The Edenton ladies who boycotted tea with their own tea party, legislators who served in the State Capitol and girls and women involved in the early fight for women's rights will be highlighted in tours at Historic Edenton, the State Capitol and Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum in March. The Asheville Art Museum will focus on women of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, and recipients of the North Carolina Heritage Award also are saluted during Women's History Month.
Historic Edenton
In October 1774, one of the earliest political actions by women in the country saw 51 women of Edenton organize to protest the tea tax imposed by the British Crown in 1773. The women joined a boycott of tea, widely consumed in the colony, to protest taxation without representation. The "Women of Edenton Walking Tour" will highlight these women and their homes.
Tours also will include the story of Harriet Jacobs, who escaped slavery from Edenton and became an abolitionist and activist for women. The 1767 Chowan County Courthouse, the James Iredell House and other historic properties also will be visited. The tours will be given Tuesday through Saturday during March. Individual group tours may be arranged by calling (252) 482-2637. The fee is $10 for ages 13 and up, $5 for 3-12, younger free.
State Capitol
The periodic "Under the Dome Discovery Tour" at the State Capitol will focus on women March 19, keeping with the national Women's History Month theme, "Working to Form a More Perfect Union: Honoring Women in Public Service and Government." It will recognize the state's earliest female legislators.
Lillian Exum Clement, who took a seat in the State House in January 1921, and Gertrude Dills McKee, who was elected to the State Senate in 1930, will be recognized. The Discovery Tours take visitors to spaces not normally open to the public. Participants must be at least 10 years old, comfortable climbing stairs and in confined spaces. Tours are at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. The fee is $17 which must be prepaid. For information or reservations, please call (919) 733-4994.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum
The "Women's Work" tour will be given Saturdays in March at Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum. Tours will focus on gender roles at the elite Palmer Memorial Institute, once an elite boarding school for African Americans. The tours will highlight the role of the school's founder, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, in the women's rights movement and learn of accomplishments of Palmer faculty and alumnae. The free 90 minute tours will be given at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Reservations are suggested.
Reed Gold Mine
Women are rarely thought of with gold mining, but the "More Than a Woman" tours at Reed Gold Mine State Historic Site will bring light to the subject. Each Saturday in March tours will demonstrate how women defined themselves as teachers, activists and miners during America's first gold rush. The tours at 1 p.m. will examine the roles and labor of women in the patriarchal, antebellum times. The cost is $2 and those under 12 years are free.
Asheville Art Museum
Important work of female artists is now on display at the Asheville Art Museum in the "Appalachian Innovators: Women Makers in the Southern Highland Craft Guild, 1930-2000" exhibition. Almost all of the guild's founding members were women and they have been a driving force in the organization. "Appalachian Innovators" features some of their most significant work. With influences from craft schools to Black Mountain College, the guild was a major economic force for its members.
North Carolina Heritage Awards
Three women who have made outstanding contributions to our state's culture will receive the North Carolina Heritage Award in May. The recipients were announced in September by Gov. Pat McCrory. Sheila Kay Adams and H.Ju Nie and H Ngach Rahlan are outstanding keepers of traditional culture.
For seven generations the Scots-Irish forebears of Sheila Kay Adams kept alive the balladry of their homeland in their new home in Madison County. From the mid-1700s, the families of Nortons, Chandlers, Wallins, Ramseys and Rays have made the Sodom community famous for its music. Adams absorbed the music of her great-aunt "Granny Dell," Dellie Norton Chandler, and also Doug Wallin, both previous Heritage Award recipients. Adams learned banjo from legendary musicians and was a rapt listener to the tales, legends and stories of her region. She carries forward that tradition and also has been awarded a National Heritage Fellowship.
Vietnamese Montagnards call themselves Dega, and more of them settled in North Carolina than any other state due to fellowship with Special Forces units during the Vietnam War. Dega weaver H Jue Nie and H Ngach Rahlan mastered the ancient spinning, dying and weaving traditions of their people while growing up in Vietnam's central highlands.
Both moved to Greensboro 20 years ago. Ju Nie continues to weave in the tradition of the Rhadé people, one of the region's ethnic groups. She uses many of the colors and patterns of her ethnic group and hopes to teach others to spin and weave in this traditional way. Ngach Rahlan warps and weaves women's skirts and shirts. She also creates the kteh, a technique that twines two threads around warp threads off the loom, making an attractive and nearly indestructible finish to the piece. Few Montagnard women learned this skill and a noted kteh maker is in high demand.