Abstract: Stan Woodward is a southern auteur and documentary filmmaker. The Woodward Studio Limited produces documentaries on southern folk culture through the themes of American foodway and related traditions. In the 1980s, Woodward served as director of the Media Arts Center and the Communication Wing at the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C., where he got to know animator Chuck Jones. Woodward also worked as filmmaker-in-residence in Georgia, South Carolina, and other locations where he was involved in mentoring independent filmmakers and advising classroom teachers on how to teach students to create Super 8mm films. In the 1990s, Woodward worked on productions of Satellite Distance Learning Broadcasts for various television networks. The R. Stanley Woodward Collection consists of about 1400 items created or collected by Woodward, 1932-2004, including films, moving image materials, production notes, distribution and licensing contracts, and promotional and educational materials related to his films and other work promoting independent filmmaking. Films cover a wide range of topics, including southern food traditions; southern families, storytelling, folklore, and customs; African American dance and folk art; NASA, the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, the Skylab Program, and astronauts; media programs on the novel To Kill a Mockingbird ; educational films; teaching filmmaking to students; the Capital Children’s Museum; the University of South Carolina; serpents; and sharecroppers. Locations include South Carolina; Virginia; Georgia; North Carolina; Kentucky; Washington, D.C.; New York City; and Alabama. Some of the people associated with the films are food critic Craig Claiborne, John A. Burrison, filmmaker Frank Eastes, John Egerton, Harold Hausenfluck, Fred Wolfe, animator Chuck Jones, Richard Pillsbury, and folklorist Saddler Taylor. The moving image materials are in various media formats, including 16mm print film, DVCAM video, U-Matic video, Betacam SP video, Digital Betacam video, MiniDV video, VHS video, and DVDs. Descriptions have been derived from the original container, film, video, or notes.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: This collection contains materials related to African American dance and folk art. In Series 1, about the tradition of Brunswick Stew in Georgia, Videotape VT-20446/262-267 contains an author’s note about meeting with an African American stewmaster.

Series 2 focuses on Southern Stews and Videotape VT-20446/35-37 depicts the cooking of Frogmore Stew by the African American Faulkenberry family and a neighboring chef in Saint Helena, S.C.

There is also a 1971 film in Subseries 6.1 (Video and Film) entitled Afro-American Dance: Establishing A Cultural Heritage (Film F-20446/17)

Abstract: The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources is the state agency responsible for arts, history, and library programs; among its divisions is the State Library of North Carolina. The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources films collection documents a variety of topics, some relating to North Carolina and others to the wider world, covered in films made by a variety of filmmakers, 1951-1988. Topics include folklife, folk dancing, folklore, and folk art in various parts of the world; tattooing; women’s folklore; African American history, culture, and music; Indians of North America; Canadian Iroquois Indians; Aboriginal Australians; folk, gospel, jazz, and blues music; folk singers and composers Woody Guthrie, Elizabeth Cotten, and Malvina Reynolds; gospel singer Mahalia Jackson; various religious communities; Colonial Williamsburg; poet Carl Sandburg; filmmaker Tom Davenport; and the social life and customs of the American South. All of the films are 16mm commercial release prints with sound. Both narrative and documentary films are represented.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Several of the films in this collection relate to African American history and  culture. A few examples include

Afro-American Music: Its Heritage (1969): This film traces the history and evolution of black American music from enslavement to contemporary music ( Film 20448/22)

Black Genesis: The Art of Tribal Africa (1970 ): The film shows masks, carving sculptures, statues, drawings jewelry and tattoo art of different areas of tribal Africa, as well as songs and musical rhythms (F-20448/15)

Black Music in America: From Then Till Now (1987):  traces the evolution of African American music from its African origins today and showcases  of Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Leadbelly, Count Basie, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Billie Holiday, Cannonball Adderley, and others (F-20448/60)

 

 

 

 

