African-American Life: 1830-1980 from the Collections of the Cape Fear Museum and the Bellamy Mansion Museum

Artifacts and photographs chronicled aspects of African American life in the Cape Fear region over the course of 150 years. These objects of material culture bore witness to the life of a people through labor, politics, civic service, professional work, cultural arts, sports and family life. Examples included a rough-hewn cypress log, holding a story of the slave industry when, with a large pestle, it was used as a grinder for freeing rice kernels from their hard exterior shells; a Victrola, vinyl records and musical instruments, still playing the song of a music-filled home in the 1920s; and a female student in cap and gown signing the roll of the National Honor Society, while an unknown young man in uniform smiles back at the camera.