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Execution of Frankie Silver: This Date in History

  • Thread starter Thread starter donbosco
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Sometime during the early part of my Chapel Hill sojourn I learned of ‘Libba’ Cotten. As with much classic music it was likely Dennis Gavin down at The Fair Exchange that turned me on to her music. Then slowly, as happens so often with those who overstay, The West beckoned and the #Carrboro connection began to settle in, on, and under.



Eventually it seemed aesthetics were kind of oozing forth - The #YellowHouse cranked up and chronicled the Frequency, The Art Center responded, and #TheHardbackCafe offered up that jet fuel coffee, its walls and tables and the very canvas of patron and worker in its space — joining with #Pepper’sPizza to BE Art in the 100 block. #TheCave brought up it’s downstairs vibe and cool shade, and just across the way #ThePyewacket sweetly rocked that dark, dark bar and a glorious front porch in inside-outside style. #WXYC broadcast The Sounds, Zines like ‘Ransom Street,’ ‘Stay-Free!’ and ‘Trash’ joined more respectable mags like ‘The Indy,’ and ‘The Spectator’ to promo projects of all stripes, ‘The Triangle Cómic Review’ made us laugh and think, and there, on the south side of Franklin stood campus supplying a steady stream of listeners, lookers, do-ers, and future ne’er-do-well overstayers.



And of course #Local506 and the progenitor of it all, #TheCatsCradle, offered up their venues as sacred spaces where friends sang to friends and fellow travelers paused briefly from travels - After all, somebody said we were ‘The Next Seattle.’ Thanks go to Tom Maxwell for chronicling a seminal decade (1989-99) of that ‘Really Strange and Wonderful Time’ with such care.



And in that mix was the foundational Spirit of Elizabeth Cotten. And of that ‘Spirit,’ Laird Dixon, with help from Frank Heath, very properly placed Mrs. Cotten at the Musical Center of All Things. (See Laird’s artistic rendering of her in the photos below and at this link, read that tale as brought forward by the inimitable David Menconi at the link: Down on Copperline: Libba Cotten/Cat's Cradle - Orange Co. Arts Commission



Now on to our On This Day: #OTD (June 29) in 1987 Elizabeth Cotten passed away. Her ‘parlor ragtime’ guitar brought us ‘Freight Train,’ ‘Shake Sugaree,’ and other ‘almost-lost’ songs. She was born in 1893 in #Carrboro, then called West End, on Lloyd St. alongside the Railroad tracks. The Seegers - players and folklorists - heard her at 60+ years and shone a light on her talent.



www.ncdcr.gov

Carrboro’s Libba Cotten, Composer of “Freight Train”

On June 29, 1987, folk music legend Libba Cotten died.Cotten taught the world “Freight Train,” “Shake Sugaree” and a host of other songs. Her “parlor ragtime” style was no less elegant for the guitar being turned upside down and the thumb and finger roles being reversed.
www.ncdcr.gov www.ncdcr.gov
 
donbosco said:
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My Deddy was generally a very quiet man but he also hollered. He hollered up our cows. The sound he made might be best spelled out as “Swuuu-Kaaa, swuuu-kaaa!” I always associated it with “Soo Cow.” When he belted that call across the pasture his cows would literally come running to the barn. I can do it too but not with the texture and tenor that he brought to bear.

Back in 2019 I reached back into that #DeepChatham memory and shouted out during a talk on such things held at @pack.memorial.library in #AVL. I hadn’t intended to do such a thing nor even imagined there would be an opportunity. I did so rather suddenly and with no practice but it proved to be akin to the proverbial ‘riding a bicycle’ and it was a release - a timeless one - that transported me back to Grandpa Willis Dunn’s farm at #SandyBranch and all those afternoons of counting and feeding and watering Deddy’s herd.

We, he and I, spent good time together ‘down there’ working, often with few words passed that weren’t essential. Nods, gestures, even yelps and grunts communicated a good deal. And there were the ‘hollers’ too. It brought us close in the way that laboring shoulder-to-shoulder does.

