta Buckner Lunsford.
 
[...]
 
Bascom Lamar Lunsford's father was a teacher for years in the mountains of Western North Carolina, a teacher who was largely self educated during his service as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War.
 
The father was teaching at Mars Hill when Bascom was born, and when he was about 18 months of age, the family moved to Asheville and another teaching job. It was on this trip that Bascom remembers riding the horse across Big Ivy River.
 
The family lived in Asheville for several years, then moved to the Leicester Community in Bumcombe County, and it was there that young Bascom grew up. He went to Camp Academy there, and then to Rutherford College, where he completed what would be considered junior college training today. In 1906, the whole family moved to Rutherford College to give the younger girls a chance to get to school, high schools then not being what they are today.
 
On June 2, 1906, Lunsford married Miss Nellie Triplett of the Leicester community. They lived at Rutherford College and he took work in school and also taught there. Later, he continued his teaching and read law. From there, he went to Trinity College Law School (now Duke University) and took second year law under the famed Dr. Samuel Fox Mordecai, and was admitted to the bar in 1913.
 
Then, he was appointed solicitor of Burke County Court in Morganton, and later was elected to that job. He got a lot of legal training in that job, he feels.
 
In 1916, he moved to McDowell County to practice law, then in the fall of 1924 moved to Buncombe. He practiced law there and in McDowell until about 1935.
 
During those years, too, he owned and edited the Old Fort Sentinel and was a G-man in New York during World War I. He taught school some in McDowell County and in Madison County.
 
In 1931, he was reading clerk in the State House of Representatives during the long session, the longest in North Carolina history until 1955.
 
He traveled for the East Tennessee Nursery Company, too, during the years before 1935, through the mountain counties of Tennessee and the Carolinas. It was on those travels that he picked up many of the folk songs he knows today.
 
"I'd make may headquarters with a family," he says. "I'd learn their songs, and they'd learn mine."
 
Lunsford had heard folk music at home as a boy, and had learned then to pick a banjo and a fiddle. By the time he was 10 years old, he was playing for school entertainment.
 
In 1925, Dr. R. W. Gordon, an eminent folklorist of Washington, came to the North Carolina mountains to search out genuine folk music. Lunsford traveled with him , and became interested in the subject. Dr. Gordon taught him how to spot the authentic folk music, how to tie it down as to its origin, and how to search for it.
 
[...]
 
After his summer with Dr. Gordon, Lunsford continued his travels of the mountains, collecting folk songs as he went.
 
He learned so many of them that in 1935 he was able to record 315 of them for Columbia University. Later, he re-recorded 350 songs for the Library of Congress. That recording session led Dr. Duncan Emerich, chief of the Library's Folklore Section, to say that no other one person had recorded more than a seventh of the songs Lunsford had.
 
 
In 1928, Asheville was having a civic festival and someone asked Lunsford to put on a folk music festival as part of it. It was held in the Asheville square, and the square was packed to full they had to cut off traffic.
 
That original civic celebration faded out, but the folk music festival continues each year during the first weekend of August. Lunsford also organized the Carolina Folk Festival, which was held in Chapel Hill from 1948 to 1953, as well as festivals in Kentucky, Kinston, and the State Folk Festival in Raleigh.
 
In his folklorist activities, Lunsford has covered America from coast to coast and has appeared before many audiences.
 
He is proudest of all, though, of an appearance he made in June of 1939. Then, he was invited to bring singers and dancers from North Carolina to the White House to entertain the King and Queen of England during their tour of America.
 
"It's that sort of thing that keeps me in this business," he says with a smile. -- The News & Observer 6/5/1955
 
Lunsford died in 1973 at the age of 91. 

Recalling the Dixie Classic

Submitted by tleonard on 07/24/2012 - 13:49

 

It seems news of any college sports scandal brings to mind North Carolina's Dixie Classic basketball tournament. 
 
Ron Morris, a reporter for The State in Columbia SC, described a meeting in 1961 between UNC system president William Friday and Wake County's district solicitor Lester Chalmers.
 
