Comments on: The Klan in NC http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/ Processing the Hugh Morton Photographs and Films Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:38:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Jack Hilliard http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-291 Jack Hilliard Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:54:05 +0000 http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-291 Elizabeth: The D.G. Martin column, "500,000 Photos" is also in the Chapel Hill News... http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinion/martin/story/15254.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elizabeth:

The D.G. Martin column, “500,000 Photos” is also in the Chapel Hill News…

http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinion/martin/story/15254.html

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]]> By: Elizabeth Hull http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-290 Elizabeth Hull Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:28:35 +0000 http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-290 6/25/08: If you can, get a copy of today's Tabor-Loris Tribune (apparently not available online). It features two great columns by Deuce Niven and D. G. Martin on the Morton collection, this blog post, and the Klan in Columbus County, NC. 6/25/08: If you can, get a copy of today’s Tabor-Loris Tribune (apparently not available online). It features two great columns by Deuce Niven and D. G. Martin on the Morton collection, this blog post, and the Klan in Columbus County, NC.

]]> By: Walter E. Campbell http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-264 Walter E. Campbell Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:38:19 +0000 http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-264 For the past several years, my colleague, Martin Clark, and I have been producing a television documentary focusing on UNC alumnus Horace Carter and his campaign against the Ku Klux Klan between 1950 and 1953. Working under the name of the Carter-Klan Documentary Project, we've examined hundreds of photographs related to our subject and have listened to almost as many stories. We had not seen Hugh Morton's Klan photographs, however, nor had we heard of his experience photographing the Klan. We thank Elizabeth Hull for alerting us to Morton's K.K.K. photographs (Hull, "The Klan in NC," April 23), and we enjoyed Julia Morton's story of her late husband's experience getting those photographs (Morton, comment, May 4). As Hull suggests in her post of April 23, the man being fingerprinted in Morton's K.K.K. photographs is not Early Brooks. We think we know who the man is, but because we can't confirm his identity with absolute certainty, we prefer not to mention his name. We have other photographs taken in the same room where Morton took his Klan photographs, but we don’t know who the photographers were that shot them. The room in question is almost certainly in the Columbus County courthouse in Whiteville, NC, and though a different man is doing the fingerprinting in our pictures, everything else in the photographs is identical: the desk, the books, the calendar, the door, and the windows. Dozens of suspected Klansmen were arrested by local, state, and federal lawmen during the first three months of 1952. The press reported on most of these cases, and several photographs related to the cases are located in the Raleigh News and Observer Collection at the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in Raleigh. Unfortunately, most of the Klan-related photographs in the N&O collection—about 30 in number—do not identify the photographer. Did Hugh Morton take any of the Klan-related photographs in the N&O collection? Perhaps. Although he photographed the Klan for the wire services, as Julia Morton recalls, he may also have offered some of his photographs to the N&O. It's also possible that Morton shot the N&O photograph of Early Brooks posted in the blog by Ms. Hull. Unlike the fingerprinting photographs—all of which were taken in Whiteville in late February or early March of 1952—the photograph of Brooks appears to have been taken in early February, 1952, in Fayetteville, NC, at the Cumberland County courthouse. Our thanks again to you, Ms. Hull, and to Mrs. Morton, for bringing this information to our attention. We depend upon such efforts to enrich our own and we hope we’ve contributed in turn to the impressive effort to organize Hugh Morton’s wonderful photographic work. We also ask anyone with information that might be considered helpful to our film project to contact us by using the information provided on the project Web site: http://www.carter-klan.org/Filmmakers.html Walter E. Campbell and Martin Clark For the past several years, my colleague, Martin Clark, and I have been producing a television documentary focusing on UNC alumnus Horace Carter and his campaign against the Ku Klux Klan between 1950 and 1953. Working under the name of the Carter-Klan Documentary Project, we’ve examined hundreds of photographs related to our subject and have listened to almost as many stories.

We had not seen Hugh Morton’s Klan photographs, however, nor had we heard of his experience photographing the Klan. We thank Elizabeth Hull for alerting us to Morton’s K.K.K. photographs (Hull, “The Klan in NC,” April 23), and we enjoyed Julia Morton’s story of her late husband’s experience getting those photographs (Morton, comment, May 4).

As Hull suggests in her post of April 23, the man being fingerprinted in Morton’s K.K.K. photographs is not Early Brooks. We think we know who the man is, but because we can’t confirm his identity with absolute certainty, we prefer not to mention his name.

We have other photographs taken in the same room where Morton took his Klan photographs, but we don’t know who the photographers were that shot them. The room in question is almost certainly in the Columbus County courthouse in Whiteville, NC, and though a different man is doing the fingerprinting in our pictures, everything else in the photographs is identical: the desk, the books, the calendar, the door, and the windows.

Dozens of suspected Klansmen were arrested by local, state, and federal lawmen during the first three months of 1952. The press reported on most of these cases, and several photographs related to the cases are located in the Raleigh News and Observer Collection at the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in Raleigh. Unfortunately, most of the Klan-related photographs in the N&O collection—about 30 in number—do not identify the photographer.

Did Hugh Morton take any of the Klan-related photographs in the N&O collection? Perhaps. Although he photographed the Klan for the wire services, as Julia Morton recalls, he may also have offered some of his photographs to the N&O.

It’s also possible that Morton shot the N&O photograph of Early Brooks posted in the blog by Ms. Hull. Unlike the fingerprinting photographs—all of which were taken in Whiteville in late February or early March of 1952—the photograph of Brooks appears to have been taken in early February, 1952, in Fayetteville, NC, at the Cumberland County courthouse.

Our thanks again to you, Ms. Hull, and to Mrs. Morton, for bringing this information to our attention. We depend upon such efforts to enrich our own and we hope we’ve contributed in turn to the impressive effort to organize Hugh Morton’s wonderful photographic work. We also ask anyone with information that might be considered helpful to our film project to contact us by using the information provided on the project Web site: http://www.carter-klan.org/Filmmakers.html

Walter E. Campbell and Martin Clark

]]> By: Julia Morton http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-222 Julia Morton Sun, 04 May 2008 15:13:33 +0000 http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/index.php/2008/04/the-klan-in-nc/#comment-222 Hugh and Horace Carter were great friends, and Hugh was as proud of Horace's Pulitzer as if it had been his own. Horace didn't give Hugh the photo assignment you refer to, it was one of the, then, wire services that asked him to go up to Whiteville and make a picture of the Klan leader who was being arrested. When Hugh discovered it was Early Brooks, the lawman who had given us a speeding ticket on our way back from our honey moon (It really was a speed-trap.) he told me later, "I could have moved in close and photographed him through the bars, but I backed off so I could get the bars." The roll of film with that negative probably went to the wire service undeveloped for the sake of speed, in which case you, of course, won't find it. Hugh and Horace Carter were great friends, and Hugh was as proud of Horace’s Pulitzer as if it had been his own.
Horace didn’t give Hugh the photo assignment you refer to, it was one of the, then, wire services that asked him to go up to Whiteville and make a picture of the Klan leader who was being arrested. When Hugh discovered it was Early Brooks, the lawman who had given us a speeding ticket on our way back from our honey moon (It really was a speed-trap.) he told me later, “I could have moved in close and photographed him through the bars, but I backed off so I could get the bars.” The roll of film with that negative probably went to the wire service undeveloped for the sake of speed, in which case you, of course, won’t find it.

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