Abstract: John Kenyon Chapman (1947-2009), known as Yonni, was a life-long social justice activist, organizer, and historian who focused his academic and social efforts on workers rights and African American empowerment in central North Carolina. Chapman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 1947; graduated from Harvard University in 1969; and then moved to Atlanta, Ga., to join the fight for African American equality. He relocated to North Carolina in 1975 and worked as a laboratory technician at the North Carolina Memorial Hospital for about ten years. During this time, Chapman became active in local social justice struggles and community organizations. He helped organize his coworkers against unfair working conditions, became involved with the Communist Workers Party, and participated in African liberation and anti-apartheid struggles. Chapman was a survivor of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979. Throughout the 1980s, he was active in progressive social justice campaigns. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chapman was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he focused his activism and academic work on historical accuracy, African American empowerment, and civil rights education in and around Chapel Hill. During this time, Chapman founded and directed two racial and social justice organizations: the Freedom Legacy Project in 1995 and the Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth in 2005. From 2002 to 2005, Chapman ran a successful campaign to abolish the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award on campus, an action that opened a dialogue about the history of slavery and racism on campus. After a 30-year battle with cancer, Chapman died on 22 October 2009 in Chapel Hill. The collection documents Yonni Chapman’s social activism and academic activities, covering nearly four decades of progressive racial, social, and economic justice struggles in central North Carolina. Organizational correspondence, notes, newsletters, and reports document the activities of the Communist Workers Party, the Federation for Progress, the Orange County Rainbow Coalition of Conscience, the New Democratic Movement, the Freedom Legacy Project, and the Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth, among other organizations on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus and in Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh, and Greensboro. Workers rights and racial justice campaigns and commemorations, including the Greensboro Massacre and the campaign to end the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award on campus, are documented in paper, audio, visual, and photographic formats. Photographs, slides, contact prints, photographic negatives, posters, banners, signs, and screen-printed t-shirts, chiefly created by Chapman, document a variety of demonstrations, meetings, and social justice events. Audio and video materials, largely created by Chapman include documentaries, meetings, speeches, and demonstrations captured on audio cassettes, VHS tapes, 8mm video cassettes, and DVDs. Research materials for Chapman’s graduate doctoral work include audio and paper files of interviews with participants in the Chapel Hill civil rights movement. There are also audio files recorded by Chapman on a digital voice recorder in the year leading up to his death that contain lengthy discussions with local activists about continuing his social justice work after his death; audio recordings and a video photograph montage from Chapman’s 2009 memorial service; photographs of Chapman with friends and family; and other items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular note are the materials related to the Communist Party in Series 1, as well as materials documenting the Greensboro Massacre that took place at an anti-Klan Rally in 1970. Series 6 also contains materials related to numerous social justice and civil rights organizations that Yonni Chapman was involved in, including the Chapel Hill- Carrboro chapter of the NAACP. Subseries 7.1 contains audio recordings of oral histories interviews Yonni conducted with participants in the black freedom struggle and civil rights movement in Chapel Hill. There are also photographs and audio of numerous civil rights demonstrations, events, and programs.

Abstract: Raymond Bowden Mallard was born in Faison, N.C., in 1908. He was an attorney, state legislator, North Carolina Superior Court judge, and first chief judge of the North Carolina State Court of Appeals. Mallard died in 1979 in Tabor City, N.C. The collection documents Raymond B. Mallard’s judicial career and related civic activities. Materials include correspondence; briefs and other legal documents for a variety of cases, most of which probably duplicate the official records that are filed with the North Carolina Court System; writings; court notes; his diary from the Superior Court special terms of 1964; informal notes and annotations on envelopes and other materials; speeches; newspaper clippings; and photographs, including a few relating to the civil rights protests in Chapel Hill, N.C. The bulk of the materials documents Mallard’s judicial career on the North Carolina Superior Court and the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Topics include the establishment and function of the Court of Appeals; the trials stemming from the civil rights demonstrations in Chapel Hill; the North Carolina Civil Rights Advisory Committee’s reports on African American participation in instrumentalities of justice and voting history; judicial responsibility for protection of rights of the defendant in high profile cases; preparation and delivery of jury charges; inherent powers of the courts of North Carolina; the Henderson Cotton Mills trials; conflicts with the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI); inmate requests for parole and Mallard’s opinions on criminal recidivism; his interest in student activism on campus; and the North Carolina Bar Association position on legal aid clinics. The collection also documents Mallard’s early work as an attorney for the town of Tabor City, N.C., and board of trustee matters at Pembroke State College, including the conflict over administrative decisions and planning that purportedly diminished the roles and presence of Native Americans at the school.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folders 186-188, 196, 197 document cases in the Superior Court relating to Civil Rights. Folders 206-233 particularly contain legal documentation, clippings, letters, and other materials related to the Civil Rights protests in Chapel Hill in 1964.

