​The obvious qualities that attracted me to the MARC were its community participation, potential and people. Many museums boast interesting collections, historic architecture and varied programs, but not many can claim their existence as being truly grassroots or have such a compelling story. Born from the Rockingham County Historical Society (formed in 1954) with support from the Rockingham County government and many community members, the MARC emerged at the geographical and cultural center of the county. Stewarding a space that had been the site of county governance since 1787, two Revolutionary War sites and the painstakingly restored 1816 Wright Tavern that was brimming with tales left me hooked. It was also clear as the only county-wide museum in the area, MARC was uniquely placed to act as a positive galvanizing force, with the power to bring people together. But the real selling point for me was the passion of the Search Committee and staff who, during my interview, proudly told MARC’s story and vision for the future. When I received the call offering me the Executive Director position, I couldn’t say anything but “yes!”
​
Shortly after starting my tenure as Executive Director at the end of 2019, which now seems a lifetime ago (or two), the world was brought to a halt by the COVID-19 pandemic. Shutdown came at a critical time when MARC needed to expand rapidly and diversify funding sources to keep operating. The pandemic was a challenge I certainly didn’t expect, and one that could have easily led to a possible closure within 6-8 months. Thanks greatly to Jeff Bullins, former MARC President, and the Board of Directors, we were able to secure multiple COVID-19 relief funds and a local grant from the Reidsville Area Foundation which enabled MARC not just to weather the storm but to pivot our events and projects to virtual formats.
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That was a difficult time and, in many ways, defined my tenure at the MARC, with added complexities at home as my wife and I juggled full-time work with many a sleepless night tending to the needs of our newborn twin daughters, far from extended family. Fletcher Waynick (former Operations and Facilities Manager) and Nadine Case (former Administrative and Volunteer Coordinator) were instrumental in keeping everything going at the museum during this period and I can’t thank them both enough! The team’s collective efforts allowed MARC to not only continue to deliver its mission but expand our online presence and install two new exhibits, The James P. Southern Korean War Exhibit and Heavy are the Scales: Griggs v. Duke Power Co. Exhibit. A rather unexpected result of the pandemic was that it left MARC with a new vision of what it could be and what it could do.

One part of that vision was to realize the MARC’s full potential as a community convener. For the MARC to be able to draw together people from different areas and backgrounds and to acknowledge the full history of the people of Rockingham County. We have strengthened our relationships with the municipalities and rural areas of the county, and we have forged strong cooperative relationships with a wide variety of agencies and non-profit organizations in Rockingham County.
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MARC’s research and education regarding the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. case remains, for me, a personal highlight of our accomplishments and an example of our work to make connections. In 2019, when Valencia Abbott approached me about this 1971 United States Supreme Court case, it was a completely new history for me, and I spent hours researching all I could on the subject. Poignant but modest plans were set in motion to deliver the nation’s first permanent exhibit on the case, aiming to bring together the Duke Energy Foundation, the families of the 13 local African American plaintiffs and community leaders to celebrate this relatively unknown piece of local history that helped to secure workplace equity for all. Given the nature of the case, the volatile context for race relations during the 1960s and 1970s and the understandable reticence of the plaintiffs’ families to step forward, it was clear bringing these disparate groups together to share personal stories would be a significant challenge. But through championing our position as an apolitical cultural space that facilitates open dialogue, the project has grown beyond the state-recognized exhibit to include lesson plans, workshops, a North Carolina Historical Highway Marker, and North Carolina Civil Rights Trail Marker, with more ambitious plans in the works. Witnessing over 250 attendees at the Civil Rights Trail Marker event that included families of the plaintiffs from across the United States, County Commissioners, county tourism, Duke Energy, esteemed legal and cultural speakers and members of the community just visualized for me the power of MARC.

Another large part of the vision that we set for MARC was the ability to be a more sustainable organization. I am proud that the MARC’s financial outlook is much improved, and we are continuing to make great strides in fiscal sustainability and transparency.  It feels as though we have moved beyond fighting to keep MARC’s head above water, to now working to transform ourselves to engage, to inspire and to meet the needs of the communities we serve.
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Antiquated utilities were a large threat to the sustainability of our operations in the historic courthouse building.  This was brought into sharp focus during the pandemic when parts of the system failed.  During the early stages of fundraising for the project, another highlight of mine was receiving a letter from the U.S. Senate announcing MARC’s selection for a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant, one of only 13 awardees in the nation. Seeing that gold seal embossed on the letter was quite surreal for me, at the time a green card holder who had only been in the United States for three years.  It now proudly hangs on my wall.

​The top highlight for me, however, and what I will miss most are the people who are the heart and soul of the MARC. They not only adopted me but also my family. Offering a warm and generous welcome, throwing a baby shower for us, a leaving party and truly becoming a community “home away from home”, much to the reassurance of my close-knit U.K. family 3,000 miles away (who, incidentally, got to visit the MARC in March 2022). I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the Board, especially Jeff Bulins and David French for your leadership and advice, MARC’s staff for your dedication and support, as well as the hosts of volunteers behind the scenes, both past and present.

The more I have gotten to know Rockingham County, from its deep industrial and agricultural histories to its rural charm, the more I have also found an uncanny similarity with my home village of Barrowford in County Lancashire, England. It is a friendly village where, like Rockingham County, the news travels fast, you’re not far from wide open fields and we enjoy our hearty comfort foods. Out of these similarities, if I may indulge in my love of history, I have found one thread in particular that links Rockingham County and Lancashire across the Atlantic - cotton. Although pre-Civil War cotton farming was largely found in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and in North Carolina confined to the Coastal Plains, cotton bales made their way to Rockingham County just as they did to Lancashire. The red-rose county of Lancashire had more than 2,600 mills at its zenith as the powerhouse of the British Empire’s cotton produced goods. When the American Civil War broke out, it affected the textile mills and its workers in both counties, known in the U.K. as the “cotton famine.” This shared history and hardship, from differing perspectives, lives on in the heritage of both communities to this day. I’d recommend the University of Exeter’s ‘Poetry of the Lancashire Cotton Famine’ if interested in the topic (https://cottonfaminepoetry.exeter.ac.uk/).

​So, whilst my time as part of the MARC staff is at an end and there is much I will miss, I am excited to see the MARC’s journey in the capable hands of its leadership team. I will, of course, continue to support MARC’s work any way I can as it has firmly secured a special place in my heart. And in the meantime, I am looking forward to taking what I have learned on to new challenges as Assistant Director of the Gaston County Museum, Dallas, NC (https://gastoncountymuseum.org). And I invite y’all to pop in to say hello!

 In July 1948, the Washington Mills Company opened a new and exciting recreational facility for its employees and their families—Mayo Park, often called Mayo Lake by locals. Situated about two miles north of Mayodan, the park offered serene, wooded areas and trails, a large picnic pavilion, a playground, fishing, and the highlight of the facilities: a bathhouse, a sandy “beach,” and a lake for swimming and diving.  Special invitations and admission tickets were required when a crowd estimated to number about three thousand gathered for the July 3, 1948, event dedicating the park. The President of Washington Mills, Agnew Bahnson, gave the keynote speech, explaining that the mill was partnering with the Mayodan Y.M.C.A. to provide “plenty of fresh air, sunshine, camping, family picnic areas, nature trails, games, swimming, and other forms of recreation” for the company’s employees, their relatives, and other citizens of the community, where the Mayodan mill had been located since the 1890s. Other officials of the company, including W.H. Bollin, General Manager of the Mayodan plant, and R. A. Spaugh, company vice-president, were present to show their support, as was Mayodan mayor A. G. Farris. In fact, the park opening was considered important enough to postpone the very popular Bi-State League baseball game originally scheduled for that day in Mayodan.

Yet, some of the developments in 1922 revealed a darker side of the times. Some area residents were clearly having difficulty complying with the anti-alcohol laws that had been instituted in January of 1920. Most of the cases brought to Superior Court in Wentworth were prohibition violations. Lawbreaking, called “showing disrespect of Mr. Volstead’s laws,” in one article, was widespread as evidenced by the list of automobiles confiscated by county law enforcement. In May 1922, Sheriff A. P. Sands advertised two public auctions of automobiles seized because of transporting illegal liquor. Funds from these sales were to go to the public schools.  

Public health in 1922 Rockingham County was also very concerning. Having recently come through years of the influenza pandemic, residents were no doubt alert to warnings from health officials about potential outbreaks of other serious diseases. Rotarians in Reidsville heard from the director of state sanitoriums who urged the county to build its own sanitorium to provide treatment for victims of tuberculosis. The county had seventy-five T. B. cases in 1921. Smallpox also was a serious threat in May of 1922 when the local health officer published his warning in the newspaper: 

(read using the slides below or by downloading the PDF)

The theft unfolded this way:
News had circulated in the area and eventually among the criminal crowd that McAnally kept a large amount of cash in his home. The trio of thieves, who had served time in and become well acquainted with NC jails over the previous decade, may have heard that one area resident had had a large insurance check of $1800 cashed by the dentist in his home after hours. Leonard suggested the dentist as a target to Knight and Watkins and drove the get-away car, a blue and green Mercury they had borrowed from an acquaintance in Greensboro. Two local men later told authorities that they had seen this car parked beside the McAnally house. 

On the afternoon of January 17, 1963, the two robbers entered the dentist’s home with the key and found the safe in the closet. Watkins was able to lift the heavy safe and carry it out the back side door. They put the safe in the back seat of the car and Watkins sat there beside it.

Next, the thieves stopped at a hardware store in High Point, where Watkins bought a screwdriver and a crowbar. He had learned to crack open safes while on the lam after a prison escape in the mid-1950s and boasted later that he had the McAnally safe open in less than ten minutes. The robbers then took the stolen safe to a cabin owned by Leonard’s father at High Rock Lake. “It was full of money, most money I'd ever seen in my life,” Watkins later told a reporter. “I was really surprised. All of us were.” There were so many bills that they had to use two bunk beds at the cabin to stack and examine their haul— hundreds, fifties, twenties, and a few smaller bills. As the prosecution later described the cash for judge and jury, “This money, by reason of being kept for years in his safe, had a moldy, stinky odor.” Several witnesses testified that bills given to them by the defendants also had this very identifiable “moldy” smell.
 
In the days immediately following the heist, the trio of thieves traveled to Greensboro, Salisbury, and Fayetteville and had dealings with many people across the state, including family members, gambling pals, and military police. They had a female acquaintance return the vehicle they had used during the theft to the home of its owner in Greensboro and both Watkins and Knight bought cars. Knight paid a dealer, the father of Henry Lewis Leonard, $2100 for a 1961 Chevrolet on January 18, and the teller who received this deposit later testified that the bills had a “foul” odor. On the morning of January 19, military police stopped Watkins as he was “weaving” on a highway near Fort Bragg and charged him with drunk driving. Watkins paid the $300 bail with fifteen twenty-dollar bills from his stash. Officials later testified that there was a “distinct odor of mustiness, an unpleasant odor to the money.”
 
Watkins was arrested at the home of his sister in Greensboro, but only after a surprising mix-up. The day after the robbery, he had left some cash (about $300) and a suitcase full of what he thought was dirty clothing at her home. When the sister opened the case, she found a pillowcase filled with what turned out to be about $15,000 in very “moldy” smelling bills. The money smelled so bad, she told authorities, that she sprayed the room with an air deodorizer. She called her husband and her father and upon showing them the contents of the suitcase, they called the police. Meanwhile, Watkins had realized his mistake while gambling in Fayetteville when he went to the car to get more cash, finding instead his dirty laundry.
 
When he arrived at his sister’s home to retrieve the suitcase, he was met with a “double-barreled shotgun” and law enforcement officers who arrested him. Watkins told the SBI that he had won the money gambling. Somewhere around $17,000 of the large cash haul was eventually recovered, mostly from Watkins’ share of the money. It is not clear what happened to the rest. Knight was later apprehended by police in Charlotte and brought back to Rockingham County, where he and Watkins were initially held on bonds of $150,000 each.
 
