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From segregation to shared space: Chatham County Fair’s inclusive journey

By Chatham Journal staff

Pittsboro, NC – When the gates open in Pittsboro for the 76th annual Chatham County Agricultural and Industrial Fair, visitors will encounter the familiar sights and sounds of an American county fair: children moving between rides and games, music from the stage, the smell of carnival food and rows of carefully judged produce, preserves, flowers, clothing, photographs and crafts.

But the fairgrounds on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive hold a history deeper than the midway.

The Chatham County Fair began in 1950 as the Chatham County Colored Agricultural Fair, an institution created by black extension agents, farmers, homemakers and community leaders during segregation. Its founders wanted a place where rural black families could display the products of their labor, earn prizes, exchange knowledge and gather safely with neighbors from across the county. They rented land, signed a carnival contract, erected a tent and proceeded despite rain, mud and leaks. About 3,000 people attended that first fair.

Within two years, black home demonstration clubs had raised the money to buy the fairgrounds. Volunteers later built an exhibit hall, staffed the gates, organized contests and kept the institution operating. The result was more than an annual celebration. It was a demonstration of self-help and collective ownership at a time when public life in Chatham County remained divided by race.

Today, the fair welcomes the whole county. Its name and audience have changed, its entertainment has expanded and Chatham itself has become faster-growing and less agricultural. Yet the basic idea survives: ordinary people bring forward what they have raised, canned, baked, sewn, grown or made, and the community comes to see it.

That continuity makes the Chatham County Fair both a living tradition and a local history lesson.

(Source: chathamcountyfairnc.com)

The idea grew from “Achievement Day”

The fair’s roots reach into the work of Black Home Demonstration and 4-H clubs, organizations that combined practical education with community building in rural North Carolina.

Before the fair existed, the clubs held an annual “Achievement Day.” Members displayed improvements in cooking, sewing, canning and other household arts, and prizes recognized the best work. The exhibits became so numerous that finding enough prize money posed a problem.

Mildred Bright Payton, who arrived in Chatham County in October 1947 as the county’s second black home demonstration agent, proposed a solution. A carnival and county fair could generate proceeds to pay the awards, known in fair terminology as premiums. The Home Demonstration clubs embraced the idea in 1948, but the wider Farm and Home Organization was initially reluctant.

The hesitation was practical. A fair required land, a carnival operator, exhibits, advertising, security, tickets and many hours of volunteer labor. Laura L. Lee, who later became one of the fair’s secretaries, recalled seeing “so much work in the fair.” After it succeeded, however, she judged it one of the community’s finest accomplishments because, as she said, “we grew to know each other so much better.”

Payton persisted. Robert Hawkins, longtime president of the Vance County Colored Fair, spoke to the organization about how such an event could work. On May 30, 1949, the Farm and Home Organization voted 16-2 to proceed.

The Chatham County Colored Agricultural Fair was formally chartered Jan. 11, 1950. Its incorporators and first directors included Robert Gade Bryant, C.W. Baldwin, J.C. Gowins, E.C. Lee, E.H. Powell, Fred Dowdy, H.M. Lee, Noble Womble, Mamie D. Jones, farm agent J.A. Turner, Payton and E.J. Dark, then chairman of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners.

Bryant, a Moncure farmer and community leader, was central to the project. He and his wife had earlier given land for an office serving Chatham County’s black farm and home agents. Dedicated in June 1947, that office gave the Farm and Home Organization a base for regular meetings and helped create the organizational network from which the fair emerged.

Securing a carnival was another test. With help from leaders connected to the Durham County Colored Fair, the Chatham organizers obtained a contract with DuPont Shows. Bryant assumed the risk of signing it. The rides carried more than entertainment value: the association’s 1980 history noted that many Black children in Chatham had never seen a Ferris wheel or merry-go-round.

Rain, mud and 3,000 visitors

The first fair opened in the fall of 1950 on the old Goldston Lumber Company grounds in Pittsboro, rented for $250. Organizers and volunteers cleared and prepared the property. The County Home Demonstration Council rented a tent for exhibits, while Turner supervised agricultural displays, including livestock.

