Browse Items (916 total)

Racial Response In the early years of cinema, films were not only forms of entertainment, but they also served as a lens for how people perceived each other. In the 1930s African Americans were fighting for racial progress, and groups like the…

North Carolina's Federal Soldiers Although North Carolina was a Confederate state, as many as 10,000 Tar Heels served in the state's four white Union regiments, and more than 5,000 blacks joined four African American Federal regiments. White…

1863: A Year of Carnage "Our N.C. troops behaved most nobly....My Brigade behaved magnificently and got cup up terribly." --Brigadier General William Dorsey Pender, May 7, 1863 The intensity of the battles that North Carolina soldiers fought in…

Gone with the Wind premiered at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta on December 15, 1939. Two thousand guests were invited, including most of the main cast, southern dignitaries, and surviving Confederate soldiers. Leslie Howard returned to England at…

A life-size statue of a weeping widow in front of a graveyard sat at the conclusion of “North Carolina in Crisis.” While the power of such an object effectively conveyed the psychological toll of death and destruction in the wake of the war, its…

This mannequin presents a powerful image to the visitor who might expect interpretive efforts to be entirely focused on the Civil War as experienced by white Southerners. This case does represent, however, only a portion of the comprehensive black…

Material artifacts in the exhibit also mask efforts to seriously question the ideology of Confederate soldiers. In this case, battlefield hospitals are highlighted through the inclusion of surgical instruments, a crutch, and a prosthetic leg. When…

Exhibit displays such as this one in “Living Together” provided an important historical contextualization for the following exhibit, “North Carolina in Crisis.” By exploring provocative themes of violence, oppression, resistance, and…

Weaponry displayed in “The Civil War in North Carolina” no doubt remained a proverbial crowd-pleaser, but did little to add to the interpretive efforts as expressed in text panels.