Revealing, Preserving and Protecting Our Black Heritage and Culture In NC!
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"The Ruffin Brothers Grocery Historic Marker.
The dedication ceremony is Sunday, February 24th at 4PM. The store is located at 1104 East Main Street, Murfreesboro, NC. The marker will be placed next to the store building. The land on which the store stands has been in the Ruffin family since 1926."

Barber-Scotia Seminary, A Source Of 19th Century Learning.

On Tuesday, 11.22.1870 Barber-Scotia Seminary was chartered by the State of North Carolina. This was a learning institution for Black girls.

STOLEN LAND + STOLEN PEOPLE

On September 8, 1663, the first transfer of land under the Lords Proprietors in Carolina took place. The grant was made to Sir John Colleton, himself one of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina.

The piece of land transferred was what was then called Carlyle or Colleton Island, and is now called Colington Island in Dare County. Colleton, a planter who also dabbled in business, finance and politics, already had large New World holdings in Barbados.

Colored State Fair Remembered With A New Marker.

by Marvin Jones / Chowan Discovery - May 31, 2018

The almost-forgotten North Carolina Colored State Fair (1879 – 1930) received a North Carolina Highway Historical Marker in April 2018. The marker’s dedication was held at Shaw University’s historic 1873 Estey Hall in Raleigh. The Chowan Discovery Group, the nominator, the NC State Office of Archives and History – the marker’s provider – and North Carolina A&T State University participated in the program.

"In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. This means that we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its original meaning- getting down and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system." - Ella Baker 1964

African American Heritage Trail Honors Story of Esther
Vineyard Gazzette - Wednesday, July 14, 2021 - 12:39pm

A new site on the African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard will be dedicated on July 27, 2021 at 3 p.m.

The site at Memorial Wharf in Edgartown honors the story of Esther, an enslaved woman who escaped from her captors in 1743 in the Edgartown Harbor.

Esther was being transported from Boston to North Carolina aboard the sloop Endeavor to be returned to enslavement. According to testimony given by the ship’s crew, while the vessel sat in the harbor overnight, Esther despite having her feet bound to a crowbar, her hands tied behind her back and being put down in the hold, was able to jump overboard and make it to shore and freedom.

Guest speaker Roland Martin places the memorial wreaths back into place after the flowers were moved to make photos at the February One Monument at the 60th Sit-In Anniversary Breakfast Celebration on the N.C. A&T campus in Greensboro, N.C., on Friday, January 31, 2020.
Photo Credit-Woody Marshall/News & Record

Jibreel Khazan and Joseph Alfred McNeil and the families of Franklin Eugene McCain and David Leinail Richmond stand in front of the February One Monument on the N.C. A&T campus.
Photo Credit-Woody Marshall/News & Record

On July 30, 1863, Gen. Edward Wild departed New Bern with the North Carolina Colored Volunteers for the coast of South Carolina.

Wild’s 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers (NCCV) along with some soldiers from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers were among the 10,000 reinforcements requested by Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore who was in command of Union forces attempting to attack Charleston.

FOR THOSE WHO CHOSE THE SEA
Death, Memory and the Atlantic Slave Trade

"Vicissitude"s, an underwater sculpture in memory of the enslaved Africans who died before the slave ships docked.

The Williamston Freedom Movement: Civil Rights at the Grass Roots in Eastern North Carolina, 1957-1964
Freedom Fghters Remember Williamston, NC Civil Rights Movement -- The Williamston Freedom Movement, Began On June 30, 1963, a month of protests known as “Freedom Rallies” began in Williamston, North Carolina.

-Note- Though this is Virginia history, we know state lines were created and recreated several times before the Revolutionary War, and we know that a slaver would own plantations in several states, and we know people were sold and transported across state lines.
We also know slaves self-emancipated and moved to different states.
This is why we are adding this information to a gallery specific to North Carolina because many of the freed Black people could have ended up in North Carolina.

