I do not believe that I ever seen more runaway slave notices in one place than I found in a New Bern, N.C., newspaper published on August 1, 1818. In that single issue, slaveholders announced bounties for the capture and return, usually alive, but in one case dead or alive, of 11 men, 4 women, and 2 children who had escaped and were in hiding somewhere on the North Carolina coast.
Duplin County N.C.
The Pickle Makers of Faison and Mount Olive, N.C., 1941-47
The company's founder often said that he was following in the footsteps of his mother, Ms. Elizabeth Bradshaw Cates. Driving a horse and wagon through the streets, she had paid for her children's schooling by making jams, jellies, pickles, and preserves.
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 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."
“I Never Ask for Anything”: Stories from Rose Hill
In the 1970s, the writer Reed Wolcott fit into life in Rose Hill, N.C., in some surprising ways. She went to prayer meetings. She loved to sit on a porch with a crowd of other women telling stories and shelling butterbeans. She was hard-nosed, and she had a taste for bourbon.
The Rose Hill Poultry Workers Strike of 1968
The Rose Hill poultry workers strike of 1968 was one of the unsung chapters in the story of the black struggle for justice and equality in Eastern North Carolina.
David Cecelski 