Part 4 of my series "The Shrimp Capital of the World"-- Today, the rise of Southport’s shrimp industry, Italian shrimpers and the days when most coastal North Carolinians were more likely to fertilize their gardens with shrimp than to sell or eat them!
Author: David Cecelski
“Until the blood be coming out of the fingers”- part 3 of “The Shrimp Capital of the World”
Today-- part 3 of my series "`The Shrimp Capital of the World:' Charles Farrell's Photographs of Southport, N.C., 1938"
Jabbertown’s Children– “The Shrimp Capital of the World,” part 2
Today-- "`The Shrimp Capital of the World,'", part 2. I begin my look at Charles Farrell’s historical photographs of Southport's shrimp industry with a special pair of photographs that are full of youth and joy, beauty and innocence.
“The Shrimp Capital of the World”– Charles Farrell’s Photographs of Southport, N.C., 1938
In today’s post I'm introducing a 10-part series looking at Charles A. Farrell’s historical photographs of shrimpers and shrimp house workers in Southport, a village at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, in Brunswick County, N.C. As a local woman named Leila Pigott told me years ago, “Southport used to be known as the shrimp capital of the world.”
Rosa Parks at the Library of Congress
I only met Rosa Parks once, back in 1996 when I accompanied my friend Tim Tyson to Robert Williams' funeral in Monroe, N.C. At the request of the Williams family, Tim and Ms. Parks both gave moving eulogies to the great civil rights leader who had a poet's soul and stood up to the Ku Klux Klan with guns.
At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
In its thoughtful and deeply troubling new exhibit “Americans and the Holocaust,” the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum highlights Sen. Robert Reynolds of North Carolina because in 1939 he led a senate fight that prevented the U.S. from rescuing 20,000 Jewish children from the Nazis. At the time, Reynolds said that he did not want the Jewish children to come to America and take our jobs.
The Earthed Lightning of a Flock of Swans
All winter my friend Tom Earnhardt sends me photographs of the birds at Pungo Lake, in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Washington County-- tundra swans and snow geese and countless thousands of migratory ducks-- green-winged teal, widgeons, pintails, spoonbills and many others.
Harriet Tubman’s Shawl
Finally, I want to look at a silk lace and linen shawl. By itself I don't suppose it's anything rare or valuable. But in this case it's special because of who owned it: one of greatest freedom fighters in American history, Harriet Tubman.
Portrait of a Rebel
John H. Scott was a free African American saddle and harness maker in Fayetteville, N.C. until 1856, when he left the town and settled in Oberlin, Ohio. Two years later, he became famous for taking up arms and liberating a fugitive slave that federal marshals had captured in Oberlin and were planning on returning to slavery.
Richard Ansdell’s “The Hunted Slaves”
A painting called "The Hunted Slaves" is another of the treasures at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, DC, that speaks to North Carolina's coastal history. Done in Liverpool, England, in 1862, Richard Ansdell's oil painting depicts a pair of fugitive slaves defending themselves against a slave catcher's dogs in the Great Dismal Swamp....
The Convict Labor Camp
As I look through the historical collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I also found another important artifact from eastern North Carolina: a postcard, dated ca. 1910, of a convict labor camp in Laurinburg, N.C.
The Conjure Woman
Today I'm looking at another artifact from the National Museum of African American History and Culture that has a connection to the North Carolina coast: a first edition of a book called The Conjure Woman, a collection of short stories by African American writer, lawyer and activist Charles W. Chesnutt.
Free the Wilmington 10
Some of the National Museum of African American History & Culture's artifacts are very small but hold a lot of meaning. This little pinback button is a good example. The button highlights another important moment in the civil rights movement on the North Carolina coast-- the campaign to free the Wilmington 10.
“The Forgotten 29”– The Sit-in Movement in New Bern
The sit-ins in New Bern began on March 17, 1960. Led by the Rev. Willie Hickman and the Rev. Leon "Buckshot" Nixon, a group of 29 African Americans, mainly high school students, came in the front doors of two downtown businesses, the Kress Department Store and Bob Clark's Drug Store, and sat down at the lunch counters.
Dr. Hubert Eaton’s Tennis Court
As I continue my look at the treasures at the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the second item I want to discuss is another photograph: a photograph of the backyard and tennis court at 1406 Orange Street in Wilmington, N.C. where Dr. Hubert Eaton oversaw the training of Althea Gibson, one of the greatest women's tennis players of all time.
At the National Museum of African American History & Culture
As my way of celebrating Black History Month this year, I'm going to feature stories about nine artifacts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that speak to North Carolina's coastal history, beginning with this photograph of Golden Frinks and an amazing young woman from Williamston at the March on Washington.
The Allen Parker Slave Narrative Project
Allen Parker’s Recollections of Slavery Times is one of the most important historical accounts of slavery and antebellum life on the North Carolina coast. Today, as we approach its 125th anniversary, I want to talk about Parker, Recollections and a special group of students that I taught when I was a visiting professor at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.
The Wild Plums at Core Creek– or, In Praise of Slow Cooking
I wrote this piece 22 years ago when my children were little. It seems a little dated today in some ways, but not in the most important ways, and I thought it might make a nice gift for today-- reading it now certainly reminds me of how much I have to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving!
The Norwegian, Swedish & Dutch Fishermen of Beaufort, N.C.
In this photograph (above), we see the blackfish boat Margaret at an unidentified port probably in southern New Jersey in 1934. Standing in the bow is Capt. Einar Neilsen, a Norwegian immigrant. Capt. Neilsen was part of a largely forgotten enclave of Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch blackfish fishermen and their families that left New Jersey and made their homes in Beaufort, N.C., beginning in the 1910s.
Working in the Logwoods: Photographs from Coastal North Carolina
I must have heard that phrase a million times when I was younger: “we were working in the logwoods.” Old men would say it again and again when they remembered their younger days on the North Carolina coast. They talked plenty about farming and fishing and raising families, but they talked just as much about “working in the logwoods.”
From Harkers Island to Rockyhock– More Photographs from the National Fisherman
The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has recently made available more than 20,000 photographs of America's commercial fishing industry that originally appeared in the pages of National Fisherman. Last week I highlighted several of the magazine's photos from Beaufort, N.C., in the 1930s and '40s. Today I want to share photographs that take us to Hatteras, Buxton, Harkers Island, Wanchese, Belhaven, Rockyhock and several other parts of the North Carolina coast.
Photographs from the National Fisherman
The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has recently made available for the first time more than 20,000 historical photographs from America's fishing communities, including those here on the North Carolina coast. It is an extraordinary collection: the photographs from every issue of the National Fisherman, the leading trade journal of the commercial fishing industry.
Chloe’s Story
This is a single story from the life of a woman named Chloe that was held in slavery at Indian Ridge in Currituck County, N.C., in the first half of the 1800s. It is only one brief moment in her life, but it is the only one that history has recorded. The passage, though brief, says a great deal about her and about the lives of other enslaved women on the North Carolina coast.
Escape through the Dismal Swamp
The most exciting historical source I found in coastal Maine this week was an old tintype portrait of an African American man named John H. Nichols who escaped from slavery on the North Carolina coast and settled in Lewiston, Maine, after the Civil War. In a 1921 issue of the Lewiston Journal Illustrated Magazine, I also found the life story of John H. Nichols....
The Fisher-Woman of Blue Hill
On the other side of Union River Bay, just west of where I am staying on Mount Desert Island, in a village called Blue Hill, the menhaden oil and scrap industry was born, if one can say it was born anywhere.
David Cecelski 