On Friday, May 5, 1916, ECTTS affirmed the educational value of school trips for some eighty-eight students with a day trip to Raleigh. Accompanied by history professor Sallie Joyner Davis, the group traveled via special cars on the Norfolk Southern railway for a tour of the state capital arranged by Colonel Fred A. Olds. With Olds as their guide, the students visited some of Raleigh’s attractions, including the monument to the Women of the Confederacy. The monument, privately-financed, had been presented to the state two years prior, in 1914. Governor Locke Craig, who accepted it on behalf of the state, also hosted the ECTTS students at the Executive Mansion. In the picture, Craig is standing front and center; sitting to the right is Olds. Olds had given a presentation at the Training School’s morning assembly earlier that year on the women of the Confederacy.” Olds’s remarks were published in the Training School Quarterly.
The monument depicts a grandmotherly figure sitting, open book in hand, next to a boy holding a sword. Reportedly, the woman symbolizes “the women in the South as custodians of history” as they impart “the history of the Civil War.” A relief plaque on the eastern side shows the woman sending off men marching to war, while the western side reveals her embracing a returning soldier, as a younger woman clutches a limp soldier carried by another. Of the eight men depicted on the eastern plaque, only six return on the western. The plaques presumably convey war’s tragedy as well as women’s love and loyalty throughout it.
Viewed at another level, the monument, concomitant with the triumph of the Democratic Party’s “white supremacy” campaign and the resulting Jim Crow system of racial segregation, glorified the South’s “lost cause.” ECTTS, one expression of the same forces, here honors, with the presence of its students, the white women of the Confederacy. Omitted was any note of African-American women and their experiences during the Confederacy.
The students also visited the State School for the Blind, the State Museum, the Church of the Good Shepherd, the Capitol, A. and M. College (later N. C. State College), a country club, and the Hall of History. The following day, in a report before the school assembly, one of the group observed that “the most significant event – the capstone of the day” was the visit to the new State Building, the Hall of History, and the Supreme Court room. When Chief Justice Walter Clark remarked that he “expected soon to see women grace the bench, he was warmly applauded and was assured by the visitors that they were all suffragettes, to the last one.” Although the picture of the ECTTS students in front of the monument remains as the icon of the day, and one with white supremacist nuances, that experience was not, apparently, the most memorable. Rather, the most meaningful and memorable occasion was with Chief Justice Clark. While progressive as suffragettes, the students presumably envisioned women’s enfranchisement within the limits of the Jim Crow system of the times.
Sources
- “88 College Girls Spend Day Here: Nine and Half Hours Under Guidance of Col. Fred Olds Prove Delightful.” News and Observer. May 6, 1916. P. 7.
- “A group of students of the training school on Capitol Square, Raleigh.” 1916. University Archives # 50.03.03.01.1. J. Y. Joyner Library. East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/22746.
- “Educational Trip to Raleigh.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. 3, no. 1. April, May, June, 1916. Pp. 94-96.
- “Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, Raleigh.” Commemorative Landscapes. Documenting the American South. http://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/99/.
- Olds, Fred A. “Women of the Confederacy: A Bit of a Story About Some of the Things They Were Called On To Do.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. 2, no. 4. January, February, March, 1916. Pp. 291-293.
- “School Girls Will Visit Raleigh Today.” News and Observer. May 5, 1916. P. 5.
- “The Legacy of the Confederacy: Address of Gov. Craig accepting the monument to the Women of the Confederacy, Raleigh, June 10th, 1914). The Lexington Herald. March 14, 1916. P. 2.
- “Training School Girls Will Visit Raleigh.” News and Observer. April 29, 1916. P. 5.
- “Women of the Past Workers.” Training School Quarterly. Vol. 2, no. 4. January, February, March, 1916. P. 303.
Citation Information
Title: ECTTS Trip to Raleigh
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 6/4/2018