Plans for North Carolina Civil War Atlas Announced
Concurrent with programs and special events to commemorate the 140th anniversary
of the close of the Civil War, the Office of Archives and History and the University of
North Carolina Press announced plans to develop and publish a volume tentatively titled
/1
North Carolina Civil War Atlas. Mark Moore, research historian and webmaster in the
office’s Research Branch, conceived the idea. Moore has published detailed works about
the Battle of Bentonville and the Fort Fisher campaign. The objective of the new project
is to create a major reference work, featuring as many as two hundred newly created, full-
color maps using the latest CIS technology and mapping software. Beyond the military
story, an effort will be made to interpret the full scope of the war graphically, from mobi¬
lization to finance to dissent. The ambitious undertaking will likely be as long as four years
in development.
Several prominent North Carolina Civil War historians are advising on the project,
including Paul Escott of Wake Forest University; Mark Bradley, doctoral candidate at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Chris Fonveille of the University of North
Carolina at Wilmington; Richard Starnes of Western Carolina University; and Chris
Meekins, correspondence archivist at the North Carolina State Archives and a graduate
student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The advisers were selected to
be complementary, with wide-ranging areas of expertise to assist the effort. The other staff
members of the Research Branch — Michael Hill, Ansley Wegner, and LeRae Umfleet —
will also take part in development of the atlas.
Rosenwald Schools Project Receives Award from Educators
Onjanuary 14, the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) recognized the
efforts of the State Historic Preservation Office (HPO) and the North Carolina Rosenwald
Schools Community Project (RSC'P) to preserve the heritage of North Carolina’s
Rosenwald schools. The association presented its Excellence in Equity Award to Claudia
Brown, architectural survey coordina¬
tor with the HPO, and Nyoni Collins,
head of the RSCP, at the annual
Martin Luther King Jr. banquet. In
making the presentation, NCAE pres¬
ident Eddie Davis praised the collabo¬
ration that has united historic building
survey and restoration with the gath¬
ering of oral histories to preserve and
celebrate the African American past.
Since the summer of 2002, the
HPO, in collaboration with the
RSCP, an undertaking of the private
non-profit Sankofa Center in Wake
Forest, has overseen a project to iden¬
tify, evaluate, and record the state’s
Rosenwald schools. These public
schools for African Americans were
funded through matching grants pro¬
vided by Chicago philanthropist Julius
buck and Company, who helped build
more than 5,300 schools throughout
the South between the late 1910s and 1932. With 813 building projects, North Carolina
had more Rosenwald schools than any other state. Most of these were of frame construc¬
tion and many have been lost to disuse and demolition, but a surprising number still stand,
4 ;i
Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roe-
Eddie Davis (center), president of the North Carolina
Association of Educators, presents the association’s
2005 Excellence in Equity Award to Nyoni Collins
(left), head of the North Carolina Rosenwald Schools
Community Project, and Claudia Brown (right),
architectural survey coordinator with the State Historic
Preservation Office. Photo courtesy of the North
Carolina Association of Educators.
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