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This Date in History | Archibald Henderson, G.B. Shaw, and Mark Twain

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#OTD in 1929.

"The authorities couldn't tell for certain who shot Gastonia, N.C. police chief Orville Aderholt on June 7, 1929, so they arrested nearly everyone at the scene. Seventy-one people were detained, all of them organizers for or members of the National Textile Workers Union, whose camp Aderholt was visiting when he was killed. The trial received national attention. Members of the media, like many locals, were divided as to whether the strike at the Loray Mill, which had begun earlier that spring, represented an honest effort by workers to improve their conditions or a dangerous plot by Northern Communists to infiltrate the South."

More here: The Gastonia Strike
 
donbosco said:
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I grew up pretty fascinated with Daniel Boone. Bonlee, my little town in #DeepChatham, actually sits along a path where Highway 421 (now Old 421) was referred to as Boone Trail. I vaguely remember when Garrett Tillman’s gas station, directly across the road from my father’s Bonlee Hardware, was known as Boone Trail Station.

In nearby Siler City, Liberty, and Staley there were markers for Boone Trail. There is an image of one here. There is also one in Chapel Hill. (Across from the Post Office on Franklin) Of course I loved the TV show with Fess Parker as Dan’l and Ed Ames as Mingo. I ‘played’ Frontiersman constantly and that set me to my own exploring of the woods around Bonlee and down toward Sandy Branch where my Deddy kept his cows and where Grandpa and Grandma lived on the Home Place, among the state’s Century Farms. (https://www.ncagr.gov/public-affairs/public-affairs-2024-century-farm-directory/download?attachment)

Tramping those forests and fields, sometimes with Deddy as we checked fences or hunted down/counted cows, or camping with the Bonlee boys was pretty constant from around 6 thru 16 and still comes back to me often whether I’m walking parks or trails or just traversing from A to B. When creep-striding through the terrain, to take stock of the trees and their multiple twists and turns (Fibonacci Sequence anyone?) to step over and snap no twigs or limbs, and to note straight-on and peripheral movement from bird to bear is the setting made automatic in my system in those wander-filled boy years.

#OTD (June 7) in 1769, working out of North Carolina for Richard Henderson’s Transylvania Co., it is recorded that Daniel Boone first spied Kentucky. Boone, born in Berks County, Pennsylvania in 1734, spent his youth hunting and exploring Western North Carolina and Appalachia. He blazed the #WildernessRoad thru #CumberlandGap. In making these forays across the mountains Boone was among a few who were defying the orders of The British Crown banning westward migration. By the way, lest one put a humanitarian spin on that prohibition know that the King cared nothing of protecting the land from deprivation but rather feared being left out of that process. Indeed, Boone’s explorations ultimately served the purposes of iniquitous land-grabbers and caused endless harm and injustice to the Cherokee and other indigenous people. https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-07
Click to expand...
Boone's Cave at Boone's Cave Park. North of Salisbury, directly on the Yadkin River.
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You gotta love "a dangerous plot by Northern Communists to infiltrate the South."
 
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Helen Keller was in Western NC this week in 1945. Herself deaf and blind from the age of 19 months she became an author and lecturer known worldwide. Here in 2025 prominent Magaman Dr. Oz says people “should prove that you matter” BEFORE you qualify for healthcare provisions and accommodations like Medicaid. His party’s DOGE has cut education programs for people with disabilities. In the trump/Oz MAGA World we’ll have no Helen Kellers. This week in 1945 Keller was in Asheville to tour military hospitals and convalescent centers offering encouragement and praise to soldiers injured in the fight against Fascism.

By the way, Helen Keller was a strong advocate of women’s suffrage, the rights of workers, and peace. She was a socialist and a founding member of the ACLU. Her birthplace in Tuscumbia, Alabama is a National Historic Landmark. Keller also worked closely with the American Foundation for the Blind, an organization that was instrumental in the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Johnson.

Helen Keller’s remarkableness was made known very prominently to my generation by the riveting story told in 1962 in the feature film, “The Miracle Worker.” I don’t know how or exactly when I viewed that movie but it is probably one of the top ten (five?) most memorable ones of my life. The film’s portrayal of Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) as Mark Twain had described her, a “Miracle Worker” and young Keller (Patty Duke) as a strong-willed near-feral child and their fight to learn seems seared into my memory and I daresay, for the good.

Helen Keller’s story is a true American one. Her fight against the darkness and the silence is one we ought to, one we need to, ponder then engage with at present. Her compassion and advocacy for the troubled and put-upon and stressed and oppressed is what should drive us forward in the constant bombarding of ill-will and greed that confronts us today. Be a Helen Keller, not a Dr. Oz.

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My grandmother told me about meeting Helen Keller when my grandmother was a young woman. I was awed by this. Seemed like a real touching history moment. What I didn't know at the time was that when this conversation with my grandmother occurred, Helen Keller was not only still alive, but would be alive for another five years. Helen Keller actually outlived my grandmother. While I doubt I could have actually met Helen Keller, it would have been possible. Also, my grandmother really made sure I understood what an important and inspirational person Helen Keller actually was.
 
