Abstract: John Kenyon Chapman (1947-2009), known as Yonni, was a life-long social justice activist, organizer, and historian who focused his academic and social efforts on workers rights and African American empowerment in central North Carolina. Chapman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 1947; graduated from Harvard University in 1969; and then moved to Atlanta, Ga., to join the fight for African American equality. He relocated to North Carolina in 1975 and worked as a laboratory technician at the North Carolina Memorial Hospital for about ten years. During this time, Chapman became active in local social justice struggles and community organizations. He helped organize his coworkers against unfair working conditions, became involved with the Communist Workers Party, and participated in African liberation and anti-apartheid struggles. Chapman was a survivor of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979. Throughout the 1980s, he was active in progressive social justice campaigns. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chapman was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he focused his activism and academic work on historical accuracy, African American empowerment, and civil rights education in and around Chapel Hill. During this time, Chapman founded and directed two racial and social justice organizations: the Freedom Legacy Project in 1995 and the Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth in 2005. From 2002 to 2005, Chapman ran a successful campaign to abolish the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award on campus, an action that opened a dialogue about the history of slavery and racism on campus. After a 30-year battle with cancer, Chapman died on 22 October 2009 in Chapel Hill. The collection documents Yonni Chapman’s social activism and academic activities, covering nearly four decades of progressive racial, social, and economic justice struggles in central North Carolina. Organizational correspondence, notes, newsletters, and reports document the activities of the Communist Workers Party, the Federation for Progress, the Orange County Rainbow Coalition of Conscience, the New Democratic Movement, the Freedom Legacy Project, and the Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth, among other organizations on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus and in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and Greensboro. Workers rights and racial justice campaigns and commemorations, including the Greensboro Massacre and the campaign to end the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award on campus, are documented in paper, audio, visual, and photographic formats. Photographs, slides, contact prints, photographic negatives, posters, banners, signs, and screen-printed t-shirts, chiefly created by Chapman, document a variety of demonstrations, meetings, and social justice events. Audio and video materials, largely created by Chapman include documentaries, meetings, speeches, and demonstrations captured on audio cassettes, VHS tapes, 8mm video cassettes, and DVDs. Research materials for Chapman’s graduate doctoral work include audio and paper files of interviews with participants in the Chapel Hill civil rights movement. There are also audio files recorded by Chapman on a digital voice recorder in the year leading up to his death that contain lengthy discussions with local activists about continuing his social justice work after his death; audio recordings and a video photograph montage from Chapman’s 2009 memorial service; photographs of Chapman with friends and family; and other items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular note are the materials related to the Communist Party in Series 1, as well as materials documenting the Greensboro Massacre that took place at an anti-Klan Rally in 1970. Series 6 also contains materials related to numerous social justice and civil rights organizations that Yonni Chapman was involved in, including the Chapel Hill- Carrboro chapter of the NAACP. Subseries 7.1 contains audio recordings of oral histories interviews Yonni conducted with participants in the black freedom struggle and civil rights movement in Chapel Hill. There are also photographs and audio of numerous civil rights demonstrations, events, and programs.

