Writer of Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry and Master Photographer
[Note: Parts of this story first appeared in Michael’s Soapbox column in The Nashville Graphic] With Halloween approaching, it is a good time to think about scary stories. What’s interesting is that it is not just American culture that has folktales and urban legends that have been around so long people view them as true,…
Politics are rough these days, but 17th century England was no cakewalk. Sir Walter Raleigh, an important figure in North Carolina history, upset the wrong people and it resulted in his untimely death on October 29, 1618. Raleigh was a soldier, explorer, and author and gained significant political power during the reign of Queen Elizabeth,…
I’m taking a short break from history to put a plug in for my new book, It’s A Time in the Land: The Best of the Soap Box. The book is a collection of 86 of the best columns that I’ve written for The Nashville Graphic over the last nearly 25 years. I…
[Note: This originally appeared as a column several years ago in The Nashville Graphic] Maybe you remember that song that helped start the folk music scene of the late 1950s and 1960s. Maybe you remember the Darlings “scratching one off” for Andy Griffith. Or, maybe you just are into folklore. At…
August 1 marked the first official reading of the Declaration of Independence in Halifax. The Halifax Resolves was a key forerunner of the document. With that in mind, here are Declaration tidbits of interest: •Independence from Britain was officially voted on and approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776. The final…
It’s sadly ironic that most of us can name three cartoon characters but not the three North Carolina signers of the Declaration of Independence. I like to think of myself as a historian and I’d struggle to come up with Joseph Hewes, William Hooper, and John Penn. Let it be noted that…
Note: In working on a project involving my newspaper column, I found this piece about The Halifax Resoloves. This story appeared in part in The Nashville Graphic in June, 2005. It shouldn’t surprise that a document from Halifax County often gets overlooked. Many people have never heard of The Halifax Resolves, and many who have…
Lawson Andrew Scruggs was born into slavery, but rose out of that to become a doctor, pharmacist, and writer and one of the first three black licensed physicians in North Carolina. He was born to slave parents in 1857 in Bedford, Virginia. He grew up on a tenant farm and while there were few educational…
Even casual baseball fans know that George Herman “Babe” Ruth was a star baseball player for the New York Yankees, the first great home run hitter, and a legendary character. He was a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox before that and part of a trade that was said started an 86-year curse that…
Many people are familiar with the name of World War I pilot Captain Eddie Rickenbacker — he held the record for enemy planes shot down. Far fewer people know that Greensboro’s George E. Preddy Jr. broke that record with his exploits in World War II. Preddy was born in Greensboro in 1919. He worked in…