At the trial in Wentworth in June, McAnally was asked to identify the recovered bills as those he had stored in the safe in his Madison home some twenty-five to thirty years earlier. Although he could not confirm the bills were his from serial numbers or markings, he testified that he could do so another way—by their distinctive odor. To challenge him, the defense attorney took two bills out of his own wallet, mixed them in with others recovered from the accused thieves, and shuffled the stack. The dentist “closed his eyes and sniffed each bill separately,” saying “yes” to each of the recovered bills and “no” to the attorney’s money. The jury also “smelled” the money entered as evidence.
 
The judge at the trial in the Rockingham County Courthouse (now the MARC building) explained to the jury the role of circumstantial evidence, as some of the details in the McAnally case fell into this area of the law. After deliberating only thirty minutes, the jury convicted Knight and Watkins of breaking and entering and larceny and sentenced them each to fifteen years in prison. Their accomplice Leonard would later receive the same outcome and sentence when he stood trial. Defense attorneys appealed the convictions to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which held that no errors had occurred that would warrant a new trial. Details of the heist as presented in court were confirmed and additional information was given in an interview of one of the accused with a Greensboro reporter in the early 1990s. 

Of the ten Rosenwald Schools for African Americans built in Rockingham County, one of the earliest was the Springfield School near present-day Eden. The historical record shows that this was truly a cooperative effort among not only the Rosenwald agents and other state officials, but also involving the county school leadership and local African Americans acting on their own behalf. In April 1915, citizens of that area, sometimes called Moyer Town in correspondence, started the process of obtaining a school for their children by writing to the county school superintendent, L. N. Hickerson, telling of very difficult circumstances and asking for his help. The letter, signed by thirty-one school patrons, explained that, as parents, they were very concerned that the only “school” available to them was one room so small that it would hold only half of their children. This one room was also so distant from where they lived that their “little school age children” could not be sent at all, especially in bad weather, since they would have to walk there. They asked for “two large rooms” that could house their eighty-five children to be built in their community. The families also requested that officials choose a location in “Moyer town” as many lived there on their own land and expected to “be here all our lives.” 

In the coming months, the superintendent went to work to secure some assistance for the people of Moyer Town. He shared the contents of the April letter and wrote to the head of the Division of Negro Education, N.C. Newbold, that the school system could furnish “only part of the money to build the house,” estimated to cost about $600, but with some help could get it built by fall of that year. “The truth of the matter is, the negroes in this community near Spray have no house at all,” Hickerson wrote, “and there is something like 90 or 100 negro children who ought to be in school.”  
 
Two weeks later, the superintendent followed up with the state office, assuring the official, “It seems to me that if any community in the state needs any help this does.” He also included a letter with a promise from the community’s citizens of six days of labor, two days hauling with a “two horse team,” and thirty dollars in pledges that the area’s minister had collected. The reply from Newbold was that the citizens had not “made a very large offering in money or in labor.” “If they really want a school,” he replied, they would have to do more.”

together (as they had twenty years earlier) to provide for their own educational advancement. With $1,000 they raised, the group bought five acres on the west end of Decatur Street, not far from the White elementary and high schools, for the location of a school of their own. This land purchase fulfilled the contribution of the Black community required by the Rosenwald program. Later, teachers also financed the steam heat that was installed in the facility. ​

​Some areas of Rockingham County did, indeed, report that in early 1919 the flu had “about run its race.” Reports from Mt. Carmel and Stoneville happily noted that the epidemic seemed to be “on the decrease” and that the flu had “almost died down.” A Pelham resident reported in late February 1919 that no new cases had appeared in that area, that churches and the graded school were back open, and “our people can mingle again.” The county gradually reopened. Tickets for some cancelled events such as the Lyceum attractions in Reidsville had to be refunded in the aftermath of the epidemic’s first wave. Reidsville’s Grande Theater opened back up in early 1919, but in compliance with new health ordinance requiring more ventilation, and thus encouraged its patrons to come “more warmly clad” to their shows. A resident of the Narrow Gauge section even reported in late February that a large crowd had enjoyed a Thursday evening dance in their community and that dances were “all the go” in their neighborhood. By late spring, things seemed to be returning to normal.

Public health officials and medical experts urged Congress to appropriate money to study the 1918 pandemic that had caused so much death, in an attempt to determine its cause and effective treatments. Health officers and doctors continued to remind citizens of ways to promote sanitation and prevent infectious diseases from spreading. Some warned of a recurrence, though likely less severe, in the fall of 1919. 

State health officials sent out an urgent request in mid-September 1919 to all county commissioners that they take steps to combat the infection should it reoccur. The Rockingham County commissioners received a letter asking that they “AT ONCE” gather all the public welfare agencies and organize supervisors in every township in the county to prepare for a possible outbreak. These men and women in each community would stay alert to the situation in their own areas, keep the county and state informed, and assist their neighbors. “In the late epidemic of influenza [1918], whole families were stricken so that no member of the family was able to get out and ask for aid,” the head of the State Board of Health wrote. “We do not want this to happen again in North Carolina.”   

As the winter months approached a year after the initial outbreak, the public was naturally anxious about a resurgence of the virulent disease. As feared, in September, a growing number of cases were reported in some areas of North Carolina, including several in Charlotte and in Greensboro. Several hundred cases in fourteen states were reported by early October, but symptoms appeared milder than those of the previous year. The numbers never reached epidemic proportions in most areas in the fall of 1919. Many were no doubt comforted by the report that only 7,000 cases of influenza had been reported throughout the U.S. from September 1919 to January of 1920, compared to the 400,000 reported during the same time the previous year. Many of the 1919 cases also appeared less virulent. Scholar John M. Barry’s research in The Great Influenza has confirmed that, just as with the COVID-19 virus, many variants of the 1918 influenza developed worldwide and, for a number of reasons, were less deadly in many populations.

In early 1920, however, the influenza epidemic strongly reemerged, first in military camps and among American troops in Germany. By the end of January, influenza had reappeared in twenty states. In the North Carolina mountains, Buncombe County closed all theatres, schools and churches and, to stem the spread of disease, “public gatherings of any kind” were forbidden. More than 6,000 cases were reported in Chicago, 1,200 in only one day. In New York, the number of infections approached epidemic proportions in late January 1920, and about a month later, there were so many deaths among the inmates of one almshouse and hospital that burial facilities were “exhausted,” and bodies in coffins waited outside on the ground.

By the first week of February 1920, the names of numerous influenza patients were again being listed in Rockingham County newspapers. “The influenza situation is beginning to be very serious around here,” wrote a resident of Route 5, Reidsville. J. H. Williams of Route 4 similarly reported that there were a large number of cases in his section. Multiple members of many families were listed. In Reidsville, three Pinnix children as well as three in the Glidewell family were confined to home by the flu in early February. Dr. J. B. Ray of Leaksville reported twelve cases on February 4. The Reidsville paper noted that the “Sulphur Club” had been revived there, with the slogan “put sulphur in your shoes and thus ward off the flu.” 

The local situation grew even worse. “The epidemic is spreading like wildfire in the county and State,” the Reidsville Review reported in mid-February, listing a dozen local cases as evidence to add to the nearly one hundred they had earlier noted. The Tri-City Daily Gazette similarly recorded the epidemic in the communities of Leaksville, Spray and Draper. Several dozen influenza patients were named in the columns of that publication during February and March 1920. The Gazette editor estimated the number afflicted in his area to be in the hundreds. “The mills are beginning to feel the effect,” he wrote, “as one after the other goes home sick.” Cases of influenza became so widespread that a reader, called the “town poet,” suggested that the Review’s slogan be changed from “Covers Rockingham Like the Morning Dew” to “Covers Rockingham County Like the Flu.”

Susie Sharp, the first female Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, appeared on the January 5, 1976 cover of TIME magazine as one of the Women of the Year. Sharp, who grew up in Reidsville and practiced law in Rockingham County for two decades, was selected to represent changing roles and advances for women in the legal profession. Her image appeared on the magazine’s iconic cover just below that of tennis great Billie Jean King and between those of First Lady Betty Ford and Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

​Each year, TIME recognizes persons of influence and importance and typically selects one individual whom editors deem “a living symbol of the year that was.” In considering 1975, TIME chose twelve women of consequence from a variety of walks of life to represent “American Women.” The issue celebrated the diversity of women in the United States and their changing roles in society.

​There is no doubt that Susie Sharp was a trailblazer as an attorney and judge. She was the only woman in her law class of sixty, the first woman to have a law practice in Rockingham County, the first woman appointed to a Superior Court judgeship in NC, and the first woman on the NC Supreme Court. When she was on the cover of TIME, Sharp had just been elected as the first woman in the nation to serve as Chief Justice of her state’s Supreme Court. 

At age 68, Sharp was selected as one of the women who embodied the change the nation was undergoing in the mid-1970s, but she had made it clear that she did not support the Equal Rights Amendment debated throughout the decade. Sharp, who never married, openly expressed her more traditional view of women’s choices, telling TIME that she did not think it was possible for most women to balance both a career and a family. “The trouble comes when a woman tries to be too many things at one time,” Sharp said. “A woman has got to draw up a blueprint. She has got to budget her life.”
 
During her long career, Susie Sharp became one of the most prominent citizens of Rockingham County. Her parents met when they were both teaching at the Sharp Institute in the Intelligence community. Although she was born in 1907 in Rocky Mount, NC, a fact that made its way into the TIME profile, Sharp and her family moved back to Rockingham County only a few months after her birth. As a young child, she lived in the western part of the county and very briefly on a farm just across the state line in Virginia while her father J.M. Sharp practiced law in Stoneville and Madison. Then, the Sharps moved to Reidsville in 1914, where the family ultimately made their home on Lindsey Street. 

​In 1924, the future judge graduated from Reidsville High School, where she had excelled as a debater, and then attended the North Carolina College for Women, as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was then known. Sharp returned to Reidsville and joined her father’s legal firm following her 1929 UNC Law School graduation. For the next two decades in that law practice she tried scores of cases in the Rockingham County Courthouse (now home to the MARC) and served several years as Reidsville’s city attorney. In 1949, she was appointed to a special Superior Court judgeship by Governor Kerr Scott, who made a visit to the Sharp and Sharp legal offices in the Amos Building on Gilmer Street in Reidsville to inform her of her selection.
 
In rising to the highest ranks in her profession, Sharp had to overcome many gender barriers. “Women lawyers aren’t a curiosity anymore,” she told TIME, “but I was a curiosity in my little town.” In fact, the judge who swore her in at the courthouse in Wentworth told her from the bench that she would never “make a lawyer.” “If you persist,” he said, “you will be wasting your time.” Not only were there very few female attorneys in North Carolina in the late 1920s when Sharp started her career, women were not even allowed to serve on juries in the state until 1946. By 1975, even though women were making inroads into traditionally male professions, only 7 percent of attorneys in the United States were women.
 
One of Sharp’s legacies was court reform. During her first years on the state’s highest court, she played a role in reorganizing the court system and streamlining the judicial process through the creation of the Administrative Office of the Courts. In addition, Sharp’s final election in 1974 was a catalyst for the amendment to the state constitution that requires judges in North Carolina to be licensed attorneys. Prior to 1980, there was no such standard for judicial candidates, or even for those seeking a seat on the NC Supreme Court, as Sharp had learned firsthand. Though she won with 74 percent of the vote, she had truly been worried that her challenger for the position of chief justice in 1974, a fire extinguisher salesman with no legal training, might be elected. He garnered nearly a quarter of a million votes.
 
As a jurist, Sharp became known for her steady and calm demeanor and her thorough knowledge and application of the law. During the 1960s and 70s, her name was routinely mentioned by her supporters as a possible candidate for the federal bench or the United States Supreme Court. Sharp remained in North Carolina, however, serving for seventeen years on the state’s Supreme Court. “I broke the ice,” she said at her retirement in 1979 at the mandatory age of 72. “I hope I made it a little easier for women who want to be lawyers and judges.”

​The 1975 issue profiling “American Women” was not the first to honor a group. The American “fighting man” was selected in 1950, U.S. scientists were lauded in 1960, and “Middle Americans” were chosen in 1969. Those recognized with a TIME cover have ranged from Charles Lindbergh on the first “Man of the Year” cover in 1927 to the 2020 selection of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris.