Then the weather turned against them.

Rain created mud underfoot, and water came through the exhibit tent. The makeshift surroundings could easily have overwhelmed a new organization with limited money. Instead, roughly 3,000 people attended, according to the fair association’s history. The turnout established that the idea had a public constituency.

The first fair also revealed what the institution could provide. Agricultural and domestic work that was often performed within individual farms and homes became visible as skilled, valuable production. A jar of fruit, a carefully sewn garment, a healthy animal or a strong field crop could be compared, judged and rewarded. Neighbors from communities separated by miles of rural roads could meet in one place.

For black residents, those opportunities carried added weight. The fair operated in a county where schools and many other institutions remained segregated. It created a public venue controlled and sustained by the people it served – a place for commerce, education, recreation and recognition.

In a 2009 remembrance published by the fair association, board member and treasurer Ann McCrimmon described the fair as a safe, friendly gathering place for black residents from throughout Chatham. County agents used it to highlight the crops, foods, skills and crafts they had helped rural families develop. Children could meet peers from distant parts of the county, while adults renewed ties and compared their work.

The fair was not a diversion from the extension mission. It was a public expression of it.

A permanent home built by the community

The second fair took place Sept. 17-22, 1951, on land offered rent-free by Pittsboro Mayor J.A. “Atlas” Farrell Sr. That tract became the fair’s permanent home.

The 1951 event showed rapid growth. Organizers produced about 500 homemade fair catalogs containing an extensive premium list, 81 advertisers and 22 additional patrons. Payton typed the premium list and prepared advertisements with a stylus; 4-H member Guytana Horton mimeographed the pages.

More than 100 exhibitors entered over 300 items, among them canned and baked goods, clothing, needlework, arts, crafts and horticultural products. One farm-and-home booth presented the breadth of work performed by Bennie and Eleanor Paige of Siler City: tobacco, wheat, corn, cotton, milo, potatoes, chickens, hogs, pigs, cows and 930 quarts of canned food. Estimated attendance climbed to 7,000.

The fair’s decisive step toward permanence came before the third season. Sixteen Black Home Demonstration clubs raised the entire $1,000 purchase price for the 11-acre tract. The clubs represented communities across Chatham: Bear Creek-Bonlee, Bynum-Hamlet, Goldston, Haw River, Hinton-Beckwith, Lambert Chapel-Jordan Grove, Milliken, Mitchell, Mount View, Mount Zion, New Hope, Pittsboro, St. Luke, St. Matthews-Alston Chapel, Taylor’s Chapel and Webster.

Their contributions turned an annual event into a landowning institution. The association now describes the fairgrounds as a 12-acre property within Pittsboro’s limits, still owned and operated by the organization.

Physical construction followed. Before the 1953 fair, volunteers erected a 40-by-100-foot concrete-block exhibit hall at an estimated cost of $5,000. Men from across the county donated labor. Farrell used his tractor to clear the site, the Home Demonstration clubs raised more money, and fair proceeds covered much of the remaining expense.

This pattern – contributions in cash, labor, food, planning and publicity – defined the fair’s early decades. Club women sold and collected tickets and rotated responsibility for work nights. Men initially assigned to security wore armbands as “Law and Order Men”; later, the county sheriff swore them in as temporary deputies during the fair.

By 1953, the association owned its grounds and had a nearly paid-for exhibit building. A special edition of The Carolinian, a black newspaper published in Raleigh, devoted extensive coverage to the fair that September. What had begun under a rented tent had acquired a durable address.

The exhibits were lessons as well as contests

Early fair programs reveal a broad definition of agricultural progress. Field crops and livestock mattered, but so did clothing, nutrition, food preservation, gardening and household economy. The fair recognized skills necessary to sustain a family and manage a farm, many of them taught through Black extension programs and practiced by women whose work often went unrecorded elsewhere.

Competitions included 4-H field crops, junior and adult canning, clothing, cornmeal muffins, vegetable trays, flowers, dolls and fashion. There were talent and music contests, school parades, band concerts, awards programs and dairy cattle shows.