Image Folder PF-5518/1 also contains a number of photographs of the protests from 1964.

Abstract: The Lewis family arrived in Raleigh, N.C., in 1923, when John D. Lewis Sr. took a job as a district manager for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company of Durham, N.C. He and his wife, Luella Alice Cox Lewis, and their two children, J.D. Lewis (John D. Lewis Jr.) (1919-2007) and Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004), lived in southeast Raleigh and were members of First Baptist Church. J.D. Lewis was a Morehouse College graduate, one of the first African American members of the United States Marine Corps, and the first African American radio and television personality, corporate director of personnel, and director of minority affairs for WRAL of the Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC). J.D. Lewis also worked as the special markets representative for the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company; as the project director of GROW, Incorporated, a federally funded program for high school dropouts; and as the coordinator of manpower planning for the state of North Carolina. Lewis was active in many civic and community organizations as well. Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004) graduated from the Palmer Institute for Young Women and Hampton Institute. She built a successful and celebrated career as a choreographer and professor of dance at the University of Michigan. The collection consists of papers, photographs, and audiovisual materials that chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s working life and the civic and community organizations he supported. Lewis’s career is documented by materials from Capitol Broadcasting Company, including editorials he wrote and produced; GROW, Incorporated; Manpower; Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company; National Association of Market Developers; and the National Business League. Lewis’s civic leadership is evident in records of the Raleigh Community Relations Committee, which worked to integrate Raleigh public schools; political campaigns; and the Team of Progress, a group interested in political leadership at the city and county levels of government. Community organizations represented in the collection include the Garner Road YMCA; Alpha Kappa Alpha Debutante Ball; the Eastside Neighborhood Task Force; the Citizens Committee on Schools; Omega Psi Phi; and Meadowbrook Country Club, which was founded in 1959 by a small group of African American community leaders. Other materials document the Method Post Office dedication in 1965; the Montford Point Marine Association; and a youth charrette, possibly on integration of Durham schools. There are also clippings and printed materials on such topics as black power, African American history, Morehouse College, and Shaw University. There are several issues of Perfect Home, a home design and decorating magazine published by John W. Winters, a real estate broker, home builder, city councilman, state senator, and civic leader. Family materials are mainly biographical and include newspaper clippings, funeral programs, school materials, awards and certificates, and photographs. There are a few family letters, including one from 1967 with a first-hand account of rioting on Twelfth Street in Detroit and a copy of a 10 January 1967 letter in which the Lewis family opposed the selection of Mark Twain’s Mississippi Melody for student performance on the grounds that it perpetuated stereotyped images of African Americans. Photographs include portraits and snapshots of four generations of the Lewis and related Cox families, documenting family life from the 1910s through the 2000s. There are non-family group portraits of Omega Psi Phi members of Durham, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company employees on its 21st anniversary, and of unidentified groups at other civic and community events. There is one folder of J.D. Lewis photographs that depict him in various work contexts. Also included is a portrait of a young Clarence Lightner, who owned a funeral home business and later served as the first African American mayor of Raleigh. Audiovisual materials chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s work at Capitol Broadcasting Company/WRAL and his interest in African American community and history. Included are audiotapes of his editorials for WRAL; videotape of Harambee, a public affairs program about the concerns of the general public and especially African Americans; audiotape of musical performances, possibly for Teen-Age Frolic, a teenage dance and variety show; audiotape of Adventures in Negro History, an event sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Raleigh; and film of unidentified wedding and seashore scenes. Also included are several published educational film strips on African American history with accompanying audio.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular note are the letters J.D. Lewis received from musicians and students desiring to appear on Teen-Age Frolic, the dance/variety show Lewis hosted on WRAL (Folder 140). There are also numerous editorials Lewis did during his years as a broadcaster, on a variety of topics (Folders 21-140). Additionally, there is corresponding audio for many of these transcripts (See Series 3).

Folder 16 also contains a 1967 letter with a first-hand account of the rioting in Detroit and a copy of a 10 January 1967 letter in which the Lewis family opposed the selection of Mark Twain’s Mississippi Melody for a school-wide student performance on the grounds “it will by no means further relationships in an integrated situation, where students as a whole, do not have a sufficient background or appreciation of Negro History to comprehend this as perhaps an exaggerrated situation of a particular and past era, but rather, would perpetuate an image already deeply established as stereotyped.”