Collection number: 606

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Abstract: Prominent members of the Polk and Yeatman family of North Carolina and Tennessee included William Polk (1758-1834), land speculator and North Carolina federal internal revenue supervisor; his son Lucius Junius (1802-1870) and grandson Will, planters of Maury County, Tenn.; Lucius’s son-in-law Henry Clay Yeatman (d. 1910), Nashville lawyer and Confederate colonel; and Yeatman’s stepfather John Bell (1797-1869), Nashville lawyer, Whig leader, United States representative (1827-1839), United States senator (1847-1859), and Constitutional Union Party presidential candidate (1860). The collection includes personal and business papers of three generations of the Polk and Yeatman family of North Carolina and Tennessee. Materials through the 1830s are chiefly letters and legal papers of William Polk of Raleigh, dealing with his widespread land speculation in North Carolina and Tennessee and his position as federal internal revenue supervisor for North Carolina. There are also, particularly in the 1820s, items relating to the treatment of slaves on North Carolina plantations. Papers from the 1830s through the 1890s relate mainly to the Maury County, Tenn., cotton plantations of Lucius Junius and Will Polk, including some items about the treatment of slaves; to Henry Clay Yeatman’s law practice; and, particularly 1840-1861, to the political and personal life of John Bell. A letter each from Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk are included. Later materials relate to various enterprises in which Polk family members were involved, including a dry goods store and livestock firms. There is much family correspondence, especially after 1861, and scattered business and personal items of members of the related Hawkins, Devereux, and Rayner families. The Addition of May 2009 consists of an 1827 autographed letter from William Polk to the Adjutant General of the United States Army concerning the absence of his son, Leonidas Polk, and the possible delay of the latter’s acceptance of his appointment as Brevet Second Lieutenant of Artillery.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In Subseries 1.1 (Correspondence: 1773-1883), Folder 7 contains a letter dated 2 April 1820 describing the punishment of enslaved people. Letters from  17 July 1820 and 16 January 1822 (folder 8) discusses the sale of property and slaves. In Folder 8, A letter from 22 May 1822 discusses the suspected poisoning of a family by 7 or 8 of the enslaved people on their plantation.

Abstract: David Irvin Craig was born in Orange County, N.C., in 1849. He received his early education at the old Hughes Academy at Cedar Grove, N.C.; was a student at Davidson College, 1874-1875; and, in 1878, graduated from the Theological Seminary in Columbia, S.C. He was licensed to preach in May 1878 in Greensboro, N.C., and served as pastor at the Reidsville Presbyterian Church in Reidsville, N.C., until 1925. In 1881, Craig married Isabel Gertrude Newman of Columbia, S.C., with whom he had four children. Craig was elected as a representative of Orange Presbytery in the General Assembly, served as Moderator of Synod and the Presbytery, was one of ten original regents of Barium Springs Orphanage, held the Stated Clerk position for both the Orange Presbytery and the Synod, and was a trustee of Davidson College and Union Theological Seminary. He wrote historical works on Presbyterianism. Craig died in 1925. The collection includes one account book, one day book, 14 diaries, and some loose papers. The account book, 1878-1924, includes information about marriages, baptisms, and burials performed by D.I. Craig. It also contains insurance information and lists new members of Reidsville Presbyterian Church, 1878-1897, with some gaps. The day book, 1912-1923, contains salary, expenditure, and debt information for D.I. Craig and his family. The diaries, 1884-1925, include stories of his experiences on the Craig family “plantation,” which was established in Orange County, N.C., during the 1750s. Craig also recorded a short history of the Craig and Strayhorn families in the 1884 diary and discussed family history in other diaries. Entries discuss President Grover Cleveland’s appearance at the Great Centennial Celebration of the Presbyterian General Assembly in May 1888, local and national elections, his experiences with African Americans at the polls on election days, thoughts on Prohibition, meetings with the Synod and Presbytery, his perspective on racial issues, farm life, family members, and the local gossip. Also included are entries describing the Wilmington race riots of 1898 and race riots across the country that followed first black Heavyweight Champion of the World (1908-1915) Jack Johnson’s defeat of Jim Jeffries, a white boxer and former world heavyweight champion who came out of retirement to fight Johnson on 4 July 1910. Loose papers, 1878-1925, include clippings mentioning D.I. Craig’s life and work, a program for Reidsville Presbyterian Church, and photographs of New Hope Cemetery in the 1920s. The cash book, 1914-1929, contains information on sermons preached and prayer meetings held at Reidsville Presbyterian Church as well as a list of baptisms, marriages, and funerals performed by D.I. Craig. There are also loose papers throughout the book primarily addressed to D.I. Craig’s son, Carl B. Craig. The notebooks, 1876-1878, consist of a collection of writings, sermons, and lectures given by educators at the Theological Seminary in Columbia, S.C., and they also include some written thoughts and reflections of D.I. Craig. The Addition of August 2010 consists of a single volume providing genealogical information about the Craig family written by D.I. Craig in 1899. Other information in the volume is written in another hand and includes a transcription of an obituary of a relative who died in the Civil War during the Battle of Bean’s Station (14 December 1863) and a transcription of a letter purported to have been found by a servant at a federal army camp near Camden, S.C. Dated 26 February 1865, the letter from Thomas J. Myers to his wife in Boston, Mass., recounts the looting and pillaging that occurred, likely in Camden, S.C., as General William T. Sherman’s army travelled north through the state.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection highlights: Some of the material in this collection has been digitized. Click here to access the finding aid to link to the digital material.