In September 1920, the campaign to register newly enfranchised women voters began in Rockingham County. The lead-up to the 1920 election was a spirited time when local women heard passionate appeals from both political parties and then voted “for the first time in their lives.” In some areas of the state, it was feared, there would be “something on the order of an upheaval” because women were voting, but, according to one observer, “no unusual occurrences” were anticipated in Rockingham County, “except the sight of the feminine appearances at the election booths.”

Voter registration for women started only a month after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920, and was expedited because of the fast-approaching election on November 2. The registration books for all county precincts were open for twenty-one days, excluding Sundays, from Thursday, September 30 through Saturday, October 23. Residence requirements were that the new voters had to have lived in the precinct thirty days, in the county six months, and in the state for two years in order to be eligible to cast their ballots.

In each issue of the Reidsville newspaper during this time, “every woman in the county qualified for the ballot” was urged to register and vote. “Every intelligent woman owes it to herself and her State to be in [a] position to vote on November 2,” one writer advised. The registration process, however, involved quite a bit of agency on the part of the newly enfranchised women. As all voters were required to do, they had to register in person in their own precincts, often having to “hunt up the registration officials.” Saturdays, it was noted, might be the best day to register, since women could likely find the registrar at his precinct then. Husbands and other male relatives were urged to accompany reluctant or timid women to the registrar. “Go to it, gentlemen” one local article admonished. To get women to register, the writer suggested, “Some of them apparently are going to need a lot of eloquent ‘persuasion’ of one sort and another.” 

This public encouragement that white women received to register and vote in 1920 did not extend to African American women, however. As countless historians have documented, African Americans instead faced hostility, intimidation, and suppression of their votes across the Jim Crow South for much of the twentieth century. In North Carolina, an all-white political system had controlled the state since the amendment was passed in 1900 meant to disenfranchise black men. In order to maintain their dominance (and in the event that black women did manage to register and vote for their opposition), it was important to these leaders to secure the votes of newly enfranchised white women. Several appeals appeared in Rockingham County newspapers in the fall of 1920 specifically urging white women to register and then vote to keep the “whites-only” state and local governments in power.

​To expedite registration, some potential barriers to women’s participation in the coming election were removed. The yearly poll tax, which males had been paying to be eligible to vote, was suspended in 1920 for female voters. Women were assured that “no question will be asked as to the poll tax” when they went to register, as a special session of the NC legislature had eliminated the tax for them for one year only “because of the short time before [the] election and the difficulty in collecting from the women.” They were also assured that they would not be required to serve on juries as a result of registering. Women would not even have to reveal their ages in the registration and voting process, they were told, but needed only to state that they were 21 or over.

​There had been some pro-suffrage activity in the area, as a chapter of the Equal Suffrage League of North Carolina had been established in Reidsville by 1914, but many did not expect much enthusiasm for voting from females locally. “Whether a woman favored suffrage or not,” the Reidsville paper noted, “suffrage has come.” Antisuffragists claimed that “the majority of women of the county care but little about the ballot,” but large numbers apparently did register and vote in 1920. “Who says our women are not going to vote,” a Reidsville editor wrote, upon hearing that in another NC town, Greenville, women outnumbered men by 200 (1306 to 1100) at the conclusion of the 1920 voter registration window. Although it is not clear exactly how many Rockingham County women voters registered and cast ballots in 1920, there were 900 new names on the books in four Reidsville precincts alone and the total number of votes in the election—more than 9,000—was double the total cast four years earlier.

Campaigns in the fall of 1920 were vigorous, with both political parties trying to reach newly enfranchised voters. Candidates for Rockingham County Sheriff challenged one another on who would enforce the newly enacted Prohibition amendment most effectively. Candidates for at least a dozen offices appeared at events in communities across the county, with local school houses being popular meeting places. A list of speakers on behalf of Democratic candidates read, “Everybody Invited, especially the ladies.” 

​Plenty of candidates came to Rockingham County to campaign. Republican candidate for Governor, John J. Parker, addressed a “large audience” at the courthouse in Wentworth (now home to the Museum and Archives of Rockingham County) and later that evening in Spray. The advertisement for his speech read, “Ladies Especially Invited.” On the Democratic side, two future governors—O. Max Gardner and Clyde Hoey—spoke on behalf of their party’s candidates. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels gave a two-hour speech to more than two thousand at Pinnix’s Warehouse in Reidsville, where he described the efficient use of the navy in winning the “great war” and gave a defense of President Woodrow Wilson’s peace efforts. Even Vice-Presidential candidate Calvin Coolidge visited Rockingham County during the last week of the 1920 campaign. He and his party came to Reidsville on a special train, which stopped before a large crowd gathered at the station. Coolidge spoke from the platform, thanking them for their hearty welcome and expressing what he called his “real American message,” support for Americanism and Republicanism.

As the election neared, campaigns focused on whether to support the newly organized League of Nations. In an emotional appeal a few days before the vote, an editorial appeared in a county newspaper congratulating the “women of Reidsville” for registering, and urging them to vote Democratic on the basis of support for the organization meant to avoid future wars. Accusing the opposition of denouncing Woodrow Wilson and sneering at the “most sacred things,” the editorialist claimed, “Reidsville boys—sons of Reidsville mothers—‘lie sleeping in Flanders Fields.’” They had given the supreme sacrifice of their lives in a “victory that would end war in this world forever.” To ensure this peace, women must now vote to support the League of Nations. 

This view was bolstered in speeches by prominent citizen, Mrs. B. Frank Mebane, of Spray. Although known to have supported Republicans in previous elections, Mrs. Mebane spoke on behalf of Democratic candidates in 1920, based on her concern about avoiding another terrifying war. Having done relief work in areas of France devastated by the war and in the Balkans, she had seen first-hand “the full horror of war and the hideous suffering of the innocent.” Understanding this, Mrs. Mebane told audiences that the U.S. must join the League of Nations. 

Many were unsure about how the more than twenty-five million American women would vote in their first general election. One political cartoon depicted this uncertainty as a sphinx-like figure, deliberating between the two political parties. In North Carolina, some political prognosticators anticipated about 75,000 women casting ballots in 1920. In preparation for the coming election, the state of North Carolina printed five million ballots, twenty-five percent more than in 1916. As was customary at that time, separate ballots for Democratic and Republican slates of candidates were printed, one million state and federal tickets for Democrats and 700,000 for Republicans, who were expected to number fewer at the polls based on the previous election cycle. Congressional ballots were printed separately by district on additional sheets of paper and county election boards were responsible for printing ballots for local races.

When voters checked in at the polling place, they picked up the ballots or the “tickets” they supported from different stacks and voted in a very public manner. Typically, there were no private polling booths; a measure to implement them was even defeated in the 1921 session of the General Assembly. In 1920, voters deposited their ballots in one of six different boxes, depending on whether the ticket was for a local, state, district, or national office. This process could be problematic, as an incident of voter intimidation reported in Governor Thomas Bickett’s home county of Franklin ​illustrates. There, ballots for a voter’s preferred party could be picked up at the opposite ends of a long table. Above the Republican end, it was alleged, a “huge live rat” was hung by their opponents to deter women voters from approaching and getting their ballots. 

Locally, women were encouraged to vote early on election day (by 10 a.m.) and to take part in the excitement of election night by coming to one of the local theaters to learn about the election results. The Colonial Theater advertised that “Ladies are especially invited to attend” the gathering there, where the complete returns of the election would be announced as soon as they were received. Along with a Paramount and Artcraft feature, the Grande Theatre also offered that evening, “full election returns of the county, State and nation without any extra charge.”   

​In the presidential race, the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge won the White House. Rockingham County voters, however, chose their opponents, Democrats James M. Cox and his running mate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by a 902-vote margin. The entire Democratic ticket was elected in North Carolina state races as well as in all local offices. This prompted the Reidsville paper to issue a congratulatory piece, noting, “We knew old Rockingham’s women would do the proper thing.” 

​Having achieved its goal of enfranchisement for women, the North Carolina Equal Suffrage Association, the primary suffragist group in the state, morphed into a new organization, the League of Women Voters. In October 1920, this group met in Greensboro, with Gertrude Weil, perhaps “North Carolina’s best-known suffragist,” as its leader, and made plans to educate the women of the state in a bipartisan manner about “the duties involved in their new political freedom.”

    Women’s enfranchisement in 1920 did open doors for females in political roles. That fall, the first two women notaries public in Rockingham County were commissioned—Kathleen Walker of Spray and Laura Powell of Reidsville. In the 1920 election, Lillian Exum Clement of Buncombe County was elected the first female member of the NC General Assembly. Foreshadowing later women in educational leadership, Mary Settle Sharpe, the daughter of prominent Rockingham County judge Thomas Settle, Jr., ran for NC Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1920. Although she was not elected, Sharpe encouraged women from all across the state to vote and she received especially strong support from fellow faculty members and students at the North Carolina College for Women (now UNC Greensboro).
 
     North Carolina was among the ten states that did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment; nine of the ten were in the South, where women’s suffrage was often not well supported and anti-suffragist groups worked actively against the amendment. Some opponents saw the enfranchisement of women as being forced upon the South by the overreach of the federal government. In fact, women’s suffrage was not officially ratified in North Carolina until 1971.
 
References:
Articles in the Reidsville (NC) Review: “Rockingham County Has a Population of 44,149,” September 3, 1920, 1; “Printing Five Million Ballots,” September 7, 1920, 1; “Women Will Register Here for Election,” September 7, 1920, 1; “Township Population of Rockingham County,” September 7, 1920, 1; “Of Local Interest,” September 7, 1920, 5; “Campaign To Be Waged To Educate Women To Vote,” September 7, 1920, 1; “At Greenville, N.C.,” September 10, 1920, 1; “Of Local Interest,” September 17, 1920, 5; “Instructions Issued for Election Boards,” September 28, 1920, 10; “Women Must Register,” September 28, 1920, 3; “Of Local Interest,” September 28, 1920, 5; “Public Speaking, Hon. John J. Parker,” September 28, 1920, 10; “Candidate Parker Made Speech at Wentworth,” October 1, 1920, 1; “Information for Women Voters,” October 1, 1920, 1; “Secretary Daniels Comes on Friday,” October 1, 1920, 1; “Hear Hon. Josephus Daniels,” October 1, 1920, 7; “Two Thousand Heard Secretary of Navy,” October 5, 1920, 1; “Of Local Interest,” October 8, 1920, 5; “News of Reidsville and Rockingham,” October 12, 1920, 1;”Pointers for Qualifying To Vote in the Election To Be Held November 2nd—Registration Books Close 23rd October,” October 12, 1920, 1; “News of Reidsville and Rockingham,” October 15, 1920, 1; “Of Local Interest,” October 19, 1920, 5; “Democratic Speaking,” October 22, 1920, 4; “Gov. Calvin Coolidge,” October 22, 1920, 4; “The Vice-Presidential Candidate Spoke Here,” October 26, 1920, 1; “Of Local Interest,” October 26, 1920, 5; “The Women,” editorial, October 29, 1920, 10; “Hear Hon. O. Max Gardner,” and “Hear Hon. Clyde R. Hoey,” October 29, 1920, 8; “Gardner and Hoey Are in County for Speeches,” October 29, 1920; “Of Local Interest,” October 29, 1920, 5; “Colonial Theater ad,” November 2, 1920, 4; “Eleventh Hour Hopes,” November 2, 1920, 4; “To the Voters,” A. P. Sands, November 2, 1920, 4; “Heavy Democratic Majority in State,” November 5, 1920, 1; “Three Cheers for Rockingham!” November 5, 1920, 4; “The Winners,” November 5, 1920, 1; “County’s Vote,” November 5, 1920, 1; “Official Majorities in Rockingham County,” November 9, 1920,1; Articles in the Greensboro (NC) Daily News: “The Women Who Vote Must Meet the Same Sort of Test as Men,” October 7, 1920, 1; Women Voters of the State Meet Here and Perfect Organization,” October 8, 1920, 1; “Mrs. Sharpe Heard by Crowd at Siler City,” October 13, 1920, 3; “Democrats Think 75,000 Women Will Vote in Election November 2,” October 24, 1920, 7; “The Woman’s Vote,” political cartoon, October 25, 1920, 4; “Mrs. B. Frank Mebane, of Spray, Who Is Making Speeches for League of Nations,” October 28, 1920,11; Gilmers, Inc., advertisement, October 29, 1920, 8; “Democrats Claim To Have Captured State by Majority of 85,000,” November 3, 1920, 1; “Rockingham Democratic by a Majority of 975,” November 3, 1920, 1; Other sources: Margaret Supplee Smith and Emily Herring Wilson, North Carolina Women: Making History (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 203 “best-known suffragist” quotation, 215-218; 216 “Equal Suffrage League” chapter in Reidsville quotation; “Thomas Walter Bickett,” NCpedia, State Library of North Carolina, North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/bickett-thomas-walter; Caroline Pruden, “Women Suffrage,” NCpedia, 2006, https://www.ncpedia.org/women-suffrage; Meilan Solly, “What the First Women Voters Experienced When Registering for the 1920 Election,” Smithsonian Magazine, July 30, 2020,  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-first-women-voters-experienced-when-registering-1920-election-180975435/;  “She Changed the World: North Carolina Women Breaking Barriers,” online exhibit, North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, https://www.ncdcr.gov/about/featured-programs/she-changed-world-north-carolina-women-breaking-barriers; ”She Changed the World Educational Activity Guide,” North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, https://files.nc.gov/ncdcr/documents/files/She-Changed-the-World-Educational-Activity-Guide-.pdf; “Mary Settle Sharpe: Keen in Intelligence, Kindly at Heart, and Democratic in Sympathy,” Spartan Stories: Tales from the University Archives at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro,  http://uncghistory.blogspot.com/2018/11/mary-settle-sharpe-keen-in-intelligence.html.

