When I am giving lectures these days, I am often asked to compare what is happening in America today with the white supremacy movement that rose to power in Wilmington and the rest of North Carolina between 1898 and 1900.
Month: January 2026
Muriel Wolff in Terra Ceia
In May of 1938, a young woman named Muriel L. Wolff spent several weeks interviewing people in Terra Ceia, a community of Dutch immigrants, African Americans, and other settlers who had all come to that part of the North Carolina coast to try to make a new home in hard times.
Logging in the Great Dismal Swamp
Today I want to highlight two historical photographs of loggers in the Great Dismal Swamp. In the foreground of one of the photographs, we can see a man named Willis Warren Powell. His great-grandson shared the photographs and his family's stories with me.
“I was born in Edenton, N.C., on the seashore, in 1804”
Allen Sidney was born a slave in the seaport of Edenton, North Carolina, in 1804. More than 50 years later, in 1856, he escaped from a steamboat on the Ohio River and followed the Underground Railroad to Canada. At the age of 90, he told the story of his life to a newspaper reporter.
David Cecelski 