One of the great pleasures I had last winter was a visit from Dr. Linwood Watson, a Haliwa-Saponi family physician who has a passion both for growing native plants and for understanding more deeply how they were traditionally used for sustenance and healing in eastern North Carolina’s Indian communities.
Columbus County
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.”
The Birth of a Plantation Empire: New Bern in 1800– Susan Johnson’s Diary, part 6
This is part 6 of my series on the diary that Susan Edwards Johnson wrote on the North Carolina coast in 1800 and 1801. At this point in her story, she's spending time at her cousin Frances Pollock Devereux's home in New Bern while her husband is overseeing the construction of gristmills and lumber mills on Peter Mallet's lands on the Black River.
The Color of Water, Part 1: Lake Waccamaw
This is the first in a special series on Jim Crow and our coastal waters. In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting 7 or 8 stories about coastal North Carolina’s forgotten history of all-white beaches, “Sundown towns,” and racially exclusive resort communities.
Remarks on George Henry White
I want to thank the Phoenix Historical Society for inviting me back to Tarboro. As many of you know, I have been watching your historical society grow from its first days. I have had the privilege to be your guest as a lecturer, a writer and on two of your extraordinary walking tours of Tarboro’s African American past. I can scarcely believe how much you have accomplished in only a few short years. I think you should be so proud of what you have done.
David Cecelski 