I head north on 501/15 to 86 through Chapel Hill to Blackwood Station. There’s no longer a station here, though the tracks are there. I’m searching for the house of Caroline Atwater, who was “born a slave.” She and her husband Ernest, who had “worked on the railroad,” had owned their home for thirty years when Dorothea Lange spoke with Atwater and photographed her in 1939. According to Lange, the Atwaters lived 6/10 of a mile east of Blackwood Station. Atwater told Lange about her church, Mount Sinai, which Atwater’s husband said was five miles down the road. No sign of the Atwater’s house today, but the name of the road is Mount Sinai, and I do find the Mount Sinai Baptist Church, a large brick structure, which was remodeled and new educational building constructed in 1968. A stone marker embedded in the exterior wall of the church says that the church was founded in 1870 and dedicated in 1926. In the churchyard is a large cemetery, but it’s late afternoon; no time today to search for the Atwaters’ names among the headstones.

Dorothea Lange. “Refer to General Caption No. 15. Colored owner’s home. July 1, 1939.

On Mount Sinai Road, I stop at a small white church with a cross draped in purple satin. A sign announces it “The Tabernacle of God Deliverance Church, Pastor-Founder, Bessie Heard.” Many artifacts: a gold cross painted on a rock, the sign, the church itself, a lock on the door, flowers planted at the base of a tree, a cedar sprouting alongside a stump.

Checked in to Microtel Inn, Hillsborough. Very basic, but comfortable. A tiny compact room with not an inch wasted. A built in desk and closet, with little space between either side of the bed and the walls. A window seat instead of an armchair. But free phone calls nationwide and free wireless Internet service. And a free breakfast. How ironic that more expensive hotels charge $10-15 a day for an Internet connection. Working in the field, I prefer to stay at inexpensive hotels like this one.

Dinner with Tom Campanella, who is teaching in the urban planning department at University of North Carolina.

On the photographs:

The black and white photograph was taken by Dorothea Lange in July 1939, the color by Anne Whiston Spirn in 2007. Read the stories behind these photographs in Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field.

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