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: 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: Wesley Critz George was professor of histology and embryology and chair of the Anatomy Department, University of North Carolina Medical School, and an internationally recognized researcher on the genetics of race. Early items relate to George’s family and early career. Materials relating to George’s theories on the genetic basis of racial inferiority begin in 1944. There are also letters documenting George’s disputes with religious leaders, particularly at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, N.C., about racial mixing in churches, and George’s disapproval of the liberal tendencies of Frank Porter Graham and Howard W. Odum at UNC. After the 1954 Brown decision, George’s fight against school integration escalated, reaching its height in 1955-1957, when George was active in the Patriots of North Carolina, Inc. Many materials, 1858-1963, relate to the North Carolina Defenders of States’ Rights, Inc., which picked up the anti-integration banner after the Patriots’ demise. George’s activities in I. Beverly Lake’s unsuccessful North Carolina gubernatorial campaign are reflected in materials dated 1958- 1960. Items, 1959-1963, document George’s interest in race problems in other countries and in the issue of academic freedom on college campuses. Correspondents include Carleton S. Coon, James P. Dees, Henry E. Garrett, Luther Hodges, R. Carter Pittman, Carleton Putnam, Clayton Rand, and Archibald Roosevelt. There are also a considerable number of letters and other items George received from individuals and organizations with extremist ideas on race relations. A scattering of family letters and a small number of items relating to George’s tenure at UNC are also included. Writings by George relate to academic freedom, civil rights, genetics and race, and communism. Also included are writings by others on race and other topics, notes, clippings, biographical materials, genealogical materials relating to the Critz and Dalton families, and a few family photographs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In Folder 1, there is a  1908 typed transcription of a letter from Roan Critz, former slave of Haman and Elizabeth Critz to Mrs. T. M. George about the death of her mother.

Subseries 1.2 (Correspondence from 1944 – 1954) contain 8 folders that deal mainly with George’s views on race relations, primarily arguing against racial mixing based on genetics. From the mid-1940s through the early 1950s, there are many letters from George to various church leaders, particularly Rev. Jones and Rev. David W. Yates, rector of the Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill, N.C., about interracial activities, both documented and alleged, in Chapel Hill churches and elsewhere.

There are also letters George wrote to Frank Porter Graham (19 April 1947) and Howard Odum (24 May 1944) on topics of racial and education.

In 1954, there are several letters George wrote after the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, vehemently opposing school desegregation. Included are letters of support for a petition George circulated opposing school integration in Orange County, NC. Folders 10 and 11 contains these letters of support.

Throughout the rest of the correspondence in Subseries 1.3, there is also correspondence and documentation relating to groups such as Association for Preservation of the White Race, the Federation for Constitutional Government, the American Society for the Preservation of State Government and Racial Integrity, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, White Men Incorporated, and many states’ rights leagues and citizens’ councils. There is also some material from the American Eugenics Society

Series 2 (Writings) and Series 3 (notes) also contain George’s articles and notes about genetics, race, biology, and his issues with academic freedom.

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: 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 Old Hickory Council of the Boy Scouts of America grew from a single troop organized at Fairview Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1911. The council operated Camp Raven Knob beginning in the 1950s. Records, beginning in 1917, of the Old Hickory Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Included are letters, meeting minutes, reports, financial materials, clippings, training materials, membership lists, photographs, newsletters, pamphlets, and other items. Documentation is uneven; for some years, there are many informative letters, reports, and other materials, while other years are represented by only a few relatively minor items.Some items relate to scouting activities during World War I and World War II; many items document the planning and operation of camping sites, especially, beginning in the 1950s, Camp Raven Knob. Also included are photocopies of two 1964 documents relating to integration of the Council’s troops; a videotape version of a 1955 film about Camp Raven Knob; and two audiotaped interviews, 1976 and 1982, with scout leaders;two photographs of African-American scouts associated with Mount Zion Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, N.C., 1944-1950s; and a CD of photographs entitled “Wahissa and CRK Images Vol. 1, 1500+ Photos,” 1970s-1990s.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included are papers relating to integration of the troop (1964). Includes two photographs of African American boy scouts associated with Mount Zion Baptist Church, Winston Salem, 1944-1950s.

In Series 1 (General Files), there are photocopies of two documents in 1964 relating to the Committee on Integration, showing the current racial makeup of Old Hickory Council divisions and Various Degrees of Integration for Consideration, as well as documents pertaining to white flight in eastern Winston-Salem (See Folders 57-58).

In 1965, there is a memo dated  September 15th by district executive Walter Wilson concerning the need to organize new groups of scouts in an area into which blacks had started to move (See Folder 59).

In 1969, the executive board meeting minutes of June discuss restating in detail its racial nondiscrimination policy (See Folders 65-66).

There is a  taped interview from around 1976 with Stanley A. Harris, who was the first Director of Inter-Racial Scouting and worked to develop African-American scout troops in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. (See Series 3, Tape  T-4688/1),

Also included are two photographs of African American boy scouts associated with Mount Zion Baptist Church in Winston Salem, N.C., circa 1944-1950s. (See Images Folders P-4688/18 and 19.)

Abstract: Algernon Lee Butler, attorney in Sampson County, N.C., 1931-1959; active member of the Republican Party; and U.S. District Judge for Eastern North Carolina, 1959-1978. Judicial files, correspondence, and other material of Algernon Lee Butler. Pre-judicial papers, 1928-1959, include political correspondence and printed material, mostly related to Republican Party business; legal correspondence, briefs, and transcripts; correspondence and printed material regarding Butler’s duties for the Clinton city schools and Sampson County government; a wide variety of writings and speeches that Butler produced on political, educational, and civic topics; and limited personal correspondence. Judicial papers, 1959-1978, include case files, handwritten notes, legal briefs and orders, correspondence, copies of opinions, clippings, and other papers. Materials relating to school desegregation cases, civil rights cases, and the case of Jeffrey MacDonald are included.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: While serving as a judge Butler gained a reputation for his involvement in desegregating North Carolina public schools and in numerous civil rights cases. The collection reflects his efforts in the civil rights movement and contains speeches that reveal his dedication to desegregation (1950s-1970s).