​In August 1935, a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp was established in Rockingham County. Located about one mile west of Madison, Company 3417 or Camp Victor as it was named, provided employment, educational opportunities, and practical training for young men ages 18 to 28. Named Camp Victor in honor of Victor H. Idol, a local businessman who provided the land, the camp opened on August 13, 1935, in the vicinity of the present-day Idol Park off Highway 311 West in Madison.

​Created as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), in FDR’s own words, was intended “to supply employment to young men unable to obtain work and to develop our forests, parks, fields and streams.” 

An estimated five to seven million young men, ages 16 to 25, were unemployed in 1933, when the first CCC camp in the nation was opened in April of that year in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. At the same time, there was much work that needed to be done to restore the nation’s natural resources, many of which had been lost to erosion, soil depletion, and deforestation. Camps labeled “companies” were eventually located in every state. The nation was divided into nine regions, known as “corps,” and within North Carolina there were three districts. Camp Victor was in District A, which stretched from the mountains in Buncombe County to the coast. Camp commanders made bi-monthly trips to Fort Bragg, District A headquarters, to make reports and get supplies.

   To participate in the CCC, recruits had to register and take an entrance exam. Local enrollees typically did so at district offices in Greensboro, but were assigned to camps all over North Carolina and were not necessarily attached to the Madison unit. Staffed mainly by U.S. Army personnel, Camp Victor had a camp educational adviser and its own medical doctor, but at times also contracted with Dr. Paul C. Carter of Madison as its physician. At its highest enrollment, the camp provided employment and boarding to about two hundred young men. 
 
   The local weekly newspaper, The Messenger, regularly covered the work and activities of Camp 3417 and provided a good overview of their accomplishments and interaction with folks in the Madison vicinity. In the newspaper’s pages, area citizens had already had some opportunities to read about the CCC program, even before the Madison unit was established. In 1934, the paper ran a series of articles written by Sherwood Anderson, the well-known novelist and short story writer. Anderson was the father of Mimi Spear, who with her husband Russell came to Madison that year to purchase and edit The Messenger. Anderson wrote of the CCC camps he observed as he traveled through the South as a “tremendous educational experiment,” providing an education in nature, “a kind of man-making process that factory work and clerkships haven’t as yet been able to bring into men’s lives.”

​While the camp operated outside Madison, there was a steady influx of young, mostly single, men into the area. The Army was responsible for their welfare—feeding, clothing, and sheltering them and maintaining their health and safety. 

The daily routine included morning exercise at 6 a.m., “three square meals a day,” and bedtime (with a bed check) at 10:30 p.m. Behavior on and off the camp was monitored, and the Army assured the Madison community that they would tolerate no “intoxication, depredation, rowdyism, or trespassing” by members of the CCC. They did, however, caution local merchants to do business with the young men on a cash basis, as their debts would not be covered by Army funds.
​
   At its core, the CCC was a job creation program, providing employment during a time of severe economic crisis, when close to a third of North Carolina’s citizens were on federal relief. A quota system based on the 1930 census was established for the CCC—one enrollee for every 500 persons in a state. In the first month of the program, North Carolina was allotted 7,650 recruits, but local agencies had to work out details as openings in camps became available. Rockingham County’s quota in January1937, for example, was twelve recruits—ten whites and two African Americans. In 1939, recruitment periods sought 24 whites and six blacks from the county in March and nineteen whites and eight blacks in October. The program was overseen locally by the superintendent of public welfare, Mrs. John Lee Wilson. Potential CCC members had to apply through her office and then applicants moved on to examination.
 
   Pay for the young men of the CCC was $30 per month, $25 of which had to be sent home to parents or other dependents. As noted by historian Harley E. Jolley, while the five dollars left to each young man might seem a small amount to today’s consumer, in terms of Depression-era dollars, it gave the CCC youth some “respectable purchasing power.” For instance, those at the Madison camp might have gone into town to shop at McGehee & Co., where they could have bought items for after-work hours or life after the CCC—a dress shirt for 79 cents, a man’s overcoat or suede jacket for $4.48, or a Sunday suit for only $7.95. Should they have desired a meal outside the camp, they could have enjoyed a lunch plate at Grogan’s Restaurant with a meat, four vegetables, drink, and dessert for only 35 cents. And, if their required 10:30 bedtime had not prevented it, men from Camp Victor might have taken in a late night Saturday film at the Patovi Theater for only a dime.
 
   While some of the CCC units in North Carolina were established on military lands or affiliated with the National Forest Service or national parks, Camp Victor was one of about three dozen sites in the state assigned to the Soil Conservation Service (SCS). The young men were tasked with soil and water conservation and erosion control on area farms. Local farmers who agreed to work with the young men of the CCC were called “cooperators.” The work of the Madison CCC camp was extensive throughout the 25-mile radius in which they were assigned to operate. Only two years into their work, Camp Victor enrollees had completed 130 cooperative agreements with farmers in Rockingham, Stokes, and Forsyth counties, contouring furrows, planting trees, and performing other needed tasks that would improve agricultural lands and literally keep the soil from washing away.
 
   By 1937, the Madison CCC workers had constructed 96 miles of a new type of agricultural terrace, introducing a novel farming method to the region. They also made land surveys and soil maps of more than 200 local farms. It was complicated work to determine the slope of the land, the degree of erosion, and to plan the best ways to control the damage, with seventy-five different types of soil identified in Rockingham and Stokes counties. The camp enrollees also had a “demonstration plot” of various grasses alongside the Madison to Greensboro highway, showing how these plants adapted to different soils. In addition, more than fifty talks were presented at Camp Victor to area farmers on soil conservation and nearly 300,000 tree seedlings were planted on “steep and badly eroded areas” that the CCC workers expected would become 45 acres of timber for future generations.  
 
   Over time, the young men of the CCC also created an increasingly comfortable and pleasant camp for themselves. While local laborers and carpenters built the fourteen original camp buildings, including four barracks, camp enrollees did much of the subsequent work at the site. 

They constructed archways at the two entrances to the camp as well as a bell tower. They planted cedar trees and over one thousand other plants, including roses and lilacs, that were donated by a local nursery, enhancing the landscape at Camp Victor.

Facilities were constantly improved. Two years in, new cypress tabletops were added to all the mess hall tables and the company canteen was remodeled. A new laundry facility along with a barber shop was built with funds earned from sales at the Camp Exchange and, in 1937, Camp Victor was said to boast “one of the best company stores in North Carolina.” When it became apparent that the water supply from Madison was “inadequate” to meet the needs of Company 3417, a 190-foot deep well was dug at the camp.
 
   There was a good deal of movement of personnel and enrollees in and out of Camp Victor. The earliest camp members came to Rockingham County from Florida, one hundred from Jacksonville and 75 more from Live Oak. Later, others came to Madison from the Hattiesburg, Mississippi area. Enrollees were sometimes moved from one North Carolina camp to another, such as the 28 who were reassigned to Madison from Winston-Salem in January 1936 or the five who left for a camp in Polkton, NC, in April of that year. Army leadership was reassigned periodically and new recruits came in, often forty at a time, as other young men completed their two-year work limit with the CCC and left the camp.
 
   When these two years were up, some sought work locally, as securing jobs outside of the CCC was the ultimate goal of their training. In September 1937, the local newspaper, the Messenger, advertised that forty CCC men were available to take jobs in the vicinity of the camp, all promoted as “alert, courteous, well-trained, and capable young men” who could perform a variety of jobs—from carpentry and auto mechanics to typing, cooking, painting, and surveying. In two weeks, fifteen found jobs in the Madison area. Another fifty completed their experience at the camp in early 1939 and again sought local employment.
 
   During their after-work hours, the young men of the Madison CCC camp could pursue educational outlets, games, and sports. Foremost in the plans for the program were schooling opportunities, which ranged from basic literacy instruction to detailed studies of trades and vocations. Among CCC enrollees in southern states, six percent were judged unable to read and write. In January 1936, nine of the Madison camp’s enrollees were identified as illiterate, “unable to read a newspaper or write a letter.” These camp members attended classes in spelling, reading, and arithmetic twice a week while employed by the CCC. Many of the young men received vocational certificates as they finished training courses while at the camp. Like many other camps, Company 3417 produced its own monthly newspaper, The Piney Pick Axe, first published in April 1936. The production of such a publication could serve as an educational tool in spelling, writing, typing, and critical thinking. The camp also had a library where camp members could read three daily newspapers or some of the forty-four popular and educational magazines that arrived each month.
 
   In addition to bettering himself academically and vocationally, each young man was “urged to participate in some athletic activity,” and there were many sports and games to choose from. Two camp baseball clubs played in a Winston-Salem league and had games against other CCC teams, such as the one from nearby Danbury. Playing as the Camp Victor Hornets, they hosted many area teams on the camp diamond, including Ayersville to whom they lost 7-5 in April 1937. Camp Victor’s basketball team played games against local school and community teams, as well as other CCC camps in the area, including Burlington and High Point. The facilities boasted two “well kept tennis courts,” a volleyball court, and a pit for high jumping. Some enrollees played billiards nightly on two regulation pool tables in the recreation hall. The young men could also swim and take lifesaving instruction at a Boy Scout lake, or throw horseshoes, which the camp members called “barnyard golf.” Twenty-five of the men played handball regularly and there were even boxing competitions. “Camp Victor offers every opportunity to improve the physical self,” one observer noted. Still more than once, illness swept through the camp, with thirty young men down with various illnesses in February 1936, followed by a “severe Spring epidemic of German Measles” with more than sixty stricken in April.
 
   From the outset, camp leaders sought “pleasant and amiable” relationships with the civilians nearby. Local people were frequently invited to come to the camp, to observe its educational activities, and tour its facilities. One “open house” event at Camp Victor in 1937 drew more than 700 visitors, including several classes from the Madison schools. The mayor of Madison, C. G. Moore, who had previously toured several CCC camps in Florida, came away from his visit to the local camp with the opinion that it was “by far the best equipped, best managed, cleanest, and most attractive” of any he had seen.
 
   Dances to which local residents were invited were held at Camp Victor. The success of  “a very enjoyable dance” in January 1936 with 150 attendees led to others. One such event the following May “for the CCC boys and townspeople” featured the Lucky Strike orchestra, a group of talented black musicians from Reidsville. For the festivities held from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., the Number 4 barracks building was decorated with crepe paper and honeysuckle vines.
 
