Proud Boys and Drag Shows: This Date in History
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How quaint.
donbosco
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OTD in 1969 Malcolm X Liberation University opened in Durham. #Dook students had protested the lack of AFAM Studies-Activist Howard Fuller led the founding. Durham’s Malcolm X Liberation University
“The stated mission of the radical new university was to provide an ideological and practical methodology for meeting the physical, social, psychological, economical and culture needs of black people as well as to provide an alternate to institutionalized racism in education.”
Malcolm X Liberation University - Empowerment Through History and Learning | Durham Civil and Human Rights Map
MXLU MOVED TO Greensboro after a year in Durham & closed before graduating any students. It was a bold, and for the times, radical, experiment. Universities had no African American Studies in their curriculums in those dayls. MXLU no doubt was key in striking blows against that ignorance.
“The stated mission of the radical new university was to provide an ideological and practical methodology for meeting the physical, social, psychological, economical and culture needs of black people as well as to provide an alternate to institutionalized racism in education.”
Malcolm X Liberation University - Empowerment Through History and Learning | Durham Civil and Human Rights Map
MXLU MOVED TO Greensboro after a year in Durham & closed before graduating any students. It was a bold, and for the times, radical, experiment. Universities had no African American Studies in their curriculums in those dayls. MXLU no doubt was key in striking blows against that ignorance.
donbosco
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This New Yorker is among my Top Ten Tar Heel Anti-Fascists. Modern imaginings might cause one to take a look at his photo portrait and think Right-Winger but that would be a dead wrong reckoning. George Watts Hill was raised in money and key institutions in N.C. like The Carolina Inn, UNC Press, Watts Hospital, Hill Hall at UNC, and The George Watts Hill Alumni Center have associations with his family. Born in 1901 he graduated UNC IN 1921 and earned a law degree in 1924. Observing the rise of fascism around the world in the late 1930s into the ‘40s, Hill, worked to spur an isolationist USA to recognize the dire threat of Nazism and Mussolini’s Italy as well as homegrown rightists like the America First Committee in this country. Past combat age as the US entered WWII in 1941, Hill nevertheless served in intelligence gathering with the group that would develop into the OSS.
After his service fighting the rising tide of fascism in Europe Hill opposed similar views at home with his strong opposition to the N.C. General Assembly’s Speaker Ban, a railroaded-in law meant to shutdown Free Speech on the campuses of UNC System schools and otherwise squelch anything but Patriotically Correct instruction, writing, and research at Carolina. An anti-fascist dedication to racial justice led to his early advocacy of desegregation in public accommodations. Hill also supported the creation and expansion of education for children with learning disabilities. (There are two links at the conclusion here where you can learn more)
#OTD (Oct. 27) in 1901 George Watts Hill was born in NYC to a prosperous family with deep North Carolina roots. A UNC Undergraduate and Law Graduate, he came early to the fight against fascism and was a key officer in The Office of Strategic Services. Later he stood vs the Speaker Ban and Segregation. The Alumni Center @UNC bears his name. George Watts Hill, Tar Heel in Cloak
A Tar Heel in Cloak: George Watts Hill, Interventionism, and the Shadow War Against Hitler - North Carolina History (And yes-I know the provenance of this site -I find irony in this)
Vote like George Watts Hill was your mentor.
After his service fighting the rising tide of fascism in Europe Hill opposed similar views at home with his strong opposition to the N.C. General Assembly’s Speaker Ban, a railroaded-in law meant to shutdown Free Speech on the campuses of UNC System schools and otherwise squelch anything but Patriotically Correct instruction, writing, and research at Carolina. An anti-fascist dedication to racial justice led to his early advocacy of desegregation in public accommodations. Hill also supported the creation and expansion of education for children with learning disabilities. (There are two links at the conclusion here where you can learn more)
#OTD (Oct. 27) in 1901 George Watts Hill was born in NYC to a prosperous family with deep North Carolina roots. A UNC Undergraduate and Law Graduate, he came early to the fight against fascism and was a key officer in The Office of Strategic Services. Later he stood vs the Speaker Ban and Segregation. The Alumni Center @UNC bears his name. George Watts Hill, Tar Heel in Cloak
A Tar Heel in Cloak: George Watts Hill, Interventionism, and the Shadow War Against Hitler - North Carolina History (And yes-I know the provenance of this site -I find irony in this)
Vote like George Watts Hill was your mentor.
One other thing George Watts Hill did was donate his home to UNC. It’s now the Chancellor’s Residence. Its driveway is at the bottom of Raleigh Road just before one gets to the former UNC System Headquarters, the Spangler Complex. Those buildings now house the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.
Now that the UNC System is located in Raleigh, I hope the UNC President’s House will become the Chancellor’s Residence (after the right-wing d00kie is no longer chancellor).
Despite his being born in NYC, I struggle to call Mr. Hill a New Yorker. His parents were long-time North Carolinians and moved back to Durham in 1903 when GWH wasn’t quite two.
One of Mr. Hill’s stepdaughters called Mr. Hill “Major.” I never knew why. Now I do. Definitely antifa!
