While history is often studied through textbooks and official documents, a non-profit group in eastern North Carolina is proving that some of the most valuable historical records are stored right in the memories of our neighbors. A digital archive is capturing the raw, unedited life stories of regional elders. The Black Oral Histories of Beaufort County project is preserving the past before it slips away.
For decades, the lived experiences of Black people in rural communities like Washington, Belhaven, and Blounts Creek went largely unrecorded. But a local initiative, launched by the non-profit Odyssey for Democracy and backed by North Carolina Humanities, is changing that.
The project, led by Clark Curtis, the president and founder of the Washington-based non-profit, has compiled dozens of first-hand interviews, giving local elders a platform to share their own histories in their own voices.
“You've got folks that have 400 years or more where they've been told their stories are not important,” he explained, “And it's like, I just felt the need and the want to create a platform for individuals, black individuals, to be able to share their stories because their stories are part of all of our history and they're important for us to remember and learn from.”
Listeners can log on to the digital archive and hear vivid accounts of the twentieth century. Interviewees like Ledell Moore, born in 1933, describe the grit it took to grow up in a two-room house with five siblings, navigating rural poverty.
“I got one pair of shoes, and when that pair of shoes looked like -- back that time, shoes went to flip-flop, the sole would come from the shoe -- and my dad would take hog rings and patch them shoes up, and I'd wear them to school. I thought I was rich, I didn't know, but I was poor.”
In fact, Curtis said that is a theme heard over and over again in the dozens of interviews he has conducted, “’We were poor, but we didn't know we were poor.’ And it's, I would say, over 90% of the individuals we've interviewed, that's what they say.
Terry Sneed Brown was born in Washington in 1951. He recalled being kicked off an all-white outdoor tennis court at the age of 8.
“A police car drove up, and the first thing out of this cop's mouth was, ‘What are you doing out there, n****r?’ And I'm like 8 years old, so I'm looking at him -- he's a big guy. He said, ‘You hear me talking to you, boy?’ I said, ‘I'm playing tennis.’ ‘Oh, you getting smart with me?’ I said, 'No, sir, you asked me what I'm doing here. I'm playing tennis.’ He kicked us off the court.”
Brown also remembered being refused service at the counter in Woolworth’s .
First cousins Shirley Tyre and Preddy Stilley grew up recalling the exhausting, dawn-to-dusk labor of working as child sharecroppers in regional corn and tobacco fields.
“I would go there and a lot of times help take the cured tobacco out of the barns. And a lot of times, I didn't even go home at night because they had what they called shelters. And they would close the shelters in with some kind of burlap bags or some kind of material. And that's where we would sleep at night.”
Curtis said capturing these memories is crucial, particularly amid the current political climate. “Since when does history get a label as Critical Race Theory or whatever?” he asked, “It's part of all of our history.”
As the older generation passes away, he said these unwritten stories of resilience, faith, and community leadership risk being lost forever, and archiving them online ensures that future generations of educators, students, and families can hear the true history of Beaufort County straight from the people who lived it.
Curtis said the project is beginning to branch out to other eastern North Carolina communities, like Craven and Pamlico Counties, to preserve more regional stories of the past. In addition to the project website, the interviews are also preserved in the Library of Congress.
