Note from Elizabeth: Five years ago today, Johnpaul Harris’ sculpture of UNC football legend Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice was unveiled at the west entrance to Kenan Stadium. Not only was our volunteer Jack Hilliard there, he was involved (along with Hugh Morton) in the creation of the statue. Jack shares some of his recollections in this post.

The voice on the phone was familiar. “Hello Jack, this is your friend Hugh Morton.” He was answering my request for photographic help with one of my projects. The conversation lasted about 10 minutes but as we began to wrap it up Hugh said: “I’m going to be dong something next Tuesday that you might be interested in. I’m going to take a group of Justice-era players over to Johnpaul Harris’ studio in Asheboro to check out his progress on the Justice statue. Would you like to join us?” It took me about 1/100 of a nanosecond to make up my mind. We were all to meet at the McDonald’s on Highway 64 in Asheboro at 10 on Tuesday morning June 1, 2004. “We’ll caravan over to the studio . . . I can take you there, but couldn’t begin to tell you how to get there,” he said.

When I walked into the restaurant on Tuesday morning it was like a gathering of my boyhood heroes . . . Rizzo, Neikirk, Morton, Pupa, and Cox.  A few moments later Weiner joined the group. Boyhood heroes indeed, but the thing is, I never outgrew that . . . these guys are still my heroes.

The 10 mile drive to Harris’ studio took about 15 minutes — Highway 64 to 49 and back into rural Randolph County. Johnpaul and Ginger Harris’ home/studio is unique. (It was once described in a magazine article as a cross between “Swiss Family Robinson” and “Sanford and Son”). We were greeted and taken in to view the 8 foot 6 inch clay model. All of the Justice-era players made comments and Harris took lots of notes. Then Morton took out his camera and began taking pictures. When all of the players’ pictures had been taken, he turned to me and said, “OK, Jack, let’s get one of you.” It was like that Walter Cronkite – Ted Baxter scene from the Mary Tyler Moore Show when Cronkite tells Baxter, “you can call me Walter.” I wasn’t dressed properly for a picture, but I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to have a my very own personal “Photo by Hugh Morton.” When that photo arrived in the mail a couple of days later, it was placed in a very special scrapbook to be treasured forever.

Over the next five months I made several trips back to the studio to watch a master at work, and in the process Johnpaul and Ginger became great friends. In early September a statue dedication date was finalized.

Read more

The Morton digital collection has now surpassed 2,000 items! (This 1960 image of John F. Kennedy and New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner just happened to be the 2,000th image added — I like to think they are applauding our efforts).

Want to be alerted as additional Morton photos are uploaded/updated? You can now “subscribe” to the Morton collection via an RSS feed. Note that you will need to have an account with a “feed reader,” such as Google Reader or Bloglines, to use the service. You’ll probably also have to clear out a few rounds of images that are not actually new to the collection, but are new to your reader. Once you’re up-to-date, you’ll only see those that are being newly added or updated.

Speaking of which — since launching the digital collection, we have received 165 comments, almost all of which have contained useful identifying information for Morton photographs in the digital collection. While that’s definitely A LOT, the comments have come from a very small number of people. We want to hear from you! Search or browse the collection by name, location, subject, or decade, then click on “feedback” at the top of the item page to share your knowledge.

Note from Elizabeth: Today is University Day here at UNC-Chapel Hill, the oldest state university in the country. To help us celebrate, volunteer Jack Hilliard remembers some University Days past. (Further recollections of the Kennedy event and the full text of his speech can be found on the fabulous Chapel Hill Memories blog).

The TV viewing room on the first floor of Teague Dorm at UNC was small, but a dozen or so of us crowded our way inside. We had come to watch a speech by President John F. Kennedy, one that would be extremely important to several of us who were scheduled to graduate in less than six months. It was October 22, 1962, and we were being “recruited” by the big four — not Carolina, Duke  State, and Wake, but the other big four — Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. As I sat waiting for the address, my mind wandered back to one year and 10 days before, when I sat waiting for this same President to speak.