Chalmers informed Friday of evidence he found that implicated at least four N.C. State players and possibly two UNC players in the fixing of games, including at least one played in the Dixie Classic basketball tournament the previous December.
 
Game-fixing, or point-shaving, involved gamblers who paid players to alter the point spread in games. Most times, a bribed player did not help determine a game's winner or loser. Rather, the player helped his team win or lose by a certain number of points. For instance, a player could easily let the man he was guarding score late in a game to ensure his team lost by more than, say, five points. Thus, the term point-shaving.
 
What struck Friday, and stays with him today, was Chalmers' description that a player's life had been threatened by gamblers. A gun was stuck in the belly of an N.C. State player after the outcome of one game was not to the gambler's liking, according to Friday.
 
"In our minds, we were dealing with protection of human life of an innocent college kid that, because he had exceptional skills, had gotten all his fame, " Friday said last week. "Forces were preying upon these young men that were bigger than they could handle.
 
"You believe that threat to be real. That's what the difference was. I really did believe these [gamblers] would hurt these kids. That being said, you weren't left with any alternative."
 
Led by Friday's charge, the UNC system imposed numerous sanctions on both the North Carolina and N.C. State basketball programs and abolished the Dixie Classic, a popular tournament that ran for 12 Decembers before packed houses at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh.
 
The Dixie Classic was the brainchild of N.C. State coach Everett Case, who pitted the Big Four schools against four of the nation's top-caliber teams for the three-day event. The '58 event featured four top 10 teams, including No. 1-ranked and unbeaten Cincinnati led by All-American Oscar Robertson.
 
"It's like the State Fair, it's part of the people, " former Wake Forest coach Bones McKinney once said.
 
In addition to canceling the Dixie Classic, the consolidated university presidents also reduced the schedules for UNC and N.C. State for the 1962 season to include 14 regular-season conference games and only two games outside the league instead of nine. Players at both schools were prohibited from participating in summer basketball leagues, and only two freshmen in the next recruiting class were allowed from outside the ACC area.
 
None of those restrictions had the impact of canceling the Dixie Classic, at least to fans of college basketball in North Carolina. Even the state's agriculture director, Jim Graham, voiced his displeasure to Friday about the decision.
 
But Friday's belief at the time was the Dixie Classic represented how college athletics was fast distancing itself from the university campus.
 
Friday regularly attended the Dixie Classic. Upon hearing that tickets for the annual event were being written into the wills of patrons, Friday had serious questions about the magnitude of the Classic.
 
"There was no Final Four in those days, " Friday says now. "It was our Final Four in national attraction. There was just enormous pressure on the thing from top to bottom." -- The N&O 3/24/2010
 
Basketball fans weren't alone in mourning the loss of the tournament. A protest by Raleigh merchants was organized. Wesley Williams, executive secretary of the Raleigh Merchants' Bureau and James Little, president of the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce spoke to N&O reporter David Cooper about the impact of the tournament on the city.
 
Williams said that "there must be more effective ways to get to the root of the problem," than abolishing the Classic, which, merchants admitted is a golden egg.
 
The Classic had been an extra boon for merchants and businessmen because it came each year in the slack period right after the Christmas rush.
 
From 10,000 to 12,000 Tar Heel basketball fans attend the games daily.
 
[...]
 
Both Williams and Little said the Classic, held ... on the State College campus, meant a business boom for hotels, motels, restaurants, service stations and a host of other businesses. 
 
[...]
 
"Sure, it means a great deal to all the hotels, motels and restaurants," said Arthur Buddenhagen, manager of the Sir Walter Hotel, when asked about the Classic shutdown.
 
"There are a lot of people who come to Raleigh for a three day period," he said, allowing that the Classic normally fills up the Sir Walter. Buddenhagen added, however, that he personally agrees with the action taken by the University leaders.
 
"Ooow!" said one motel owner, who asked not to be identified. "It'll knock all the motels in Raleigh out of (at) least $50,000 worth of business a year. And all them 12,000 folks got to eat somewhere!"
 
"It means plenty," said Red Balentine, one of Raleigh's largest restaurant operators. "We hate to see it happen; it brings an awful lot of folks to Raleigh."
 
