In this-- my 17th photo-essay in this series-- we meet scores of tenant farmers harvesting tobacco on the Braswell Plantation in Battleboro, N.C., in August 1944. The 15 photographs speak to North Carolina's agricultural history, but also to the enduring legacy of Gov. Charles B. Aycock's brand of white supremacy.
Hauling Cabbage: Beaufort, 1944.
A number of my cousins in Harlowe also "hauled cabbage" back in the 1930s and '40s. One of them was my mother's first cousin Edsel, who often told me tales of his adventures driving all night to deliver truckloads of cabbage to New York City's Washington Square Market by dawn.
In the Strawberry Fields: Wallace, 1944
In this photograph, we see a group of African American women and children harvesting strawberries in Wallace, N.C., in May 1944. They were among the tens of thousands who labored in the fields of North Carolina's "Strawberry Basket"-- a stretch of towns including Chadbourn, Tabor City, Rose Hill, Burgaw, and Wallace that supplied much of the U.S. with strawberries in the years around World War II. (Part 15 of my "Working Lives" series.)
The Woman in the Lettuce Fields of Castle Hayne, 1943
They came there from a hundred places, as close as the Georgia piney woods, as far as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas. Then, early in the spring, when there was no more work in South Florida's fields, some of them came to the lettuce fields of Castle Hayne. (Part 14 of my "Working Lives" series.)
Logging on the Lockwood Folly River, 1943
In this group of photographs, we see two young black men unloading a truckload of logs onto a barge at a landing on Lockwood Folly River in March of 1943. (Part 13 of my "Working Lives" series.)
Ada Retha Walters Plowing a Cotton Field, Robeson County, 1943
I found this old photograph of a 13-year-old girl plowing a cotton field in Robeson County, N.C. at the State Archives, then found her granddaughter today.
In My Great-Uncle’s Sweet Potato Fields, 1942
This group of photographs is more personal for me than most of the other historical photographs that I have featured here: they were taken at my great-uncle George Ball and his brother Raymond Ball's potato farm in Harlowe, N.C. (Part 11 of my "Working Lives" series.)
The Shirt Factory in Morehead City, 1942
This is a portrait of Ms. Neva Adams at work in the stitching room of the Morehead City Garment Company in Morehead City, N.C., in 1942. People called it the "Shirt Factory," and I still remember my elderly cousins speaking of the deep feeling of sisterhood that they felt when they worked there. (Part 10 of my "Working Lives" series.)
On the Old Mullet Road, 1942
In this 9th photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am looking at several photographs that feature workers on a railroad that old timers, when I was a boy, still called the "Old Mullet Road."
In the Soybean Fields & Factories of Edgecombe County, 1942
Soybeans have been one of Eastern North Carolina's most important crops for more than a century, but these photographs are the only historical images I have ever seen of how workers turned them into the oil and meal that was, and still is, so much a part of daily life in the U.S.
At the Hackney Wagon Factory– Wilson, 1941
In this 7th photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am visiting the master wheelwrights and blacksmiths at the Hackney Wagon Company's factory in Wilson, N.C., in 1941.
On the Diamond Shoals Lightship, 1939
In the sixth photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am looking at historical photographs of the captain and crew of the Diamond Shoals Lightship, on duty 20 miles out at sea off Cape Hatteras.
On the James Adams Floating Theatre, 1940
In the fifth photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am looking at the actors and actresses, the clowns and musicians, and the ventriloquists and magicians who were traveling the North Carolina coast on the James Adams Floating Theatre in 1940.
Mending Net at Hatteras, 1939
In this fourth photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, we can see a quartet of Hatteras fishermen getting their gill net ready for fall fishing: patching holes, mending tears. The date is August 1939.
At a Cotton Gin in Dunn, 1938
In this third photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, I am looking at the Tart brothers' cotton gin in Dunn and the cotton fields of Harnett County in 1938.
The Sawmill Workers of the Roanoke River, 1938-1939
In this second photo-essay in my "Working Lives" series, we go inside a sawmill, a handle mill, and a veneer plant that were located on the banks of the Roanoke River in 1938 and 1939.
In the Peanut Fields of Edenton, 1937-1942
This is the first photo-essay in my series "Working Lives: Photographs of Eastern North Carolina, 1937-1947." In this photo-essay I am looking at a group of 21 photographs that chronicle threshing time on a peanut farm near Edenton, N.C. in the years just before the Second World War.
Working Lives: Photographs of Eastern North Carolina, 1937-1947
Today I would like to introduce a series of photo-essays that I will be publishing here over the next few weeks. Each of the photo-essays-- some very brief, some longer-- will focus on the working lives of people in Eastern North Carolina just before, during, and after the Second World War.
Calling Home
A few days ago, a journalist, poet, and prison activist named Phillip Smith II sent me the news that the on-line magazine Bolts has just published his article "Priced Out of Phone Calls Home." Phillip is an inmate at the Neuse Correctional Facility in Goldsboro, N.C.-- and his article is worth reading.
“The Huckleberry Capital of the World”: Sampson County’s Wild Blueberries, 1850-1950
As I drove along the Black River, I thought about the history of Sampson County's once legendary wild blueberries. Long before the country's first blueberry farm was established, the county's wild blueberries were famous as far away as New York City and Boston. Locals called them "huckleberries." In the rest of the world, they were known as the "Sampson blues."
Remembering Betty Town
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.
The Town Where Ella Baker Grew Up
In these days when we seem to have forgotten who we are, and what is best within us, I have found myself thinking often about the legendary civil rights activist Ella Baker and a spring day two years ago when I visited Littleton, the small town in Halifax County, N.C., where she grew up.
Bass Player Willie Weeks Comes Home
Taking the back way home from Wilmington, I drove through the little town of Salemburg-- and that's when I saw the mural: the legendary bass player Willie Weeks, bigger than life.
“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.
David Cecelski 