Charles Norfleet Hunter

[4] A prolific writer, Hunter authored numerous letters to the editor, and he frequently corresponded with local and national political figures and family members.

Throughout his life, Hunter used his journalistic voice to illuminate the challenges emancipated Blacks experienced during Reconstruction and in the early-twentieth century with regard to voting rights, lynching, economic progress, and education.

[8] In the antebellum years, Charles’ father Osborne Hunter, Sr. was an artisan, carpenter and mill wright who “hired his own time”  from his master and his wife's master, William Dallas Haywood, one-time Raleigh mayor and prominent land and slave owner.

Charles remembered his Aunt Harriet as a “exceptionally intelligent woman” who like several other family members on his maternal side, had become a “fluent reader” and a good writer “before the surrender.”[9] This achievement of literacy was especially remarkable given that the North Carolina statutes from 1832 through the 1854 revision (R.S.

After the bank failed, Hunter served as chief clerk in the assessor's office of the Internal Revenue Service for several southern states.

[9] Hunter's early venture in newspaper editing was tied to his efforts to create a "State Fair" in North Carolina that would celebrate the economic achievements of Black farmers, homemakers, inventors and entrepreneurs.

In the early twentieth century, Charles Hunter began researching the history of the Black community in Raleigh.

He published his memoir privately in 1928 under the title Review of Negro Life in North Carolina with My Recollections.

[7] Charles N. Hunter papers, 1850s-1932 and undated, David M. Rubenstein Library, Duke University[20] John Haley, Charles N. Hunter and race relations in North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 1987.

[21] "Historic Architectural Resources Report for I-440 Beltline Improvements from Walnut Street, Cary to Wade Avenue, Raleigh, N.C, 2013.