Getting back into the Southern Historical Collection, at the University of North Carolina’s Louis Round Wilson Library this summer felt a bit like a dream.
As I parked my car and prepared to walk across the seemingly deserted campus, I took a moment to appreciate the beauty of UNC’s quad—and appreciate the shade in North Carolina’s summer heat.
As I walked past the Old Well, I thought about the generations of UNC students who took a sip of water hoping for good grades that year—including, I’m sure, some of the people I study.
Finally, the columns of Wilson Library loomed in front me. After over a year and a half of waiting, it was time to get some research done in person.
Things are different in the Covid-era archive: in addition to mandating masks, the SHC placed a cart full of my requested materials at my assigned table. On my first day, the cart was full of Civil War and Reconstruction-era documents from the Cameron family papers.
I spent the summer looking at documents like this October 1876 letter from Paul Cameron to his sister Margaret Mordecai, in which Paul called the white supremacist political campaigning of his son-in-law, John W. Graham, a “political rampage”—an apt metaphor for the processes by which white southerners wrested back political control and ended Reconstruction.
There were also some lighter moments, like finding a postcard written crosshatch and embarking on an experiment with Megan Brett to see if crosshatch was more legible with modern (and unfaded) ink.1
When the archive closed for the day, I trekked back across campus to my car, once again thankful for the shade. As I headed back toward Franklin Street, I watched for the chipmunk that liked to scurry across the path in front of me and felt the weight of history as I passed buildings and drove down streets named for the very enslavers and white supremacists I study.
- A letter which contains two separate sets of writing, one written over the other at right angles and often done to save paper and keep postage costs low. Crosshatch letters also served as an expression of great affection: the writer had so much to say, share, and express that they couldn’t stop the flowings of their heart–or their pens!
