N.C. Museum of History offers March programs

Musicians Patrick and Cathy Sky will get you in the mood for Saint Patrick’s Day with Irish reels, jigs and hornpipes. This lively performance and more will take place in March at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh. During a special presentation, watch a new Readers’ Theater work about the family life of Sojourner Truth, a 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist. A cast of four professional actors will present this play that suits all ages. Don’t miss Cotton Mill Colic, a music performance with an intriguing, historical twist: songs from Piedmont cotton mills in the early 20th century. Seasoned musicians Gregg Kimball, Sheryl Warner and Jackie Frost will draw on commercial recordings by mill workers and on accounts of union strike songs.
Enjoy all this and more in March at the museum. Admission is free unless otherwise noted. Parking is free on weekends.

First Friday Performance: Sojourner Truth and Her Children
When: Friday, March 2, from 7 to 9 p.m.
Cost: $5 per person; ages 12 and younger free. You can purchase tickets in advance at ncmuseumofhistory.org or the night of the event in the Museum Shop.
The local performance group Voices in Concert will dramatize the family life of 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth. This new Readers’ Theater work centers on Truth’s efforts to reunite her family as three of her enslaved children approach their freedom. She is challenged to inspire her children to dream of more for themselves as they await freedom. The play was written by Rudy Wallace, artistic director of Voices in Concert.

Cotton Mill Colic: Songs of Labor from the North Carolina Piedmont
When: Sunday, March 4, from 2 to 3 p.m.
Musician Gregg Kimball and singers Jackie Frost and Sheryl Warner will perform songs from Piedmont cotton mills. The trio will draw on commercial recordings by mill workers and on accounts of union strike songs. In the early 20th century, Piedmont mill towns were incubators for innovative string bands and musical performers in an emerging genre known as country music. With Kimball on guitar, banjo and fiddle, Frost and Warner will add their own distinctive vocal styles.

Time for Tots: Saint Patrick’s Day
When: Tuesday, March 6, and Tuesday, March 13, from 10 to 10:45 a.m.
Who: Ages 3 to 5 with an adult
Cost: $1 per person. To register, call (919) 807-7992.
Discover the history, foodways and traditions of Saint Patrick’s Day, a holiday observed by the Irish for 1,000 years. Then make a take-home craft to give you the luck of the Irish.

History Hunters: Greetings from North Carolina!
When: Wednesday, March 7, from 10 to 11 a.m.
Who: Ages 10 to 13
Cost: $1 per person. To register, call (919) 807-7992.
Before Facebook and Skype, how did you say, “Wish you were here!” when you vacationed? Learn about North Carolina holiday spots, get a bit of postcard history and make your own postcard.

Make It, Take It: Blimps
When: Saturday, March 10, from 1 to 3 p.m. (drop-in program)
Discover how blimps protected ships off the North Carolina coast during World War II and make a paper model to take home.

Music of the Carolinas: Patrick and Cathy Sky
When: Sunday, March 11, from 3 to 4 p.m.
Get ready for Saint Patrick’s Day with a program of Irish reels, jigs and hornpipes. The performance is presented with PineCone, with support from the N.C. Museum of History Associates, Williams Mullen, and WLHC-FM/WLQC.FM.

History à la Carte: Variety Vacationland
When: Wednesday, March 14, from 12:10 to 1 p.m.
Extras: Bring your lunch; beverages provided.
Presented by Sandy Webbere, associate curator.
What was a typical family vacation in North Carolina in decades past? Using historic postcards, maps and film, Webbere will identify early tourist destinations from the coast to the mountains and discuss how they have evolved.

Curator’s Choice Tour: The Story Behind The Story of North Carolina
When: Sunday, March 25, from 2 to 2:30 p.m.
How do you cover 14,000 years of history in one exhibit? Join curator RaeLana Poteat for this special tour and hear how staff worked to tell the state’s story through artifacts, multimedia presentations and hands-on interactives.

2012 Women’s History Month Celebration
When: Tuesday, March 27, at 6:30 p.m.
To register, call (919) 807-7992 by Friday, March 23.
Presented by Anita Brown-Graham, executive director of the Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State University.
Women compose more than half of the U.S. electorate and have influenced electoral outcomes for more than 40 years. Learn about their importance to the 2012 campaigns. The event is sponsored by the N.C. Council for Women.

About the N.C. Museum of History
The museum is located at 5 E. Edenton St. in Raleigh, across from the State Capitol. Parking is available in the lot across Wilmington Street. Hours are Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. The Museum of History, within the Division of State History Museums, is part of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

Program focuses on people of color in the American Revolution

During Black History Month, the N.C. Museum of History and the Sons of the American Revolution will present the program Return to Tradition highlighting a lesser-known fact about the American Revolution: significant numbers of people of color fought for the Patriots during the war.
This free program on Saturday, Feb. 25, from 10 a.m. to noon in Raleigh features keynote speaker Brig. Gen. James Gorham, the first African American general in the N.C. Army National Guard. His talk will focus on these soldiers who served in integrated troops during the war for independence.
“Though nearly lost to history, these Patriots of color served as equals in the typical regiment of Continental soldiers,” said Earl Ijames, Curator at the N.C. Museum of History.

