It feels strange to look back into the past and feel heartbreak for people's suffering, and all they did without, when they are long gone and there is nothing left to be done about their want or need. But I cannot always help myself, and that is how I felt when I read these words from a tenant farmer in Martin County, N.C. in 1887.
Beaufort County N.C.
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.
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.
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.
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.
David Cecelski 