At first light we gathered at the Friendship Holiness Church in Piney Grove, a community in the far southeastern part of the North Carolina coast. The descendants of Caesar Evans were going searching for the community's past in the local woods and swamps, and they had invited me to go with them.
Month: January 2024
Remembering Cedar Hill
I will never forget the day I spent with George Beatty, Jr. exploring the Gullah Geechee heritage of Cedar Hill, a community founded by the survivors of a rice plantation on the banks of the Cape Fear River.
The CCC Workers of Bell Island
These photographs were taken at a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp on Bell Island, in Hyde County, N.C., circa 1935. Taken by a young man named Troy Elliott and now preserved at the State Archives, they give us a rare glimpse at a little-known part of the Great Depression on the North Carolina coast.
David Cecelski 