[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is the presidential address delivered by Mrs. Gotten at the meeting of the
Historical Society of North Carolina at Eton University on October 24, 2003. Mrs. Gotten retired in
December 2002 as head of the reference staff of the North Carolina Collection at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the editor «/"Thomas Wolfe’s Composition Books: The North State
Fitting School, 1912-1915 and is an active member of the Thomas Wolfe Society.
“I don’t know that all is forgiven but they asked me to make a
speech”: Thomas Wolfe and the 1936 Meeting of the North
Carolina Literary and Historical Association
By Alice R. Gotten
All was ready for the annual big event in the cultural life of North Carolina, the meetings
of the organizations that carried on the literary, historical, and artistic traditions of the
state. Foremost among them was the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association
(NCLHA), organized in 1900 “to collect, preserve, produce, and disseminate State litera¬
ture and history, to encourage public and school libraries, to establish an historical
museum, to inculcate a literary spirit among our people, to correct printed misrepresenta¬
tions concerning North Carolina, and to engender an intelligent, healthy State pride in the
rising generation.”'
The programs were printed, showing that on Thursday evening, December 3, 1936, at
8:00 P.M. at the Woman’s Club in Raleigh, William T. Polk of Warrenton, described in
publicity as a “rare combination oflawyer and short story writer,”2 would give his presi¬
dential address, titled “North Carolina Prophets and the Twentieth Century.” The next
day held equal promise: Dan Lacy would talk on “The Historical Records Survey in
North Carolina”; Ruth Ketring of the Manuscripts Department at Duke University
Library was speaking on “Charles Osborne, Quaker Abolitionist”; Archibald Henderson
would give a “Review of North Carolina Books and Authors of the Year”; and at the ses¬
sion on Friday evening, Albert Ray Newsome would present the Mayflower Cup for the
best nonfiction book of the year, followed by the closing address by well-known Balti¬
more newspaperman and North Carolina native Gerald Johnson, whose paper was titled
“Proposals for a History of the Future.”
But the speaker whose name aroused the most interest and got the largest type in news¬
paper articles was that of a thirty-six -year-old native son of Asheville, who was scheduled
to talk on Thursday night after the presidential address. The program listed liis appearance
simply: “Address: Thomas Wolfe, New York.” The article on page two of the News and
Observer on Wednesday, December 2, 1936, was titled “Wolfe to Speak at Session Here,”
relegating mention of the talks by Polk, Henderson, Johnson, and others to the body of
the article.
Wolfe’s name generated interest from all parts of the state. On November 14, Miss
Carol Nunnelee of Small’s Book Store in Washington, had written to Dr. Christopher C.
Crittenden, secretary of NCLHA, that she had read in the News and Observer that day that
Thomas Wolfe was going to speak on December 3. Miss Nunnelee was “most anxious to
hear him” and asked whether she might do so even though she was not a member of the
society. Good ambassador that he was, Dr. Crittenden replied that “All session [sir] of the
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