   The young men also participated in many citizenship and community-building activities while at the camp and were regarded as helpful citizens in several encounters. In January 1937, they raised $35.40 for Red Cross flood relief along the Mississippi. They were able to visit the Guilford Courthouse Battleground one Sunday afternoon and learned about the area’s Revolutionary War history. Five camp members were lauded in the local newspaper for “their thoughtfulness to a motorist in distress” and their quick action in putting out an automobile fire they saw as they traveled to work on Highway 220 outside Madison. Another group of young men from the camp learned that nine of a family of eleven who lived near Madison were stricken in mid-winter with the flu and lacked firewood. The group borrowed a truck from the project superintendent, located and chopped wood, and delivered a truckload to the needy family. In June 1936, fifty CCC enrollees worked quickly to put out a forest fire that started near an old sawmill about six miles from Madison on the Walnut Cove road and were able to contain the damage to two hundred acres. When a heavy snow shut down regular camp activities, two crews from Camp Victor even cleared the main streets of Madison and Mayodan.   

Other nearby CCC camps included those located in Ridgeway across the state line in Virginia, Yanceyville in Caswell County, and at Walnut Cove and Danbury in Stokes County. 

Some, like the Danbury camp, were specifically assigned to develop parks and improve forested areas. Camp Mountain View, as the Danbury unit was named, has been especially noted for its valuable conservation and construction efforts at what became Hanging Rock State Park. CCC enrollees there built a park road, hiking trails, picnic shelters, a swimming area, a stone bathhouse, and even a concrete and earthen dam.
  
   During the nine years of the Civilian Conservation Corps program’s existence, camps experienced change. Some shifted their personnel or tasks to meet the needs at hand. At least sixty-six camps employing approximately 14,000 young men functioned in North Carolina during these years, with several others forming for short or limited assignments. As the work projects near camps were completed, some units were disbanded, and all CCC camps were in the process of closing by 1942. Camp Victor was one of eleven CCC camps in NC marked for closure in budget cuts in March 1940. Despite the fact that local people expressed strong support for maintaining the Madison camp, it was evacuated in September 1940 and most of its men moved to Sanford.
 
   President Roosevelt wrote in praise of the CCC: “You Men of the Civilian Conservation Corps have helped the nation. In return, you have benefitted physically and spiritually.” Russell Spear, the Messenger editor, echoed these sentiments. “In our opinion,” he wrote, “the CCC has done...a fine and desperately necessary work. Saving the land.” Highlighting the challenging task assigned to the CCC in Rockingham County, the journalist argued that they had made remarkable contributions, even though they were working in a location where only about 35 percent of the land was “good for even a paying crop of any kind.” The CCC’s conservation work in the area had done more than any other government initiative to help local people, he contended. Years later, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that the CCC was, in fact, the New Deal program in which her husband took the most pride, an organization whose purposes were, according to FDR: “Both to save a generation of upright and eager young men and to help save ​and restore our threatened resources.”

​Local officials acted quickly. To prevent the spread of the deadly virus, a general shutdown of the city of Reidsville was ordered on October 7. The health ordinance closed all schools, churches, and theaters, and prohibited public gatherings of all kinds. Violators were to be fined $100 for each infraction of the ordinance. An emergency hospital was opened in the Lawsonville Avenue School building to take care of influenza patients. Mr. Francis Womack, Red Cross chairman, issued a call for additional nurses to staff the hospital. “It is gratifying that some have so nobly responded,” he said. “But we want more to volunteer for this noble work.” When the influenza situation seemed to improve by the end of the month, the emergency hospital was closed.

Medical professionals offered guidance. The Surgeon General of the Army advised, “Avoid needless crowding—influenza is a crowd disease.” He also suggested opening windows, keeping cool, and ​washing hands. The North Carolina State Board of Health published instructions for making and using masks when attending the sick. The masks, according to Red Cross instructions, were to be eight by five inches and made of four layers of gauze. To sanitize them, masks could be placed “in boiling water for a few minutes and used over and over again.” Citizens were urged, “Place a mask over your mouth and nose and help the sick of your community.”

​Numerous advertisements began to appear in newspapers promoting the use of various tonics and treatments for the influenza and pneumonia spreading in the region. Some ads were designed deceptively in formats that appeared to be news articles. Some were remedies that had been available for decades.

To reduce the epidemic’s impact, public activities were curtailed in October 1918. Long-planned community fairs in Bethany and Reidsville were postponed. Political meetings, including Governor Thomas Bickett’s speech in the New Bethel community, had to be cancelled. Still citizens were urged to vote in the upcoming November election. As long as crowds did not congregate at polling places, “There is no reason why any voter who is able to be outdoors should fail to exercise the right of franchise because of fear of this disease,” health officials assured the public.

Churches also had to adapt during the influenza crisis. Some churches made requests for donations and tithes of their members during the shutdown. “Our church has been closed for several weeks on ​account of influenza,” the leaders of St. Thomas Episcopal Church wrote, but “our expenses are necessarily going on.” They asked the congregation to bring or send their dues to the church during a designated hour when the treasurer would be waiting there. When Reidsville houses of worship were closed by the town health directives, one minister was reported to have gone a bit outside the town to preach at a church in Wentworth one Sunday morning.

Boy Scouts rang the bell at the Reidsville First Presbyterian Church each night for a week in November to remind citizens to pray for the soldiers and for an end to the epidemic.
Commerce was also affected. One observer noted, “The influenza epidemic has played smash with business in all sections of the State.” Even though several tobacco markets, including Winston-Salem, had already been closed, local pundits predicted on October 15, “No shutdown of the tobacco market, factories or stores are contemplated here.” However, to check the spread of the epidemic, state health authorities did request that tobacco warehouses close, which they did in Rockingham County on October 18. Tobacco warehouse managers worried that some of their competitors in the county would open before the lifting of the health ordinance. Having missed some important weeks in the tobacco trade, all were permitted to reopen on November 4, “the influenza epidemic having improved to such an extent that it was deemed safe to resume the sales.”

The epidemic also brought disruption to local schools. Young teachers who had been working away in Jackson Springs and Gastonia returned home to Rockingham County in mid-October, their schools having closed “until the influenza epidemic is over.” The rural Bethany School was closed for two weeks but reopened by October 29. Schools in Reidsville were closed by the October 7 ordinance and reopened on November 11. Doctors assured families that it would be safe to return then and urged parents not to keep their children away from their classes.

During the month of October 1918, at least 5,000 in North Carolina died from influenza and the pneumonia that often followed, with 55 of these victims being in Rockingham County. The first “crest of the epidemic was apparently reached during the fourth week of October,” the State Board of Health reported. The human toll was great. One of the local victims that week was 35-year-old Walter Ledbetter, “a well-known citizen of Madison,” who died after a “short illness with influenza,” leaving a wife and “five little children.”

In early November, it seemed to many that the worst might be over locally. One Stoneville resident praised town officials for their careful leadership. “There have been only three cases of influenza within the corporate limits,” he said, and only “seven or eight in the community near here.” A young Wentworth woman home during the epidemic returned to her studies in Greensboro when the college reopened. The Reidsville library, which had been closed for six weeks, reopened in mid-November. Patients seemed to be recovering. The newspaper noted that Dr. W. A. Johnson of Monroeton was “out again after recovery from a hard spell of influenza and pneumonia.” It was reported that Miss May Hopper was now well and able to go back to school and that several others were “convalescing after an attack of influenza.” North Carolina Governor Thomas Bickett proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving for Sunday November 17, “rejoicing both for the victory that has attended American and allied arms and for the passing of the terrible epidemic.”

However, outbreaks in various communities of Rockingham County flared again and continued into December. A McIver resident reported that “the influenza is again epidemic in his section.” Both black and white families were stricken. Manton Oliver, whose family operated the Reidsville newspaper, found himself “confined to his room with influenza” as it was declared that “the influenza situation continues bad here.” In the New Bethel township, there were “quite a number of influenza cases.” Mr. T. Z. Sparks of the Oregon section told the newspaper that “nearly all of his family have been down with the influenza.” A citizen of the Mt. Carmel area reported that the influenza epidemic continued to “rage” in that community, saying “The influenza is taking a new start in this section and we fear it will yet get in the schools.”

By Thanksgiving 1918, over 80,000 Americans had died from the epidemic and news of deaths locally was frequent in this second wave of infection. Among the victims was 27-year-old Edna Johnston of Reidsville, who died of influenza-pneumonia only weeks after her brother Jamie had died from the same malady. Alvis Daniel Millner, age 51, died from influenza on December 4 after being ill for only two days. Mrs. Irvin T. Hinton and her four-year-old son Earle died during the first week of December and were buried the same day. Five others in the Hinton home also had influenza-pneumonia.

On November 27, acting on the “advice of the city health officer and other physicians,” Reidsville again adopted an ordinance closing schools, the public library and churches. While in effect, the ordinance made it unlawful to operate “any motion picture or vaudeville show” or to hold any public meetings or gatherings. As with the earlier ordinance, all homes where influenza victims had died or had been nursed back to recovery had to be disinfected according to directions from the county health officer. This time, though, the fine for violating any of the directives was $50, half of the fine imposed two months earlier. During the second shutdown, the county school superintendent assured parents and children that the “time lost on account of the influenza will be made up during the spring term and that grades will be promoted.” High school teachers promised to give the senior class an extra month to complete all work required for graduation. The week before Christmas, Madison High School announced that its principal, J. C. Lassiter, had influenza and that the school would close again and not reopen until after the holidays.

The span from September through December was certainly a time of great concern for Rockingham County and all of the state. Besides the trauma of influenza deaths, many local families were hoping to hear that their soldiers were returning home from the war, but instead often received sad news that their loved ones were injured or missing in action. Other serious health concerns were present in the county as well in the fall of 1918. Two dozen Rockingham County patients were quarantined with diphtheria, in addition to 37 with typhoid and 14 with smallpox.

By the new year, the influenza epidemic seemed to be waning. The renovated Grande Theatre in Reidsville announced that it was properly ventilated and reopening in compliance with health ordinances. Students were back in school and in Reidsville were attending classes a half day on Saturdays in January to make up for lost instruction. Still, national health officials warned that the public should learn from the “bitter experience” of the epidemic, to “realize the seriousness of the danger,” and to expect “a large number of scattered cases” in the coming months. Emphasizing the ongoing concern about infection, one business reminded the public repeatedly in its January 1919 ads, “Our store is disinfected daily against spread of disease.” As the new year began, one Ruffin resident wrote that folks in his area were very thankful that all but one of the soldiers from their community had returned safely from the war and that the “flu situation in our town is greatly improved.”

“Many homes are in mourning,” the editor of the Reidsville paper wrote. “We have had to mourn in common with other localities the loss of some of our brightest young men who have made the supreme sacrifices of war, as well as men and women who succumbed to the ravages of the influenza epidemic.” The year 1918, he concluded, had brought “strange, startling, and unprecedented” times.