The Miss Piedmont pageant, introduced in 1954 under Payton’s direction, added another civic stage. Former winner Lucille Rodgers later earned a doctorate, joined the University of Wisconsin faculty and became a national Miss Black America finalist, according to the fair’s 1980 history.

By 1956, several hundred exhibitors had made more than 2,000 entries, and the association awarded over $1,000 in premiums. Events included a dairy cattle show, cotton fashion show, talent contest, band concert and Poultry Day barbecue. During the awards program, Bryant gave a dairy calf to a deserving 4-H girl – a prize that represented both recognition and a productive asset.

The following year’s countywide garden contest connected display with public health. Participants emphasized year-round gardening and introduced vegetables that could improve family diets. Winner E.V. Lee of Moncure titled her booth “Spring Garden in the Cans, Fall Garden in the Ground,” capturing the cycle of cultivation and preservation on which rural households depended.

In 1958, the fair recorded about 3,000 entries and awarded more than 550 premiums.

The 2026 premium book demonstrates how much of that original structure remains. Departments still cover field and forage crops, horticulture, flowers, food preservation, baking, clothing, arts and crafts. Judges assess vegetables for maturity, uniformity and freedom from defects. Preserves are evaluated for flavor, consistency and appearance. Clothing earns points for workmanship, suitability, appearance and economy. Blue and red ribbons still transform individual labor into public achievement.

The amounts attached to many entries are modest. Their symbolic value is larger. A premium book asserts that knowledge passed through families and extension programs – how to select corn, pressure-can low-acid vegetables, make a quilt or grow an unblemished pepper – deserves standards, judges and a place on display.

A school holiday worth crossing the creek

McCrimmon’s memories show how the fair looked to a child in segregated Pittsboro. Students from Horton Public School were given a day to attend. They walked through the woods and crossed Robertson Creek on a small footbridge to reach the grounds.

The crossing frightened her, she wrote, but the fair made it worthwhile. Inside the exhibit hall were embroidered pillowcases, crocheted and knitted pieces, vegetables, fruit, jars of preserved food, pies and cakes. Outside waited hot dogs, candied apples, taffy, popcorn balls, roasted peanuts and ice cream.

Her account preserves something statistics cannot: the fair’s sensory and emotional place in community life. For children whose transportation and entertainment choices were limited, the event converted a school day into a holiday. Friends shared the treats they could afford. Handmade objects familiar from homes and church communities appeared under exhibition lights as accomplishments worthy of attention.

The route from Horton School also illustrates the distance between the fair’s past and present. Children no longer approach through the woods on a footbridge. Visitors arrive by car at a fair now marketed to every part of Chatham County. Yet without memories such as McCrimmon’s, modern visitors might never realize that the event was founded, financed and operated by African Americans.

That history is not incidental to the fair. It explains why the institution existed and how it survived.

The Milliken Cabin made the grounds a place of memory

In 1977, the fair added an artifact that enlarged its mission from celebrating contemporary achievement to preserving Black history.

The association dedicated the Milliken Cabin as a black history museum during Charlie Baldwin Day. The one-room cabin had been built after the Civil War by Bob, a formerly enslaved man who had been purchased at the Fayetteville slave market. Bob and his wife, Sallie, raised three children there. Later generations of the family also lived in the house.

Willis Wrenn of Siler City donated the cabin to Baldwin, and it was moved from a site about seven miles northwest of Pittsboro to the fairgrounds. C.W. Bryant supervised the project, while volunteers repaired the building and landscaped the site. Churches, NAACP branches, the Chatham-Lee Credit Union, the North Carolina Federation of Negro Women and individual donors supported the work.

The cabin’s condition later deteriorated. By the 1990s, vegetation had overtaken it, and Hurricane Fran dropped a large oak onto the structure. Reconstruction began in 1998 with support from the fair association, the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the State Fair. The aim was educational use, including demonstrations of pioneer crafts.

