![]() ![]() 1955 A woman hangs clothing on a line to dry while her two young sons watch. 1954 Children on swings in front of houses. 1953 A Little League team and coaches pose by a wall and bleachers in uniforms that read Pepsi-Cola. Date from article: “Annie Barnes, ‘about 43’, says she is mother of 31 thirteen now living.” 1949 A man throws the first pitch at the opening of Elm Street Park. 1962 An African-American woman and wife of a Pitt County tenant farmer standing on her porch with six children. 1958 The winner of the Country Future Farmers of America National Public Speaker's Contest Bobby Corey, who is a junior at Chicod High School. Woman at the ticket counter waits for customers at the movie theater. If you would like to learn more about the digital collections at East Carolina University, contact information is available here. From teen dances to parades to the reviled cloud of the Ku Klux Klan, there is plenty to discover when you go local with your research. Though I grew up in a different part of the state during those years, these images could have been taken in any small, southern town. I found the collection rich with “between-the-lines” insights, and fascinating both photographically and historically. This archive, called Seeds of Change, allows us to see the daily lives of eastern North Carolinians. Still publishing a daily and Sunday paper today, over 80,000 of their photographic images were donated to the East Carolina University Joyner Library Digital Collections, and to date a significant portion of these images have been scanned and available for access and research. Because I attended East Carolina University between the years of 19, I thought to take a look at the Archive of The Daily Reflector, the Greenville, NC newspaper that was founded in 1882. Now viewed with that wonderful lens called 20/20 hindsight, we are able to see with clarity the socio-economic situation of a town or region, the political events that shaped it and the family life of its citizens. Local and regional newspapers give us a closer view of everyday life, much of it rather mundane - like ribbon cuttings, grip and grin photos of politicians, the local sports scene, community celebrations and the like. We can do that today, since more and more photographic images are being digitized and available for viewing. One of the best ways to investigate the life and times of a region is to look at the local photo files from the daily newspaper. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |