STONE WALLS turned a year old recently. We’ve picked up a lot of new readers in the last several months, so now is a good opportunity to take a deep breath and reflect on some of what more recent folks might’ve missed when this newsletter was getting off the ground. In the coming weeks, we might be republishing some prior posts from the first few months of Stone Walls mixed in with some new ones. Their relevance persists, and some topics are worth regular reminders. (The entire Stone Walls archive also lives online.)
We’re grateful for all of our readers and everyone who’s shared and discussed topics covered in this corner of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Keep sharing. Keep talking. And an extra thank you to those who have been here since near the launch.
Today I want to highlight and link to the wonderful guest contributors who have graced this space so far. The guest posts have become my favorite part of Stone Walls. Have an idea for a guest post or a topic in general? Email me, Mike Ogle, at stonewalls1793@gmail.com. Read the original welcome post for a sense of what Stone Walls aims for. And while this newsletter isn’t a moneymaking enterprise, Stone Walls does pay guests a small contributor’s fee, made possible by paying subscribers. (When a contributor declines the fee, the amount goes to a cause of their choice.)
Stone Walls Guest Posts
DAWNA JONES
“Two years after Sam: The more things change, the more they stay the same”
August 20, 2020
Campus advocates and activists have expressed and written many statements and demand letters, urging university leaders to better treat and protect us. In response, we have heard statement after statement filled with placations.
TERRENCE FOUSHEE
“Black Mama Advice” (a poem)
November 24, 2020
It only took a white tall tee and a squad car to drive up the curb on Franklin Street for
her wisdom to vibrate through the concrete:
“You can’t trust all these cops in this town. They not gon see you differently just because you my son.”
KYNITA STRINGER-STANBACK
“From slavery to college loans” — Part I and Part II
December 8 and 17, 2020
In 1992 during my first visit to UNC, I did not understand just how rooted and connected to the university I was. My ancestors toiled the land. As the reality of my six-figure student-loan debt with compounding interest loomed over my psyche, I dug deeper into the research. It inevitably spelled out how intimately and intricately my ancestors were connected to the building, growth, and preservation of our nation’s flagship public university.
SAM’S RECKONING (a research collective)
“Q&A: Sam’s Reckoning”
March 3, 2021
The men honored by the Silent Sam monument weren’t “nameless;” they were the sons of some of the most well-known aristocratic families in the South: the Alstons, the Bryans, the Polks, the Moreheads. So far, all of them came from households that trafficked, enslaved, and exploited human beings.
LARRY CHAVIS
“Larry loves steak and the American Indian Center”
March 17, 2021
When I first started working in the business school, one of the accounting professors told me that he was so happy to have someone who was “nominally” Native American on the faculty. I had to look that up. Nominally means “in name only.” That didn’t help me believe I was Indian. It also didn’t help that the professor headed the tenure and promotion committee.
HANNA WONDMAGEGN1
“Guest artist/photographer”
March 31, 2021
DANITA MASON-HOGANS
“Enslaved, Escheated, Erased”
June 3, 2021
She said not many people know what escheat means, so my shirt might not make sense to everyone. I smiled and said I knew that, but in the name of Nikole Hannah-Jones, they were going to learn that day.
“JAMES CATES FAMILY SPEAKS”
June 13, 2021
Stone Walls didn’t publish the essay “Say His Name: James Cates” by Cates cousins Valerie P. Foushee and Nate Davis, but I wanted to link again to their piece that ran in The Assembly. As an update, UNC has not announced new building names this summer despite previously stating it would, or publicly updated the status of that process. The overwhelming community and campus support for the James Cates Building proposal has been much appreciated by all involved.
FRED JOINER
“For the #Unnamed”
(a poem excerpt from a group art installation “Say Their Names”)
June 17, 2021
for every body
attached to a #,
there are bodies
that will never
be found, a name
only the soil will
know, that will
not aggregate
on our timelines
or our memories.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS2
“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
July 4, 2021
To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
ONE GOOD THING:
A piece I spent a good deal of time working on is now the cover story for the new issue of the Carolina Alumni Review. It’s about the Jubilee music festival that was held on UNC’s campus from 1963 to 1971. This was a fun one to research, report, and write. I really loved talking with so many people about their memories from that era. You can check it out at this link. Lots of entertaining nuggets throughout.
Among the people I interviewed was the comedian Lewis Black, who has vivid recollections of the last few Jubilees. Go to the last page at the above link for a short bonus story full of his anecdotes.
One thing that didn’t fit into the article that I asked Black about was his apartment on Franklin Street. A few years back, the famously cranky comedian said in an Esquire interview that his Chapel Hill apartment was one of the things that makes him happy.
But Black told me he sold the apartment after the building got too fancy for his liking. “They started to upscale the place,” he said. “I’m not there, and they enhanced it, and I’m like, really? It was too many enhancements.” Black was only in town occasionally, but he said he did a lot of writing in that apartment across from McCorkle Place.
After he graduated from UNC in 1970, Black had stuck around for another year on a playwriting fellowship and had his share of fun, as evidenced in my story. After that year, he decided to move from Chapel Hill in the name of productivity. “I knew I wouldn’t get anything done,” Black told me. “I was so happy to be there. I loved being there. I knew it just wouldn’t work. So I made a promise that I would retire there. And that was the beginning, to get that apartment and to set up there.” Black said he’d still like to retire to Chapel Hill, he just needs to find a suitable dwelling. Presumably one with fewer frills.
Mike Ogle purchased three of Ms. Wondmagegn’s photographs from her online print shop as payment. They now hang in his home.
Mr. Douglass’s speech is in the public domain. A donation was made to Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives.