When History Collides: Rethinking the cult of public opinion
Years ago, I began work on a special project examining the legacy of the old Davidson County Courthouse and Historical Museum. What started as straightforward historical research slowly became something more complicated. The deeper I went into the building’s origins the more I found myself wrestling with an internal conflict sparked by a single quote and a larger, unsettling question that has followed me ever since: who records history and who fact checks it anymore?
In its October 15, 1858 edition the Greensborough Patriot and Flag praised the newly completed courthouse in glowing terms:
“The new building is indeed magnificent, by far the best we ever saw and we presume the finest in the state. Beautiful and magnificent Temple of Justice, it will stand for ages as a monument both of their taste and liberality, while the stranger in passing will involuntarily stop to gaze on its beautiful proportions, its majestic columns and admire the artistic skill of the master workmen which is so admirably and tastefully displayed in every part of the building…”
When I look up at the old courthouse today that description is not all that I see.
Instead my mind goes to the records housed inside and the lives shaped and constrained within its walls. History has almost always been recorded by those with power and privilege. Fact checking has existed but unevenly and often only within systems designed to protect certain narratives. The voices left out were not forgotten by accident. They were excluded by design.
Over the years I have written about slave registers and the way they quietly document the contributions and suffering of African Americans both enslaved and free. I have studied names, transactions and court records that reduce human lives to line items and ledger entries. This work has never felt urgent in the moment but persistent over time, returning to me whenever I pass the courthouse or open an old ledger.
Inside this so-called “Temple of Justice” is a slave register tied to the old Holt Plantation. The first name listed is “Old Charles,” born in 1776. That was the same year our founding fathers declared that all men are created equal and endowed with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those promises did not extend to Old Charles. Men and women were bought and sold like property for sums between $800 and $1,100 and recorded without sentiment.
I have no proof that I am directly related to Old Charles, Dorcas, Sue or the others listed in the Holt register. Still I return to the museum, year after year, with the quiet hope of learning more about my own ancestry. Knowing I descend from Floyd A. Kerr II and enslaved people in nearby Rowan County keeps me wondering whether my ancestors passed through these doors seeking mercy.
When I look at the courthouse itself I also wonder who built it. In Southern Built: American Architecture, Regional Practice, architectural historian Catherine W. Bishir documents the work of free and enslaved Black builders across antebellum North Carolina. Masons and carpenters labored without compensation while helping create the South’s most celebrated public buildings. Unfree labor built monuments to government, law and education throughout the region and possibly right here in Davidson County.
That question is not abstract for me. My father, a descendant of Robert Partee, came from a long line of masons and real estate developers. His work helped build entire communities, many of which still stand today, yet his contributions hold no honor here. Black labor shaped this region in ways that were rarely credited and often deliberately obscured. Knowing my own family history makes it impossible to separate the beauty of these structures from the hands that built them and the systems that benefited from their silence.
I promised myself that this Black History Month would be about more than slavery. Still, after years of reading records and revisiting this place, it is impossible to encounter lavish praise for antebellum symbols of “justice” without confronting their full context. The “Temple of Justice” meant something very different for people like Jane Amanda.
Court records show that Jane Amanda was an emancipated slave convicted for returning to North Carolina. A law passed in 1830 made it illegal for freed slaves to remain in the state. Even those hoping to reunite with family were required to leave within 30 days and never return. After her conviction the sheriff was ordered to sell Jane Amanda to the highest bidder at the doors of the Davidson County Courthouse.
Today we live in a moment where history is not only misunderstood but actively challenged. Fact checking is treated as optional labor. Archives are underfunded. Local journalism is shrinking. Digital platforms reward repetition over truth. History is rewritten not decades later but in real time. Erasure is no longer passive. It is intentional.
Journalism is often mistaken for popularity or sensationalism. The work of verifying records, contextualizing history and sitting with uncomfortable truths produces spectacle. When careful reporting is dismissed as agenda-driven or dramatic what is really being rejected is accountability. Sensationalism amplifies emotion. Journalism demands evidence and patience.
And yet I hold space for complexity. After years of returning to this building and its stories I still feel pride in the courthouse as one of North Carolina’s most historically significant structures while acknowledging the harm that passed through it. Even the courthouse brochure captures this tension:
“The impressive second-floor courtroom remains intact with its judge’s bench, jury box and prisoner’s holding cage… They stand in silent testimony as visitors imagine what personal joys and sorrows were experienced by those who came to this room so long ago seeking justice and mercy,” says the media of the moment.
Public opinion impacts journalism. The Greensborough Patriot and Flag was right about one thing. The courthouse has stood for ages as a monument. What it represents has changed over time and depends on who is standing beneath its columns and whose story we are willing to preserve.
