Overview

From its inception, America has storied itself as the “land of opportunity.” This beckoning ideology has invited people over the world and across time to come in search of something “better.” Immigrants often come with origin stories that carry ethnic history, culture, traditions, struggles and accomplishments.

The ancestors of most contemporary African Americans, however, came as a result of forced migration and did not come here voluntarily. The standard origin story of Blacks in America goes back to some twenty enslaved Africans who arrived in 1619 during the country’s first recorded engagement with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, “the largest long-distance forced movement of people in recorded history”. The arrival of this small group set the stage for the creation and evolution of a slave society that is unique to human history.  

American chattel slavery accomplished the removal, assimilation, and enslavement of people of distinct ethnic groups by breaking their physical and ancestral connections with Central and West African nations, and by re-identifying them as members of one broad “Black race” with a single, generic origin story. The histories and traditions of African descendants in America did not go back to acknowledge the diverse indigenous cultures and distinct ancient civilizations of Africa. Instead, the revised and essentialized origin story started with slavery, and stripped both the continent of Africa and descendants of its sub-Saharan region of their deep histories and extensive ethnic diversity and advanced the interests of slavery. 

“Origin stories matter, for individuals, groups of people, and nations. They inform our sense of self, telling us what kind of people we believe we are, what kind of nation we believe we live in. They usually carry, at least, a hope that where we started might hold the key to where we are in the present…But in the case of Black people, the limitations of the history and possibility of our origin stories have helped create and maintain an extremely narrow construction of Blackness.”

— Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize and McArthur Genius Award winning Author and Harvard University Professor of History

At the time of the first federal census in 1790, 7% of Burke County’s population was enslaved people of African descent. By 1850 the slavery business was at its peak here and unfree Blacks comprised 27% of Burke County’s total population. This constituted one of the highest rates of enslavement in all 215 counties of the nine states that comprised America’s Appalachian region at that time. 

Nine families formed Burke County’s slaveholding “planter” elite. Unfree labor was commonly leased out to other wealthy households who needed extra temporary labor, or to small farmers who couldn’t afford to own slaves.  Enslaved people performed farm and domestic labor, skilled trades, work in gold mines and railroad enterprises, and did other tasks that supported their owners' diverse economic and entrepreneurial ventures. In 1850, the monetary value of enslaved people owned by Burke County households was 2.5 million dollars, which in today's dollars equates to approximately $114,535,384.00.

After the abolition of chattel slavery Blacks left Burke County in large numbers, dramatically reducing their population to 7.1% by 1870. In the early 20th century the onset of the local textile industry grew the Black population back to 12.9%, but this temporary bump was flattened when local mills stopped hiring Black workers. With little employment available other than domestic work, the Black population quickly dropped closer to its 2020 rate of 6.9%.

The history of race relationships between the white citizenry and the African American community in Burke County is much like it is in other Southern, rural communities: complex. Depending on the time period covered, the narrator, and the stories told, the experiences of local African Americans can be quite different because their stories demonstrate a variety of cultural viewpoints and concerns.

For Additional Context:

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

“Black Americans Neglected Origin Stories” by Annette Gordon-Reed

“Many African American last names hold weight of Black history” by Julia Craven

African American culture | As seen through…The heritage of Gaston Chapel

Gaston Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, est. 1863, was originally known as the Methodist Episcopal Colored Church or the “Colored Methodist Church.” Built at the turn of the 20th century, historic Gaston Chapel A.M.E. is the second oldest church building in Burke County and the oldest church built for a Black congregation. It is listed with the National Register of Historic Places.

Before the Civil War, Black churches were prohibited because slave holders feared they would stir dissension among the enslaved. It was, however, common for enslaved people to use clearings in the woods to worship, most often secretly.  The Methodist Episcopal Colored Church, aka the “Colored Methodist Church,” evolved from the Methodist Episcopal Church South, an all-white religious organization that allowed African Americans to worship in segregated sections of white churches or in their own separate congregations.

From 1863-1866, Rev. Mose Gaston led services for the Colored Methodist Church from a small, wood-framed building. In 1867, Todd R. Caldwell, who served from 1871-1874 as the only North Carolina governor from Burke County, transferred land on Bouchelle Street to six men who were elders of the Colored Methodist Church. The elders donated the land to the church and started to erect a brick structure, renaming the congregation Gaston Chapel A.M.E. in 1872 in honor of its founding minister. The brick building was completed around 1912 and still stands as a historically recognized structure.

The Legacy of Rev. Mose Gaston

The legacy of Rev. Gaston is carried forward in Morganton, and abroad by the Gaston family. One of his descendants, highly-esteemed journalist Ed Bradley, beloved for his 26 years as a correspondent on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, was recently memorialized in a mural in the West Philadelphia, where he grew up. Bradley, who passed away in 2006, was the first black television correspondent to cover the White House and the recipient of dozens of prestigious journalism awards, including Emmys, Duponts, Peabodys, and both the George Polk and Paul White awards.

Gaston Chapel Commemorative Service on February 24th, 1985

Photos from left to right: #1 Ted Alexander submitted this photo to Picture Burke, a digital photo preservation project of the Burke County Public Library. #2 Preservation North Carolina Historic Architecture Slide Collection, 1965-2005 (PNC slides), Preservation North Carolina, #3 Members of the Ocean Wave Club ca.1926 at Gaston Chapel AME Church, 100 Bouchelle St.

Ed Bradley

“Unlike other immigrants to these shores, we did not come voluntarily. We came in chains, and we came in tears, and we brought with us a culture from another land. A culture that many tried to take from us...Because I listen to the “Amens” and the “Hallelujahs” and the “Yes Lords”, I am reminded of the call and response that is traditional in African culture. It could not be killed, It has survived. We have survived...And as I listen to the words of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, I heard a few lines that kind of summed up, I think, the history of our people, in this county and this society, our adaptation to this society. It summed up our past, our present, and our future:

Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has tought us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.”

— Ed Bradley during the Gaston Chapel Commemorative Service, Morganton, NC, February, 24th, 1985

African American Voices in Morganton

An Oral History of the Black Experience, compiled by the Burke County Cultural Arts Coalition, 1979

Black and White: The Story of Harriet Harshaw and 'Squire' James Alfred Dula by Leslie D. McKesson, Ed. D. recent appointee to the African-American Heritage Commission.

My Story: This Is How It Was by Helen Phillips Hall, the first African-American associate superintendent of Caldwell County Schools

Glimpses of Fonta Flora, by sisters Helen Norman and Patricia Page, who grew up near Lake James

Giving Back: A Tribute to Generations of African American Philanthropists by Valaida Fullwood, a writer and project consultant who grew up in Morganton

An Oral History of the Black Experience (Part One) - Burke Cultural Arts Coalition, 1979