First African American in North Carolina Will Be Inducted Into SAR
Another program highlight will center on Raleigh resident Chaz Moore, whose enslaved ancestor, Tobias “Toby” Gilmore, fought for the Patriots in the American Revolution. During a brief installation ceremony, Moore will be the first African American in North Carolina inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution. He is a firefighter with the Raleigh Fire Department.
Moore’s ancestor was born in coastal West Africa as Shibodee Turrey Wurry. At age 16, around 1758, this son of a chieftain was kidnapped by slave traders and sent to Rhode Island aboard the slave ship Dove. He was purchased by Capt. John Gilmore of Massachusetts and became known as Tobias Gilmore. He enlisted in the Continental Army and fought in several major battles.
Learn more about this lesser-known, yet important, part of our nation’s history during Return to Tradition on Feb. 25 at the Museum of History.

Bennett Place holds lecture on African Americans' newly won freedom experiences

Words of the formerly enslaved will be shared in a lecture at Bennett Place State Historic Site on Thursday, Feb. 16, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. The presentation, "The First Year of Freedom in North Carolina: Pursuing Freedom with the Hoe and the Sword, the Book and the Lord," by Dr. Reginald Hildebrand of UNC-Chapel Hill, will offer first-hand accounts based on his research.
Among experiences documented are reports of black soldiers entering Wilmington who participated in the Union capture of Fort Fisher in February 1865, the first July 4th celebration by the newly independent former slaves and recollections of a watch night service to mark both the New Year and the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The program, hosted by the Durham Civil War Roundtable and the Bennett Place Support Fund, is free to members and has a $5 fee for visitors. The lecture is part of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration organized by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
This and other special events at Bennett Place are funded and sponsored by the Bennett Place Support Fund, Inc., a nonprofit which provides additional funding to this historic site. For information, visit Bennett Place.

Author to speak on a slave escape from a Durham plantation

In 1848, Mary Walker fled slavery and the plantation that is now Historic Stagville in Durham, leaving behind her son and daughter. She spent 17 years trying to recover her family.
Dr. Syd Nathans, professor emeritus with Duke University, tells of Walker's remarkable ordeal in the book "To Free A Family: The Journey of Mary Walker" at Historic Stagville on Sunday, Feb. 12, at 2 p.m., and at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh, on Monday, Feb. 13, at 11 a.m. The programs are free.
The tale of Mary Walker is representative of the secret labors of hundreds of women escaping bondage and trying to reclaim their families in the South. The story is also the basis for the Addy Walker doll in the American Girl doll collection.
Two extraordinary collections provide the basis for the story—the letters and diaries of Walker's former North Carolina slaveholders and those of the northern family who protected and employed her. In spite of her persistence and the assistance of black and white abolitionists, she was not reunited with her children until the end of the Civil War.
The programs are sponsored by the N.C. African American Heritage Commission, whose mission is to preserve, protect and promote North Carolina's African American history, arts and culture for all people. The AAHC is affiliated with the Department of Cultural Resources.
For additional information call Michelle Lanier at (919) 477-7103. The Division of
State Historic Sites and the Division of State History Museums are within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

Burwell School hosts speaker on slavery and the civil war

The Burwell School Historic Site, N. Churton St., will host Katherine Mellen Charron, Ph.D., for a lecture titled “William Henry Singleton’s Recollections of My Slavery Days: a North Carolina Slave’s View of the Civil War and Its Legacies” on Wednesday, April 20, at 7 p.m.
Admission to this programs is free and is open to the public with reception to follow. For more information, contact the Burwell School at 732-7451 or email info@burwellschool.org. This program is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
In 1922, the former slave and Union Army veteran William Henry Singleton published an autobiography that provided a fascinating glimpse of life in a North Carolina coastal city and rural neighborhood. His Recollections of My Slavery Days vividly reminds us how slavery impacted black and white families, the church and the marketplace in the antebellum South as well as the upheaval that accompanied the Civil War. The talk explores what Singleton’s narrative revealed about a place and the people in it, about slavery and freedom, and the bridge between the two.
For Singleton, that bridge was built in the crucible of the Civil War and rested on the militant black political self-assertion that emerged early in the war in coastal North Carolina. Considering the 57 years between the war’s end and Singleton’s writing, this talk also considers the question of memory, of what we choose to remember, how we remember it and why that matters.