October 12, 1961 was a beautiful fall day in Chapel Hill. About 32,000 of us had gathered in Kenan Stadium to observe University Day 1961 — the University’s 168th birthday. The highlight of the morning was an address by President John Kennedy, scheduled for 11 AM. Thirty minutes before the President arrived, the official 40-person White House Press Corp arrived and joined the local media in scrambling for good viewing positions. Among those scramblers was a man who had covered University events for more than 20 years — Hugh Morton.

At 11:05 AM, President Kennedy’s caravan arrived at the west end of the stadium, having completed a journey down Highway 54, which had been closed and well guarded by 50 North Carolina Highway Patrolmen. The President, with Governor Terry Sanford at his side, rode in an open top limousine. At 11:12, the academic procession, led by Faculty Marshal John Coriden Lyons, started toward the east end of Kenan Stadium. Greensboro Record staff writer Charlie Hamilton described what he saw:

“A warm sun whose heat was cooled intermittently by soft breezes, beat down upon the scene, as the President, in cap and gown and flanked by state, national, and university officials, made his way beneath the west goal post and down the gridiron to the speaker’s rostrum.”

Read more

Though September 9 was the official 100-year anniversary of the first class offered by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill, celebrations and events continue to mark this milestone for one of the country’s best-regarded journalism programs. One such event is an exhibit currently on display here in Wilson Library’s North Carolina Collection Gallery, Consecrated to the Common Good, which features the above photo of Hugh Morton (as well as other notable alumni including W. Horace Carter).

Morton’s legacy is alive and well at the J-School thanks to the Hugh Morton Distinguished Professorship established by his wife Julia to help the school recruit or retain an outstanding educator and provide scholarly, research or instructional support for that person. Julia Morton is quoted in an article on the Carolina Development website as saying:

“My main purpose for establishing this professorship is because there really is no other ‘watchdog’ standing between the citizens of North Carolina and Raleigh and Washington, so it’s important that today’s journalism students know how to ask the hard questions,” Julia Morton said. “What’s more, I can think of no better way to honor Hugh than to enable others to experience and appreciate what he held dear—Grandfather Mountain, the state of North Carolina and the UNC experience.”

We hope you can join us in the Gallery next Thursday, October 15 at 5pm for a reception and exhibit viewing, to be followed by a lecture by Tom Bowers, J-School professor emeritus and author of Making News: One Hundred Years of Journalism & Mass Communication at Carolina.

This is a question I was asking myself from the time I started working on the Morton collection until recently, when I happily discovered the answer. A particular batch of Morton negatives labeled “Singleton C. Anderson, Rocky Pt.” caught my attention when I was making my first survey of Morton’s photographs. I noticed them because 1) they were striking black-and-white images from the circa 1950 period, and 2) they depicted African Americans in a non-athletic setting (somewhat unusual in Morton’s work).

Some quick Google searches at the time were fruitless; I suspected the images showed scenes from a Rosenwald School, but I didn’t have time to look into it any further. But the images, and Anderson, stuck with me. I just had a feeling they were important. So when I came upon them again recently during processing, I figured “what the heck,” and tried another Google search. Jackpot!

The site I found, Under the Kudzu, is run by educator and writer Claudia Stack, who is now in the process of creating a feature-length documentary film focused on the Rosenwald school movement as shown through two schools in Pender County, NC: the Canetuck Rosenwald School, a primary school, and the Pender County Training School, a high school. PCTS was located in, yes, Rocky Point. I emailed Claudia immediately and attached jpegs of the images included in this blog post. The next day, I got this reply:

I am ASTOUNDED at these images . . . I have been researching PCTS and Singleton C. Anderson’s profound impact on the region for the past six years, but images are very hard to come by. That is partly, I think, because he was a humble man, and partly because a tragic house fire claimed the life of his wife, Vanetta Anderson, and also all of their papers and pictures.

So, who in fact WAS Singleton C. Anderson?

Read more

Note from Elizabeth: This post was written by volunteer Jack Hilliard as a tribute to Kenan Stadium in honor of its recent facelift. For a great related article about Hugh Morton and Charlie Justice, check out this column by Lee Pace on TarHeelBlue.com.

What two things do each of the following have in common: opera star Norman Cordon, Hollywood actress Georgia Carroll, CBS News correspondent Charles Kuralt, UNC Football Great Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice, actor-comedian Andy Griffith, Rev. Billy Graham, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, Rameses VI, NC Governors Terry Sanford and J. Melville Broughton, Hall of Fame football coaches Carl Snavely and Jim Tatum from UNC and Wallace Wade from Duke, musician Arthur Smith, and Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy?