The diaries (1884-1925) contain entries describing Craig’s interactions with African Americans at the polls during election day, as well as his views on race relations.

The Diary from August 1897-1900 (Oversize Volume SV-5399/4) contains an entry describing the Wilmington Race Riots of 1898.

The Diary from 1908-1910 (Oversize Volume SV-5399/7) includes an entry about the 4 July 1910 fight between Jack Johnson, an African-American man, who defeated Jim Jeffries, a white man. The event provoked race riots across the country.

Abstract: Prominent members of the Hentz family included French revolutionary Nicholas Arnould Hentz (1756-1832); his sons Nicholas Richard Hentz (1786-1850), an officer in the French Imperial Army; and Nicholas Marcellus Hentz (1797-1856), a prominent entomologist; the latter’s wife, the writer Caroline Lee Whiting Hentz (1800-1856); two of Nicholas Marcellus and Caroline Hentz’s children, Charles Arnould (A.) Hentz (1827-1894) and Thaddeus William Harris Hentz (1830-1878), who were both physicians; and Charles A. Hentz’s son, William Booth Hentz (b. 1860). The collection includes personal, medical, financial, and legal papers, and diaries and autobiographies of members of the Hentz family of France, Alabama, and Florida. Correspondence describes activities of family and friends in Alabama and Florida, teaching at a female academy in Alabama, medical and dental practices, and a Confederate soldier’s camp life and experiences as a prisoner of war. The diaries of Caroline Lee Hentz discuss her life and work in Alabama. The diary of Thaddeus W. Hentz, her son, details his experience in the Confederate army. The diaries and autobiography of Charles A. Hentz are concerned with travels in the southern United States; the Mexican War; his medical education and practice, including treatment of slaves; recreational drug use and drug addicts; the flora and fauna of the Panhandle region of Florida; descriptions of inhabitants of and life in Louisville, Ky., Cincinnati, Ohio, New Orleans, La., Mobile and Tuskegee, Ala., and Jackson and Gadsden counties, Fla.; a journey on horseback to Tampa Bay, Fla.; treatment of the wounded at the battles of Marianna and Natural Bridge, Fla. The execution of Confederate deserters; his citrus and vegetable farms; and a lynching. Other items include military records of an officer in the French Imperial Army; notes and writings on yellow fever and grave-robbing for dissection purposes, descriptions of fish and plants, and drafts of plays and stories; records of Charles A. Hentz’s obstetrical cases; drawings and pictures of human, botanical, and animal subjects; biographical and genealogical sketches; and a phrenological character analysis. The Addition of June 2000 includes two framed photographs and one cased ambrotype, all undated. The photographs are childhood portraits of Julia Keyes Hentz Dumbar (b. 1862) and William Booth Hentz (b. 1860), probably taken circa 1865. The ambrotype is a portrait of Charles A. Hentz. The Addition of May 2005 contains two documents relating to the medical practice of Charles A. Hentz. The Addition of September 2005 consists of the Hentz Family Bible, with scattered genealogical material. The Addition of May 2009 includes eight diaries. The 1862 diary documents Charles A. Hentz’s activities as a doctor in Quincy, Fla., and his work at the military hospital established there. Diaries, 1880-1901, describe Charles A. Hentz’s everyday activities as a doctor in Quincy and as a citrus farmer in City Point, Fla. Included is a 17 May 1880 entry describing an operation Hentz performed to remove part of the skull of an African American man who had suffered a fractured skull. In an 1899 diary, Ella Hentz described traveling with William Booth Hentz from their home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a family wedding in City Point; in a diary, March-May 1901, William Booth kept a March-May 1901 diary during a visit to City Point and Quincy.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  An autobiography (1827-1893) includes descriptions of slave life in Alabama;  comments on northern impressions of slavery; the medical treatment of plantation slaves in Florida; the punishment of slaves in Florida; black Union troops in the Civil War; the murder of a white sheriff by four black men and their subsequent trial and execution; northern schoolteachers and their treatment of freedmen in Florida; and the murder of a white man by a freedman and the arrest and lynching of the latter in Florida.(See Folders 23-26 for the autobiography and typed transcriptions).

