VGCC Speaker To Discuss Stagville,Slaves Contributions To State, Area

Students of the History Society of Vance-Granville Community College are having a special guest speaker on Nov. 19, and they are inviting the public to hear her presentation.

Alice Eley Jones is a North Carolina historian with a special interest in, and knowledge of, Durham’s Historic Stagville, a former plantation that held perhaps the South’s largest enslaved population of nearly 900 on the eve of the Civil War. At Vance-Granville, she will talk about the West African presence at Stagville and on the contributions of free and enslaved black builders to the architecture of North Carolina and the Vance-Granville area.

Jones earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from N.C. Central University and is a former history instructor there. She has taught at Duke University and St. Augustine’s College and has been a guest lecturer at N.C. State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The State Department of Public Instruction selected Jones to research and write The Standard Course of Study in African American History in North Carolina.

The free lecture will be held at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 19, in the auditorium of Building 2 on Vance-Granville’s main campus, located at Exit 209 off I-85 between Henderson and Oxford.