The cabin complicates any easy nostalgia about rural life. It embodies craftsmanship, family continuity and survival, but it is also tied directly to slavery and its aftermath. On grounds built by black citizens during segregation, it places the county’s longer racial history within the landscape of celebration.

From a Black institution to a shared county fair

Integration altered the fair’s audience but did not erase its origins. Over time, the Chatham County Colored Agricultural Fair became the Chatham County Agricultural and Industrial Fair and grew into a more inclusive countywide event.

That transition is one of the institution’s greatest achievements and one of its interpretive challenges. Inclusiveness strengthened the fair, bringing participation from longtime residents and newcomers alike. But a universal-sounding name can make the specific black history behind the organization less visible.

Three children of original founders were still serving on the association’s advisory board when McCrimmon wrote in 2009: former county commissioner Margaret Pollard, her brother Wilbur Bryant and Charlie Baldwin Jr. Their service represented an unbroken line between the fair’s organizers and its modern leadership.

The fair has also had to adapt to changing habits. Families once relied more heavily on home gardens, preserving, sewing and small-scale farming. Greater mobility, prepared foods, store-bought clothing and a wider menu of entertainment reduced the number of people practicing some traditional skills. McCrimmon observed that exhibits were no longer as plentiful as she remembered from the 1950s and 1960s.

Yet the old practices have not disappeared. The current premium book still invites the public to enter corn, grain, seeds, fruits, herbs, nuts, vegetables, flowers, canned goods, pickles, jellies, baked goods, clothing, quilts, photographs, ceramics, crochet, embroidery, knitting and woodworking. School groups and young exhibitors remain part of the system.

The fair therefore records both change and persistence. Its displays are a yearly inventory of what residents still know how to do.

The 76th fair links the midway to the mission

The 2026 fair runs Sept. 17-20 at 191 Fairgrounds Road in Pittsboro. The program combines traditional exhibits with rides, games, food vendors, a petting zoo, music, pageants, children’s art and other performances. Students in kindergarten through 12th grade receive free admission on Thursday, echoing the school-day tradition of earlier decades in a new form.

The midway and entertainment are not departures from the founding purpose. Payton’s original plan used a carnival to finance premiums and attract the public to the exhibits. From the beginning, education and amusement were meant to support one another.

The fair’s modern partnership with N.C. Cooperative Extension also continues the relationship that produced the event. Payton and Turner were not merely organizers whose names happen to appear in old records; extension work supplied the network, instruction and philosophy behind Achievement Day and the fair itself.

Association President Glenn Foxx Jr. has urged residents to enter their arts, crafts, fruits, vegetables and livestock and thanked the sponsors, patrons, advertisers and volunteers who keep the institution operating. “We encourage all who have an interest in this historic institution to help strengthen the Fair,” the association’s 2026 program says.

That appeal resembles the calls made in the early 1950s. The fair has always depended upon participation more than spectatorship. Buying a ticket helps, but entering a jar of preserves, volunteering at a gate, sponsoring a premium, sharing a family photograph or teaching a child the story of the grounds carries the tradition further.

A historic fairground

The Chatham County Fair’s history is a story of local institution-building under difficult conditions. Black farmers and homemakers who were excluded from equal participation in much of public life created their own showcase. They moved from rented land to owned property, from a leaking tent to a permanent hall and from a one-season experiment to a tradition now entering its 76th year.

Their fair rewarded work that was essential but too often overlooked. It gave young people a stage, gave families a gathering place and gave rural communities a reason to compare achievements rather than endure isolation. Later generations widened its welcome while retaining its agricultural competitions and preserving the Milliken Cabin as a reminder of the deeper past.

The lights and music of the midway will still draw the first glance. But the fullest experience lies in seeing the fairgrounds as the founders did: a place where knowledge becomes visible, labor receives honor and community is made through repeated acts of contribution.

Residents who want to carry that history forward can attend the fair, enter an exhibit, volunteer, sponsor an award or learn more through the Chatham County Agricultural and Industrial Fair Association and the Chatham County Historical Association. The most fitting tribute to the people who built the fair is not simply to remember their names. It is to keep using the institution they left behind.

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