Folder 19 includes Volume 1 of Charles Hentz diary includes discussion of the amputation of an African American woman’s leg.

Folder 27 contains obstetrical records in order by date, with an index to patient names in the back of the volume. Case descriptions for both white and black patients are included. (This folder has been digitized, click here to link to the finding aid and access the digital material).

Folder 28 contains a medical journal of Hentz’s cases from 1858 to 1863. Entries give details on symptoms and treatment of cases for both black and white patients (This folder has been digitized, click here to link to the finding aid and access the digital material).

Folder 33 contains a copy of Charles Heinz diary from 1880, which contains an entry 17 May 1880 that describes an operation performed by Hentz to remove part of the skull of an African American man who had suffered a fractured skull.

Abstract: Daniel Moreau Barringer of Cabarrus County and Raleigh, N.C., was a lawyer; North Carolina state legislator; United States representative, 1843-1849; minister to Spain, 1849-1853; active Whig and later Democrat; and member of the North Carolina Democratic Party state executive committee, 1860, and chair, 1872. Family, business, and political correspondence and other papers of Daniel Moreau Barringer and members of his family. Included are letters, 1830s-1870s, from numerous North Carolina politicians and public officials, including Daniel Laurens Barringer, David F. Caldwell, Thomas L. Clingman, William Gaston, James Graham, William Alexander Graham, Willie P. Mangum, David L. Swain, and Calvin H. Wiley. Letters concern such issues as state and national politics; positions to be filled by President Zachary Taylor, 1848-1849; slavery; railroads; the University of North Carolina; and gold mining in Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties, N.C. Papers for the period of Barringer’s diplomatic service in Spain are especially full and include material relating to Americans taken prisoner after an expedition against the Spanish in Cuba. Letters, 1844-1860, from Barringer’s brother, Paul Brandon Barringer, cotton planter near Oxford, Miss., discuss agricultrual, economic, social, and political affairs in Mississippi. There are also letters from Franklin L. Smith, a student at the University of North Carolina, 1827 and 1829; about politics during the Civil War; about race relations just after the Civil War; and about student life at Washington College, Lexington, Va., 1867-1869. Papers of Barringer’s wife, Elizabeth (Wethered) Barringer (1822-1867) of Baltimore, Md., document her life, including treatment she received for cancer, 1866-1867, and the lives of members of the Wethered family. There are also two color photographs of oil portraits of Daniel Moreau Barringer and Elizabeth Barringer painted by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz during the Barrigers’ stay in Madrid.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence discusses the execution of slaves accused of killing a white woman (1828); the buying of slaves (1849; 1863); a “Negro convention” at which a former Barringer slave was a secretary (1865); conditions of Southern freedmen (1865, 1867); a “Negro procession” and meeting in Lexington, North Carolina (1869); and requests for aid for two brothers convicted of illegal activities associated with the Ku Klux Klan (1871). References to the purchase of slaves express attempts to keep slave families intact.