Common goals of coordinated effort but simple strategy shared can be quite beautiful and binding. Just moving 30 assorted head of cattle up the road from one field to another meant learning not to move too fast lest one skittish cow spook the rest but not too slow otherwise they scatter or one or two turn to wander. We were a team of two in those moments and never so close doing anything else. And that sweet sound of ‘Swuuu-Kaa’ was the yawp that always kicked it off. What I’d give to hear it one more time.

I bring this up because back in June of 1969 (The 28th) the 1st National Hollerin’ Contest was held in Spivey’s Corner (Sampson County). The formal definition of “Hollerin’” is — a traditional way of communication, often work-related, that connected with farm culture before technology was prevalent. Many people around the country became familiar with the contest, often in a campy way unfortunately, by way of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” where the champ would often show and ‘Holler.’ People came to expect the yearly visit by a country Tar Heel and it surely added to a hayseed image that stood in stark contradiction but most often overrode that of RTP or our multiple universities. Such is, to paraphrase Rob Christiansen, ‘The Paradox of the Tar Heel State.’

The contest grew very popular but was suspended in 2016 - I have no idea why. Perhaps the true hollerers had dwindled or maybe they didn’t want to show off or out anymore or maybe it was just too much trouble. There have been disparate efforts at holding the contest in the years since - to no avail as far as I know. A Hollerin’ Contest in Sampson County ‬

Somewhere though I figure somebody is carrying on.

The Black & White Photo is of H.H. Oliver of “near Goldsboro,” the 1970 champion. Thanks to The N.C. Office of Archives and History.
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Never went to Spivey’s Corner but I can remember as a boy in the 80’s you got a real phone book. And I think on the back cover was a map of NC and it had certain towns listed with their claim to fame. And I remember Spivey’s Corner specifically, seemed such a weird name to me. And their claim to fame was the Hollerin Contest.
 
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I was born in 1958 and have only recently come to realize that so much was happening across North Carolina and the nation related to Civil and Human Rights when I was essentially too small to be aware. I am only just beginning to grasp just how hard so very many people were working from town to town and city to city addressing local issues of racial equality that connected with a much, much broader network. In churches in particular but also in an ever expanding set of advocacy organizations real grassroots, neighbor-to-neighbor outreach was being done throughout not just those towns and cities but even in the little crossroads communities that dot the state and nation.

How many stories remain to be gathered and preserved? This is storytelling friends - so often newspapers did not carry, or when they did, did not fully recount, what was happening. I wish we could mobilize students and current community organizers to fan out and capture these narratives before they slip away.

In your home county for example - in #DeepBuncombe, #DeepDuplin, or ##DeepAlamance, who can you ask about those times? Who stood tall? Which churches did the grassroots work of justice? What other organizations existed that fought the fight? Where did African Americans find white allies of genuine integrity?

On to ON THIS DAY: #OTD (June 30) in 1963 ‘Freedom Rallies’ lasting through the hot, humid Eastern North Carolina Summer into the fall began in Williamston, NC (Martin County). Locally tense since the acquittal of white men accused of murdering an African American man in 1957, the larger Civil Rights Movement was afoot nationally. Sarah Small and Golden Frinks were leaders in Martin and Chowan County respectively while The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and The Holiness Church served as centers for outreach and action.

Desegregation was the goal - in particular of the schools and libraries. On behalf of simple access to equality of educational opportunity hundreds of African American citizens, young and old, kept up the pressure on entrenched segregationist government and law enforcement. Through peaceful and not-so-peaceful tactics African Americans in Martin and Chowan stood tall against centuries of oppression. Refusal to buckle under dated back generations and simple survival in the face of the force monopoly possessed by White Supremacists and their institutions is a historical fact but by 1963 conditions had converged to make Everyday Forms of Resistance into organized and persistent use of The Constitution, the Law, faith, and physical actions. Williamston marked just one of so many fronts in the War on Racism waged by regular folk fed up with second and third class status.