There are also numerous photographs of the Lewis and Cox Family, including J.D. and Vera Lewis’s father during his time at Morehouse College. There are also photographs of J.D. Lewis on the set of Teen-Age Frolic, introducing different bands, and at different community events (Image folders 1-10).

Abstract: Daniel Hubbard Pollitt (1921-2010) was a law professor, civil liberties lawyer, progressive activist, and staunch advocate and defender of civil liberties and civil rights. The collection documents Daniel H. Pollitt’s legal career and his scholarly and public service interests and activities. The bulk of the collection consists of Pollitt’s subject files. Major topics include ABSCAM and other congressional ethics controversies; amnesty for draft dodgers and deserters; planning a law school with a focus on public service; civil rights, especially school desegregration and employment discrimination; the death penalty in North Carolina; government employee strikes; self-incrimination and the House Un-American Activities Committee, especially with regard to Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller; Hobby v. United States, a case about grand jury foreman selection that Pollitt argued before the United States Supreme Court; impeachment; labor, especially the reorganization of the National Labor Relations Board, migrant workers, and the Brookside Mine Strike in Harlan County, Ky.; the North Carolina speaker ban; and Supreme Court nominations. Numerous other topics are covered in these files, many of which concern narrower aspects of constitutional law, such as separation of church and state and search and seizure. Subject files also document long collaborations with a number of legal scholars, civil liberties attorneys, and government officials, including Congressman Frank Thompson, as well as Pollitt’s work with academic associations, government agencies, and civil liberties and civil rights groups, and his teaching career and his service to the University of North Carolina. Other smaller series in the collection include Biographical Materials; Correspondence and People Files, which refer to legal cases, writings, and career activities and developments of Pollitt and others, including Joseph L. Rauh Jr., Henry Edgerton, and H.L. Mitchell; Writings, which overlap considerably with the Subject Files; and Photographs, which are chiefly of Pollitt.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: There are a number of materials that deal with civil rights, civil liberties, employment discrimination, and social justice in this collection. Folder 86 contains correspondence regarding Pollitt’s analysis of school desegregation legislation in Arkansas. Folder 105 contains correspondence with Julius Chambers, former chancellor of North Carolina Central University.

Speech topics include the KKK and the Lumbee Indians (Folder 186), racial discrimination in employment practices (Folder 198) , and legal issues in school desegregation in the South (Folder 192). There are also various subject files related to African American history and civil rights organizations in Chapel Hill (Folders 325, 331). Several subject files deal with civil rights issues in Chapel Hill and throughout the South (Folders 337-350). There are also numerous files related to the death penalty in North Carolina, including discussions of race and subject files related to particular individuals (see Folders 618-740).

 

Abstract: George C. Stoney (1916- ), a documentary filmmaker who specialized in socially relevant films, was a mentor and teacher to generations of filmmakers and media activists worldwide and a pioneer in the movement for the creation and use of public access television to enact social change. The collection consists of papers chiefly relating to George C. Stoney’s professional work as a documentary filmmaker, teacher, and early advocate of public access television. Correspondence, 1944-1993 (bulk 1960-1990), is chiefly work-related in content, though many of Stoney’s correspondents were long-time friends and colleagues and wrote personally as well. Letters, 1944-1945, from Stoney to his future wife, Mary Bruce (1926-2004), are chiefly personal in nature and include love letters, but also, to a lesser extent, describe Stoney’s experiences as a photo intelligence officer with the 8th United States Army Air Forces in England, France, Belgium, and Germany. Correspondence between Stoney and his long-time companion Betty Puleston (d. 2009), 1967-1968, also blend description of personal and working life. Subject files comprise the bulk of the collection and include materials relating to films Stoney wrote, directed, and/or produced for the Southern Educational Film Production Service and George C. Stoney Associates. Topics include sexually transmitted disease; outreach programs of the Methodist Church; cardiovascular healthcare; education; community mental health; race relations in the South; police training; old age and retirement; midwifery; urban redevelopment in New York, N.Y., Philadelphia, Pa., Pittsburgh, Pa., and Washington, D.C.; and other social issues. Some of Stoney’s early work as a journalist and social researcher is also documented in essays, a report on race relations in Mississippi, and materials relating to his work for the Farm Security Administration. Subject files also document classes and workshops Stoney taught, especially at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, and his involvement with the growth of public access and local cable television, the Challenge for Change project of the National Film Board of Canada, the Alternate Media Center, and the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers. Additionally, there are film treatments and research materials for prospective projects and printed and other material relating to the documentary film and cable television industries. Loose papers, 1980-1990s, consist of memobooks that likely relate to Stoney’s filmmaking, and clippings, reports, readings, conference advertisements, miscellaneous printed materials, handwritten notes, and writings by others that are not clearly connected to his film projects or cable and public access advocacy work. Photographs depict the documentary filmmaking process for several of Stoney’s films, public access projects and the Alternate Media Center, the work of Farm Security Administration photographers in the South in the early 1940s, and Stoney’s family life. The audio-visual materials consist of films, tapes, and sound reels from various Stoney productions, 1950s-1990s.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 675 contains some of Stoney’s work as a Southern field assistant for Gunner Myrdal’s study on race relations in the U.S., An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.