Abstract: Benjamin F. Swalin (1901-1989) was conductor and director of the North Carolina Symphony, musician, composer, performer, author, teacher, and advocate for music in North Carolina. His wife, Maxine M. Swalin (1903-2009), also an accomplished musician, supported the work of the North Carolina Symphony as its executive assistant for many years. The collection contains biographical information, writings, correspondence, subject files, and photographs of Benjamin F. Swalin and Maxine M. Swalin. Materials document Benjamin F. Swalin’s life from childhood through his music studies, teaching career at the University of North Carolina, and his 33 years as conductor and director with the North Carolina Symphony. Published and unpublished writings include notes, poetry, musical scores, and materials relating to Benjamin F. Swalin’s Hard Circus Road (1987), a history of the North Carolina Symphony, and to Maxine M. Swalin’s An Ear to Myself (1996), a reminiscence of her childhood in Iowa and life with her husband and with the North Carolina Symphony. Correspondence chiefly concerns North Carolina Symphony operations and the Swalins’ social and professional relationships with acquaintances and advocates in the arts and legal communities. Subject files include materials relating to the Symphony, especially Benjamin Swalin’s forced retirement in 1971; a run of Symphony Stories that Adeline McCall wrote for the Symphony’s Children’s Concert Division, 1950-1973; items relating to music education and appreciation in North Carolina; and other materials. Photographs document the Swalins from early childhood to old age.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folders 16 – 18 contain various addresses and articles, some of which includes drafts of “Music in a Chaotic World,” which addresses racial conflict, war attitudes, and other social dilemmas in North Carolina.

Folders 248 – 249 contain  a summary of legislation efforts made by Benjamin F. Swalin, and  his discussion of the challenges surrounding the use of state busses during the 1960s to transport African American children to desegregated symphony concerts in areas of North Carolina where “mixed” audiences were not permitted; and drafts of his Jukebox bill.

Folder 371, entitled “American Black Music, includes notes and research gathered on African American art and music used in creating “Painted Music”, a performance by Maxine Swalin

Folder 376, “Black Art,” contains articles, picture postcards, and handwritten notes about African American art for “Painted Music”.

Abstract: The Grigsby family of North Carolina and South Carolina; New Haven, Conn.; Detroit, Mich.; and Phoenix, Ariz., descend from Fred Grigsby (b. 1867), the son of a former slave. The Grigsby family papers consist of correspondence and invitations, funeral and school materials, newspaper clippings and other printed biographical material, photographs, and other materials documenting the Grigsby family, especially publicist, civil rights activist, and editor Snow F. Grigsby, artist and art educator J. Eugene Grigsby (Gene), school principal J. E. Grigsby and school teacher Purry Leone Dixon Grigsby, and the family of teacher Miriam Grigsby Bates. Educational achievement is the central theme of the collection, in evidence in transcripts, diplomas, and photographs of family members receiving degrees. Other education-related materials include a letter from one Grigsby generation to the next providing personal insights on Langston Hughes for a research paper; a 1938 photograph of Purry Leone Dixon Grigsby teaching in a Biddleville (Charlotte, N.C.) elementary school classroom; and a small amount of material relating to the School Workers Federal Credit Union, which was founded in 1941 in Charlotte, N.C., by J. E. Grigsby, for African American teachers and employees of the public school system. Also of note are a 1942 living letter recorded at a USO Club; a 1980 letter that included a then-confidential list of the Detroit chapter of Tuskegee Airmen; a copy of a 1980 letter from Snow F. Grigsby to fellow Republican Strom Thurmond on racism, politics, and the economy; a CORE sit-in songs (Congress of Racial Equality) booklet; and the 1942 program for the women’s West End Book Club of Charlotte, N.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The DeRosset family descended from French Huguenot Armand John DeRosset, who immigrated to the American colonies in the 1730s and settled in Wilmington, N.C., where four generations of DeRossets worked as physicians and

