fthe Center for Documentary Studies 



76-year-old woman who 

 grew up in Pitt County, 

 was typical. During her 

 early married life on a 

 Clayroot tenant farm, she 

 and a white tenant 

 woman alternated fixing 

 supper for the two 

 families. They shared a 

 dinner table, traded farm 

 work and cared for each 

 other's children. "It was 

 like a big family, 

 everybody working and 

 living together," she 

 recalls. Not even Jim 

 Crow could build a wall strong enough to 

 keep people apart all the time. 



I was also surprised at how many of 

 New Bern's black families have roots on 

 the Outer Banks. Dorcas E. Carter, for 

 instance, describes in loving detail her 

 grandmother, a fisher-woman who had 

 grown up on Portsmouth Island. By the 

 late 1 800s, her grandmother had moved 

 to New Bern and brought her skiff and 

 fishing nets with her. "She would go up 

 the river every day," Carter remembers. 

 "She would take my brothers, and they 

 would come back with crabs and fish." 



No event is more prominent in the 

 "Behind the Veil" interviews than the 

 great fire of 1922. Before Dec. 1, 1922, 

 New Bern was home to one of the most 

 prosperous black middle-class communi- 

 ties in the South. The neighborhood of 

 skilled artisans and professional people 

 was centered on George Street near St. 

 Peter's African Methodist Episcopal Zion 

 Church, the mother church of the AME 

 Zion denomination in the South. 

 Interviewees recall the community's 

 many black-owned businesses, its paved 

 streets and gas lights, the beauty of old 

 St. Peter's and the trolley that could be 

 ridden for only 5 cents. 



Carter remembers it well. "To me," 

 she tells a Duke student, "I felt as though 

 we were almost like the historic section 

 of New Bern. The houses were very 

 historic and the people dressed so 



A graduate student interviews a woman for "Behind the Veil 



modest, so cultured. You could see the 

 men escorting the ladies by the arm, all 

 dressed with their walking canes and their 

 derbies. It glowed .... People would come 

 out looking graceful and dignified. Then 

 the big fire came and destroyed this." 



The great fire of 1922 incinerated the 

 entire community and left more than 

 3,000 black citizens homeless. For 

 reasons that are unclear, the town of New 

 Bern condemned the burned-over streets 

 and took the land despite black protests. 

 A cemetery, ballparks and a police station 

 displaced the black community. Impover- 

 ished, many of the former residents 

 moved to New York or to makeshift 

 camps on the edge of New Bern. "I 

 always wondered why we could never go 

 back," Carter says. "This was a turning 

 point in my life." 



You can tour historic New Bern 

 all day and never know that African- 

 Americans ever lived there, much less 

 played a far more historic role in the 

 town's past than Governor Tryon and his 

 palace. I expect this will change soon. In 

 September 1998, the "Behind the Veil" 

 interviews will be open to the public. 

 Then there will be no more excuses for 

 not honoring our black heritage in historic 

 markers, monuments and museums. 



The "Behind the Veil" collection 

 holds hundreds of important stories, but I 

 would like to conclude with one that 

 touched me especially. It is a Civil War 



tale told by Annie Gavins, 

 a New Bern resident born 

 in 1913. Gavins grew up 

 with her great-grand- 

 mother Hannah, who had 

 been born a slave in 

 Swansboro. 



"My great-grand- 

 mother told the experience 

 of having seen Abraham 

 Lincoln in Swansboro," 

 J[fg% Gavins says. "He came to 

 )AMm their plantation. He was 

 asking the stable boy 

 questions (about) how he 

 was faring. He was by 

 himself. He was well dressed and had 

 nice horses. He was tall. All of this I 

 remember. After he went back to 

 Washington, that's when they started 

 laying the plans to free the slaves. You 

 see, he came to see how things were 

 before he signed the (Emancipation) 

 Proclamation." 



History books say that Lincoln 

 never visited North Carolina during the 

 Civil War, but I don't think any historian 

 could shake Gavins' faith in her great- 

 grandmother's story. I heard the convic- 

 tion in her voice, and I know that 

 hundreds of former slaves told similarly 

 unexplainable stories about meeting 

 the Great Emancipator. Personally, I 

 wouldn't try to change her mind. Who 

 am I, after all, to tell an 80-year-old 

 woman what is possible and what is not? 

 We all have to discover on our own if we 

 believe in the possibility of certain things 

 beyond proof and reason. As for me, I am 

 acquainted with the unbounded power of 

 the heart — and I can hear it in every one 

 of the "Behind the Veil" interviews. □ 



David Cecelski is a historian at 

 the University of 

 North Carolina- 

 Chapel Hill's 

 Southern Oral 

 History Program 

 and a regular 

 columnist for 

 Coastwatch. 



COASTWATCH 23 