Monuments To The Civil War-Era Freedom Colonies In Coastal North Carolina: The Hotel De Afrique
Posted on September 16, 2015
by lunchcountersitin

Image: Monument to the Hatteras Island’s Hotel De Afrique, a freedom colony in North Carolina; Image was taken during the dedication of the monument in July 2013.
Image Source: Blog for OuterBanksVacationscom.

Igbo Landing (alternatively written as Ibo Landing, Ebo Landing, or Ebos Landing) is a historic site at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia. It was the setting of a mass suicide in 1803 by captive Igbo people who had taken control of their slave ship and refused to submit to slavery in the United States. The event's moral value as a story of resistance towards slavery has symbolic importance in African American folklore and literary history.

On June 15, 1838 John Chavis, died. He was a free Black man, a teacher, preacher and a Revolutionary War veteran.

He was born in Oxford, NC sometime around 1763, Chavis had an extensive education for the time period, likely the best education of any African American of his day in North Carolina. In 1778, Chavis enlisted in the 5th Regiment of Virginia, serving for three years with the patriots. Honorably discharged, he studied at what is now Washington & Lee University.

This 8 ft. bronze statue with a marble base, honors one of High Point’s most acclaimed citizens, John Coltrane, who was a legendary American jazz saxophonist. Coltrane graduated from William Penn High School in 1943.
It was created by Sculptor Thomas J. Warren of Oregon.

The statue is located at Commerce Ave. and Hamiliton St.
High Point, NC 27262

On July 17, 1967, legendary jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane died.
Born in 1926 in the small Richmond County town of Hamlet,

Coltrane and his family moved to High Point by the time he was 3-years-old. Coltrane’s love of music developed early, and he played both clarinet and saxophone in high school.

On February 26, 1870, Graham town commissioner Wyatt Outlaw, an African American, was lynched by a band of Ku Klux Klansmen.

Outlaw served in the 2nd Regiment United States Colored Cavalry during the Civil War. In 1866, he attended the second freedmen’s convention in Raleigh and soon after organized the Union League, an organization that aimed to promote loyalty to the United States after the Civil War, in Alamance County, as well as a school and church. Outlaw became the target for a Klan mob because he was an effective leader, able to work with both races.

An Underground Railroad station emerges near Guilford College
By Lauren Barber - February 14, 2019 -Triad City Beat

“Dee-ee-eep river, my home is over Jordan/ Dee-ee-eep river, Lord I’m going over into camp ground/ Oh, don’t you wanna go to that milk-and-honey land where all God’s children are free? Dee-ee-eep river, my home is over Jordan.”

Photo: ID: H-124
Marker Title: N.C. COLORED STATE FAIR
Location: 2600 block of Hillsborough Street in Raleigh
County: Wake
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Did you know there was a Colored State Fair in NC?
This was created because we were not allowed to participate in the NC State Fair which was also called, the White people's fair.

This. Speaks. Loudly.
Selah....

#Irememberourhistory

Montgomery, Ala: One of the statues depicting chained enslaved African people at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial/museum to honor thousands of people killed in racist lynchings throughout America., as well as those enslaved during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Words on image: On January 22, 1834, Will, an enslaved man belonging to James Battle at his Edgecombe County plantation, killed a white man. The charges brought against Will at the time resulted in the State v. Will case, in which the North Carolina Supreme Court protected slaves from a charge of murder when acting in self-defense. This challenged the 1829 State v. Mann decision which held that a master’s power over an enslaved person was absolute and that the slave’s submission must be “perfect.”

STATE v. WILL
Landmark N.C. Supreme Court case, 1834, gave protection to slaves who killed in self-defense. Will was a slave on the Battle plantation, here.

Photo: Historic marker for OBERLIN VILLAGE - at the northwest corner of the Historic Turner House, 1002 Oberlin Road, Raleigh, NC
There are at least 600 souls buried in Oberlin Cemetery -Historic Oberlin Village Cemetery.

Pea Island Life-Saving Station was a life-saving station on Pea Island, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was the first life-saving station in the country to have an all-black crew, and it was the first in the nation to have a black man, Richard Etheridge, as commanding officer.
On August 3, 2012, the second of the Coast Guard's 154-foot Sentinel-Class Cutters, USCGC Richard Etheridge (WPC-1102), was commissioned in his honor

On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation on railroads or similar public places was constitutional, that stated as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality forging the “separate but equal” doctrine,

"The Plymouth State Normal School operated from 1881-1903 to train African American teachers for work in public #education, which was legally segregated. The 2-story building had 4 classrooms. The school moved to Elizabeth City in 1903 and eventually became Elizabeth City State University".

Photo: State Mile Marker for Princeville, NC

At the close of the Civil War, former slaves seeking protection and freedom left the plantations for Union troop encampments. Following the departure of Union soldiers, many of the now-freed slaves remained behind and settled in an area named Freedom Hill. Freedom Hill was incorporated in 1885 in Edgecombe County. The name was changed to Princeville in honor of Turner Prince, an African-American man who had been involved in building many of the community’s homes.

On October 8, 1915, the Warren Grove School, in Chowan County, North Carolina’s first Rosenwald School, was completed.

During the 1914-1915 academic year, North Carolina received funding for its first Rosenwald schools, although the Rosenwald Fund’s School Building Program did not begin until the nonprofit was incorporated in 1917.

"Labor activism was brewing in the South in the 1970s, and North Carolina was the scene of several strikes. The continuation of that civil rights movement was felt in Rocky Mount with a sanitation workers’ strike that started in July 1978.
Their efforts to win dignity and to build leaders was recognized today September 7, 2019, with a N.C. Highway Historical Marker at the BTW Community Center, 727 Pennsylvania Ave., Rocky Mount.

FC Keys was 22-years old on Aug. 2, 1952, dressed in her Woman’s Army Corps uniform traveling from New Jersey to her hometown of Washington, North Carolina.

Upon arrival at the Roanoke Rapids bus station, she was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a White Marine and move to the back of the bus.

On Election Day, November 3, 1874, local white residents in Eufaula, Alabama, determined to regain political dominance in the county that they had lost during Reconstruction, used terror and intimidation to suppress Black votes, ultimately waging a violent, deadly massacre.

South Mills, Camden County, North Carolina: The McBride Colored School opened in 1928.
Today it houses the Rosenwald Community Center.

The McBride Colored School, located on this site, had four classrooms, an auditorium, office, and a kitchen. The school stayed in operation until closing in 1961.

The Plymouth Massacre in North Carolina
The Civil War

Plymouth, North Carolina:
New Marker Unveiled on the Plymouth Massacre in North Carolina

Author: Patrick Young Published Date: December 17, 2024

On December 13, a new marker was unveiled on Route 64 in Plymouth, North Carolina to mark where Confederate troops massacred African Americans.

The Unsung Founders Memorial
Location University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Dedicated-November 5, 2005

The Unsung Founders Memorial at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a memorial located in McCorkle Place, one of the University's quads. It consists of a black granite tabletop supported by 300 bronze figurines and surrounded by 5 black stone seats. The inscription around the edge of the table reads:

The Class Of 2002 Honors The University's Unsung Founders – The People Of Color, Bond And Free – Who Helped Build The Carolina That We Cherish Today.

November 10, 1898, the year’s white supremacy campaign culminated with a violent political coup in Wilmington, marking the onset of the Jim Crow era of segregation in the state. Though traditionally termed a “race riot,” many have called the event a massacre.

The Williamston Freedom Movement: Civil Rights at the Grass Roots in Eastern North Carolina, 1957-1964
Freedom Fghters Remember Williamston, NC Civil Rights Movement -- The Williamston Freedom Movement, Began On June 30, 1963, a month of protests known as “Freedom Rallies” began in Williamston, North Carolina.