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donbosco
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Addendum
"Hill Learning Center was established in 1977 in Durham, North Carolina as the Learning Development Center (LDC), with a mission to provide an intensive remediation program for students with specific learning disabilities or attention deficit disorders. Originally established as a program of nearby Durham Academy, in 1980 the Center was dedicated to founder George Watts Hill and renamed the Hill Learning Development Center (HLDC). The name was shortened to The Hill Center in 1996. In the 2017-18 school year Hill celebrated its 40th Anniversary and in the fall of 2018 The Hill Center name was changed to Hill Learning Center."
"Hill Learning Center was established in 1977 in Durham, North Carolina as the Learning Development Center (LDC), with a mission to provide an intensive remediation program for students with specific learning disabilities or attention deficit disorders. Originally established as a program of nearby Durham Academy, in 1980 the Center was dedicated to founder George Watts Hill and renamed the Hill Learning Development Center (HLDC). The name was shortened to The Hill Center in 1996. In the 2017-18 school year Hill celebrated its 40th Anniversary and in the fall of 2018 The Hill Center name was changed to Hill Learning Center."
donbosco
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A friend wrote this...
"I never met him, nor did I know about his antifascist efforts, but he allowed all the kids in our neighborhood to use his front yard--the only flat, treeless space in the entire Greenwood area--as our regular football field. From 1970 to 1976, the Cashwells, Crumptons, Lathrops, Dunns, and other families regularly sent their youth out to test themselves on the local gridiron, using the gigantic tulip tree as one goal line, hammering each other and the grass Mr. Hill had planted on the ridge above Battle Branch. We howled and screamed away the afternoons. My brother broke his leg there. And not once did Watts Hill (as we always called him) step out of his house to admonish us or complain about the uproar. He was a civic treasure."
The two Lathrop boys and the younger Dunn are lifelong friends. Bruce Crompton is a friendly acquaintance and has been since about 1979; but, Bruce and I have never been close friends.
Is the Cashwell named Peter?
The property described for neighborhood football games belonged (belongs?) to Watts Hill, Jr. It’s at the corner of Greenwood and Houston Roads.
Turn left on Houston and go down that road and you come to where Paul Green’s Cabin was. You also cross the creek coming out of Battle Park.
If anyone ever wonders why Estes Drive at University Mall floods, the creek coming out of Battle Park, Bolin Creek, and Booker Creek all converge there.
The Barbee-Hargraves Slave Cemetary is at the end of Greenwood.
Watts Hill, Sr.’s property is on the opposite side of Hwy. 54 from Greenwood Road.
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donbosco
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Three years ago (2022) in late October Neo-Fascist Paramilitary Proud Boys gathered at a Sanford, NC brewery to protest and intimidate participants and attendees of a Drag Show Brunch. https://www.rawstory.com/proud-boys-drag-queens/ (https://www.huggermuggerbrewing.com ) - the event was associated with The Sanford Yoga & Community Center www.sanfordyogacenter.com - a “veteran-owned and trauma-informed yoga studio fighting to bring a safe-space to you wherever you may be.” From their websites it appears that both businesses have weathered the efforts of clear-cut fascists to cancel them - Christian activists joined the Proud Boy protest with signs and Neo-Confederates also pitched in. The Proud Boys took the moment to do some impromptu recruiting.
I “shudder to imagine” the horror these “Modern” Conservatives would experience were they to go back in time and witness families all over the Tar Heel State gathering in small town school auditoriums and gymnasiums to fund-raise for PTAs and Rotary Club projects by way of the always packed performances of a “Womanless Wedding!”
I distinctly remember going to the #Bonlee Elementary School auditorium as a young boy to attend one such event. That evening local men dressed in drag and followed a comedic script featuring nuptials between an unlikely pair (a very tall “bride” and a diminutive groom). Who else remembers this type of event? While I only remember specifically a horrible rendition of ‘I Love You Truly’ by a grown man dressed as a young woman and a lot of other men who went to my church or frequented my Deddy’s hardware store in various states of drag, just a little searching turns up some good writing on the performances. Read on here about one held in Burgaw, NC in 1957:
https://www.digitalnc.org/blog/womanless-weddings/
Obviously the equivalency Implied here is strained considerably but it does show an interesting closing off of the mind to anything not sanctioned by rightists within a rigid ideological construct of intolerance. This isn’t a “Good Ole Days” observation either because we all know, and some admit, that those times were really the “Bad Ole Days” for most anyone not embracing, or faking, straight-ness and also well-off enough financially to be a middle to upper-class white man. No — “Womanless Weddings” were not affirmations of gay rights by any stretch. Gay and bisexual men and women in small town North Carolina in the old days lived their lives primarily in the closet with all of the accompanying oppressions and even dangers associated.
I am wondering what is behind so much deep insecurity among some citizens today - mostly men but not solely - regarding masculinity - and in so many cases their own? I am riffing somewhat here and while I’ve thought on this I admit that I have not ‘studied’ it. Kind and constructive ideas from friends are certainly welcome. It is no secret that we find ourselves this very day in a nation poised to go the way of the Proud Boys or to continue forward with our experiment in constitutional democratic republicanism so I think pondering just what you think about the things that happen or may yet happen in places like Sanford should be foremost.