Sources: Western North Carolina Historical Association, “1918 vs. 2020: Epidemics Then and Now in NC,” Online Exhibit, https://www.wnchistory.org/virtual-exhibits/influenza/; John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York: Viking Penguin Group, Inc., 2004), 92-97, 338, and 355-356; Kip Tabb, “Historic Outbreak: Spanish Flu on NC Coast,” North Carolina
HealthNews,https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2020/05/02/historicoutbreak-spanish-influenza-on-nc-coast/ ; Going Viral: Impact and Implications of the 1918 Flu Pandemic, Online Exhibit, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wilson Library, https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/going-viral/goingviral; Steve Case and Lisa Gregory, “Influenza Outbreak of 1918-1919,” NCpedia, Government and Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina, https://www.ncpedia.org/history/health/influenza; William S. Joyner, “Infectious Diseases,” NCpedia, Government and Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina, https://www.ncpedia.org/infectious-diseases part-ii . Articles in the Reidsville (NC) Review: “Spanish Influenza Prevalent,” September 27, 1918, 1; “Raleigh in Grip of Spanish Influenza,” October 1, 1918, 1; “Rules To Prevent Influenza,” October 22, 1918, 5; “A Call to Prayer,” October 25, 1918, 1; “Route 6,” November 26, 1918, 4; “Health Ordinance,” December 3, 1918, 6; and December 6, 1918, 7; “University President Dead,” October 29, 1918, 1; “Thomas S. Beall Dead,” October 8, 1918, 1; “Emergency Hospital Opens in Reidsville,” October 25, 1918, 1; “Spanish Influenza—New Name for Old Familiar Disease,” October 25, 1918, 6; “Editorial Column,” October 15, 1918, 4; “Stoneville,” November 5, 1918, 3; “Influenza Should Not Stop Voting,” November 5, 1918, 3; “Bethany,” October 29, 1918, 4; “Schools Will Make Up Lost Time,” December 3, 1918, 1; “Tobacco Warehouses To Open November 4,” October 29, 1918, 1; “Mt. Carmel,” November 22, 1818, 5; and December 13, 1918, 4; “A Call to the Good Samaritans,” December 6, 1918, 8; “U.S. Health Service Issues Warning,” December 13, 1918, 6; “Notice,” November 1, 1918, 8; “Should Be Forced To Close,” October 22, 1918, 4; “1918-1919,” December 31, 1918, 4; “Ruffin,” January 3, 1919, 5; “County Quarantine Officer’s Report,” October 8, 1918, 7; November 12, 1918, 1; and December 6, 1918, 2; “Some Timely Advice to the Influenza Convalescents,” December 2, 1918, 6; “Madison High School,” December 17, 1918, 1; “In Memoriam,” December 17, 1918, 4; “News of Reidsville and Rockingham,” November 26, 1918, 5; “Review of the Town and County News,” October 4, 1918, 8; October 8, 1918, 8; October 11, 1918, 8; October 15, 1918, 8; October 18, 1918, 8; October 29, 1918, 8; November 1, 1918, 8; November 5, 1918, 8; November 8, 1918, 8; November 12, 1918, 8; November 15, 1918, 8;November 26, 1918, 8; November 29, 1918, 8; December 3, 1918, 8; December 6, 1918, 8; December 13, 1918, 4; December 17, 1918, 8; December 31, 1918, 8; January 14, 1919, 8; “City Local News in a Condensed Form,” November 15, 1918, 5; November 29, 1918,1; December 3, 1918, 1; December 6, 1918, 1; December 13, 1918, 1; December 20, 1918, 1; December 31, 1918, 5; Advertisements in the Reidsville (NC) Review: Rockingham County Fair, September 20, 1918, 2; Mask Against Influenza, November 5, 1918, 5; Hill’s Bromide Cascara Quinine, November 8, 1918, 2; November 15, 1918, 4; November 22, 1918, 6; and November 29, 1918, 6; Foley’s Honey and Tar, November 22, 1918, 4; and November 29, 1918, 8; Dreco, November 5, 1918, 7; How To Use Vick’s VapoRub in Treating Spanish Influenza, October 18, 1918, 2; Druggists!! Please Note Vick’s VapoRub Oversold Due to Present Epidemic, Vick Chemical Company, October 29, 1918, 6; Vick’s VapoRub, November 8, 1918, 7; Peruna, October 29, 1918, 2; S. S. Harris, Clothier, December 24, 1918, 4; A. S. Price & Co., December 3, 1918, 8; January 3, 1919, 3. Reidsville Review accessed through NCLive, nclive.org, Historic North Carolina Digital Newspaper Collection, https://newscomnc.newspapers.com/ .

​The summer of 1914 looked to be one of great entertainment for the people of Rockingham County. For the first time, the Chautauqua series came to Reidsville, bringing an entire week of fun, learning, and enjoyment. One observer noted, “There is not a dull day for the whole week and there will be in reality Seven Joyous July Days.”

Named for the location in southwestern New York state where it originated in 1874, the Chautauqua movement was an effort to bring cultural experiences and enlightenment on a variety of topics to small town and rural America. The “tent” series brought to Reidsville in 1914 was organized by the regional Chautauqua Association of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. That summer, concerts, lectures, films, and plays came to two hundred towns in ten states. 
​
Events were held under massive tents, just as were the traveling carnival entertainments and religious revivals of the time. In total, the organization owned 14 of these large “auditorium” tents and 20,000 chairs that they moved to towns all over the region. The main Reidsville tent presented a “very pretty interior” with good acoustics and plenty of room, according to attendees. Organizers encouraged each stop on the circuit to adopt town colors, and pennants were made to represent each location. In Reidsville, many businesses and homes were decorated with the town colors of orange and black, as well as red, white, and blue for the Chautauqua week.

In the first week of July 1914, for a $2.00 ticket, one could attend thirty-one events over seven days. “This is Chautauqua Week in Reidsville,” one supporter wrote, “and now for a good time, ladies and gentlemen!” Musical performers included a Russian quartet, opera vocalists in costumes, and Alpine yodelers. The Imperial Russian Quartet, musicians “trained by Russian masters” who had “traveled over the world,” gave two of the twelve concerts in Reidsville that week. The most popular of all the week’s performers was probably Victor and His Band, a “big brass band” of 25 Italian musicians. The group had earned a reputation with Chautauqua audiences as well as with listeners during their ten years playing at the “big resorts of the Atlantic coast.” “There is no better music than that of an excellent brass band well played,” one admirer wrote. Another said of Victor and His Band, “Their grand concerts were alone worth the price of a season ticket.” 

In early spring, a promotion for the Chautauqua series had promised that the Tuskegee Institute Singers, “Eight of the Best Singers From Booker T. Washington’s Famous school,” were also under contract to perform in Reidsville, but they did not appear on the July schedule.

During the week, local folks could also take in a production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” an “illustrated lecture” on the Panama Canal (the engineering marvel about to open the next month) and entertainment from a cartoonist and clay-modeler. A highlight of the week was no doubt the two reels of motion pictures shown each evening, a truly dazzling and exciting opportunity in 1914. Promoters described one reel as a “purpose picture” and the second as a comedy.

In order to secure the week’s events, Reidsville citizens made financial commitments and prepared for weeks in advance. To become a stop on the Chautauqua tour, local residents first had to guarantee the organizers a sufficient number of ticket sales in advance. “An almost unbelievable number of people” signed cards at Tucker’s Drug Store, requesting tickets be reserved for them, according to promoters. At $2.00 each, the required number of tickets were sold ahead of time—725—and the names of more than 120 “guarantors” were printed in the local newspaper. During this time, the mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, wrote to a Reidsville acquaintance, recommending the series: “To have an entertainment of this kind in any community will result in an uplift for the good along all lines.”

Some apparently argued that Reidsville was “too small a town to have a real first class Chautauqua,” but local organizers set out to make sure the event was a success. Teachers, especially, were encouraged to take advantage of the Chautauqua, to be “entertained and educated and inspired and refined.” Attending “will be like taking a long trip, and hearing things great,” promoters said, “without leaving the county.”  They assured teachers, “It will be like going off on a summer vacation for seven days.” 

​As John T. Oliver was the town’s publicity chairman for the Chautauqua, there were numerous articles and ads in the newspaper he and his family operated, the Reidsville Review. Area businesses had robust advertising campaigns, tying their goods and services to the exciting week promised by the Chautauqua. To promote its men’s clothing, one stated, “You must be properly clad for this great occasion,” and asked, “Are You Ready for the Chautauqua?” Others touted their businesses as good stopping places while in Reidsville. “We will have plenty of seats and cool water for you. Have your friends meet you here,” a furniture and undertaking establishment suggested. The Townshend Buggy Co. proposed even more: “Make our store your Headquarters” while at Chautauqua, they wrote, offering “Comfortable chairs, surreys, buggies, and riding cultivators to rest in, and cool ice water.” Expecting the “greatest crowd that has ever visited Reidsville,” hotels and cafes “laid in big supplies of provisions.”

In addition to the concerts and other arts attractions, a number of lectures were also available to ticketholders, including one by Frank Dixon, whose presentation the year before was called “the most talked-of on the Chautauqua program.” Dixon, whose lecture in Reidsville was titled, “The Social Survey, or Taking Stock of a Town,” was a member of a prominent North Carolina family. His brother was Thomas Dixon of The Klansman fame, whose novels on the Reconstruction South envisioned a “Lost Cause” narrative and were the basis for the film “Birth of a Nation” in 1915. 

​Another prominent lecturer was Mrs. Meddie O. Hamilton, an officer with the Chautauqua organization. In the weeks leading up to the series and during the July week as well, Hamilton gave several lectures in Reidsville. She typically spoke on literature and great authors such as Shakespeare, Browning and Longfellow, but at least once she urged her Reidsville audience to support women’s suffrage. She “so eloquently put the argument in favor of allowing the women to vote,” one Reidsville listener said, that “even the most callous of her hearers” was ready to agree. “No nation could rise above the status of its women kind,” Hamilton argued.

A highlight of Chautauqua week was no doubt the visit by former presidential candidate and member of President Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet, William Jennings Bryan, who was on hand for the 1914 Fourth of July celebration. Noted for his compelling oratory (readers may remember learning about his “Cross of Gold” speech in high school history class), Secretary of State Bryan was one of a half dozen political figures who took to the Chautauqua circuit that summer. He came into Reidsville on the morning train from Washington, D.C. From the depot, he was taken to the New Rockingham Hotel, where he breakfasted with more than twenty regional and local Chautauqua Committee members. One account marveled at the massive breakfast served to Secretary Bryan: “Canteloupe, 3 kinds of breakfast food, peaches, fried spring chicken, with cream gravy, lamb chops, breakfast bacon, sliced tomatoes, French fried potatoes, stewed apricots, eggs as ordered, hot cakes, sourwood honey, Georgia cane syrup, hot biscuits, toast, white bread, instant postum, coffee, tea, milk, all served in true Southern style.” After this hearty breakfast, Bryan spoke to the Reidsville audience for about two hours on the topic, “World Progress, Intellectual, Normal and Political.” Upon the conclusion of his speech, Bryan left on the No. 7 Southern train for High Point, speaking there and in Asheboro during the afternoon, and then on to Statesville that evening.

Overall, the performances of the 1914 Chautauqua in Reidsville were called “splendid” and audiences were said to be “thoroughly delighted” by what they experienced. A Chautauqua series typically came to town yearly from 1914 into the 1920s, as Reidsville became a regular stop as one of 33 towns in North Carolina on the Chautauqua circuit. In 1918 one observer noted, “Reidsville every year maintains a Chautauqua week and subscribes funds liberally to secure many of the most noted lecturers and entertainers on the lyceum circuits.” ​

​At other times of the year, entertainment during these decades was available at the Grotto Theatre in Reidsville, which offered plays from New York and touring comedy shows, as well as new miraculous motion pictures, “making living pictures on the screen.” Concerts and recitals at the private Reidsville Seminary and at other schools and local theaters meant that the area’s citizens had several cultural experiences available to them, but the Chautauqua series must have been a special entertainment highlight for Rockingham County.

In June 1966, the Leaksville-Rockingham County Industrial Education Center (IEC) held its last commencement. In its final year of operation, the IEC awarded fifty certificates to those completing a two-year program in areas such as mechanical drafting, auto mechanics, machine shop, radio and TV servicing, and cosmetology. These vocational training endeavors were then transferred into the campaign to build Rockingham Community College (RCC), and the staff and equipment were assigned to the Wentworth campus which opened later that year.

​The Industrial Education Center in the Tri-Cities area (Leaksville, Spray and Draper) was one of the first seven vocational schools established by the state of North Carolina in 1957. The other six IECs funded that year by a $500,000 appropriation from the NC General Assembly were in Burlington, Durham, Goldsboro, Jamestown, Wilmington, and Wilson. This initiative during the administration of Governor Luther H. Hodges, a Leaksville resident and former textile executive at area employer Marshall Field and Company (later Fieldcrest Mills), was just one of the ways Hodges exhibited a lifelong dedication to workplace education, technical training, and business advancement. As Governor, he was very successful in recruiting businesses to North Carolina and later was named U.S. Secretary of Commerce by President John F. Kennedy. By the mid-1960s, the number of IECs grew to twenty sites, providing a foundation for a statewide community college system.

