Content warning: This episode includes potentially sensitive issues including suicide and death. Listener discretion is advised.
Inspired by Where the Crawdads Sing—the bestselling novel by Delia Owens and now-streaming film—Connecting the Docs explores true stories that happened in the coastal communities of eastern North Carolina. In this episode, host John Horan, regular guest Josh Hager, and Samantha Crisp, director of the Outer Banks History Center, examine school records, truancy, and public education. Join in as they investigate the history of Rosenwald schools—more than 800 public schools built for African American students in North Carolina prior to desegregation in the 1960s—and learn from the personal experience of former Rosenwald school student Sharon Davis through excerpts from her oral history interview. Afterward, Samantha Crisp narrates the wildest truancy case in North Carolina’s recorded history. Through criminal action court records, personal letters, and newspaper coverage, she explores the curious case against the DeFebio family of Dare County, who objected to sending their children to public school. The controversy includes media battles, prison time, hunger strikes, kidnapping charges, and so much more.
Sources Mentioned:
An Interview with Sharon Davis (b. 1956), 2021. School Integration and Desegregation Oral History Project, OH.SchoolIntegration.002.
School Planning Building Photographs digital collection. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/custom/school-planning
Department of Public Instruction Records, Division of Negro Education Records and Special Subject File on Rosenwald Schools.
Miscellaneous Records, 1821-1966, Dare County (N.C.). Clerk of Superior Court, CR.031.928.
State vs. Frank J. DeFabio, 1951, N.C. Supreme Court, CR.031.326.
State vs. Mrs. Theo DeFabio, 1962, N.C. Supreme Court, CR.031.326.
Research material on Frank DeFebio, from the David Stick Papers, box 272, PC.5001, Outer Banks History Center.
Correspondence re: Frank DeFebio Monument, from the Frank Stick Papers, box 9, PC.5089, Outer Banks History Center.
Articles and Letters on the DeFebio Family and School Integration, 1951-1961, from the D. Victor Meekins Papers, box 63, PC.5126, Outer Banks History Center.
Uncovered Stories, Episode 3: The Revolutionary Ruthey Jackson Letter
Uncovered Stories, Episode 2: Marginalized Communities in Early Statehood General Assembly Records
Uncovered Stories, Episode 1: Finding Enslaved Labor in the Treasurer’s and Comptroller’s Papers
Ask an Archivist: Fan Letters
Year of the Trail: Interview with Special Guest Secretary D. Reid Wilson
We Beg Your Pardon: The Saga of Slow Poke
Year of the Trail: Indian Trading Paths
Year of the Trail: Mountains to Sea Trail
Resiliency in Records Management: Disaster Preparedness and Protecting Essential Records
Resiliency in the Face of Natural Disasters: Other Storms and Natural Disasters
Resiliency in the Face of Natural Disasters: North Carolina Hurricanes
Ballads and Banjos and Fiddles, Oh My: Appalachian Music Spotlight
Call the Granny Woman: Appalachian Dialect Spotlight
Searching for a Spy: A Conversation with Dr. David Cecelski on Discovering the Legend of Abraham Galloway
Exploring Island Life in the John Wilson IV Papers: A Summer Internship at the Outer Banks History Center
True Stories Behind Where the Crawdads Sing: Oyster Wars
True Stories Behind Where the Crawdads Sing: Historic Black Communities of Eastern North Carolina
Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem Revisited: The True Stories behind North Carolina Murder Ballads
The Journey of an Archival Record. Part III: Digitization and Access
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