Balentine said figures in his office showed that his two restaurants alone ran $500 to $700 a day above normal sales during the three-day Classic.
 
The transportation industry will feel the loss too, said Irvin E. Doggett, president of Yellow Cab Co. "Anything hurts the cab business when it comes to crowds," he said. "I hate to see it go myself." -- The N&O 5/23/1961
 
In happier days
Big Four basketball coaches pull their Dixie Classic opponents from the hat of tournament director Roy Clogston at Reynolds Coliseum in 1957. Left to right: Harold Bradley, Duke; Frank McGuire, North Carolina; Roy Clogston; Everette Case, NC State; and Murray Greason, Wake Forest assistant athletic director. 
 
N&O Staff Photo by Lawrence Wofford

What if ...

Submitted by tleonard on 07/18/2012 - 11:31

 

In the summer of 1969, as Americans excitedly watched the progress of Apollo 11, the White House had to consider the possibility that the mission would not be a success. Speechwriter William Safire was asked to prepare a statement for President Nixon to deliver in case of disaster. The National Archives has made the never-delivered speech available.
 
Read about Raleigh's reaction to the moon landing and hear the famous quote in Neil Armstrong's own voice here.

The Long Vigil

Submitted by tleonard on 07/17/2012 - 13:12

 

When 102-year-old Charlotte Adams died in July 2005, she was remembered as "Chapel Hill's most tireless -- and most dlightful -- crusader." Her work spanned nearly 70 year and was all the more remarkable considering that with each decade, "she was as old as the decade."
 
In 1997, N&O writer Dave Hart wrote a profile of the then-95-year-old Adams.
 
Adams was born in Tennessee as Charlotte Garth, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She wanted to become a medical missionary and moved to Chapel Hill in 1927 to earn her pre-med degree.
 
Helping a fellow student serve refreshments to the English club one day - "That used to be what women did, serve refreshments, " she says - she met Raymond Adams, a graduate student in English literature.
 
[...]
 
"Well, Robert Frost used to come here every spring to read poetry, and Mr. Adams asked me if I wanted to go with him to hear Robert Frost. I said, 'I'm not an English scholar.' He said, 'Everybody who speaks English ought to go.' So I went."
 
She and Adams were married later that year and remained married for 60 years, until Raymond's death in 1987. He was a passionate scholar of Henry David Thoreau; Adams still has an arrowhead once owned by Thoreau that was given to them by a biographer of the great Transcendentalist, and she maintains Raymond's extensive library of Thoreau's early-editions.
 
In 1935, Dorothy Detzer, secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, spoke at UNC. Adams, who by then had become a Quaker and begun to admire Thoreau's philosophy of pacifism and civil disobedience, attended the speech. Inspired, she helped begin the local branch of the organization.
 
"We had a good group, but in 1941 they all fell away, " Adams said. "Peace and freedom were not on people's minds in '41 through '45. But there were six of us here in Chapel Hill who stuck with it and kept it alive. We urged the president, FDR - you've heard of FDR? - to move toward peace."
 
After World War II, Adams and the league shifted their attention toward civil rights. It was a long and difficult struggle, but by 1960 the movement had begun to gather steam. Adams and other activists went to Greensboro to support the lunch-counter sit-ins there, and they brought the protest movement back to Chapel Hill with them, organizing sit-ins and marches.
 
"I remember one occasion when we had students marching up and down, protesting segregation, and I went to one restaurant manager and asked him if he would let the blacks come in and have a cup of coffee, " Adams said. "He said no. His black cook heard this and looked out and saw his minister there in the crowd. He said, 'You mean my minister can't have a cup of coffee?' The man said, 'That's right.' And the cook said, 'Then you don't have a cook anymore, ' and he walked out and joined us.
 
[...]
 
Retired law professor Dan Pollitt was among those on the picket lines with Adams. He recalled that even then her charm disarmed those she was working against.
 