merchants. Family members included Armand John DeRosset (1767-1859) and his wife Catherine Fullerton DeRosset (1773-1837) and children Moses John (1796-1826), Catherine Fullerton Kennedy (1800-1889), Eliza Ann (1802-1888), Magdalen Mary (1806-1850), and Mary Jane Curtis (1813-1903). Also included were Armand John DeRosset (1807-1897), his wife Eliza Jane Lord DeRosset (1812-1876), and their children, Katherine Douglas Meares (1830-1914) and Louis Henry (1840-1875) and Louis’s wife Marie Trapier Finley DeRosset (1844-1870) and daughter Gabrielle de Gondin Waddell (b. 1863). DeRosset family papers, chiefly 1821-1877, relating to family life and social, religious, political, and military activities of DeRossets in Wilmington and Hillsborough, N.C.; Columbia, S.C.; New York, N.Y.; and other locations. Included is correspondence of several generations of DeRosset women, documenting the education of children, family health, fashion, social events, religious opinions, and household problems. Other correspondence relates to mercantile partnerships in Wilmington and New York City; family members’ relocation to England because of interests in the Wilmington and Weldon Rail Road after the American Civil War; the family rice plantation in Brunswick County, N.C.; and slaves in North Carolina and South Carolina. Civil War era letters describe hardships on the homefront and shipping goods from Bermuda through the Union blockade of Wilmington. Included are some letters written by slaves. Some Reconstruction era letters discuss activities of former DeRosset slaves. Also included is correspondence with British author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was a family friend. Financial and legal materials include papers documenting land transactions; papers relating to slave sales and a volume listing births and deaths of DeRosset slaves, 1770-1854; wills and estate papers; and military commissions. Of special interest are a group of French documents, including a 1671 marriage contract and an 1817 deed of emancipation for a Charleston, S.C., slave. Other materials include records, 1801-1806, of the Nine-Penny Whist Club of Wilmington; a Civil War narrative describing running the Wilmington blockade; scattered diaries of DeRosset women; and materials relating to the history of Saint James Episcopal Church, Wilmington. The Addition of 2007 consists of Moses John DeRosset’s travel diary documenting a trip to western Europe in 1854; Moses John DeRosset’s autograph album containing autographs and quotes from schoolmates, 1855-1863; Adelaide S. Meares’s autograph album containing autographs and quotes from schoolmates at the Patapsco Female Institute in Maryland; diplomas and certificates, 1850s-1870s.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence includes letters, discussing the hiring out of slaves written to the De Rossets by their slaves in Wilmington, North Carolina (1861-1864) and activities of freed slaves (1865-1871). Financial materials include slave bills of sale; a deed of emancipation for a Charleston, South Carolina slave (1817); and a slave record listing births and deaths of De Rosset family slaves (1790-1854). The collection also includes four prints of charcoal drawings of African Americans by H. P. Kimball.

Abstract: Francois Mignon (given name Frank VerNooy Mineah) was born in 1899 in Cortland, N.Y. He was a journalist and curator of buildings, furnishings, and gardens at Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, La. Melrose was a working cotton and pecan plantation, but it was best known in the period between the two World Wars as a writers’ and artists’ colony. Cammie Henry, who bought the plantation in 1899, restored its unique collection of African-inspired buildings. These structures sheltered such authors as Lyle Saxon, James Register, Harnett Kane, Alexander Woollcott, and Rachel Field. Mignon began writing his own weekly column for the Natchitoches Enterprise in the 1950s. In addition to his writing, Mignon designed the gardens at Melrose and promoted the African American folk artist Clementine Hunter. The collection includes Mignon’s journal and correspondence from about 1939 to 1980. Also included are photographs, printed materials, newspapers clippings, writings and other materials collected by, written by, or relating to Mignon and his diverse interests. Mignon’s journal began with his arrival at Melrose Plantation in 1939 and continued until February 1970, when the plantation was sold. Many of the ideas Mignon first expressed in his journal later appeared in his newspaper column, which dealt chiefly with Natchitoches, La., history and traditions. Persons significant in the collection include James Register; the Louisiana naturalist Caroline Dorman; the Louisiana filmmaker Caroline Ramsey; a black soldier named King Solomon, who grew up at Melrose; Eleanor Roosevelt (2 items); Rachel Field; Harnett Thomas Kane; Lyle Saxon; and Alexander Woollcott. After 1970, the correspondence is chiefly from readers of Mignon’s weekly newspaper column and his responses. In addition to these materials, the collection contains the original manuscript of B.L.C. Wailes’s “Report on the Agriculture and Geology of Mississippi” (1854) and letters from Wailes’s granddaughter to Mignon. Also included are 19th-century documents and genealogical information relating to the Metoyer family, which originally built the plantation later called Melrose.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular interest are Folders 576 – 577, describing Mingnon’s work promoting African American female artist Clementine Hunter, who became the first African American woman to have a one-person show at New Orleans’s Delgado Museum. Correspondence in Series 1 includes letters from an African American soldier named King Solomon, who grew up on Melrose Plantation in Louisiana.