There are a number of Subject Files that relate to Stoney’s research for Myrdal’s study as well as many of Stoney’s own films. There are several that deal with race relations and various topics:Folder 162 (Auburn, Ala./Race Relations and the Methodist Church, 1963); Folder 214 (Brewster Methodist Hospital (Jacksonville, Fla.)/Race Relations and the Methodist Church, 1963); Folder 216 (Bunche, Ralph: Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR (1973)); Folders 625-626 (Kytle, Calvin, 1947, 1960, 1973 – materials related to anti-discrimination protests and land use); Folder 666-667 (Methodist Church 1962– Chiefly concerning “The Church and the Inner City”); Folders 752-760 (Newspaper Clippings, 1960s-1980s – dealing with issues such as segregation, race relations, and Christianity)

Several of Stoney’s films also discuss the African American community and various topics. Notable documentaries include All My Babies and The Shepard of the Night Flock

All My Babies (1953) was an award winning film that focuses on An African American midwife. Folder 101-113, 671-672, 887,  contains articles, correspondence, and other materials related to the film. Folder PF-4970/1-3 contain photographs related to the film. There is a copy of the film as well (Film F-4970/203).

The Shepard of the Night Flock (1975) is a documentary discussing the life of Father Joseph Gensel and his role ministering to the Jazz community in New York. Influential musicians such as Duke Ellington appear in this film. There is a Reference folder (between Folders 972 and 973) for this film. Subseries 5.2 contains numerous clips and edits from the feature film, as well as audio tapes of the performances featured in the film.

Abstract: Harvey E. Beech was born in Kinston, N.C., in 1923. He was a lawyer, philanthropist, and advocate of civil rights. While studying law in the early 1950s, Beech was asked to join a case against the University of North Carolina School of Law. In 1951, after a lengthy court battle, Beech and four other students became the first African Americans admitted to the UNC law school. He graduated in June 1952 and went on to practice law for more than 35 years. Harvey Beech died in August 2005. The collection includes letters and an student notebook from an English class. The notebook, with some pages dated 1939, includes a variety of coursework activities and exercises. Letters include a few addressed to Harvey Beech, 1980-1981, expressing gratitude for Beech’s campaign support for President Jimmy Carter and North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt; a few offering congratulations on Beech’s being chosen as “Citizen of the Year” in Kinston-Lenoir County; a 2002 letter thanking Beech and his wife for their contributions to the Free Press Newspaper in Education Literacy Program; and a 2004 letter thanking them for contributions to Bennett College.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Related collections on education and desegregation at UNC Chapel Hill include the J Kenneth Lee papers (4782), Karen Parker Papers (5275-z), Leroy Frasier Papers (4375-z), and the Floyd McKissick Papers (4930)

Abstract: You Got To Move is a documentary film released in 1985 about southern social justice activists and the Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, in New Market, Tenn. Lucie Massie Phenix directed and edited the film. The collection primarily contains research files compiled by Lucie Massie Phenix on people and communities featured in the documentary You Got To Move. There is a small amount of material relating to funding the film and scattered correspondence of Lucie Massie Phenix about the film. The collection also contains a DVD viewing copy of You Got To Move.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: You Got To Move features several individuals involved in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Bernice Johnson Reagon and Myles Horton.

