Stories of black life, labor, and freedom struggle from the Antebellum era through Emancipation and beyond
Farmer and his children, Granville County, NC. Photograph Dorothea Lange, 1939
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Advisory Board
Dr. Omar Ali, Project Director, UNC Greensboro
Mr. Eddie McCoy, Principal Researcher
Ms. Kaila Dollard, Graduate Research Assistant, UNC Charlotte
Ms. Allyson Beatty, Undergraduate Research Assistant, UNC Greensboro
Mr. Andrew Mahoney, Director, Richard H. Thornton Library
Dr. Timothy Tyson, Duke University
Ms. Stephanie Velazquez May, Granville Museum
Ms. Vera Cecelski, Stagville State Historic Site
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Timeline
1600-1700s – Occaneechi and Tutelo Native American peoples living in the area of Granville County
1746 – Granville founded by English, named after British Statesman John Carteret, Second Earl of Granville, heir to one of eight Lord Proprietors of the Province of Carolina
1776 – John Penn, a planter in Granville, is a signer of Declaration of Independence
1794 – An enslaved person in Granville County named Quillo attempted to organize a massive revolt in April that included holding elections for an African American government and uniting with insurrectionists in neighboring Person County.
1857 – Two African Americans lynched on Harrisburg Bridge, near Oxford
1861 – Granville total pop 23,396, of whom 10,000 were enslaved working tobacco fields
1865 – Emancipation of enslaved African Americans through 13th Amendment
1871-Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act)
1881 – John Brodie and Shadrack Hester, lynched near Oxford
1883 – Colored Orphanage Asylum established
1890 – Colored Farmers Alliance leader Rev. Walter Pattillo
1912 – Reports of Black and Native American “free negroes”
1970 – Murder of Henry Marrow in Oxford, leading to movement against segregation
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Oak Lawn Plantation
Harrisburg Bridge
Stagville Plantation
City of Oxford
Sudan
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Resources:
Granville Museum, Oxford, Granville, NC
Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill
Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University
Native American Roots, Genealogy and History of Native Americans in Granville County
North Carolina History Project: Granville County
Publications:
Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name (New York: Crown Publishing, 2004)
Omar H. Ali, In The Lion’s Mouth: Black Populism in the New South, 1886-1900 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010)
Andrew J. Carlson and Marvin A. Brown. Heritage and Homesteads: The History and Architecture of Granville County North Carolina (Oxford, NC: Granville County Historical Society, 1988)