Abstract: Operating broadly in the areas of health, education, and the arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation has, beginning in the late 1970s, supported the work of institutions, local groups, and individuals in eastern Tennessee and throughout the South. The Foundation has encouraged education initiatives, centers, and leaders; environmental protection and improvement activities and organizations; community health, development, and minority improvement programs, centers, and leaders; and cultural events, centers, leaders, documentation, and interpretation. Files relating to programs, projects, grants, etc., in which the Lyndhurst Foundation has been involved. Included are grant proposals, correspondence, tax records, reports, pamphlets, brochures, seminar agendas, and other materials. There are also materials relating to Lyndhurst Foundation boards, 1978-1997, including minutes of board meetings, monthly budgets, and grant proposals and evaluations. The additions of May and June 1999 contain records of Southern Community Partners, Inc., a program funded by the Lyndhurst Foundation to support young people trying to strengthen their communities through working with public schools, developing community service programs, or connecting the arts with community organizing.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Operating broadly in the areas of health, education, and the arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation has supported institutions, local groups, and individuals in eastern Tennessee and throughout the South. Files relating to community health, minority improvement programs, and related materials are available.

There are several files related to various groups, such as the Chattanooga Afro-American Heritage Council and the Chattanooga Afro-American Museum, and the Chattanooga Urban League. See particularly Boxes 33, 59, and 64.

Abstract: Opelika Pictures is a film company founded by New York-based filmmaker Macky Alston (Wallace McPherson Alston III). Alston directed the documentary film, “Family Name,” which examines the links between himself and the descendants of former slaves in North Carolina who share the Alston name. Records of Opelika Pictures are comprised of research and genealogy notes, audio and video tapes, film, record albums, publications, photographs, business and personal correspondence, and clippings associated with the making of “Family Name.” Included are photographs of the work of artist Charles Henry Alston and interviews with his sisters and others who knew him. There are also photographs and taped interviews with Macky Alston and members of his family.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights:  Included are photographs of the work of  African American artist Charles Henry Alston and interviews with his sisters and other contemporaries (Box 15 & 16). There are also research files in Series 1 (Papers) on Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King Jr., and other individuals. Also included is an 1843 publication “Psalms & Hymns” (Box 1).

The Southern Historical Collection has a collection of materials, drawings, and documents related to Charles Alston. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection.

Abstract: African-American artist Charles Henry Alston, nicknamed “Spinky,” was born 28 November 1907 in Charlotte, N.C. He was the youngest of five children born to the Reverend Primus Priss Alston, who was born into slavery in Chatham County, N.C., and Anna Miller Alston. After Primus’s death, Anna married Harry Pierce Bearden, artist Romare Bearden’s uncle, and moved the family to New York in 1913. Charles Alston worked as a painter, sculptor, graphic artist, illustrator, and educator, gaining national and international recognition. His works are found among the holdings of individuals and permanent museum and gallery collections around the world. Alston married Myra Logan, a noted surgeon at Harlem Hospital. The collection includes artwork, photographs, correspondence, exhibition catalogs, and publications documenting the life and work of Charles Alston. Included are materials pertaining to Charles’s father, Primus Priss Alston; his wife, surgeon Myra Logan; and other Alston and Logan family members and associates. Also included are letters from Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and Hubert Humphrey; cartoons Alston created for the United States Office of War Information during World War II; items relating to commissioned mural paintings; and non-commercial photographs featuring James Earl Jones, Joe Louis, and Lena Horne, all at young ages.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes artwork, photographs, correspondence, exhibition catalogs, and publications documenting the life and work of Charles Alston. Included are materials pertaining to Charles’s father, Primus Priss Alston; his wife, surgeon Myra Logan; and other Alston and Logan family members and associates. Also included are letters from Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and Hubert Humphrey; cartoons Alston created for the United States Office of War Information during World War II; items relating to commissioned mural paintings; and non-commercial photographs featuring James Earl Jones, Joe Louis, and Lena Horne, all at young ages.

Abstract: Dashiell of Richmond, Va., was an illustrator of scenes in Richmond, Va., Charleston, S.C., and New Orleans, La.; an importer of French fashion prints; and a business woman. Correspondence, 1921-1948, with various literary and artistic figures, including Ellen Glasgow; watercolor illustrations; poems; and French fashion prints, 1798-1914.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Many of the watercolors in Subseries 2.1 depict African Americans working  in Richmond, Va, and New Orleans, LA, including domestic servants caring for children.