Abstract: Raymond Bowden Mallard was born in Faison, N.C., in 1908. He was an attorney, state legislator, North Carolina Superior Court judge, and first chief judge of the North Carolina State Court of Appeals. Mallard died in 1979 in Tabor City, N.C. The collection documents Raymond B. Mallard’s judicial career and related civic activities. Materials include correspondence; briefs and other legal documents for a variety of cases, most of which probably duplicate the official records that are filed with the North Carolina Court System; writings; court notes; his diary from the Superior Court special terms of 1964; informal notes and annotations on envelopes and other materials; speeches; newspaper clippings; and photographs, including a few relating to the civil rights protests in Chapel Hill, N.C. The bulk of the materials documents Mallard’s judicial career on the North Carolina Superior Court and the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Topics include the establishment and function of the Court of Appeals; the trials stemming from the civil rights demonstrations in Chapel Hill; the North Carolina Civil Rights Advisory Committee’s reports on African American participation in instrumentalities of justice and voting history; judicial responsibility for protection of rights of the defendant in high profile cases; preparation and delivery of jury charges; inherent powers of the courts of North Carolina; the Henderson Cotton Mills trials; conflicts with the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI); inmate requests for parole and Mallard’s opinions on criminal recidivism; his interest in student activism on campus; and the North Carolina Bar Association position on legal aid clinics. The collection also documents Mallard’s early work as an attorney for the town of Tabor City, N.C., and board of trustee matters at Pembroke State College, including the conflict over administrative decisions and planning that purportedly diminished the roles and presence of Native Americans at the school.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folders 186-188, 196, 197 document cases in the Superior Court relating to Civil Rights. Folders 206-233 particularly contain legal documentation, clippings, letters, and other materials related to the Civil Rights protests in Chapel Hill in 1964.

Image Folder PF-5518/1 also contains a number of photographs of the protests from 1964.

Abstract: Blackwell Markham (1897-1977) was a general surgeon in Durham, N.C. He received his medical training at the University of North Carolina and at Harvard University. He served in the United States Army in World War II in North Africa and Europe. The collection contains correspondence, greeting cards, diaries, personal papers, a few business papers, and photographs relating to Blackwell Markham and his family. Topics include family matters and life during World War II. Much of the correspondence is between Markham and family members and with Mary Poteat, an English teacher at Duke University with whom he corresponded for 40 years; the bulk was written from Italy and Algeria, 1942-1945. There are also detailed diaries kept by Markham during World War II that include descriptions of specific patient cases, travel, and hospital and general military life. Also included is a diary, written in Italian, that was at least partially compiled by internees at an Italian prisoner of war camp in Algeria where Markham was stationed. There are also scrapbooks and other materials primarily relating to Markham while he attended Durham High School; the University of North Carolina; and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. There are also materials, many annotated by Markham, relating to earlier generations of Markhams, including John L. Markham Sr., who owned a general store in Durham and died circa 1900. Some materials relate to Markham and Brogden relatives, including letters of John L. Markham Jr. while serving in the United States Army in Columbia, S.C., during World War I, 1917-1919; letters of Markham’s nephew, Blackwell M. Brogden, while serving in the United States Navy, 1942-1945; and papers relating to North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Willis J. Brogden Sr. Also included are materials relating to Ritta Geer, the Markhams’ longtime African American domestic servant. Photographs are of Markham and the Markham family members, 1860s-1972, and include three tintypes, circa 1860. Photographs between about 1900 and 1930 include formal portraits and candid shots of the Markham family; posed portraits of servants, including Ritta Geer; and images of various locations around Durham. There are also World War II photographs taken by Markham in North Africa and Europe; photographer Margaret Bourke-White appears in a few of the images.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: A significant amount of Markham’s correspondence discusses being stationed as a military surgeon overseas, including North Africa (see particularly Folders 5-30; 35-72). He also describes the end of a military campaign in Tunisia in 1943 (Folder 185).

There are also letters related to Ritta Geer, the Markham’s longtime domestic servant. Folder 223 contains a 13 November 1934 receipt for Geer’s funeral expenses addressed to Blackwell Markham; an 11 October 1926 letter from Ritta Geer’s niece Cleora that discusses a family rift and Cleora’s desire to bring Geer to live with her in Pittsburgh, Pa.; and a Bible belonging to Geer, with a few handwritten annotations. There are also letters from John Markham, Jr. to Ella Markham from Camp Jackson between 1917-1919  writing about missing comforts of home including Ritta Geer’s homecooking  (Folder 218-220).

