One of the most vivid and influential personalities in the formative years of the Carolina shag.
Malcolm Ray “Chicken” Hicks, born November 27, 1925, in Durham, became one of the most vivid and influential personalities in the formative years of the Carolina shag, a dance style that developed along the coastal communities of the Carolinas in the mid-twentieth century. Raised in Durham, particularly in and around the Hayti district, Hicks was exposed at an early age to African American music and dance traditions, including the jitterbug, which deeply shaped his
Photographs taken in recent years show two “ghost signs” in Bethel — painted wall ads on Main Street and on Railroad Street.
Hines Ice Cream in Bethel, North Carolina, survives today more as a fragment of local memory than as a running factory, its presence marked by faded brick-wall advertisements and the occasional recollection in regional histories. Once part of a broader East Carolina network of small to mid-sized creameries that supplied drugstores, confectioneries, and grocery counters across the region, the Hines name appears in period
