ON DISPLAY NOW: Black History Month. The North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Library is exhibiting four special exhibits for the month of February.
ASHEVILLE’S EAST END, 1970: Photographs from the Andrea Clark Collection.
(Main level library exhibit area)
Andrea’s powerful photographs show the story of a community and its collision with urban renewal.
Aaron Workman and Doc Briggs sitting on porch rail on Valley Street.
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The Ruth Bomar and Benjamin F. Scott and Daughter Bennie Scott Davis Family Photograph Collection.
(Two exhibit cases, main level library exhibit area.)
Ruth Bomar Scott
This is a recently donated collection that begins with Ruth and Benjamin Scott moving from South Carolina to Asheville in 1919. Their daughter Bennie, who collected these images, married Frank Davis in 1925 and they lived first on Asheland Avenue where she housed Black members of the Asheville Tourist Baseball team, when they could not stay in area hotels for whites.
Bennie Scott Davis
Bennie moved to 332 Montford Avenue in 1972 where she died in 2003. Many photographs in this collection are of unidentified people that we are hoping the community can help us identify. The photo below was found in a frame underneath a more recent photo. Do you know anyone in the photo or where and what the function might have been?
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The Life of Isaac Dickson, Pioneer Black Businessman, Leading Citizen and Member of Asheville’s First City School Board.
(Exhibit case lower level by Youth Services.)
Dickson was born a slave in Shelby, N.C. in 1839. He and his wife Delia moved to Asheville in 1870. Asheville is indebted to his achievements and contributions.
Bring your children by. The Dickson display is in conjunction with a “History Mystery: Who Was Isaac Dickson” scavenger fact hunt in the Youth Services Department.
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The Ruth Jackson Cannon and Shirley Cannon Singleton Collection.
(Exhibit case lower level at North Carolina Room.)
Shirley and Joseph Singleton with Shirley’s parents Ruth And John Cannon at Birdland Night Club in New York “Last Christmas Together, 1960.” John died in 1961.
This collection contains scrapbooks, memory books, photographs and baby books of Ruth Jackson Cannon and her daughter Shirley Elaine Cannon Singleton. Following two generations, this collection gives a strong social and cultural sense of a middle class, African American family in Asheville, N.C. from around 1915 to the mid-1930s when Shirley Cannon graduated from Stephens-Lee High School in Asheville.
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Miscellaneous photographs are on display on the wall display in the hall to the NC Room.
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Portrait of the band The Untils showing the group in 1959-60 when the members were in high school. Members are back row L to R: Ernest Fair Jr., Stanley Baird, Clifford Cotton II, Bruce Friday and Marshall McCallum. Front L to R: Bynum “Jimbo” Griffin and Cornell Proctor.
Post by Zoe Rhine, librarian
