Quiet No More

Who Tells Your Story If You Don't?

• Carmen Cauthen

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Have you ever wondered what stories about your family, your community, or yourself might be lost forever if not written down? I tackle this profound question head-on in a deeply personal exploration of why documentation matters.

I share my journey from taking legislative notes to founding the first NAACP chapter at North Carolina State University—an achievement I almost forgot until recently. I observe how women's accomplishments often go undocumented because we're culturally conditioned to avoid "boasting," while men's achievements are celebrated and recorded without hesitation. This systematic silence has created massive historical blind spots.

Through my research for the Woman of Substance event, I discovered a remarkable 19th-century entrepreneur—a Black washerwoman who not only took in laundry but also rented rooms to boarders, including a future Wake County legislator. This revelation demonstrates how proper documentation can transform our understanding of historical contributions, particularly from marginalized communities. As I powerfully stated, "The history of America is not the history of white men," yet without deliberate documentation efforts, diverse experiences continue to be erased from our collective memory.

Drawing parallels to the invaluable Works Progress Administration interviews with formerly enslaved people, I emphasize that documentation creates permanence. I urge listeners to record family stories, preserve artifacts, and share their experiences on platforms they control. In an age where information can be deleted with an executive order, taking ownership of our narratives becomes an act of resistance.

Take out your phone the next time you're with elders, record their stories, and write down your experiences—because this is not a time to be quiet. Your history matters—your family's journey matters. Together, these documented stories create a more complete picture of America.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More. Today I want to talk about writing. I have always liked to read. I don't know that I always liked to write, but that was part of my job when I worked at the legislature. The first writing part was when I was running the voting equipment because I would take notes. I didn't realize at first that there were backup notes for the lady who was writing the journal at the time, but they were and I created my own sort of shorthand and I'm writing cursive because it's easier and quicker for me.

Speaker 1:

Although I know a lot, I journaled when I was a child. I remember having diaries. I don't know what we did with them. I remember having the little one with the lock. I don't know who I thought was ever going to open up my stuff and read it. I don't know if my brother ever thought that that was something that he should do as a little brother.

Speaker 1:

But writing is important In today's society. I really realize how important writing and documenting things is. I am trying to document Black history, not just on a Raleigh city level, but of course that's very important to me because that's home. But documenting what Black people have done was written by people who could read and write and people who were doing that to keep up with their economic status, and that was white men. And so everybody else needs to be writing and documenting their own history and, starting with yourself, write your history.

Speaker 1:

Realized, as I've been planning the Woman of Substance event is how many women's activities were not documented and we have to kind of guess at what they did. And part of that is because, as women, we are told that it's kind of boastful to talk about what we do, to talk about who we are and who we've been and our experiences. It's not boastful for men unless they do it in a boastful manner, but it's expected that men will share what they do. That used to be the question when you would meet a gentleman and what do you do? Well, I do lots of things. I can't necessarily think to tell you all of the things that I do or that I've done, um, but they're important. Things Like I forgot for a long time that I started the first NAACP chapter at North Carolina State University. I don't know how many iterations they've had of it, but they had not had one when I was a student there in the late 70s and I started one Um and um, I started, uh, lots of things.

Speaker 1:

In fact, one of my friends from college, when I said that I was doing a podcast called quiet no more, he said you were never quiet. Well, I'm being less quiet because I have things to talk about and things to share, things that I've done and things that I want to encourage you to do, because you don't need to be quiet when you're spreading good news. That's what the gospel is. Good news. When you're spreading important information, when you're telling the truth of your life, your history, your people's lives and history. Those are not things we need to be quiet about, and so for many communities, the history is told in an oral fashion. When it's told orally and there's no documentation behind it, people can come along, as they're doing today, and wipe it out and say, well, that's not important, that's not true, that's, there's nothing to back that up. When that is not true, there is information, there are documentations for so many things, and they're in places that we don't always think to look. We don't always think to look.

Speaker 1:

So when I was researching, when I read in a census document that a woman that I was researching her occupation in 1870 was a washerwoman, but she had borders at her house. So it wasn't just that she was making money taking in washing, she was also making money by renting space out, renting rooms to other people to live in her home. I don't know if she was cooking for them, it doesn't say anything about that. But from most of the things that I've read about stories from the 1800s, when people were renting rooms, it was room and board. There were not fast food restaurants for people to go and eat at, so you would rent a room and you would board there, and so the board meant that you were eating what was on their table. And it was interesting to me when I was researching this young lady for the Woman of Substance event that not only did she I don't know if she owned the house, I don't remember that, but I'm sure that was in the census record but she took in washing, she rented rooms and no doubt boarded, you know, fixed the food for people to eat. But one of her boarders was a gentleman who became a Wake County legislator during the Reconstruction period. Now you know, you would just assume that people who were in the legislature, they had their own place. They were people of means, but not necessarily so. Maybe he had means after this, but Stuart Ellison rented a room from a lady who was a washerwoman and that was how she made her money, so that made her an entrepreneur. Who would consider that that was entrepreneurial at that time? But it was. She was a businesswoman, and so I'm writing that down because that's important. That changes my whole perception of what women did.

Speaker 1:

Searching and writing and researching changed my perception about a lot of things. Writing down the history and writing down where you got it from that changes. That changes all the things that you know. Sometimes the things you get are from people's oral history interviews. Sometimes the things that you get are from websites that you didn't expect. Sometimes the things that you get are pictures that you didn't know existed.

Speaker 1:

Writing information down and making sure it's documented is important. I am so frustrated every time I hear that there was another executive order written wiping something out or making sure that something is buried or lost or forgotten. I'm not going to have that on my watch Now. I can't fix things that are happening on a federal level, but I can fix things that I know about. I can record things after I write them down and I can put them places where other people can see them. I have a YouTube channel and I've never really publicized that, but I'm going to start doing that. I'm going to start putting information that is important somewhere where I own it, where it can be documented, where it can be uploaded and other people can see it.

Speaker 1:

You have information like that about your family. You might not think it's important. Like that about your family, you might not think it's important, but consider this Most of what we know about how people who were enslaved were treated in America comes from 17 volumes of information that was written during the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration Act to hire people who wrote, and there were 17 states where people who had been enslaved were interviewed and their pictures were taken and they are in books and they are in the Library of Congress and nobody's going to go in there and wipe out those books. But those books have also been printed. They're in all types of different spaces libraries and bookstores and you might have a family member in there that you don't know anything about. It is so, so very important that you document who you are, who your parents were, what you did what they did as far back as you can. You have some memories and you have some people still around who remember them. You have some memories and you need to go back and dig some stuff up that you've done.

Speaker 1:

This is not a time to be quiet. This is not a time to just boycott a store. This is time to make sure that you document your part of America's history, whether that's your personal part, your immediate family part or going back even further. So those things that you think are not important, when you're going through grandma's closet or the stuff that your mom left you before you put them in the trash, go through, record them, write it down. If you're with some elders, take your phone out, record what they have to say and write it down. It's just important. Our history is a combined history of all people black, white, male, female, asian immigrant, male, female, asian immigrant, whatever but the history of America is not the history of white men and we cannot be quiet about that anymore. You've been listening to Quiet no More, where I share my journey. So you can be quiet. Let's connect at.