Abstract: Sam Thomas was a free black man in Stokes County, N.C., in 1786. It appears that he was able to free his wife Amy in 1802. It also appears that members of the Thomas family moved to Ohio in the early 1800s, settling in Zanesville and Chillicothe. Their relationship to Sam Thomas is unknown. At some point, a Sam Thomas was accused of several crimes in Salem, N.C., including poisoning his wife. Items relating to the Thomas family, who had been slaves in Stokes County, N.C. In the earliest document, 1786, Frederick Marshall gave the “Negro Sam” the right to work some land for a yearly rent of either crops or money. There are also bonds, dated 1802, that freed Pleasant Thomas, Sam Thomas, John Thomas, and Amy, identified as Sam Thomas’s wife. These bonds were signed by Sam Thomas and several white men from Salem, N.C., including Francis Clark, Archibald Campbell, and Gottlieb Shober. Also included are an 1826 letter to Mary Thomas in Zanesville, Ohio, from a sibling in Chillicothe, Ohio, which chiefly discusses the health of various relatives; a small printed paper stating that Thomas Laurence of Zanesville, Ohio, was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1835; and an undated statement, signed by William Johnson and Garrard Johnson, certifying certain criminal charges against “Black Sam Thomas” of Salem, N.C., who was charged with stealing clothes, robbing a wagon, fighting “whitemen,” and poisoning his wife and others who were to be witnesses against him.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digital content.

Abstract: Wilmington, N.C., lawyer, Confederate Army officer, Republican leader of eastern North Carolina, judge, U.S. Representative, 1879-1881, and Republican-Populist governor, 1897-1901. Half of the collection consists of papers, 1900-1905, related to the South Dakota Bond Case, a famous and complicated litigation over North Carolina’s repudiation of bonds issued during Reconstruction. Correspondents include Marion Butler, Alfred Russell, and Addison G. Ricard. Also, an extensive political correspondence, chiefly 1874-1897, about the efforts to strengthen the Republican Party in North Carolina. Other papers include correspondence with Russell’s New York cotton brokers, papers concerning his Confederate Army court martial, 1863-1864, a biography of Russell by two friends, Louis Goodman and Alice Sawyer Cooper (typescript, 111 p.); and a biography of his wife, Sarah Amanda (Sanders) Russell (1844-1913). Also, some correspondence with his law partner, Louis Goodman.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In folder 19, there are letters discussing African American and voting.   including one from John Leary in 9 December 1896, and  J.B. Hill on 14 December 1896;

There is also a 15 December 1896 letter from John Ray, Principle of the North Carolina Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, where black and white children attended,  about Russel’s upcoming visit to the school.

There is also a copy of an 18 August 1898 editorial from The Daily Record in Wilmington, N.C., written by prominent African American journalist and editor of the paper, Alex Manly. This editorial decries lynching and disputes the fact it preserves “white womanhood” and protects them from African American men. This editorial angered many whites, who terrorized the African American community and drove many blacks from the town, including Alex Manly. This violent and deadly period became known as the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898.

There is a a copy of an essay, c. 1899 – 1900 presumably written by Russel, entitled “Republicanism In The South”. This essay discusses the history of the party, as well as slavery and African American voting within the party.

Abstract: William Alexander Hoke, lawyer, legislator, and chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, of Lincolnton, Lincoln County, N.C., was the son of John Franklin Hoke (1821-1888) and Catherine Wilson Alexander Hoke (d. 1857), brother of Nancy Childs Hoke (1856-1893) and Sallie Badger Hoke (d. 1914), husband of Mary McBee Hoke (d. 1920), and father of Mary Hoke Slaughter. The collection includes letters, financial and legal papers, genealogical papers, and other materials pertaining to William Alexander Hoke and members of the related Alexander, Henderson, McBee, and Wilson families. Included is material on 19th-century North Carolina politics; an antebellum gold mining operation; John Franklin Hoke’s involvement in the Mexican-American War; slavery, including slave bills of sale; the service of family members and others in the Confederate army and navy; the homefront during the Civil War; problems of Reconstruction, including references to activities of the Ku Klux Klan; the legal career of William Alexander Hoke; the brief theatrical career of Laura Alexander in the 1870s; and Sallie Badger Hoke’s travels to Europe and Egypt in the 1880s. Also included a notebook belonging to H. T. Guion with records of the North Carolina State Troops, Company B, 1st Regiment Artillery, North Carolina land records dating back to the 1750s, and legal documents and financial items relating to family members. Correspondents include North Carolina Governor David L. Swain; Frances Christine Fisher Tiernan, the novelist who wrote as Christian Reid; Zebulon Vance; and Josephus Daniels.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence from 18 November 1859 relates to the raid on Harper’s Ferry (Folder 7)

