Photo by Albert Barden. From the Albert Barden Collection, State Archives of North Carolina. RALEIGH — The State Archives of North Carolina, a division of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, will host a webinar, “From Enslavement to Reconstruction: Lives of the Greene County USCT,” to commemorate Juneteenth. During

Gerald Anderson Lawson – By Unknown but currently held by Museum of Play/Estate of Jerry Lawson. Gerald Anderson Lawson (Dec. 1, 1940 – April 9, 2011) was an American electronics engineer. Besides being one of the first African American computer engineers in Silicon Valley, Lawson was also known for his work in designing the Fairchild Channel F

Jan Matzeliger invented the automatic shoe-lasting machine, mechanizing the complex process of joining a shoe sole to its upper and revolutionizing the shoe industry. Matzeliger was born in 1852 in what is now Paramaribo, Surinam, to a Dutch father and a Surinamese mother who had been enslaved. At age 19, Matzeliger began working as a sailor on a merchant

Garrett Morgan was born March 4, 1887, and died Aug. 27, 1963. In 1907, he started a business repairing and selling sewing machines. While his wife Mary sewed clothes, Morgan built and maintained the sewing machines. He also began experimenting with a liquid for polishing sewing machine needles to prevent them from burning fabric as they sewed. When he

Susie King Taylor was born Aug. 5, 1848, the oldest of nine children to Hagar Ann Reed and Raymond Baker in Liberty County Georgia. She was deemed property, as she was born on the Grest Plantation. Even though she and her family were enslaved, the Grest did not follow the norm of being cruel owners. At the age of 7, Taylor and one of her brothers were

Every nation tells stories about itself. Some stories are polished. Some are patriotic. Some are repeated so often they become civic scripture. And then there are the stories buried beneath the monuments. Memorial Day is one of them. Unburying this American truth helps the country realize that so much of its greatness has been shaped by contributions many

Nancy Bazemore A landmark court case that reshaped voting rights across the state soon will be recognized with a North Carolina Highway Historical Marker. The N.C. Historical Marker Program is part of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The marker commemorating the Bazemore v. Bertie County Board of Elections court case will be

Henrietta S. Duterte with one of her children who died in infancy. Henrietta Smith Bowers Duterte (pronounced Dew-tier) was the first female undertaker in the United States. Born a free woman in Philadelphia in 1817, she was one of 13 children born to John Bowers and Henrietta Smith Bowers. Henrietta Bowers’ father became the sexton of the African