Abstract: James Bryan McMillan was raised in a small farming community in Robeson County, N.C. He attended the University of North Carolina and received a law degree from Harvard University. In 1968, he was appointed U.S. district judge by Lyndon B. Johnson. Based in Charlotte, N.C., McMillan handled cases on a wide variety of subjects, including nuclear reactors, prison standards, housing, noise pollution, annexation, and public and private racial, sex, and age discrimination. Administrative files, case memoranda, trial notes, orders filed, speeches, court calendars, and other materials chiefly relating to McMillan’s tenure as U.S. district court judge. Included are files relating to Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1969), which established busing as a national tool for school integration.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Personal papers of the former federal district judge, including files pertaining to Swann v. Charlotte- Mecklenburg Board of Education (1969), which established busing as a national tool for school integration (See Series 1).

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: The Delta Health Center was established in the mid-1960s, in the rural, all-African American town of Mound Bayou, Bolivar County, Miss., and served Bolivar, Coahoma, Sunflower, and Washington counties, where poverty was widespread. The Center, which was federally funded through Tufts University and later through the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was one of the first community health centers in the United States. The comprehensive community health center model aimed at building upon traditional health services by addressing the underlying causes of illness, including economic, environmental, and social factors. Originally, Jack Geiger served as project director and John Hatch as director of community health action. The collection contains business files documenting the establishment and operations of the Delta Health Center, including the efforts of John Hatch, Jack Geiger, and others to obtain and maintain federal funding for the Center from the Office of Economic Opportunity; the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and the Department of Health and Human Services. Major topics include health care for minorities and impoverished communities, social medicine, nutrition, environmental health, and medical education and training. Materials document the economic, social, and health conditions of the residents of the Mississippi Delta, especially the African American community in northern Bolivar County; John Hatch and L. C. Dorsey’s efforts with the North Bolivar County Cooperative Farm and Cannery; the role of the North Bolivar County Health and Civic Improvement Council; and the Delta Health Center’s relationship with other health facilities, medical schools, and outreach programs, including the Mound Bayou Community Hospital (with which it merged in 1972), Meharry Medical College, the Delta Ministry, and the Columbia Point Health Center (now the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center), and others. Included are administrative records, correspondence, financial materials, grant proposals, legal materials, personnel files, reports, studies, education and training materials, publicity materials, photographs, printed matter, and other items. Of note are newspaper articles, protest photographs, and other items related to Mississippi Governor Bill Waller’s vetos of the Delta Community Health Center and Hospital’s federal funding, and photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights marches in March 1965. Audio recordings include speeches of and interviews with persons connected with the Delta Health Center, among them director Andrew James. Also included is a recording of Stokeley Carmichael speaking at North Carolina Central University in March 1970 and a recording of a 1968 speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the Delta Ministry’s Mount Beulah Conference Center in Edwards, Miss.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Subseries 1.1 documents the origins of Delta Health Center. Of particular note in Box 1 is documentation in a Folder entitled “Background: Delta White Community, 1966-1970” that includes letters to Delta Health Center director Andrew James and Deputy Director David Weeks, among others, regarding the economic boycott against white merchants in Rosedale, Miss., held by the local African American community in protest of their poor living conditions in 1970. Box 6 also contains folders related to the boycott.

Box 2 contains articles, pamphlets, and printed materials from 1963 to 1971 on a variety of topics including socioeconomic conditions and education for African Americans, health conditions in Mississippi, nutrition, legal issues, Medicaid, and medical doctors in Mississippi, with a few items published by the Delta Health Center.

Subseries 1.2 contains information on the town of Mound Bayou and the merger of Delta Health with the local hospital, among other topics. Also of note are materials regarding the treatment of African Americans in health care facilities and the socioeconomic stratification between races in Mississippi, found in the “Office of Economic Opportunity documents,” ” Mississippi data,” and “North Bolivar County Civic and Health Improvement Council” files (See Box 6,7, and 11 particularly).

Box 22 in Subseries 1.4, has a  number of letters of support written by residents of Mound Bayou.

Box 39 in Subseries 1.5 contains a flyer and a book list for the Food Co-op’s African American bookstore.

Box 48 in Subseries 1.6 includes field research, observations, and statistics on health, housing, lifestyle of communities primarily in Durban, South Africa. Materials appear to be associated with Jack Geiger’s involvement with the Department of Preventative and Family Medicine at the University of Natal. Gieger got the idea to bring community center health model to the U.S. from his time in South Africa.

There are also a number of materials related to the protest of Governor William Wallers’s attempt to veto federal funding for the center. Box 55 contains articles, pamphlets, and other publicity materials related to this topic.

Photographs in Subseries 1.8 include images from the Selma to Montgomery voting right marches in Alabama in 1965.  Images are of a police barricade, marchers lined up on the highway, several men carrying a woman who has fainted or been injured, amputee marcher Jim Leatherer standing by a bonfire, and Martin Luther King Jr. delivering a speech at the Alabama State Capitol at the conclusion of the final march (See Image Box IB 4163/1).

Audio recordings include a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the Delta Ministry’s Mount Beulah Conference Center in Edwards, Miss., on 16 February 1968. (See Audiotape T-4613/23), and a speech by Stokeley Carmichael (Kwame Ture) at North Carolina Central University in Durham in 1970 (See T-4613/25).