​At a cost of $150,000, the Leaksville Industrial Education Center was constructed adjacent to Morehead High School and opened in 1958. To “reach the man-on-the job as well as high school youth” all across Rockingham County, the IEC offered classes in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. To enroll in the program, students had to pass a standardized aptitude test and have at least eight high school units, two of them in math. Upon completion of the two-year training, graduates earned certificates that they might present to potential employers. Located in a community with numerous mills, the IEC’s course in textiles was a featured program. Not only would young men learn the basic machinery, according to the first director, Henry Rahn, but they would learn the skills needed for successful work in the mills and advancement “up to positions of supervisory responsibility.” To ready the IEC for opening, Rahn made a job-needs survey of over 150 industrial and commercial businesses in the county. In addition to textiles, he found that there was a great demand for employees in electronics and automobile mechanics. The IEC in Leaksville operated successfully for the next eight years before it was phased into Rockingham Community College.
​
     In fact, the seeds of the community college and vocational training had been sown in Rockingham County over many decades. In the Tri-Cities area especially, there was historically a strong commitment to basic literacy among adult workers, workplace preparation, and vocational education. As early as the 1920s, a large number of night classes were set up in Tri-Cities communities for men and boys who worked in the local textile plants and wanted to “get a better education and to make themselves ready for better jobs.” Eighteen different night classes, each meeting twice a week, were organized by Hodges, the textile mills’ educational director. One class in elementary electricity met on Tuesday and Saturday nights. “You can be sure that a class of boys that will meet on Saturday nights is serious in its work,” one observer noted. In 1931, a delegation representing the Committee on Adult Illiteracy asked the local school board for and received one thousand dollars to hold classes in basic education for three months. One member of this committee was again Hodges, who took on a role teaching adults throughout this period. Finances thinned as the Depression continued. Hodges returned to the Leaksville school board, seeking funds from the school system to carry on this vocational and literacy work in night classes. They were able to give only half of what was requested, as they were cutting expenses in several areas, including reducing pay for the superintendent and principals by 10 percent. The school system did, however, take on this project a few months later, funding eleven night classes, including one for black citizens in the Draper section.

​In 1934, night classes in the Tri-Cities area were expanded, with the state and the Leaksville Hospital sharing expenses for a course in Dietetics. While monies were limited in late 1936, the Leaksville school system was able to commit an additional $450 from local funds for the “promotion of evening schools in Trades and Industries.” In 1939, Hodges was still involved in keeping these classes going, obtaining $250 from the local schools and matching that amount from his own funds. Clearly, these vocational and literacy courses were of great importance to the citizens of the Tri-Cities area, and especially to the future governor. 

​ In the years leading up to World War II, citizens in Leaksville, Spray, and Draper had even more access to workplace training. Some technical training in textiles took place in a school established in the Nantucket Mill in Spray, a part of the Marshall Field facilities. There various textile operations were taught in what was basically a “small textile mill.” About two-thirds of the first students were “mill employees, anxious to improve themselves in their textile work.” What started in the Nantucket Mill facility became a comprehensive vocational high school operated for the next twenty years by the local public school system with the assistance of the numerous industrial interests in the area. With a focus on textiles and featuring Jaquard looms, the Leaksville Vocational School officially opened in 1937, as a division of Leaksville High School. Those eligible to attend the school as it was initiated were junior and senior-level high school boys or “employees from local and industrial and business enterprises.” In its first year, seventy-five students earned “diplomas, certificates, or unit cards... in yarn manufacturing or weaving and designing.” Teachers were trained in the skills to be taught at this special school by industrial education experts, including a professor from North Carolina State College. Skilled instructors were hired and equipment was purchased by the local school board as courses were gradually expanded to include “practical English,” as well as metal and woodworking. 

​Over many decades, Rockingham County has had a strong history of training the workforce. At mid-century, the citizens of the Tri-Cities area clearly had good access to workplace education and vocational training. Literacy classes for local workers in the 1920s and 1930s grew into vocational classes co-sponsored by local manufacturers and the public schools in the 1940s and 1950s. The presence of an already established vocational high school no doubt made the area a prime location for the new Industrial Education Center built in the late 1950s. When Leaksville was selected as the site of one of the state-sponsored vocational centers in 1957, the facilities and offerings of the school were further enhanced, planting the seeds of a community college system and making Rockingham County an integral part of preparing workers for the industrial expansion North Carolina saw in the 1960s and 1970s.

Foreword:
Whether or not you know a current high school senior, we can all feel sadness for the Class of 2020. Their senior year ended abruptly on Friday, the 13th day of March, an ironic twist of fate. From the appearance of flip flops and shorts on the first warm day to the turning of tassels at the graduation ceremony, the spring semester of senior year has always been a season to celebrate accomplishments, friendships, and "lasts." Yet, for 2020 graduates, this transition to adulthood is missing. The normal spring semester disease characterized by playfulness and slacking off—senioritis—was replaced this year by a much more serious virus, COVID-19, forever robbing this graduating class of the perks, pranks, picnics, proms, parties, and pomp they earned for achieving this important milestone. Knowing current students are missing so much makes all of us, and particularly the parents and family of the Class of 2020, more appreciative of the celebrations we enjoyed in high school. For “This Month in Rockingham County History,” compiled by local historian Debbie Russell, we look back at some of these end-of-the-school-year moments from earlier generations. In addition to the celebrations readers might recall, there were also other graduating classes whose experiences were framed by a changing world.
                                                               --Jean Bullins (MARC Publicity Committee Chair)

At the turn of the new century, students of the Reidsville Graded School exhibited their student work on a Thursday afternoon in May and the seven “bright young men and women” graduates were honored at exercises the next day at a 4 p.m. ceremony.  Participants read a series of essays and orations, including one by Miss Janie Williams, valedictorian. Music was a major part of the day’s event. A select choir sang, “Nearer My God to Thee,” five young women performed “The Old North State,” and the attendees all joined to sing “God Be With You Till We Meet Again” as a benediction. Local people were also looking to build a new public school and, to end the day’s festivities, the crowd gave three cheers in support of the upcoming vote to finance a proposed new school building. The editor of the Reidsville Review had already expressed his support for the project, urging local citizens, “If you favor a new school building register today; if you oppose it you needn’t bother about registering.”
 
“Closing Exercises of the R.G.S.,” Reidsville (NC) Review, May 14, 1901, 2; “Past, Present and Future,” Reidsville (NC) Review, May 7, 1901, 3.

Commencement activities in 1914 at the Sadler School were apparently extremely entertaining. “We thought the entertainment last Christmas was good enough,” an attendee wrote, but the one Thursday night far surpassed it. The music, dialogues, recitations, songs, marches, and drills were exceptionally fine.” The observer did lament the fact that the “primary teacher who carries sunshine wherever she goes” had returned to her home after the school term ended, leaving the Sadler community, and that the music teacher had also moved back to her hometown of King’s Mountain.
     In Reidsville, the Class of 1914 marked the school year’s end with a Class Gift. Representing the seniors as class president, Reuben Baker presented “a splendid bust of Apollo with a suitable pedestal” to the Reidsville Graded School and School Superintendent T. Wingate Andrews. Baker told the crowd that the class hoped the bust “might be an object of use and beauty—an incentive to high ideals to all who should come after.”
 
“The Closing of the Sadler High School,” Reidsville (NC) Review, April 7, 1914, 10; “Senior Class Presents Bust of Apollo,” Reidsville (NC) Review, April 21, 1914, 1.

Commencement exercises for African Americans at the “colored Graded School” in the Leaksville area took place in early May of 1915. The graduation, where county Superintendent L. N. Hickerson presented diplomas to five graduates, was held at a local church and was well attended. An area newspaper reported that local people spoke “in the highest terms of the work that is being done by the principal, R. S. Graves, and his assistants at the school.”
     Graduation events for the Leaksville High School Class of 1915 took place over two evenings in May. While Tuesday’s festivities featured a music recital, on Monday evening, the eleven graduates received their diplomas and heard from Class President Anice Moir and Class Orator Francis Martin. Among the eleven graduates was future North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges. During the ceremony, Hodges read the class poem, which had been written by Oscar Trent, and gave a toast to faculty (later printed in a local newspaper), naming all the teachers from the first grade through graduation of the Class of 1915, devoting four lines of poetry to each description.
     In the same paper, the commencement exercises of the Leaksville-Spray Institute, a recently opened private school, were highlighted. The school also publicized its offerings in a poem written by A. L. French: “So with environment right, and teachers true blue, There’s a grand work in prospect—a good work and true—And if training for life is part of your plan, Let this training take place on the bank of the Dan.” The Institute, described as “handsomely equipped with well-furnished buildings,” was led by principal C. M. Beach, who would later become president of Wingate College.
 
“The Leaksville High School Commencement,” “A Toast to the Faculty of Leaksville High School,” and “Leaksville-Spray Institute,” Reidsville (NC) Review, May 11, 1915, 7; “Local Happenings of Leaksville and Spray,” Reidsville (NC) Review, May 11, 1915, 5; “C. M. Beach, Leaksville, Succumbs,” Greensboro (NC) Daily News, August 19, 1959, 18. 

The 1923 annual commencement of the county schools drew an “immense” crowd to the courthouse in Wentworth. One attendee estimated that only a fourth of those there could actually get inside the building (now the home of the MARC) for the festivities. “Splendid music” for the occasion was provided by the “crack orchestra of the Grande Theatre of Reidsville,” evoking the era when local musicians provided the score to accompany silent films. The ceremonies honored the 226 students from across the county who had just completed the seventh grade, the highest level offered at some of the small rural schools. Contests took place in both the morning and afternoon. Awards went to Edna Parker from Draper for the best recitation and Clyde Shreve of Sharon School for the best declamation. Other winners were Lena Dix and Beverly Warren from Spray, best elementary spellers, and Lucy McCargo of Wentworth School, high school spelling contest winner. 
 
“School Commencement at Wentworth,” Reidsville (NC) Review, May 9, 1923, 5. 

The large size (16 x 20 inches) of Ella Bann Campbell’s diploma from Madison High School in 1924 suggests its significance for students of that era, as a high school education was just becoming available in many communities. In 1913, a two-story school that had six teachers and could offer four years of high school instruction had been built in Madison. A second multi-story brick facility to house Madison students was erected in the 1922-23 school year. School officials visiting from Raleigh described it as a “handsome new building” and praised J. C. Lassiter for the progress the Madison schools had made since he had become superintendent in 1915. Lassiter would be Superintendent of the Madison Schools for nearly forty years—until 1953. In addition to Lassiter’s signature, Campbell’s diploma was signed by department store owner, J. O. Busick, Board chairman, as well as physician Dr. J. T. Taylor and banker J. O. Ragsdale, secretary and treasurer of the Madison School Board.
 
“News Notes from Rockingham County,” North Carolina Education, April 1923, 21; “Madison School System Complete,” Leaksville (NC) News, August 30, 1934, E6; Educational Edition, Reidsville (NC) Review, October 16, 1914, 1-1 (Section 1, page 1); 2-7; see Board of Education Minutes of the Madison City Schools, May 4, 1953; and May 25, 1953; Image and information on diploma signers provided by Jean Bullins.

​In the yearbook, Frank J. Whittemore, the Historian for Reidsville High School’s Class of 1935, recalled many positive developments during their senior year, including a “very delightful Junior-Senior Banquet” and the influence of a new teacher, Mr. Leggette, who organized both a Dramatic Club and a school orchestra. Yet, as the class graduated in the midst of the Great Depression, Whittemore spoke for his classmates: “Your graduation seems a sadder time than you expected. The world outside is cold. You know not what to expect from its bleak, bare atmosphere.” Still, he advised them, “Be Thou the Rainbow to the Storms of Life.”
 
