I HOPE you are staying as well and warm as possible in this time of Omicron and ice. It’s been a little bit since the last edition of Stone Walls, so I wanted to quickly check in and give a mini update below. Subscriptions still remained paused.
Of course, today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so first I want to highlight an event you can attend from the comfort of your home. Find some inspiration with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP’s annual MLK celebration, featuring eminent guest speaker Theodore M. Shaw, Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the UNC School of Law and former Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Watch the event live at 11 a.m. on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP’s YouTube channel.
I also like to remind folks at this time of year of Dr. King’s visit to Chapel Hill in 1960. He came in large part due to the brave Lincoln High School students who’d started sit-ins in town, sparking protests that would ultimately go on here for four years without the town passing a public accommodations ordinance.
A few years ago for the News & Observer, I dug into behind-the-scenes controversy that accompanied Dr. King’s visit to town, as well as the previously unknown connection of a local judge who conspired against Dr. King to that same judge’s racist tirade against Bayard Rustin, one of Dr. King’s mentors, and other Freedom Riders in Chapel Hill during the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. You can read that piece here. Last year I also wrote a little about how that story came to be.
It’s instructive to look back at the contemporary local news accounts of Dr. King’s visit and to read his messages to different audiences in Chapel Hill, as well as their reactions. When he spoke to hundreds in the Black community, he delivered a rousing pep talk as their young movement was meeting resistance. When he was a guest speaker for a pair of Sociology 51 classes at UNC, he reassured the group that the desire to desegregate public spaces would not lead to Black men dating white women when a student asked about his statement that “the Negro wants to be a brother, not a brother-in-law to the white.”
Interestingly, Dr. King started his visit in that classroom with a history lesson. That lesson began by referencing 1619.
MINI UPDATE:
Stone Walls continues to be on a bit of a break. As I stated up top, subscriptions remain paused for the time being. If you are a paying follower of the newsletter, no monthly payments will be processed until further notice and annual subscriptions get extended by the length of the hiatus. We’re working on some things aimed to re-invent and rejuvenate this operation for a Stone Walls 2.0. Hopefully, we’ll be able to provide an update in the coming weeks. If you’re interested in perhaps being a part of this transition, reach out at stonewalls1793@gmail.com.
In the meantime, if you have an idea for a Stone Walls guest post you’d like to write, or to contribute relevant art/poetry/photography, also please write to the email above. Guest posts pay $75.