Preserving local history

In an effort to better preserve local history, the Iredell County Public Library has begun scanning materials into its computer database.

Library Assistant Lisa Stethem initiated the scanning project for a couple of reasons.

She said, first of all, people had been taking the copies from the files, and some of the materials in there could not be easily replaced.

"And this way, if it is taken, we'll still have it in the computer," Stethem said.

She also said that having the materials on the computer is a way to make the information more accessible.

"It's nice," she said, "that when the project is finally competed, someone will be able to call with a question and we'll be able to just pull it up."

These materials include details on some of the less savory aspects of the county's past. Below are some excerpts:

'The Wailing of
a Colored Child'

The James Iredell Room is the place for archives at the Iredell Library. And tucked in a nondescript folder there, behind a tab in a filing cabinet marked "Civil Rights," is a photocopy of a 1948 full-page ad that ran in the old Statesville Record.

The ad bears the headline, "The Wailing of a Colored Child," and the subhead, "Have You Ever Heard a Colored Baby Cry?"

Ultimately, the ad is a plea — apparently targeting Statesville's elite white community — for funds to be used in the construction of a hospital that would serve the city's "colored" people.

"Good health means more to them, perhaps, than to people of better economic circumstances," the ad says. "They do the hard tasks, most of them ... hard physical work on farms and in factories ... and hard work requires health and strength."

The ad goes on to tell the readers, "The ("colored") women are your cooks, your maids, the nurses of your children and you ask them for health certificates before you let them work for you.

"For many colored people health is the equivalent of a permit to work, to earn. To live healthy is the key to economic advancement, to self-improvement and to self-support."

The post-World War II ad finally makes its pitch:

"We are living in an era of unprecedented prosperity and there are few of us who cannot afford to make a substantial contribution in order to relieve misery and suffering right here at home, amongst the people who work for us."

The well-meaning ad, which seems clearly to have been written to stimulate the altruism of the well-to-do, is riddled with stereotypes and racially arrogant condescension that is so offensive that if it appeared in a publication anywhere on the planet today, it would inflame the masses.

But this ad — placed not to rile and infuriate but rather to foster the exact opposite emotions — is a snapshot of an era.

'The thirsty
of both races'

Another photocopy of a Statesville Record page in that same file highlights a news blurb in the center of the page. The copy is of a Record edition from 1938 and the short story is about plans by county officials to install a second water fountain in the Center Street courthouse.

"For some time there has been only one drinking fountain in the lobby, this being inadequate on a hot day when there is a congestion of the thirsty of both races," the story reads in part. It goes on to tell that when the project is completed, "one fountain will be designated for use by the white people and the other by the colored people."

Water, it appeared from several old articles in the Civil Rights file, was apparently big for segregationist leaders, as "white" and "colored" fountains and restrooms became infamously emblematic of the Jim Crow era.

Taking a dip,
doing a load

This issue with water is noted in several of the articles in the Civil Rights Files at the library.

In 1964, a push was made to integrate Statesville's public facilities. But at the heart of the issue were the city's swimming pools.

A Record article describes the attempt by R.R. Wood – who was then president of the Statesville Branch of the NAACP – to get the city to simply follow federal laws enacted earlier that year in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"In view of the civil rights bill passed by Congress and the fact that it is now the law of the land," White argued, the city should integrate at once.

But White was rebutted at the hearing by a Cary Owens, who was described in the article as "the leader of a white citizens group."

Owen said that integration would be to "disregard the rights of the general public." He went on to say that if the plan was carried out "the white citizens of Statesville" will have been "discriminated against."

Two years later, Statesville's two preeminent civil rights leaders, J.C. Harris and Wilson Lee, were arrested for attempting to do their laundry in a "white only" self-service laundry. The men were officially charged with trespassing and held briefly on a $200 bond.