Note that these weeks of activism came just two months after the nonviolent events that roiled the waters in Birmingham and brought to the world the moving and inspirational “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” ( At this link: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html ) From that Foundational Document penned by Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. came the timeless call to actions “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Other assertions for all-time brought forward in “The Letter” are, ““Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” and “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’” Prescient and seldom quoted until recently is the following excerpt from that letter that my students have found newly pertinent: "We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’”

Whether it be South or North, East or West, what went on where you are from? Do you know? Do you remember hearing whispers of deeds done - for good or ill - what’s the story that’s now slip, slipping away? Are there future tales now being made as well? Freedom Rallies Began in Williamston, 1963
 
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To/For Those Who Serve: #OTD in 2019 (July 1) a talentless, elitist, curmudgeon with a snappy accent as his only positive whose career has consisted of cowtowing to rich, talentless, elitists, broadcast the message above assuring that any and every mixed beverage he would imbibe for the rest of his life would be some high percentage of spit.

I tended bar (not bartended <— that word should not be a verb) for 25 years in a career that ran from 1985 to 2010. I kicked it all off at a brand new High Country version of a Piedmont institution - the Blowing Rock Tijuana Fats. I knew the operation from many hours spent in the Chapel Hill Rosemary Street flagship, most times while simultaneously attending shows at the next door down-the-alley Cat’s Cradle. Having relocated to Boone on a crazy educational mission that took myriad twists and turns, all ultimately fortuitous, there I was - more than ready to apply my hard-earned Blimpie Base hand/eye coordination and dinner rush management skills to behind the bar service in a fake Mexican eatery.

I managed to parlay that opening at Fats’ into a career that ranged from work in all range of magical places - from bright and shiny to dark and subterranean to white tablecloth to peanut shell floor cantina in civil war plagued Central America. To this day one of the most - THE Most? - comfortable places on earth for me remains a bar.

People who serve will always be my people. The lore and the legends of service make up my sacred texts. Adages like, “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean” apply to life in Big Picture Ways while “Always Carry Something - Before You Go Somewhere Look To See What Else Needs To Go There And Take It With You” will make everyone’s life better. The Maya revere Matthew 20:28, “It is better to serve than to be served,” (paraphrased) and many years ago I added that to my workbook.

Also added to that workbook was a rule I learned while trodding the boards at #BonleeHardware. Imagine what a great relief it was when my Deddy pulled 11-year-old me aside after a particularly tiresome interchange with a know-it-all regular and said quite simply, “The customer is NOT always right.” Indeed, once after confiscating a bottle of brandy, smuggled into Henry’s Bistro during one of my shifts, and being passed around at a table of ‘Rock Stars” the simple but direct admonition, “Pay up and I won’t call the cops until you’re out the door” that youthful #DeepChatham spirit came to the fore with a vengeance. Other great entries in the workbook would include, “Look fella, I don’t come to your job and fuck with you,” and of course, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

Ah yes - Piers Morgan - what a fool and a tool - but what a great representative for trumpism.
 
Through high school and into college I slung sandwiches at folks. Tried waiting tables but it wasn't for me - I much preferred the creative act of "cooking," albeit with a very limited menu. Prep, expo, line work, cleaning... I really enjoyed it all.
 
donbosco said:
Got no former servers 'round here?
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Right here, DB (et al). It's the job where I probably learned the most about people/human nature. Most physically and emotionally demanding job I've ever had too but still enjoyed it. I found that the worst tippers tended to be the ones who could afford to tip well. It's difficult to appreciate the effort involved and the shit you take off people unless you've done a job like that, and that's why save for the service being absolutely horrendous, I always tip well.

/rant
 
Waited tables at Aurora when it was in Carrboro and Crooks’ Corner. Both in the ‘80’s. Both were mostly fun jobs and relatively well-paying while in college. One rarely left Crooks on a Th, Fr, Sat, or Sunday without netting $120-130 after tipping out. Good people at both places.
 
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