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Close to Home: North Carolina Spring 2021
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The North Carolina Collection of the Forsyth County Public Library houses a broad range of non-circulating resources to suit your research needs. The room contains a wealth of local, state and federal information as well as archived issues of newspapers and magazines. Our knowledgeable staff will be happy to assist you with your project, whether you are an experienced researcher or just getting started. For help with questions about North Carolina, local history, or genealogy, please come visit us on the second floor of the Central Library in Winston-Salem, NC or call 336-703-3070 during regular business hours.
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Step it up and go : the story of North Carolina popular music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk by David MenconiThis book is a love letter to North Carolina's popular music in all its many-splendored glory, from bluegrass, folk, and country to R&B, rock, and pop. Though the state's diverse music scenes have often operated in the shadows of better-known hubs for popular genres-New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Nashville, Austin, and Athens, Georgia-David Menconi shows North Carolina's influence on American popular music runs deep. He uses profiles of artists and their role in creating or shaping genres to reveal therichness of the state's musical landscape, with an arc that runs from the origin of recorded music in the state to the digital age.
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Soul City : race, equality, and the lost dream of an American utopia by Thomas HealyThe fascinating, forgotten story of the 1970s attempt to build a city dedicated to racial equality in the heart of “Klan Country”
In 1969, with America’s cities in turmoil and racial tensions high, civil rights leader Floyd McKissick announced an audacious plan: he would build a new city in rural North Carolina, open to all but intended primarily to benefit Black people. Named Soul City, the community secured funding from the Nixon administration, planning help from Harvard and the University of North Carolina, and endorsements from the New York Times and the Today show. Before long, the brand-new settlement – built on a former slave plantation – had roads, houses, a health care center, and an industrial plant. By the year 2000, projections said, Soul City would have fifty thousand residents.
But the utopian vision was not to be. The race-baiting Jesse Helms, newly elected as senator from North Carolina, swore to stop government spending on the project. Meanwhile, the liberal Raleigh News & Observer mistakenly claimed fraud and corruption in the construction effort. Battered from the left and the right, Soul City was shut down after just a decade. Today, it is a ghost town – and its industrial plant, erected to promote Black economic freedom, has been converted into a prison.
In a gripping, poignant narrative, acclaimed author Thomas Healy resurrects this forgotten saga of race, capitalism, and the struggle for equality. Was it an impossible dream from the beginning? Or a brilliant idea thwarted by prejudice and ignorance? And how might America be different today if Soul City had been allowed to succeed?
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The Ancient Hours by Michael BibleHarmony, North Carolina is a typical town—full of saints and sinners you can’t tell apart…
Its history echoes with lynchings and shootings; mob violence and vigilante justice. But those are just whispers of a past lost to time. The summer of 2000 was different. Iggy in the Baptist church. Gasoline and a match. Twenty-five people dead. This, Harmony couldn’t forget.
Told in a kaleidoscope of timelines and voices, Michael Bible examines every dimension of a tragic but all-too-American story in The Ancient Hours. The victims, witnesses, perpetrators, and condemned comingle and evolve as the passage of time works its way through their lives. What emerges is a fable of the American South in the highest tradition: soaring, tragic, and eternally striving for redemption.
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Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane ChamberlainNorth Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, her dream of a career in art is put on hold―until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will get her released from prison immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to be free, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.
North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and in great need of work, she accepts. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.
What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?
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Boone before Boone : the archaeological record of northwestern North Carolina through 1769 by Thomas R. WhyteNative Americans have occupied the mountains of northwestern North Carolina for around 14,000 years. This book tells the story of their lives, adaptations, responses to climate change, and ultimately, the devastation brought on by encounters with Europeans. After a brief introduction to archaeology, the book covers each time period, chapter by chapter, beginning with the Paleoindian period in the Ice Age and ending with the arrival of Daniel Boone in 1769, with descriptions and interpretations of archaeological evidence for each time period. Each chapter begins with a fictional vignette to kindle the reader's imaginings of ancient human life in the mountains, and includes descriptions and numerous images of sites and artifacts discovered in Boone, North Carolina and the surrounding region.
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Under a gilded moon : a novel by Joy Jordan-LakeBiltmore House, a palatial mansion being built by the Vanderbilts, American "royalty," is in its final stages of construction in North Carolina. The country's grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl, just as driven, who lives in its shadow. Kerry MacGregor's future is derailed when, after two years in college in New York City, family obligations call her home to the beautiful Appalachians. She is determined to distance herself from the opulence she sees rising in the Blue Ridge Mountains, however close its reach. Her family's land is among the last pieces required to complete the Biltmore Estate. But something more powerful than an ambitious Vanderbilt heir could change Kerry's fate as, one by one, more outsiders descend on the changing landscape--a fugitive from Sicily, a reporter chasing a groundbreaking story, a debutante tainted by scandal, and a conservationist prepared to put anyone at risk to stoke the resentment of the locals. As Kerry finds herself caught in a war between wealth and poverty, innocence and corruption, she must navigate not only her own pride and desperation to survive but also the temptations of fortune and the men who control it.
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House History Tuesday, April 13 at 6 p.m. Virtual over Zoom Your house holds a single history that includes you. It can be exciting to find out who else might be included in that history. The North Carolina Collection is happy to present a program providing you with the research techniques and resources that will help you flesh out your home’s story. These tips and tricks can help you find out when your home was built, what architectural features stand out, or what pictures exist of it. The House History program will take place Tuesday, April 13 at 6 P.M. It will be virtual over Zoom and last about 1 hour. You can register for this program through this link. If you have any questions, please contact us at (336) 703-3070.
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Virtual Genealogy Help Monday - Friday between 10 - 11 a.m. and 2 - 3 p.m. Virtual Program with ZoomChasing after family secrets? Let us help you catch them. Schedule a virtual appointment with a librarian to help you do your genealogy. Use this link to schedule a virtual genealogy help session using Zoom. Use the calendar on the bottom right of the page to select the date and time. We recommend that you download Zoom before the appointment. Appointments will be available Monday through Friday from 10 -11 a.m. and 2 - 3 p.m. Appointments will last for approximately 60 minutes. If you have any problems scheduling, please call us at 336-703-3070. If you need help using a genealogical database and do not have a library card, you'll need to get a library card. You can apply for a virtual library card for online resources by filling out the Online Library Card Registration. Please allow 1-2 business days to fully process your request.
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