Come see the history of deep-fried Snickers and NC’s largest pumpkin

When visiting the North Carolina State Fair, you may have devoured a giant turkey leg on the midway, cheered a favorite piglet in the pig races, or gawked at produce that’s bigger than your head. Whatever your favorite thing about the fair might be, countless North Carolinians look forward to it every fall.

Come enjoy a look at the State Fair from its founding in 1853 as an educational institution through the decades to today’s entertainment spectacle in “A Fair to Remember,” a new exhibit in the Hill Library’s Exhibit Gallery. The exhibit considers why we love the fair so much, who the fair is for, and how agricultural education is conducted throughout the state. And it promises plenty of cute farm animals pics!

Join the Libraries to celebrate the exhibit’s opening on Thursday, March 27 in the Hill Library’s Exhibit Gallery. The opening begins at 1:00 p.m., remarks begin at 1:30 p.m, and light refreshments will be provided. The opening is free and open to the public.

“Researching this exhibit, I was consistently surprised to learn about the spectacle in and around the fair,” says curator Karina Burbank, a Public History M.A. student who worked with the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) on the exhibit. “Even though the fair was founded for education, there have always been opportunities for people to let loose a little. From its early days in the mid-nineteenth century to now, there have been parades, pageants, duels, hot air balloon parachuting, flaming stunt cars, and so much more.”

“There are a lot of great photographs that show the fairgrounds and some of the events and activities that occurred there, especially for the entire span of the twentieth century,” says University Archivist Todd Kosmerick who, along with Gwynn Thayer, SCRC Associate Head and Chief Curator, provided direction, guidance, and advice to Burbank on content development and research. “One thing I like about exhibits is that when we reproduce photos, we can enlarge them for display. Then you can see some of the details of what was going on in the background.”

Looking at early fair images, you’ll notice that the State Fair hasn’t always been at its current location. The next time you walk out the Hillsborough Street doors of the Hill Library, you will be facing the previous location of the fair. The fairgrounds was right across the street and hosted the State Fair until 1928. The fair’s original location was in east Raleigh. After burning down during the Civil War, that fairgrounds was repaired but the fair outgrew it.

The exhibit also tells the story of two segregated fairs. Prevented from exhibiting, local Black leaders gathered in a Raleigh barbershop to found the North Carolina Industrial Association (NCIA) in 1879. The NCIA State Fair—referred to as the “Negro State Fair” in white newspapers—was a place for Black farmers, business owners, and craftspeople to gather, as well as a way to showcase the value of their labor to influential white politicians. Although it achieved state funding for a time, the NCIA State Fair ran into funding shortfalls and political opposition and stopped functioning by 1931. It wouldn’t be until 1948 that a Black section of the State Fair would be created, and desegregation of the fair didn’t happen until 1965.

“There is a lot of hidden history that Karina brings to light in the exhibit,” Kosmerick says. “Even though there are historical markers on Hillsborough Street, many people today don't know that there was an Army tank training camp next to campus during World War I or that there was an African-American fair during the Jim Crow era that was parallel to the official State Fair—and that it featured such prominent people as Frederick Douglass, no less!”

Both Burbank and Kosmerick have loved going to fairs both in Raleigh and elsewhere. While Burbank has discovered a love for miniature flower arranging in thimbles at the State Fair, Kosmerick has been more enamored of the farm animals and the Tilt-o-Whirl. Burbank hopes that, after seeing this exhibit, people will have even more fun at the State Fair this fall.

“Visiting the State Fair in 2024, while I was knee-deep in archival research about the State Fair, was a really amazing experience for me,” she says. “I hope that visitors to the exhibit will get a chance to share in that feeling next time they go to the fair. It's a really cool feeling to walk through the fairground and think about who the State Fair was created for, the very active role that the State Fair had in shaping North Carolina's history, and to remember some of the really incredible stories that helped shape our experiences today.”