Soapboxes and Tree Stumps: Political Campaigning in North Carolina
On exhibit Sept. 15 - Jan. 31
North Carolina Collection Gallery, Wilson Library
Free and open to the public
Information: (919) 962-1172
Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Sat. 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.; Sun. 1 - 5 p.m.
Aug. 29 - As North Carolina gears up for the Nov. 4 election, a new exhibit in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of Wilson Library traces a century of political campaigning in the state.
From Sept. 15 to Jan. 31, the Gallery will host Soapboxes and Tree Stumps: Political Campaigning in North Carolina. The 250-piece exhibit will examine 100 years of Tar Heel campaigning and political issues, focusing on the period from 1890 to 1990.
On exhibit will be pinback buttons and campaign ribbons featuring figures such as Jesse Helms, Jim Hunt, Frank Porter Graham and Terry Sanford. A plastic sugar scoop, likely from the 1960s, proclaims, "Your Congressman Jim Broyhill 'Serves You Best.'"
Photos on view include one of John F. Kennedy campaigning in Greensboro in 1960, and another of a Harry Truman supporter, Confederate flag in hand, waving at the campaigning president in 1948.
Rounding out the exhibit will be campaign ballots, broadsides, posters and circulars, including one from the 1844 presidential campaign of North Carolinian James K. Polk.
Soapboxes and Tree Stumps will concentrate on primary elections, said Linda Jacobson, assistant keeper of the North Carolina Collection Gallery and exhibit curator. "The Republican Party almost seems nonexistent for the first half of the 20th century," Jacobson said. "The real struggles were between progressive and conservative Democrats, and centered around figures such as Charles Aycock, who simultaneously held progressive and white supremacist views." Aycock was governor of North Carolina from 1901 until 1905.
"It's amazing how much goes back to race," said Jacobson. "It's going to be a main theme because it played such a big part in politics across the South."
The exhibit draws heavily on the Lew Powell Memorabilia Collection. In 2007, Powell, forum editor for the Charlotte Observer, donated to Wilson Library 2,698 North Carolina buttons, ribbons, advertising mirrors, palm cards and postcards. Nearly a third of the items relate to politics in the state.
Related Links
- Political Memorabilia in North Carolina (online exhibit from the North Carolina Collection Gallery)
- The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics, by Rob Christensen (UNC Press)
