and William Talor - he was a Confederate army captain - was one of the people who attacked Archie. When they saw him coming out of the Market House. "But because he was accused of this crime, a mob met him outside of Market House, and they were ready to just lynch him. He drove a wagon, he transported goods, probably at Market House, you know, kind of like a trader, that was his job. There was a jail right on Gillespie Street, which is where one of the intersections where the Market House sits, they marched Archie from this jail to the second floor of the Market House, which also served as like a magistrate's court and a town hall sometimes, but he was just a regular man in the community. So he was arrested, didn't really have much of a trial. And in 1867, he was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. "Yes, Archie Beebe was a Black man and - what I assume and other historians assume - was probably enslaved in the Fayetteville area.
THE FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER SERIES
Because I think that people need to see and really feel that the argument about the Market House is not just about whether or not it should be standing up, it should be about the truth of it - and the truth is that enslaved Africans and African Americans were sold, and it wasn't just about Market House, but about the culture of racism that it kind of helped solidify in the city."Ī focus in your series is emphasizing parts of market houses history that have often gone overlooked, and that includes that of Archie Beebe in the late 1860s. "And I think that I was really kind of keeping that in the back of my mind when I did this series. But it's kind of a very interesting argument for people to make that, 'Yeah, people were sold, but so were corn and lettuce and people came here to protest.' And you know, it’s making it so that people who had no autonomy at the Market House were being sold off, being split up from their families, that that part of the history is not as significant as why the Market House was built, or who built it or why it should still be standing.
"I think that when you talk about the history of the Market House, I think that it gets lost for a lot of people that - at the core of all of this - people were sold here. People have very different perspectives, like you said, and it just made more sense I think to do a past, present, and what a market house in the future could look like with city council repurposing it and what that repurposed building, a rebranding of this kind of painful history can mean for Fayetteville. And I think that was part of what I felt needed to be reiterated, because it was - in some of people's ideas - about slavery not really being a big deal in Fayetteville or slave auctions not taking place at the Market House. You will see the Market House and think about how heavy you know the ghosts are circling around Market House - they're still kind of there. But it's different when you are a person of color or Black person living in Fayetteville. I think that people who lived in Fayetteville, who grew up here, they pass by Market House, don't always think about it. It feels like the legacy of the Market House carries a different meaning depending on who you ask in the city. So we can't just ignore that, and I think having the idea for a series was kind of more powerful than just one story." Now the city council voted to repurpose it instead of tearing it down. You know, we had a duty, I think, as a newspaper to continue the conversation about this contentious building. It always covered the Market House, photographers would write columns in the newspaper and feature the sunset behind the Market House. "It’s really because they are having new conversations in the city council and I thought it was time for a new conversation with The Fayetteville Observer because it played a pretty essential role in the Market House. What sparked this series for you and why’d you feel it necessary to lay out its history over multiple parts? In your series, you focus on the past, present, and future of the Market House in Fayetteville.
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