Need a clue?  There is a UNC-Chapel Hill connection . . . Each appeared and/or performed in Kenan Memorial Stadium, and Hugh Morton photographed them in that majestic venue.

The 1966 UNC Football Media Guide called Kenan “A Southern Showplace.” Built in 1927 for $375,000 on the outskirts of the campus, the arena now sits nearer center campus following 82 years of campus growth. Over those years, it has been the stage for July 4th fireworks displays, concerts featuring Bruce Springsteen; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Grand Funk Railroad; Joe Cocker; and Chapel Hill favorite James Taylor. In mid-May, UNC graduation ceremonies are held in the stadium with speakers like Bill Cosby, Madeleine Albright, and Desmond Tutu.

The Stadium has played host to high school marching band competitions (see above), campus beauty contests, homecoming and reunion celebrations, and two U.S. Presidents (John Kennedy in 1961, and Bill Clinton in 1993). During World War II (when the entire campus welcomed the Navy Pre-Flight School), the Stadium was the home for military graduation parades. A memorial was held in the Stadium for FDR in April, 1945 and for JFK in May, 1964. Around that same time, a popular campus rumor was that the Stadium might need to be used for Dr. Robert B. House’s Classics 31 class and Dr. J. Primrose Harland’s Archeology 85 because they were so large!

But, most people think of Kenan Stadium as a football arena. It is indeed that — the home of the North Carolina Tar Heels.
Read more

Though you wouldn’t know it from looking at today’s Daily Tar Heel, Hugh Morton took this legendary photo of the legendary Michael Jordan. It’s maybe Morton’s best-known (and least-credited) image, and appears on p. 191 of Hugh Morton’s North Carolina. As Morton tells it,

Michael Jordan was airborne in Carmichael Auditorium against Virginia, and this is my most published action shot of him at Carolina. I told him ahead of time that I hoped he would have a good game, and as he brushed by after making this basket he asked, “Was that good enough?”

Good enough and then some! Some say Jordan was the best that ever played. Certainly good enough to insure his induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame today, just as soon as he became eligible.

Well, we’ve been hinting about it for some time, and now, I’m SO VERY ECSTATIC to say that the Hugh Morton digital collection is finally available on the web! I can barely contain myself.

We’re really excited to make this tool available, not only because we’ve put so much work into it, but because it provides the most direct access to Hugh Morton’s work yet. As of today, there are nearly 1,500 images in the digital collection — while this is A LOT, it’s of course only a small percentage of the Morton collection as a whole. Certain topical areas are more heavily represented than others at this point, simply because we haven’t finished processing the collection yet! We’ll be adding batches of new images regularly over the next year.

Take ‘er for a spin and let us know what you think! (Be sure to play with the 3-D Wall option, which you can activate by clicking on “View in 3D” above the thumbnail images in your search results, and take advantage of our great new image viewer by zooming in and out, clicking and dragging, and expanding and contracting the viewing area). We really do want your input, on ease of use, searchability, appearance, and of course, the images themselves. Tell us if you see something identified incorrectly or incompletely. Tell us what you’d like to see added to the digital collection. Tell us how great (or un-great) we are. You can do this either by leaving comments here on the blog, or by using our online feedback form.

Some of our plans for further developing the digital collection include: adding lots more images; adding a Google map, via which you can browse selected images geographically; and linking together all the Morton access tools (the finding aid, the blog, and the digital collection).

Special thanks go out to David Meincke (our student assistant, intrepid digitizer and gifted metadata-provider) and library staff members Kim Vassiliadis, who did the original design work, and Andy Jackson, who finalized the design and handled the behind-the-scenes computery stuff. They all did great work, and are great to work with. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating this important Morton project milestone.

