Yet another memory. I am at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the Boston Public Library in Boston, Mass. Founded in 1854, the library houses more than a million rare books and historical manuscripts. I am looking for Abraham Galloway.
Month: January 2021
Reaping the Whirlwind
Many Americans are searching for historical context in order to make sense of what happened at the U.S. Capitol. Again and again, they look to the racial massacre and coup d'etat in Wilmington in 1898, when white supremacists overthrew a duly elected government and took power.
The Migrants in the Potato Fields
I discovered another forgotten chapter in eastern North Carolina's history while I was exploring the Farm Security Administration (FSA)'s photographs at the Library of Congress-- it is a story about the migrant farm workers that harvested the region's crops in the 1930s and '40s.
Building Fort Bragg: The Migrant Workers of 1940-41
This week I've been looking at another remarkable collection of historical photographs. Now preserved at the Library of Congress, they were taken by a documentary photographer named Jack Delano in the camps of the migrant construction workers that built Fort Bragg, N.C., one of the largest military installations in the world.