Abstract: Ernest Boyce McKissick (Mack) was born in Kelton, S.C., in 1895. His family moved to Asheville, N.C., around 1900. McKissick served in France, 1918-1919, with the African American 92nd Infantry Division during World War I. Returning to Asheville after the war, McKissick married Magnolia Thompson of Asheville. They had four children, the eldest of whom was Floyd S. McKissick, prominent North Carolina attorney, businessman, and civil rights leader, who was the first African American to attend the University of North Carolina’s Law School. The collection chiefly contains letters, 1918-1919, from Ernest B. McKissick to his future wife, Magnolia Thompson, written during his World War I service. Letters were sent from Camp Jackson, S.C.; Camp Dix, N.J.; Camp Merritt, N.J.; and France. They include jokes, romantic sentiments, and mention of fellow soldiers from Asheville and nearby Hendersonville, but offer little information about life as a soldier. Also included are a postcard, possibly from McKissick to H.E. Jones, and two letters to McKissick from Floyd S. Bixler, a wholesaler from Pennsylvania whom McKissick met while working at a hotel in Asheville.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The Susan Massingale collection consists of 243 videotapes from four documentary productions, 1987-1995. Massingale co-produced and co-directed one of the productions, Step It Up and Go: Blues in the Carolinas, with Glen Hinson. The other productions are Boogie in Black and White, a film about the Cherokee Indians, and another film about Black Mountain College. Massingale’s connection to these three documentaries is unclear, but they appear to related to UNC-TV and are chiefly about North Carolina. Videotape formats include Betacam, Umatic, and VHS. Step It Up and Go: Blues in the Carolinas traces the development of blues music in the Carolinas through interviews with musicians and still photographs of them. North Carolina musicians talk about how they learned to play and perform different styles on the banjo, fiddle, guitar, piano, bottle, and spoons. Performers include Odell Thompson, Nate Thompson, Joe Thompson, Etta Baker, Cora Phillips, Junior Thomas, Thomas Burt, Guitar Slim, Moses Roscoe, and Anthony Pough. The UNC-TV documentary Boogie in Black and White is a film about the making of Pitch a Boogie Woogie, a film shot in Greenville, N.C., in 1947 by John W. Warner, then owner of Greenville’s Plaza Theatre. Pitch a Boogie Woogie, released by Lord-Warner Pictures, Inc., in 1948, was the first movie made by a production company based in North Carolina. It had an all-African American cast of mostly local Greenville musicians and actors and enjoyed success in the Carolinas, but was never shown outside that area. The Cherokee Indian production appears to be mostly about Joyce Dugan, who was elected Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1995. She was the first woman to hold that position. The Black Mountain College production appears to be about the history of Black Mountain College in Black Mountain, N.C. Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 and guided by the principle that the study of art was central to a liberal arts education. Black Mountain College closed in 1957.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Series 1 contains video of the documentary Step It Up and Go: Blues Music in the Carolinas

Series 2 contains video from the documentary Boogie In Black & White, about the making of the 1947 film Pitch A Boogie Woogie, featuring a primarily African American cast of musicians mostly from Greenville, N.C.

Series 3 contains video from a documentary about Joyce Dugan, who was elected Principle Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in 1995.

Abstract: The Moore, Blount, and Cowper families of North Carolina were active chiefly in Wake, Franklin, and Halifax counties. Moore family members included B.F. Moore, an anti-secessionist lawyer and North Carolina attorney general, 1848-1851; his daughter Lucy Catherine Moore Henry Capehart and sons Bartholomew Figures Moore, Van Boddie Moore, and James Moore; and his grandson Bartholomew Figures Moore, who was married to Olivia Blount Cowper Moore. Other Cowper family members included Olivia’s paternal grandparents, Pulaski Cowper and Mary Blount Grimes, and maternal great grandparents, Bryan Grimes and Lucy Olivia Blount. The collection consists of correspondence, legal papers, volumes, pictures, family history, and other materials documenting the Moore, Blount, and Cowper families, as well as the Boddie, Coapman, Gatling, Grimes, Keeble, Ruffin, and Williams families of North Carolina. Nineteenth-century correspondence includes family letters, some mother-to-daughter and father-to-daughter, that offer a glimpse into plantation life, including social news, child-rearing, child mortality, epidemic illness, death during childbirth, courtship, and news about slaves, in antebellum North Carolina. Other 19th-century letters support ending the Civil War and discuss business affairs, agriculture, medicine, slavery, and academics at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Of particular note are copies of letters exchanged by B.F. Moore and Governor W. W. Holden in 1866 that discuss an 1863 conversation they had with Governor Zebulon Vance regarding further prosecution of the war. Twentieth-century correspondence consists chiefly of a series of Olivia Blount Cowper Moore letters exchanged with a French soldier during World War I; letters from her friend with a children’s clothing enterprise during the 1930s; frequent social correspondence, including invitations and greeting cards (bulk 1960s); and sympathy letters. Other 20th-century correspondence concerns business affairs, the Episcopal Church, genealogy, and potential Communist indoctrination at North Carolina State University. Legal materials consist of bonds, deeds, indentures, and cadastral maps regarding land and slaves, chiefly in Wake County, N.C., and in Alabama. There is also an 1852 list of slaves, where they lived, and from whom they were bought; wills and related estate materials for many family members; and account books, scrapbooks, and other volumes that document estate settlements, family life, women’s social life and customs, the Civil War, World War I, arts and cultural entertainment, influenza, the Episcopal Church, and various other subjects. Pictures depict family members and others and are primarily black-and-white photographic prints, some card-mounted, but there also are daguerreotypes, tintypes, and other formats. Family history materials include genealogical correspondence, biographical materials, and a record of slave births, circa 1828-1847. Most slave materials relate to North Carolina, but there are also items about slavery in Alabama and Texas. Also included are family bibles, a history of the Boddie family, blueprints for several family houses, a small amount of financial material, miscellaneous writings by family members and others, a mid-19th-century recipe for a medicinal cure for ague and the fever, Civil War pardons, newspaper clippings and other printed material, and World War II ration coupons and inspection records.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence in Series 1 frequently discusses the enslaved as well as the Civil War. For example, Correspondence of the junior Bartholomew Figures Moore (1838-1890) includes an 1863 letter he wrote to his father, B.F. Moore (1801-1878), while serving in the Confederate Army, in which he discussed the purchase of slaves in Alabama and the issue of runaway slaves during the Civil War. In Series 2 (Legal Materials), there are deeds of sale for slaves, as well an 1852 list of slaves, where they lived and from whom they were bought. In Folder 106, there is a list of slave births, c. 1828 – 1848.  Image Folder  P-4617/21 contains a photograph of an African American woman with two African American men and an ox drawn cart in front of the home of Lucy Olivia Blount Grimes and Bryan Grimes (1793-1860) on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, N.C.

