Day 6: UNC and the End

Today was our trip to UNC Chapel Hill, where we went to the Wilson Library to peruse original sources--actual documents from the Antebellum Period. Their collection is amazing, and I got to do research on gourd banjos. I even got some leads!

Getting there, well, let's just say it was a party. Or, at least, we were on a party bus!

The library, like the National Archives building I went to last year, was really impressive. The security wasn't as tight--the paranoia was definitely absent. But the structure itself was magnificent, and, as I later found out, necessary for all of the stuff.

We sat through three lectures from professors there, and the information was important and interesting. Dr. Juanita M. Holland spoke about enslaved others crafting their artistic expression.

One of my favorite artists of the time was Dave the Potter. The remarkable thing for me was that he wrote lines of text into his pots. This is mid 19th century when slaves were prohibited from reading and writing. Clearly he was enslaved, and clearly he was writing. Dr. Holland suggested that the pots were intended for use by other enslaved persons, and, therefore, Dave was instigating those persons to learn to read and write.


Another artist I felt an affinity with is Harriet Powers.  According to the linked site, she was born a slave near Athens, Georgia, on October 29, 1837. At a young age, she married Armstead Powers and they had at least nine children. Some time after the Civil War, they became landowners. Eventually, circumstances forced them to sell off part of the land but not their home. The date of Harriet's death, Jan. 1, 1910, was recently discovered on her gravestone in Athen's Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery. The remarkable thing to me is the resolve and perserverance, not to mention the wonderful art making. It is easy to see the earliest artists in the tradition that Faith Ringgold works in so wonderfully--Ms. Ringgold is one of my favorite artists.

Dr. Michele Ware talked about writers and poets, including Harper, Horton, and Chesnutt. There were many more literate slaves than I imagined. These three created some amazing texts beyond slave narratives.

The last lecturer was Dr. Peter H. Wood who gave a new perspective on John Brown and the five blacks who died at Harpers Ferry. I could have sat through a few more hours of this, but my main takeaway is that even though history about the institution of slavery in the British colonies and later the US is read differently today than just thirty years ago that history is still steeped in white supremacy.


We took a lunch break and walked over to a Mediteranean place. It was so delicious. And we saw this muffin-cake on the way back. I'm sure she didn't draw anyone into the store!

And we realized we were twinzies.

Then we got back and started on the good stuff--the research involving original documents. Now if you recall from last year this is a very exciting thing for me because I love spirited materials. And original documents are that!

We got to see where Thomas Day worked; we even held his tools on his workbench. And we got to witness an actor reenact one of Day's letters. And then we get to the library and we get to hold one of the letters that Day wrote!

It was a long and full day. There were so many wonderful and exciting folks participating in this workshop, and I got to talk to many, even if in just a cursory way. But there were two trouble makers with whom I spent a lot of time with.

One was my roomy, so that was just natural. He teaches high school history, civics, and that kind of stuff. It was great because if I couldn't wrap my head around something he was there for me. He was really saddened and angered by the trip to the Chapel Hill campus, though, because his NC Winston-Salem apparently doesn't get the same love. He couched it as not enough white folks at his campus. I got nothing for that.

This other knucklehead, though, turned out to be just someone I could hang with. We had too much fun. It may have been a FL connection!

The night ended with a long walk and a dip in the pool!