"A Girl on Foot-Ball," 1893

Also in honor of this Saturday's football game against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we bring you this poem from the November 1893 issue of the Trinity Archive.

A Girl on Foot-Ball

A girl is not allowed to play foot-ball
And to revel in the delights of a game.
It is only for boys, large, strong and tall
To win for themselves glory and fame.

And when the Trinity foot-ball team in honor roll
They proudly exclaim, "The girls aren't in it here,"
But if they could see the "NORMAL" girls climb a ten-foot pole
They'd conclude that they were up it there.

At Trinity the boys all think they know
The reason the girls can't play;
Just let them look in the "gym." room door
And I guess they'll believe what we say.

They say that we're afraid to play
Because we can't kick the ball aright
But I tell you don't believe a word they say
For, if we chose, we could kick it out of sight.

But though we do not choose to play,
We can shout and wear the blue
And be able from the depths of our hearts to say
To Trinity we'll always be loyal and true.

Three cheers for the boys who beat the "N. C. U!"
Long may they be champions of the State
And a girl that wears the Trinity blue
May they finally choose for their mate.

We wonder what the author of this poem—it's signed "Anon."—would have thought of 1935's Pink Pants by Ralph Y. Hopton. This novel tells the story of Brünnehilde "Pussy" Downing, the Amazonian star of Bowlby University's football team. Wearing pink sateen pants, she single-handedly decimates Harvard's team, finishing her pummeling of each linebacker with her trademark cry, "I think you're me-ee-an!"

(N.B.: Established in 1887, The Archive is one of the oldest continuously published literary magazines in the United States and the oldest student publication at Duke.)

The Victory Bell Tradition

Since the first football game on Thanksgiving day of 1888 (we won 16-0), there has been a fierce football rivalry between Duke and UNC. Duke was the dominant team during the Wallace Wade and Bill Murray years, while UNC led in the days of Charlie “Choo-Choo” Justice and in recent years.

The rivalry has not always been civil. In order to foster friendly relations and to eliminate vandalism between the two, Duke and UNC student governments created the victory bell tradition in 1948. That same year, Duke introduced a new fight song, “Fight, Fight Blue Devils,” which includes the refrain, “Carolina Goodnight.”


The problem persisted and, in 1954, Duke and UNC agreed to expel any vandals found on either campus in response to graffiti painted on the Duke campus by UNC students.

The UNC mascot, Ramses, has also been a favorite target of Duke students. In 1977, the bighorn ram was kidnapped and the following note left in his place: “Please understand that this action was consummated in the healthy atmosphere of intercollegiate competition and rivalry and was undertaken with the principles of sportsmanship in mind.”

The rivalry and cooperation between the Duke and UNC is well documented in the University Archives. Tomorrow's game will add another chapter to our history of friendly competition!

Post contributed by Tim Pyatt, University Archivist and Associate Director of the RBMSCL

North Carolina Mutual Transfers Collections to Duke and NCCU

Duke University's John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture and North Carolina Central University's University Archives, Records and History Department are the joint recipients of the historical archives of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the nation’s largest and oldest African American life insurance company.

North Carolina Mutual founders John Merrick, C.C. Spaulding, and Aaron Moore

The company's archives includes thousands of business documents, newsletters, commercials, photography and books which chronicle the vitality of Durham’s “Black Wall Street” in the early 20th century. During the Jim Crow era, North Carolina Mutual allowed the black middle class access to home mortgages, small business loans, and insurance. The archives may be the largest assemblage of African American corporate material in the nation.

For more information on using this collection, contact the Franklin Research Center staff at franklin-collection(at)duke.edu.

"The Bathers": Exhibit Opening and Reception

Date: Thursday, 12 November, 2009
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Glynn, 919-660-5968 or karen.glynn(at)duke.edu

Budapest, Hungary, 2006

Photographer Jennette Williams, winner of the 2008 Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography, will speak about her recent work, which centers on women in the ancient communal bathhouses of Budapest and Istanbul. A selection of these photographs have been gathered for "The Bathers: Photographs by Jennette Williams," currently on view in the Special Collections Gallery through 13 December, 2009. Her book, The Bathers, will be published this month by Duke University Press in association with the Center for Documentary Studies.

These stunning platinum prints of women bathers--which draw on gestures and poses found in iconic paintings of nude women, such as those of Cézanne and Ingres--take us inside spaces intimate and public, austere and sensuous. Over a period of eight years, Williams photographed, without sentimentality or objectification, women daring enough to stand naked before her camera. Young and old, these women inhabit and display their bodies with comfort and ease.

Williams is a photography instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has a master’s degree from Yale University and has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Copies of The Bathers will be available for purchase and signing at the event. The quad in front of Duke Chapel has been reserved for parking. Additional parking is available in the parking deck behind the Bryan Center (view campus map).

Franklin Research Center Acquires John Wesley Blassingame Papers

The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture is pleased to announce its recent acquisition of the papers of John Wesley Blassingame, the nationally-renowned scholar of American history and author of such influential works as The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South and Frederick Douglass: The Clarion Voice.

Blassingame's path-breaking scholarship has had a profound impact on the American understanding of slavery and the African American experience. The collection includes correspondence, personal manuscripts and research files from Blassingame's long academic career, and is particularly rich in materials drawn from his work on the Frederick Douglass Papers.

For more information on using this collection, contact the Franklin Research Center staff at franklin-collection(at)duke.edu.