SOHP Presents "Voices Over the Water" Community Forum (2003)

On Saturday, October 18, 2003, the Southern Oral History Program held a community forum, “Voices Over the Water: Oral Histories and Photographs of North Carolina’s Great Flood,” at the Historical Museum in Grifton (Pitt County), North Carolina. Researchers shared interviews and photographs as well as demographic information related to the Floyd flooding of 1999. The event was organized by Katie Otis, a history doctoral student and SOHP research assistant, and by Joe Mosnier, the SOHP associate director. The afternoon’s presenters included Otis, public radio journalist and SOHP project researcher Leda Hartman, UNC anthropology graduate student Danny de Vries, and Dr. Charlie Thompson of the Center for Documentary Studies in Durham. Otis and Hartman shared a professionally produced audio narrative drawing on their numerous SOHP interviews with flood survivors, relief providers, and government officials. De Vries presented extensive demographic and other data on the racial and economic dimensions of post-flood relocation and buyout efforts, drawing on work he and others at UNC’s Carolina Population Center have developed. Thompson shared the voices of flood survivors recorded in interviews he conducted while associated with the SOHP in the fall of 1999, and also presented slides of from an extensive body of documentary photography completed for the SOHP by award-winning NC photographer Rob Amberg. Following the three presentations, Otis and Hartman moderated audience discussion about the key lessons learned from the disaster, opening the floor to wide-ranging public comment. Otis will draw up a final report about disaster relief and recovery combining research findings and further information gathered at the forum. The event received extensive Eastern NC press coverage and was well attended. A crowd of approximately

In Rocky Mount's Candlewood neighborhood, the flood tossed this boat against a tree when Stony Creek, a Tar River tributary, became a torrent. (Photo © Martha W. Daniel, 1999.)   The owners of Cavenaugh's Restaurant plead for help in overcoming flood damage. (Photo © Rob Amberg, 1999.)   This home, like hundreds of others across the region, was destroyed by floodwaters. (Photo © Rob Amberg, 1999.)

seventy persons, one-third of them African-American, filled the Grifton Historical Museum almost to capacity. Attendees included state Sen. Tony Moore; NC House member Rep. Marian McLawhorn; Grifton mayor Timothy Bright, who introduced the program; Duplin County Commissioner Arliss Albertson; and Dr. Margaret Miles from the UNC-CH School of Nursing, who spearheaded volunteer nursing assistance in Grifton following the flood. A photographer from the regional tri-county newspaper was on hand, as was Angela Spivey of UNC’s Endeavors magazine in order to to highlight UNC graduate student research and public service. The SOHP also arranged to have the program recorded by a local videographer. The Town of Grifton and the local community (population 2,307) seemed pleased and honored to be host the presentation, and community volunteers invested many hours to make the event a great success. Staff of the Grifton Historical Museum cleared their two largest display rooms to allow for seating and reception space, the local fire department provided and set up folding chairs, and the Grifton Garden Club decorated the museum with fresh flowers and graciously prepared a lovely array of homemade foods and refreshments for the reception. Tapes and transcripts collected by the SOHP through our “Voices Over the Water” initiative will be archived in the SOHP Collection within UNC-Chapel Hill’s Southern Historical Collection, where they will represent a permanent record of North Carolina’s worst-ever natural disaster. The SOHP Collection, now totaling more than three thousand research interviews, draws heavy use from researchers and the general public.