Renocahi, Yearbook, Reidsville High School, 1935, 13

     In the 1940s, the longest established center of black education in the county was the Booker T. Washington School in Reidsville. At the intersection of Sprinkle and Scales streets in Reidsville, the original school building served area African Americans from 1922 to 1951. As the flagship school for the unofficial “Rockingham county negro school system,” Washington was the venue for numerous county and regional events.  One of these took place in 1941 when “several hundred” African American students gathered at the school for an “achievement day and county-wide commencement exercises.” Also, on hand was Washington’s distinguished principal, Dr. S. E. Duncan, who served the school from 1938-1946. Black students from all areas of the county, including pupils from some of the small one and two-teacher schools, participated in academic contests in “reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, and oratory.” Winners included scholars from the Ruffin and Groom’s schools and represented the many others in the county who no doubt looked to the future as one day being students at one of the three high schools in Rockingham County available to African American students—Washington, Douglass in Leaksville, or Madison Colored School. 
 
“Booker T. Washington High School,” The Historical Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/
marker.asp?marker=63051; “Rockingham Negro School Finals Held: Achievement Day at Reidsville Is Well Attended,” Greensboro (NC) Daily News, May 6, 1941, 5; Lois V. Edinger, “Samuel Edward Duncan, Jr.,” NCpedia, State Library of North Carolina,
​https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/duncan-samuel-edward-jr.

Another celebration often held as the school year ended was the production of a school play. This program from Wentworth High School’s 1943 offering, “Moonshine and Honeysuckle” shows that their Senior Class play was set in the North Carolina mountains and directed by school principal Allan Lewis. Lewis, who always demonstrated a zeal for school arts programs, especially dramatics, became the Superintendent of the county system in 1946. The auditorium at Rockingham County High School is named in his honor.
 
Golden Leaves, Yearbook, Wentworth High School, 1943, 81-83; J. Allan Lewis Collection, Rockingham County Historical Collections, Gerald B. James Library, Rockingham Community College, Wentworth, North Carolina,
http://www.rockinghamcc.edu/library/findingaids/jallanlewiscollection.pdf; Minutes of Rockingham County Schools, July 1, 1946; and August 5, 1946.

     In the midst of World War II, area students were highly impacted by the crisis. Class Historian, Orene Hopkins, wrote of the serious situation faced by the Draper High School Class of 1944: “The months passed swiftly and soon these pupils were Seniors. In the fall of 1943 there were thirty-six Seniors who returned to school. Many of the fellow students did not return but joined in the ranks for Uncle Sam. We were sad but proud of these boys. Many of the pupils that did return knew that Uncle Sam would be calling them as soon as Commencement is over. In the face of this, they proved their patriotism, worked hard and did their best. And with their motto, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” they leave their dear school, Draper Hi, prepared to face life and never to forget the best days of all, their school days.”
                                                  
The Crest, Yearbook, Draper High School, 1944, 18.

     In 1945, Madison High School held its only Sophomore-Senior Banquet to celebrate the end of the school year.  Because a twelfth grade had been added by the state of North Carolina, there was no junior class as such during that change-over year. The sophomores hosted the event and decorated the venue with their class colors of green and white. At the banquet held on a Friday night at Grogan’s Restaurant located just east of the bridge entering the town of Madison, attendees dined by candlelight, heard toasts to the seniors and faculty, and enjoyed a musical program. 
 
“First Sophomore-Senior Banquet Held Friday,” The Messenger (Madison, NC), May 2, 1945.

Students in white dresses participated in the tradition of winding ribbons around the Maypole at Mayodan School. The Maypole festivities were held in Mayodan for many years at the school, which was renamed for long-time principal Elliott Duncan in 1959. The final May Day was observed there in 1991, when the school closed.
 
Photo contributed by Jeff Bullins; Mayodan: The First 100 Years, Calendar, Wright Printing Company, 1999.

By 1958, Tri-City High School had been renamed for a benefactor, John Motley Morehead. Music at that year’s Morehead High School Banquet and Dance was provided by a big band, The Southerners. Space motif decorations reflected the theme, “From Here to Eternity.”
 
Carillon, John Motley Morehead High School, 1958, 113; “Morehead Donates $35,000 Facility to Tri-City School,” Greensboro (NC) Record, February 27, 1957, 1; David L. Owens, “Tri-City High School Named for Benefactor,” Greensboro (NC) Daily News, June 1, 1957, 1.

One of the most astounding moments at a commencement in Rockingham County took place in 1974 at the Madison-Mayodan (M-M) graduation ceremony. As school officials were presenting diplomas to that year’s graduates, six naked figures—streakers—scaled a fence and ran down into the stadium and across the field. “All they had on was helmets,” a Madison police officer, who unsuccessfully pursued the culprits, told the press.
     The streaking fad was a short-lived phenomenon on college campuses earlier in 1974. Most of the colleges in North Carolina experienced streaking events that spring. In March of that year, an estimated 900 streakers ran across the UNC-Chapel Hill campus and proclaimed with a banner that Carolina was “Home of the World Champion Streakers.” The fad was thought to have run its course by the 1974 graduation season. However, the M-M streakers were the third such recent incident in the Madison area, following one “involving a nude bicyclist… and a streaker at Lefty’s Restaurant in Mayodan.”
 
"Streakers Hit Commencement," The Messenger (Madison, NC), June 13, 1974, 1,3; "A Look Back at Streakers," North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, "https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2015/03/05/a-look-back-at-streakers

One of MARC's more mysterious collection items is our curious boxed device (pictured) that is actually a very well preserved example of an early dry medical battery. Produced by the Whitall Tatum Company in Millville, NJ, primarily a glass company, the item reveals a fascinating insight into a time where medical professionalisation, the dawn of electricity, the mail order catalogue and quackery all coalesced. Our single cell No. 1 Reliance model was an early version of one of many home-use electrotherapy devices, advertised as a 'cure-all' and raging in size from a book to a suitcase.

How it worked - the metal cup would be filled with an acid such as vinegar or lemon juice. One electrode made of copper and one of another metal such as aluminium would be connected to wires. Those wires would in turn be connected to two silver tubes. This would make the battery. In a time where electricity was a new and exciting discovery, shifting from the traveling shows of the early 19th century to the homes of the consumer, it is easy to see how a  gullible and trusting public could be duped into electricity's magical properties, especially when receiving a 'revitalising' shock from one of these medical batteries.

You can read more about this curious time in U.S. history ​from the article excerpt below (Wexler, A., 2017: The Medical Battery in United States (1870-1920): Electrotherapy at Home and in the Clinic: pp. 166 - 192)

In setting up his school and obtaining a mailing address for the site outside of the town of Madison, Sharp was directed by the Post Office to choose a name for the area that was not duplicated anywhere else in the state. Sharp chose “Intelligence” for the community surrounding the Institute. The school was advertised as being located in “a section of the Piedmont region unequaled for health and beauty” with some revered history, along one of the roads traveled by General Nathaniel Greene and his troops during the Revolution. Parents were promised close supervision of their children if they enrolled at Sharp Institute and that “no seductive influences” would be “thrown around the students to divert their attention.” Sharp also assured families that he would meet their children in Madison at the nearest railway stop and that they could reach him to notify him of their arrival because “the school is connected with Madison by phone.” The trip by wagon to the school, however, though only a matter of four and a half miles, would take forty minutes.
​
   One of the areas of instruction at the Sharp Institute was the “Normal Department.” Suggesting the widespread need for teachers in North Carolina at this time, these teachers in training were “often called on to take charge of schools before completing [the]...entire course.” Students could also receive instruction in business and music, as well as prepare for the university; tuition varied by course from $1.50 to $4.00 a month. The promotional brochure for the Institute boasted, “Probably no school in the State gives better facilities for musical training at so reasonable cost.” Students could study vocal music, plus piano, violin, mandolin, and guitar. Sharp promoted the Institute in its literature with a bold claim: “To say you have completed the courses prescribed by this institution means a recommendation that the world will recognize.”  

​   The school did, indeed, receive public attention and acclaim. Its baseball team played and won games against other “colleges and high-schools” in the state and was often written about in local newspapers. In 1903, a crowd of about two thousand attended the Sharp Institute end-of-the-year ceremonies, hearing a speech from Governor Charles Aycock at the closing exercises.  In the Institute’s 1906 brochure, Congressman W. W. Kitchin praised Sharp as an “earnest, industrious, energetic, and progressive educator.” And, in testimony to the “excellent school” that Sharp had established, Aycock and several local officials recommended that North Carolina citizens contribute financially to the educational endeavors in Intelligence. Despite thriving and growing in numbers and academic reputation, however, the Institute lasted only about seven years, its tenure marred by a second devastating fire in January 1907. After the second fire, Sharp did not rebuild. He later moved to Reidsville where he established a law practice. Along with fledgling public schools, other early twentieth century private academies, including the Reidsville Seminary and the Leaksville-Spray Institute, continued to educate the youth of Rockingham County.

In March 1973, Rockingham County celebrated its own version of March mania with state championships in men’s basketball for two county high schools. Completing a perfect 25-0 season, Reidsville High School won the 4A division made up of the largest high schools in North Carolina, while Madison-Mayodan High School earned the title for 3A schools.

​Wentworth High School was also a top-four contender for 1973 state honors, bowing out in the 1A semifinals to Orrum on a last-second basket. The Eagles, who won their third straight District 5 title, had a 21-3 record going into tournament play, with two of those losses being to 4A power Reidsville. Wentworth’s 6’4” senior Daryl Galloway was his team’s leading scorer and rebounder all season long and was the top vote-getter on the All-Conference team. 
​
   For Madison-Mayodan (M-M), 1973 brought their second consecutive district title and the third trip to the state playoffs in five years for Coach Leroy Myers’ team. The year before, M-M had a 26-0 record when they lost to the eventual state champion Hendersonville and placed third. In the 1973 tournament held in Durham, a determined Falcons team defeated Bertie County and Ayden-Grifton in the early rounds, setting up a rematch with Hendersonville in the final game. Before an estimated crowd of 2500 with “the better part of western Rockingham County on hand,” according to one fan, M-M jumped out to a 19-4 lead in the first quarter and had an eight-point lead at halftime. The Bearcats rallied and took the lead in the third quarter, but M-M was able to come back, defeating the defending champs 48-44. “Defense won it for us,” Coach Myers told the press. M-M center Kim Cure contributed 11 points to the win, and forward Jerry Moore, who scored 29 points in the finals, with 13 in the fourth quarter, was named tournament MVP. About three hundred local supporters met the team back at Madison-Mayodan High School for a late night reception, where school officials, Coach Myers and players addressed their fans and celebrated the championship season.

​   Reidsville had had several 20-win teams and one previous state crown—in 1924 in the very early days of the North Carolina high school athletics system—but the 1973 team, with three returning starters, had the first undefeated season in school history. Legendary coach Hoy Isaacs, in his 26th year at Reidsville, took his team to the state finals for the fourth straight year. In the District finals, the Rams were victorious over High Point Andrews 60-53, with Melvin Watkins the leading scorer (21) and rebounder (17). The Reidsville team went on to beat Fayetteville Sanford and Gastonia Ashbrook in the state tournament, with the starting five—Armeneous Adams, Leon Richardson, Charlie Wilkerson, Gerald Courts, and Watkins—leading the way. In the state championship game, the Rams defeated Winston-Salem Reynolds 71-55, with all five starters scoring in double figures and the team shooting an impressive 78 percent. Watkins, Wilkerson, and Adams were named to the 4A All-Tournament team and Isaacs marked his 446th coaching win.

​   Both championship squads exhibited high levels of teamwork and a balance of offense and defense. Both teams also had outstanding players who went on to play college basketball. M-M’s Jerry Moore, who won All-State honors, went into the state tournament averaging 28 points per game. In a 51-point performance against Mt. Airy during the regular season, the forward hit 23 of 30 shots from the floor. Moore went from Madison-Mayodan to play at the University of Florida. Melvin Watkins was Reidsville’s standout, earning All-American honors and going on to play at UNC Charlotte. He was a leader on Charlotte’s Final Four team in 1977. Watkins has had a 42-year college coaching career, with stints at his alma mater, Texas A&M, Missouri, and most recently at the University of Arkansas.  
 
   State Senator Wesley Webster introduced a resolution in the 1973 North Carolina General Assembly recognizing the Madison-Mayodan Falcons, the Reidsville Rams, and the Wentworth Eagles for their achievements on the basketball court. March 1973 was the culmination of a truly championship season and one for the Rockingham County history books.