Driving past historical markers that dot the roadsides in the area give motorists a brief glimpse into some of the well-known people that have lived, worked and died nearby.
But anyone who wants to take a deeper dive into those people memorialized on the historical markers need only ask Mark Pace, North Carolina Room specialist at Thornton Library in Oxford.
Pace joined WIZS’s Bill Harris Thursday for the tri-weekly history program on TownTalk and they discussed some prominent African Americans who influenced the political scene after the end of the Civil War.
Henry Plummer Cheatham, for example, has a historical marker along NC 96 in Oxford, which reads: “Born into slavery. U.S. Congressman 1889-1893. Superintendent of Colored Orphanage of N.C. 1907-1935. Grave 8/10 mi. N.E.”
But a marker cannot include all the accomplishments of someone like Cheatham, and of others who played a role in the politics of North Carolina during Reconstruction, which Pace said was basically between 1865 and 1900.
Vance County was formed during this period – 1881 – and until 1900 “every single representative in the state legislature from Vance County was African American,” Pace said.
This area had the highest number of free blacks in North Carolina at one point, somewhat of an anomaly that wasn’t seen in other parts of the state or in Southside Virginia.
Pace posited that this could be due to the fact that a Virginia law requiring anyone who bought their freedom had to leave the state within 90 days.
This core of free Blacks in the area opened up opportunities – educational opportunities, economic opportunities and political opportunities.
Cheatham, for example, was born in 1857 on the Cheatham plantation located off Highway 158 west of Henderson, went to Shaw University and by the age of 29, was elected to Congress. His sister-in-law was married to George White, another influential politician of the day.
White defeated Cheatham and went on to serve the “Black Second” district in the U.S. House from 1897 to 1901. He was the last black Southerner in Congress for 72 years.
That is what White’s historical marker says. It was erected in New Bern in 1976.
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