A Place in Time
By Johnnie Grant –
Contents of the 1897 Vance Monument time capsule are revealed, with a surprising twist.
According to archivist Heather South of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Western Regional Archives, the monument shifted over time, crushing the time capsule, and the items inside.
Said South, “I’ve opened several time capsules during my career and this is the first time there were documents that could be salvaged. I am amazed at the condition and we have been able to dry everything and are now working on stabilizing the brittle pages. Once stable we will be able to scan the materials and plan on making the digital versions available to other repositories and researchers as soon as we can.”
The contents of the Vance Monument time capsule were removed individually and placed into a container. Dating from Dec. 22, 1897, some of the items found were displayed for The Urban News.
Items included a page listing Asheville City officials including the mayor and governing council; a list of City of Asheville department heads; The Colored Enterprise (Asheville’s African American newspaper); several of Asheville’s daily and weekly newspapers; Honor Rolls from local schools; two Masonic Vance Monument dedication documents; and silver coins.
For this writer, one of the most amazing finds was The Colored Enterprise newspaper. A number of people were puzzled as to why it was included, but I must say that, as a history buff, I was pleasantly not surprised! The Colored Enterprise included articles related to the early African American Civil Rights struggles of 1865 through the 1890s.
Immediately following the Civil War, the federal government began a program known as Reconstruction, aimed at rebuilding the states of the former Confederacy. The federal programs also provided aid to the former slaves and attempted to integrate them into society. During and after this period, blacks made substantial gains in political power, and many were able to move from poverty into the middle class.
The year 1896 brought the landmark Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, which proved a major setback to Civil Rights efforts. Throughout the post-war period anti-progressives had tried to curtail progress for emancipated black citizens, and this case and other events in the 1890s marked a turning point.
After Plessy, Civil Rights progress was dramatically reversed, and did not gain new momentum for almost 60 years, until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Much of the early reform movement during this era was spearheaded by the Radical Republicans, a splinter group of the Republican Party which rejoined the mainstream party after Reconstruction.
An article from the Colored Enterprise titled “Between the Devil and the Deep Sea” captures the progressive struggles of inclusiveness for African Americans in North Carolina government during that era, more than 117 years ago.