Abstract: Robert L. Johnson (Robert L. Johnson Jr.) graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1952. In 1954, he was ordained in the United Methodist Church. The following year, Johnson received a master of divinity degree from the Union Theological School in New York City, N.Y. He also received a master of theology degree from the Harvard Divinity School in 1968. In 1957, Johnson was hired as the director of the Wesley Foundation in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he served for 18 years. The collection includes a scrapbook created by Robert L. Johnson primarily about the Reverend Charles Miles Jones, a Chapel Hill, N.C., minister involved in the civil rights movement. The scrapbook contains articles about Reverend Jones’s removal from the Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill, N.C., by the Orange Presbytery and other articles pertaining to clergy involved in the desegregation movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The collection also contains a dissertation by Andrew Niles McLean entitled “Collective Identity and Institutional Change in the Campus Ministry 1964-1973: Weaving the Cloak of Righteousness” (UCLA, 2000), which includes a chapter on Chapel Hill, and letters to Johnson, including two from Methodist bishops declining to become involved in the 1963 Speaker Ban debate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: An item of particular interest is a scrapbook created by Robert L. Johnson primarily about the Reverend Charles Miles Jones, a Chapel Hill, N.C., minister involved in the civil rights movement. The scrapbook contains articles about Reverend Jones’s removal from the Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill, N.C., by the Orange Presbytery and other articles pertaining to clergy involved in the desegregation movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Folder 3 contains a copy of “Dr. Shrader’s Statement to the Congregation” on desegregation, with comments by an unknown person

Abstract: Luther Hartwell Hodges began his career as an executive for Marshall Field & Comapny, 1919-1950. He was later consultant to the Economic Cooperation Administration, 1950-1951; lieutenant governor, 1953- 1954, and governor, 1956-1960, of North Carolina; United Sates Secretary of Commerce, 1961-1965; head of the Research Triangle Foundation, 1966-1972; and president of Rotary International, 1967-1968. Correspondence, subject files, political files, speeches and other writings, scrapbooks, and other private papers and audiovisual materials of Luther H. Hodges. Much of the material concerns Hodges’s years with Marshall Field & Comapny, 1919-1950; his work with Rotary International, 1930-1972; and his chairmanship of Research Triangle Foundation, 1966-1972. Also included are some letters about the Economic Cooperation Administration in post-World War II Germany; a small amount of family correspondence; political speeches Hodges made as governor and Secretary of Commerce; books by and about Hodges; scrapbooks of clippings about Hodges’s political career and about school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark., as well as in North Carolina; materials relating to a study of the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees; and trip reports to friends and family from many trips overseas, including trips to Asia and Africa.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Series 2.7 (General Subject Files) contains various folders related to school desegregation and historically black colleges and universities in the area (See Folders 1774, 1815, 1816-1817).

Some copies of speeches in Series 4.2 also deal with Civil Rights and school desegregation as well.

Subseries 4.3 contains various reports about Hodges’s travel, including Africa, where he noted observations about various African nations after independence.

Scrapbooks in Subseries 5.1 contain several clippings, papers, and letters regarding desegregation in North Carolina and Arkansas from 1954-1961 and  1957-1958 (See Volumes S-72 to S-81).

Subseries 5.3 also contains letters, telegrams, clippings, and political pamphlets sent to Governor Hodges in the wake of Governor Orval Faubus’s summoning of the National Guard troops to prevent the integration of Central High School in Little Rock.

Abstract: Herbert Covington Bonner, of Washington, N.C., was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1940 until his death in 1965. He was chairman of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, 1955-1965, and chairman, 1951-1955, of the Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee (“watchdog committee”) of the Expenditures in the Executive Departments Committee, which made changes designed to eliminate waste in the handling of war surplus material and in military supply procurement. The papers consist of Bonner’s office files, dating from November 1940, when he succeeded Lindsay C. Warren as representative from the First North Carolina District, which included, at one time or another, 14 counties of thenortheastern corner of the state. In addition to the main chronological series, there are subject- and format-based series. The Rivers and Harbors series, 1940-1965, concerns federally-funded projects, such as channel and harbor improvements, erosion problems, dredging, etc., and the operation of the Dismal Swamp Canal. The Hoover Commission series, January-October 1950, concerns the proposed reorganization of the government that came out of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. The Bombing Ranges series, 1959-1965, concerns objections to having a weapons range or ranges in northeastern North Carolina. The Political series, 1959-1965, concerns the mechanics of Democratic Party organization and election campaigns. The Community Public Works Programs series, 1962-1965, concerns local public works projects that received federal funds. The National Seashore Park series, 1937-1965, concerns the establishment of a national park that spanned Bodie, Hatteras, and Ocracoke islands, N.C. Also included are private bills, with related papers attached; scrapbooks, 1940-1965; speeches, 1940-1964; photographs, and photocopies of presidential memorabilia, some relating to the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection