Vacation

I teach in rural Johnston County. And when I look out at my classroom, I see kids whose great-grandparents farmed this land — and kids whose parents crossed an international border to get here. Families who've been in these communities for two hundred years, sitting next to families who arrived wit…

In 1920, a woman in Smithfield sat down and made a decision. Her husband had just died. He'd been the editor of the Smithfield Herald. She had children, half-ownership of a newspaper she'd never run, and a list of things a widow in Johnston County in 1920 was expected to do. She walked into the off…

There is a ledger in the North Carolina State Archives. Bound in leather. Column after column of names. It is titled Johnston County Permanent Registration of Voters, 1902 to 1908. Every name in it is white. That was the point. Smith Brooks had sat on the Smithfield Board of Commissioners. Mack Sow…

The official history of Johnston County gives her exactly one sentence. "The first woman to hold elected office was Luma McLamb, Republican Register of Deeds from 1928 to 1932." That's it. No paragraph. No chapter. One sentence in a list of firsts. But here's what that sentence doesn't te…