"The movie houses wouldn't admit blacks, and when 'Porgy and Bess' came out, the English teacher at the black high school asked the theater manager if she could bring her class to see it, " Pollitt said. "He said no, and we began picketing both movie houses downtown. We did this for seven or eight months, around the clock, in shifts.
 
"And I remember that whenever it was cold and rainy, the manager would come out with an umbrella and walk with Charlotte, keeping her dry."
 
The vigils in front of the post office began in 1966 to protest the Vietnam War - "You've heard of Vietnam?" Charlotte asked - and continued until 1972. At the same time, Adams and two colleagues, Tan Schwab and Beth Okun, began monitoring the local court on Rosemary Street to try to ensure that justice was being dispensed to black defendants. The trio would sit in court from 9 a.m. until noon and then walk to the post office for the vigil.
 
 
Adams noticed that the court docket was slowed and clogged with many cases that ultimately failed to find resolution because the offended party dropped charges. Perhaps, she thought, there was a way to resolve these kinds of conflicts without tying up the legal system.
 
Out of this grew the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center, dedicated to peaceful, mediated conflict-resolution. It's been a terrific success.
 
"It's a marvelous thing, " Adams said. "So many squabbles can be worked out without going to court. You'd be amazed how many roommates get into scraps over telephone bills." -- The N&O 12/5/1997
 

Reclaiming a park

Submitted by tleonard on 07/16/2012 - 12:13

 

In the late 1980s, as growth in Raleigh and Wake County was exploding, there was concern about keeping  some buffer between that growth and William B. Umstead State Park. Former N&O writer Nash Herndon provided some details of the park's history. 
 
A federal Civilian Conservation Corps camp during the Depression, the site was used during World War II to house 500 British sailors whose ships were torpedoed off the Carolina coast. The federal government gave the land to the state in 1943, as Crabtree Creek State Park on the north side for whites and Reedy Creek State Park on the south for blacks. -- The News & Observer 2/27/1989
 
The park had its beginnings as the Crabtree Creek Recreational Demonstration Area, a Depression-era public works project to convert exhausted farmland into parkland.
 
In 1936, E. C. Daniel described the "reverse pioneering" project to preserve the land and help struggling farmers.
 
American pioneering has been thrown into reverse. The nation is beginning to back-track over the trails trampled across the country by its first settlers.
 
Some of those settlers, in their haste and eagerness, made mistakes in their selections of land and in their methods of using it. To aid in correcting the mistakes, ... the Resettlement Administration was established. ...
 
An area along Crabtree Creek ... illustrates one type of mistake now being tackled by the Resettlement Administration.
 
Decades ago, fine and valuable hardwood trees, oak, walnut and maple, spread their shade over the slopes of the area and anchored its soil with their roots.
 
Settlers along the creek ... first cut those trees for lumber to build their homes and then hewed down others to sell. Eventually the area was stripped of its forest growth.
 
The story is an old one. As land was cleared and tilled, it yielded to the erosion of rain and wind. And now the Crabtree Creek area is hacked across with hilly and narrow ridges, rocky slopes, ravines and broad divides between streams.
 
On some of its stony and infertile slopes, farm families for many lean years have been scratching ragged furrows and trying to produce cotton.
 
[...]
 
The poor lands in the area have produced poor living conditions, poor people and poor support for government, schools and churches. So, the Resettlement Administration is purchasing 5,800 acres in the territory and giving its owners an opportunity to move to other, more productive lands.
 
In the Crabtree Creek area, then, pioneering is being reversed. Actually, the Resettlement Administration will not "develop" the area but intends to restore "its original wilderness state," as it existed before the pioneer came....
 
Because of its very ruggedness, the district is particularly suited for the uses which the government agency has in mind: To make it a public recreational area. 
 
[...]
 
Probably 50 of the families living in the area will be aided by the Resettlement Administration in establishing themselves on new lands. Other families have realized a sufficient amount from the sale of their farms to reestablish themselves. One old couple, who do not wish to move, have been granted permission to remain in their home as long as they live. -- The News & Observer 5/10/1936
Women wash clothes in the Crabtree Creek Recreational Demonstration Area in 1936. Courtesy of the North Carolina Archives
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