Chowan Discovery Group

Presentations on Pleasant Plain School and Katie M. Hart

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Pleasant Plains Trustee McCoy Pierce, Joanna Braswell and Marvin T. Jones at church fellowship hall.

 

Chowan Discovery took part in two programs on Dec 11, 2016 in Hertford County.  The first was was to celebrate three milestones at Pleasant Plains Church: its 165th anniversary, the 150th anniversary year of the founding of its school – Pleasant Plains School, and the school’s placement on the National Register of Historic Places.  After the service conducted by Pastor W. Robert Ashe, the church served a meal in the fellowship hall where Marvin T. Jones recounted the history of the school and the process of putting it on the Register.   Historic preservation consultant Joanna Braswell of Smithfield, Virginia was acknowledged for her valuable contribution to the nomination.

Chowan Discovery thanks Church Trustee McCoy Pierce,  Deacon Dr. Terry Hall, Reverend Ashe and the congregation of Pleasant Plains for making the day possible.

Mrs. Katie M. Hart in 1969.

Shortly after, the Cultivator Bookstore in Murfreesboro hosted a Chowan Discovery presentation about Mrs. Katie M. Hart.  She  founded and ran the Hertford County Colored Public Library from 1938 to 1969.  It was the only public library for people of color in northeastern North Carolina during the jim crow era.

Mrs. Hart, then a teacher supervisor, on her own, began a small library for people of color in 1931. In 1938, she began a bookmobile service and within a few years opened a library building in Winton.   Her bookmobile served Hertford and Gates counties, and her books were available to all people.  Mrs. Hart retired in 1969 at the time her library merged with the Albemarle Regional Library.  The talk/slide presentation has many images of Mrs. Hart, her bookmobile, library, home and gravesite. Included are an interview  with Dr. Dudley Flood and reminisces taken from Ben Watford, John Eley, Jacqueline Vann Jones and Shawnee Smith Ball.  Mr. Eley, a piano student of Mrs. Hart, attended.

Mrs. Hart’s 1938 bookmobile.

Chowan Discovery is thankful to Barbara Boone Buescher for sending information about Mrs. Hart and her mother; and to Caroline Stephenson and Jochen Kunstler of Cultivator for the invitation to present.

Winton Triangle History in Chicago!

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L-R: Lars Adams, Gerry Lang, Wayne Winkler, Laura Kina, S.J. Arthur and Marvin T. Jones. Photograph by Sam Clark.

In Chicago, the CDG got the opportunity to introduce our history to a national audience of academics and students at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at DePaul University in Chicago.

Writer Lars Adams, of the Chowanoke Descendants website, presented the history of the Choanoac (Chowanoke) people from the earliest evidence in the 8th century, to their encounter with the English in 1586 in Hertford County and to their decline and supposed demise in Gates County 1821. Adams finished his account by  relating the re-assertion of Choanoac heritage:  the growth of the Robbins family near Cofield, the rise of the Meherrin-Chowanoke people, based in the Hertford County, and the Choanoac marker in Harrellsville that was erected last year.

My latest presentation of the Winton Triangle has since added the recent findings and events of the past year and a new map of Winton Triangle schools. Several audience members told me that is was best presentation they had seen so far, and on that strength, several of them  returned to attend the next day’s panel about Melungeons and other mixed-race people in Appalachia.  S. J Arthur, President of the Melungeon Heritage Association, and Wayne Winkler, from East Tennessee State University and author of Walking Toward Sunset, documented the historical diversity of mixed-race people in Appalachia.  This panel was moderated by the Chowan Discovery Group.

I am excited that this is the CDG’s second participation in a conference in a month’s time, that we bought the CDG presence to a national audience and made new academic friends.

At two of the sessions I attended, during open discussions, I got to alert academics about the wealth of research possibilities offered by the Winton Triangle project, and learned of a new source of documents that we will begin to study this month. Thankfully, these are held by my friends at Howard University’s Moorland Spingarn Research Center.

Steven Riley presented a paper about President Barack Obama and multi-racial issues.

I’d like to thank Laura Kina of DePaul University for paving the way for our two panels, Meherrin-Chowanoke artist Gerry Lang for moderating the Choanoac-Winton Triangle panel, and Mayola Cotterman, a longtime family friend, for taking me into her comfy, lovely and conveniently-located home and attending both panels.  Our friends Steven Riley and Julia Cates of Mixed Race Studies attended, and as always, were supportive.

Next month in December: two firsts for Chowan Discovery! – Marvin T. Jones