NC: Commemorating Faithful Slaves, Mammies, and Black Confederates Part III

 

 Susie Sharpe Family

Although African Americans lobbied strenuously against any national monument to “mammies,” some African Americans sought to exploit whites’ professed affection for “faithful slaves” and “mammies” to advance black freedom and improve race relations. In North Carolina, Charles N. Hunter (1852-1931) was a tireless champion of black educational opportunities and economic progress even while he also promoted an annual ceremony to commemorate the faithful service of former slaves to their masters.
 
Born a slave, Hunter was the son of a slave artisan and the property of William Dallas Haywood, a member of a prominent Raleigh family. Hunter’s first job was with the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust in Raleigh. After that venture failed in 1874, he began teaching, a profession with which he was associated for the rest of his life. Over the years he taught in schools across the state, and from 1910 to 1918 he served as principal of the Berry O’Kelly School, a black high school on the outskirts of Raleigh. During his tenure, the Baltimore Manufacturer’s Record acclaimed the school as the “finest and most practical rural training school in the entire South.”⁷

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