Volume 345/16 contains references to the influence of abolitionists on a Miss Gould (Folder 236).

Correspondence from 6 April 1872 and 18 June 1874 also discusses the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina (Folders 15 and 16).

Included are slave bills of sale,  particularly in the 1820s- 1850s (Folder175-176) and the hiring of slaves in 1865 (Folder 176).

Volume 345/20 includes a register of the African-American Sunday School at St. Luke’s, Lincolnton, North Carolina (Folder 240).

Volume 345/21 contains the reminiscences from the 1890s of Sallie Badger Hoke of Julia, a former slave nurse who had belonged to the Hoke family (Folder 241)

 

Abstract: Robert Ruffin Barrow (b. 1798) was a sugar planter and canal operator in Terrebonne Parish, La. Barrow was the son of Bartholomew Barrow (d. 1852), a merchant of Fishing Creek, Halifax County, N.C., and later a planter in West Feliciana Parish, La., where he settled on his estate, Afton Villa, in 1820. Robert Ruffin Barrow’s mother was Ascension Slatter Barrow. The younger Barrow owned six Terrebonne Parish plantations, including Residence, Myrtle Grove, and Caillou Grove, as well as plantations in Lafourche, Assumption, and Ascension parishes and in Texas. Daybook (microfilm), 1811-1914, of Bartholomew Barrow in Fishing Creek, N.C., and journal, 1857-1858, for Robert Ruffin Barrow’s Residence Plantation in Terrebonne Parish, La. The daybook includes accounts with Fishing Creek residents, including several blacks. The plantation journal, kept by Residence manager Ephraim A. Knowlton and several overseers, including Robert P. Ford, George Bucknall, N.B. Holland, and Charles Lull, contains slave records, details of sugar production, records of daily operations, and reports of conflicts between slaves and overseers and between Barrow and his overseers, including reports of fugitive slaves. Slave records include slave lists, birth and death records, and notes on illnesses, tasks assigned, and supplies distributed.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection includes the original and a typed transcription of the plantation journal, 1857-1858, of Barrow, sugar planter and canal operator in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. The journal documents the relationship between plantation owner and overseer, and between overseers, field slaves, and slave drivers. It also contains slave lists, accounts of resistance and punishments, and tasks assigned slaves, and includes information on slave births, deaths, and illnesses as well as items distributed to slaves and runaways. Microfilm available.

Abstract: Valentine was a lawyer practicing in the courts of a four-county area of northeastern North Carolina (Hertford, Bertie, Gates, and Northampton). A bachelor, he kept a full diary which touched on almost every aspect of the public life of the area. Many entries concern his evaluation of the personalities and characters of his fellow attorneys and judges. He was fascinated by politics and wrote in much detail of events on both the local and state level. Other subjects discussed include the activities of the local Baptist and Methodist churches, especially the establishment of female colleges in the area; slaves and free blacks; the local fishing industry; local opinions on national politics; farming practices; and mores, gossip and scandals.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The 15 volumes contain discussion of rape charges brought against a black man by a white woman and the man’s subsequent hanging (1838); abolition (1840, 1849, 1850); the shooting of a runaway slave (1845); a case of miscegenation which appeared in the Gates County Court (1846); slavery, slaves, and free blacks within various communities in eastern North Carolina (1850-1853); a prayer meeting of blacks (1851); the legal rights and community status of free blacks (1853); and the impact a large number of free black residents had upon the community of Winston (1853).