One day I hope that I will know more about Betty Town, a free African American community that white raiders destroyed just before the Civil War to make way for the founding of Aurora, North Carolina.
Slavery and Freedom
“I Cannot Write My Life”
Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst's new book "I Cannot Write My Life" reveals the Islamic and Arabic literary traditions of West Africa that shaped Omar ibn Said, the Muslim scholar who was enslaved on the North Carolina coast from 1807 until his death in 1863.
The Lake of Hell
The recently discovered slave narrative by John Swanson Jacobs is breathtaking. I do not think I can describe how deeply it touched me, or how profoundly it changed the way that I see some of the places on the North Carolina coast that I have known all my life.
“As Long as a Star Can Be Seen”: Remembering the Plymouth Massacre
I was recently asked to give the keynote address at an extraordinary event held in Plymouth, N.C., to commemorate the Plymouth Massacre of April 1864. I found the event deeply moving, and I was honored to be there. This is a copy of my remarks and photographs of the day's events.
In Remembrance: Robert Hinton (1941-2023)
I just learned that my old friend Robert Hinton passed away late last year. He was an inspiring historian, and a good man, and he forever changed the way that I and many others think about the history of Eastern North Carolina. To honor Robert, I am sharing a special lecture that he gave in Tarboro, N.C., in 2001.
A Beautiful Day in Piney Grove
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.
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.
On a Beautiful Autumn Day in Red Hill
A few days ago, a large crowd gathered in Red Hill, North Carolina, for the unveiling of a state historical marker commemorating the establishment of an Equal Rights League there in 1866. Sponsored by the Phoenix Historical Society, the ceremony was hosted by the Red Hill Missionary Baptist Church, the heart of that rural community 18 miles northeast of Rocky Mount.
The Trouble at the Woodville Convict Labor Camp
Today I am excerpting a passage from a Ph.D. dissertation by Dr. Susan Thomas at UNC-Greensboro. The excerpt focuses on a convict labor strike in Perquimans County, N.C., in 1935 that played a key role in ending the practice of flogging prisoners on chain gangs and in the state's prisons.
“For all the Poor People”: Notes on Sarah E. Small & Her Run for the U.S. Congress in 1965
Sarah E. Small of Williamston, N.C. was the first African American woman in North Carolina history to run for the U.S. Congress. When she ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1965, she may even have been the first black woman to do so in American history.
The Griot of Topsail Sound
Curtis Hardison’s new book Griot: The Evolution of Edgecombe tells the story of a little African American community near Topsail Island called Edgecombe. Hardison grew up there, and his book chronicles his extraordinary journey in search of the community’s roots.
Minnie Evans: A Journey from Trinidad
I recently found a transcript of a 1971 interview with Minnie Evans, the African American visionary artist from Wilmington, in which she described her ancestors' journey from slavery in the British colony of Trinidad.
“One Book of Plants Very Lovingly Packt Up”: Searching for John Lawson in London’s Natural History Museum (Part 2)
In the weeks after John Lawson's death, his “one book of plants very Lovingly packt up” found a new home in James Petiver’s herbarium in London.
Where They Remember
My daughter and I recently visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. It is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the victims of racial terror and lynching.
“They have got hold of the Bible”– Beaufort, N.C. and the Civil War
The struggle of enslaved African Americans to get access to books, and most particularly the Bible, and the efforts of slaveholders to keep them from doing so, is one of the central themes in the history of American slavery.
“We Take No Negro Prisoners:” Remembering the Plymouth Massacre
Whenever I visit Plymouth, N.C., a small town near where I grew up, the first thing I think of is the massacre of African Americans that happened there on April 20, 1864.
Worcester, Mass., 1888: The Sons and Daughters of North Carolina (Part 3)
While doing research on her family’s history, Yvette Porter Moore discovered that her ancestors had organized a chapter of the Sons and Daughters of North Carolina in Worcester, Mass., in the fall of 1888.
The Sons and Daughters of North Carolina II
The second time that the Sons and Daughters of North Carolina made national headlines was the 1st of December, 1898, when they gathered at Association Hall in Brooklyn, N.Y., to protest the Wilmington, N.C., massacre and coup d’etat of 1898.
The Sons and Daughters of North Carolina
The first time that the Sons and Daughters of North Carolina attracted national attention was a winter night in Brooklyn, New York, in 1897. Composed of African American migrants who had left North Carolina, the group was holding a memorial service in honor of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
The Exodusters and the Burning of the Hackney Carriage Factory
I recently re-visited Dr. Frenise A. Logan's groundbreaking article on the Exodusters because I wanted to understand better why black insurgents had burned down the Hackney carriage factory in Rocky Mount, N.C., in February of 1890.
Building Fort Bragg II: The Puerto Rican Migrant Workers of 1918
Today I want to look at the story of Puerto Rican construction workers that helped to build Fort Bragg at the end of WW1. Theirs is a little-known tale of war, colonialism and migration, and it is one set against the background of the country's last deadly pandemic, the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19.
The Spirits Damn’d
Today I want to talk about slavery, convict labor and the construction of the old Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C. I was first led to do this historical research many years ago, when I was documenting a hunger strike at the prison in its last days. It is not something one forgets easily.
“We are Five Africans Seeking Freedom”— A Civil War Story from Beaufort, NC
Late one night in 1862, a slave waterman named Dempsey Hill slipped into the customs house in Beaufort, N.C., removed copies of the latest nautical charts and buried them in the local cemetery-- the one people now call the Old Burying Ground.
A Local History of Human Trafficking
This essay originated in discussions with Dr. Makini Chisolm-Straker and Katherine Chon on the history of human trafficking in the American South-- and especially in eastern North Carolina.
“I Desire to find my Children”
A project called Last Seen—Finding Family after Slavery has been documenting the efforts of African Americans to find their families and other loved ones after the American Civil War. Most of the documents that the project has collected and put on-line are newspaper notices like this one about a family in Perquimans County, in northeastern … Continue reading “I Desire to find my Children”
David Cecelski 