North Carolina town to honor first Black residents with plaque

A North Carolina town will honor one of the first Black families to settle in the area in the late 1800s.

The Town of Carrboro will unveil a Truth Plaque next month at the front of the historical Strayhorn House at 109 Jones Ferry Road, The Daily Tar Heel reports. Toney and Nellie Strayhorn, formerly enslaved people, built the one-room log cabin in 1879 on 30 acres of land. 

Screenshot of Nelly Strayhorn in 1879. (Credit: Ernest Dollar / YouTube)

Dolores Clark, Strayhorn’s great-granddaughter, now owns the renovated home. She also serves on the Truth Plaque Task Force, while her granddaughter, Nevaeh Hodge, is a local advocate who works with the North Carolina NAACP. 

The Truth Plaque unveiling will be held at the Strayhorn House on Friday, Sept. 1, at 6 p.m., and open to the public. According to The Local Reporter, the text on the plaque will read, “Enslaved in Orange County, Toney and Nellie Strayhorn were one of the first Black families to settle in Carrboro. After purchasing 30 acres of land, they built a one-room log cabin in 1879, which has been added to over the years. This home is a historic landmark and a testament to their faith, resilience, and determination to persevere.”

According to The Daily Tar Heel, as many as six generations lived in the Strayhorn home, including Clark, who spent her childhood there and later returned to care for her aging relatives.

The Strayhorn plaque will be the third in the Truth Plaque program that started in 2018 to acknowledge the town’s ties to white supremacist and North Carolina State Legislator Julian Carr. The former Freedman School was also honored with a plaque in 2021, The Daily Tar Heel reports. 

According to the Town of Carrboro, truth plaques aim to educate citizens about the “truth” of the town’s history.

“The point is to tell some kind of truth about history,” Terri Buckner, co-chair of the task force, said, per The Daily Tar Heel. “And the truth for the Strayhorn House is that they were an amazing family. They helped to build Carrboro.”

A grant from Preservation Chapel Hill and support from Habitat for Humanity made it possible to repair the Strayhorn House and bring its deteriorating foundation and aging HVAC system up to town codes.

“If you look at the historical preservation of homes, what you find are it’s the wealthy homes that are preserved, the ones that have the beautiful architecture and fine woodwork and all of that,” Buckner said. “But that’s not Carrboro — Carrboro is a working-class town, and so this is a vernacular home. It tells the truth of the working people who helped build Carrboro.”

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