News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 20 August 1930.

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Members of the Ayers family were among a handful of families in the Lucama area who transitioned from black to white racial classification in the early 1900s. Bertha Ayers‘ grandfather Jesse Ayers was described as colored as late as 1914, and her aunt Harriet Ayers‘ had been prosecuted for marrying a white man in 1895. By 1920, however, this set of Ayerses had gained acceptance within the white community.