This weekend (Sept. 4-5) marks the second annual Daniel Boone Days festival in my lovely hometown of Boone, NC. From the looks of it, the festival has really taken off since last year — they’ve attracted some big names and the schedule is “jam packed with activities for all ages and tastes, including children’s music and games, living history, arts & crafts, food & drink, dancing, poetry, storytelling and live performances.” The festivities kick off Friday with the Dr. Edwin Arnold Daniel Boone Symposium today (full disclosure: Dr. Arnold, a.k.a. “Chip,” is my dad, and he was heavily involved with organizing the first festival last year).

It’s a good bet that if Hugh Morton were still around, he’d be in Boone with his cameras this weekend. (In particular, he would NOT miss an opportunity to photograph the setting of a new World Record for the “Most People Dressed Like Daniel Boone at One Time”!).

Like many who live in the Western part of our state, Morton clearly had a Daniel Boone fascination. Besides developing a Boone exhibit for Grandfather Mountain’s Nature Museum, he photographed Boone’s Horn in the West outdoor drama from its early days, when Ned Austin played the famous pioneer (see above), and took many a portrait of Glenn Causey (below), the actor who took over the role in 1956 and played it for the next 40 years! (FYI, the portrait of Horn author Kermit Hunter on the “Horn History” web page is also a Morton image).

Morton also photographed the graves of Boone’s parents in the Joppa Cemetery near Mocksville, as well as Asheville’s competing Daniel Boone drama Thunderland, including the mysterious portrait below, taken circa 1952. (Does anyone know who this is? Thunderland author Hubert Hayes? Composer Lamar Stringfield?)

Hope those attending this weekend’s festivities in Boone will report back! I myself am headed to the opposite end of the state for one last salty taste of sand and surf, before the delicious crisp of fall sets in for good . . .

Note from Elizabeth: This post was written by Kyla Sweet-Chavez, a graduate student in the School of Information and Library Science here at UNC and an employee of Wilson Library. Kyla is an experienced filmmaker and film archivist, and we’re very lucky to have her as a member of the “Morton team,” processing the motion picture films.

You can tell a lot from what a person has left behind, or perhaps you can just conjecture a lot. I never met Hugh Morton, but as a student assistant working on processing his film collection, I visit with him each workday. As I work my ways through the cans of film, I’ve come up with some words that I think could describe him:

Dedicated: There are boxes and boxes of film and most fall within several categories: Grandfather Mountain; Mildred the bear; Hawks and Hang Gliding; (37 variations on the) Grandfather Mountain 30-second spot; Highland Games. Morton obviously had a passion for his part of the world and didn’t often stray from it cinematically.

Thorough: Morton was a film archivist’s dream, labeling most of his boxes and cans with exactly what he shot and even making value judgments: “Ravens–good” or “Hawk, Reject.” He kept many of the films in their original boxes, which I’ve photocopied, so archivists of the future can make informed preservation decisions.

Dogged: Morton knew what he wanted. Notes and letters were often included to the film labs and TV stations, telling them exactly how his film should be printed or broadcast. He must have been on a few VIP Customer lists (and that of the USPS), so many films did he send off to the lab. He seemed to want his films to reach a broad audience. Films he sent to TV stations included typed-up perfectly timed narration to “help” them deliver his message. Many prints are in cans that have been returned by TV stations and schools from around the nation who showed his films.

You might think a film archivist sits around watching films all day but truthfully, I haven’t seen any of the Morton films in motion. I take the film from its can, inspect its overall condition, do some cleaning or repairing as necessary and if the film is unmarked, try to determine what it’s about and when it was made. (Kodak and Dupont had a system to date their film stock, using series of symbols imprinted on the edge of the film, which is how I determine the date if it isn’t marked on the can or leader). Surprisingly, many of the films from the 1970s look worse than those from the 1950s. An element of their chemicals made them “fade to magenta,” leaving them pink and washed out.

So, when can you see the Morton collection on YouTube? It’s a long journey from the original film to an online streaming copy and realistically, most won’t make that journey. The film has to be in good shape with minimal shrinkage, thoroughly cleaned and repaired, head and tail leader attached and then digitized. Doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re dealing with over 1000 films, even the most basic processing like I do takes time.

But one of the best parts of archives work is the feeling that you have accomplished something tangible. Even as Thorough and Dedicated and Dogged as Morton was, there were still a few messes to clean up, and going from this:

to this:

is incredibly satisfying. I think Morton would be pleased.

–Kyla Sweet-Chavez