Abstract: William Belvidere Meares was a physician and planter of Davidson County, N.C. Includes letters of William Belvidere Meares, his wife Mary Thomas Exum Meares, their children, and other family members; genealogical and biographical information; clippings; writings; certificates and other miscellaneous papers; and photographs. Included are letters, 1850s, from Adelaide Savage Meares, sister of William Belvidere Meares who later married Moses John De Rosset, to Mary Thomas Exum Meares about family and social life in eastern North Carolina, and letters, 1863 and 1966, from Martha Exum Ransom (Mrs. Matt W. Ransom) to her sister, Mary Thomas Exum Meares, about social life and hard times in North CarolinaThere are also letters, 1870s, from his parents and others to Frederick P. Meares, containing family news, advice on the importance of education and on behavior relating to “the Negro cadet” at his school, and news of his father’s attempt to sell his plantation because of the difficulty of hiring labor and the dullness of plantation life. Also included are a labor contract, 1867, between four laborers and William Belvidere Meares; photographs of Meares family members; and other items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letter from Meares in Folder 1 discusses behavior relating to An African American student at his school.

Abstract: Nicholas Bryar Massenburg was a planter of Franklin County, N.C. The collection includes records, 1834-1846 and 1847-1851, kept by N. B. Massenburg concerning agricultural and family activities, slaves, and accounts for Woodleaf and Egypt, his Franklin County, N.C., plantations. Also included is correspondence of Massenburg’s daughter, Lucy C. Massenburg, including letters from her sister and mother and other relatives and friends. In addition, there are a journal, owner unknown, with brief daily entries, 1903-1908, relating to cutting and hauling lumber, and a scrapbook, chiefly containing clippings on agricultural and other topics.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  A farm journal contains slave lists from 1834-1851 (Folders 7-9).

Abstract: A. Alexander Morisey was an African American journalist from North Carolina. He wrote for the “Twin City Sentinel” (Winston-Salem, N.C.) and the “Winston-Salem Journal” in the early 1950s and later was public relations manager of the “New York Times.” Articles and speeches written by and about A. Alexander Morisey. Morisey’s articles are mostly on the subject of African American affairs in Winston-Salem, N.C. There are also a few letters relating to professional matters.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection contains letters of A. Alexander Morisey, African American journalist, as well as articles and speeches written by and about A. Alexander Morisey. Morisey’s articles are mostly about African American life in Winston-Salem, N.C. Many of the articles are from the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel’s Sunday news page about African Americans, which Morisey edited. Also included is a letter, 1946, about the terms of his employment with the Norfolk Journal and Guide; a letter, 1949, about his employment with the Winston-Salem newspapers; and a letter, 1951, requesting information for a news story.

Abstract: Morehead was a Confederate officer and a lawyer of Greensboro, N.C. Legal and business papers, chiefly 1880-1913, of lawyers Joseph Motley Morehead and James Turner Morehead Jr. (1838-1919) of Guilford County, N.C. Papers include briefs and correspondence with clients and other lawyers. Also, papers concerning the Guilford Battleground Association of which Joseph Morehead was president; family correspondence after 1900 of James Morehead; and antebellum papers of their father. Volumes include records of cases and estate settlements. Few papers pertain to the two men’s careers as Confederate officers and in Reconstruction politics. James Turner Morehead should not be confused with his cousin, James T. Morehead (1840-1908), North Carolina and New York City industrialist.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Image folder P-523/7  contains a c. 1902 postcard with a drawing of three African American children eating watermelon. Caption reads: “Greetings from the Sunny South.”

Abstract: Correspondence and other materials relating to the writing and publication of “Mary, Wayfarer” (1981) and to other projects undertaken by North Carolina writer and educator Mary E.
Mebane.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence and other materials relating primarily to the writing and publication of Mary Wayfarer , the autobiography of black writer and educator Mary Elizabeth Mebane. (1981). Of particular note are her many writings and unpublished works in Series 3, including an article and interview with singer Millie Jackson