Nearly twenty years ago, scholar and archivist Linda Simmons-Henry led an extraordinary oral history project with African American elders in Pamlico County, N.C.. What I found most unforgettable about the project's interviews, back then and still today, is how much they are a history of faith and the spirit.
Month: December 2025
At the Migrant Camp in Aurora, N.C., June 1947
This is the 21st and last photo-essay of my "Working Lives" series. It focuses on a migrant farmworkers camp in Aurora, a small town on the North Carolina coast that used to be called the "Potato Capital of the World." Every spring, with the arrival of the migrant harvest workers, Aurora's population doubled then doubled again.
The Pickle Makers of Faison and Mount Olive, N.C., 1941-47
The company's founder often said that he was following in the footsteps of his mother, Ms. Elizabeth Bradshaw Cates. Driving a horse and wagon through the streets, she had paid for her children's schooling by making jams, jellies, pickles, and preserves.
David Cecelski 