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I remember harsh segregation - schools of course, but also other public spaces. I remember the ‘Whites Only Waiting Areas’ in the Chatham Hospital and the rooms set-aside for only African Americans. I remember seeing African Americans going to the side-/back door of restaurants to pick up to-go orders only. Worse yet, imagine someone you love dying - bleeding, suffering, and mangled - because the hospital wouldn’t let them in the door.

Historians say “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” For a great many the past is a country where they were seen as foreigners and subhuman beings.

Modern efforts to stem the flow of a fuller telling of history are also part of that sense of things - the flaccid excuse that learning the racial reality of our past will foster guilt rather than compassion and action in students and society at large is just that - an excuse - one designed to maintain a facade long used to perpetuate the status of oppressed people in our past as second-class. Prohibitions against the inclusion of teaching that race has been a factor in shaping public policy, and by extension, society, throughout our national history are exactly that kind of move.

#OTD (June 10) in 1946 former Heavyweight Champ and first African American to hold the title, Jack Johnson, died from injuries (car wreck in Franklinton) in St. Agnes Hospital in Raleigh, the closest facility that would accept AFAMs. The injured Johnson passed by many White-Only Hospitals along the way. Car Accident Claims Jack Johnson, 1946



I posted a version of this reflection in another venue several years ago. The following reply is from my friend Cheryl, an African American woman from Chatham County and in it History comes from her heart straight to yours: “Oh, how I remember being made to feel second class. Back door food, white only laundromat, or the speech teacher at the ‘colored school’ who slapped me because I couldn’t say my ST sounds like “white people” — did she lose her job? Nope…or the books we received for a new term in school — they all had at least 5-6 names in the front sign-in before we got to use them. Then you ask yourself, as we heard so many times, why were those ‘colored kids’ way behind in their learning? One that still bothers me, having to get out of line to allow a white person to get in front of you in grocery or other stores. My dad owned a pool room on Birch Ave — the pool room was vandalized, a white hood was left behind as a symbol of hatred. We as a family were never given help. These are just a few highlights of the daily life of being Black in Siler City. I have learned so much in the last few years. To see how people still support the blind racism, how they accept the code words has made me realize that the fear of the people of color and how they are continuing to grow in our population is still there but I wonder what is this fear? How are we all getting to heaven with hate within our soul? This hate of God’s children as you can see on tv is unbelievable but at least you know what’s in their heart. Sorry I took up some much time…”
 
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#OTD (June 11) in 1988 ‘Bull Durham’ debuted at The Carolina Theater in - Durham. Lots of folks I knew were extras or worked on the film. Baseball makes for pretty good entertainment.
 
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I’ve grown accustomed to bridges. Out our apartment window in #WestHarlem/#Manhattanville I can spy both the George Washington Bridge and the far smaller Henry Hudson Viaduct. When in The City I live amongst islands so the presence of bridges shouldn’t be a surprise. Indeed, in this Homage to Swampy Dutch Inventiveness — New Amsterdam Anyone? Harlem itself is from the Netherlands city of Haarlem. Brooklyn is even derived from Breuckelen, a place in that old country meaning, quite appropriately, “marshy land.”

The first bridge that to become impressively part of my life was the old Swingbridge to #OakIslandNC that gave my parents and the rest of us access to Long Beach over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. To watch it in operation as a boy was plenty fascinating. These days the massive G. V. Barbee Bridge has been providing the uninterrupted way ‘over’ since 1975. Remembering the wait for the swingbridge really hits hard as a reminder as to how the pace of our lives has so dramatically quickened. On those1960s and ’70s journeys to “the beach” when we finally made it across, after excitedly (for me) watching whatever big boat had stopped traffic, we went to a little flat-top beach cottage with no phone and a boardwalk where we could ‘get’ exactly 1 TV channel, WECT out of Wilmington.

But on to the rest of the story- #OTD (June 12) in 1806 John Roebling was born in Mühlhausen, Prussia-he designed the Brooklyn Bridge—completed in 1883 as the world’s longest suspension bridge (main span= 1,595.5 ft). The structure’s profile is among the most iconic symbols of NYC-a practical monument. https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-12 By the way…Roebling died without having built the bridge. The project was taken up by his son Col. Washington A. Roebling, but as is well-known today, it was actually his partner and wife, Emily Warren Roebling who oversaw, and should be given the credit, for completing that literally monumental task.
 
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#OTD in 1967. Thurgood Marshall was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. President Johnson said that Marshall "deserves the appointment ... I believe that it is the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." On August 30 he was confirmed by a 69-11 vote in The Senate. He remained on the court until 1994 - a vital component of The Warren Court which worked hard to advance civil and human rights in The USA.
 
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