Abstract: English professor, Presbyterian churchman, civil rights leader, and farmer of Mayesville, S.C. The bulk of the papers consists of writings, correspondence, subject files, and administrative records relating to Dabbs’s activities as professor of English, churchman, civil rights leader, Penn Community Services trustee, and farmer. Very little family correspondence is included and there are few items dating before the mid-1920s, but most facets of Dabbs’s professional involvements and interests are covered. Topics of writings, correspondence, and subject files include observations on social and political issues of the day, concerns about racial inequalities, and Dabbs’s own life and religious beliefs. Dabbs’s leadership of civil rights councils, religious organizations, and the Board of Trustees of Penn Community Services are well documented. Note that all letters are not in the correspondence series; some are included in subject files. Correspondents of note included Isabell Fiske Conant and Sarah Patton Boyle.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes letters commenting on the treatment of blacks, occasional hate-mail letters prompted by Dabbs’s civil rights activism and writings, Dabbs’s articles on desegregation, and research material Dabbs collected in files, bearing titles such as “Freedom of Thought in Southern Colleges” (which contains correspondence between Dabbs and professors at southern institutions about the issue of freedom to comment on desegregation events) and “The economic effect of the racial struggle.”

Abstract: John Edwin Fripp was a cotton planter of St. Helena Island and Chechessee Bluff, Beaufort County, S.C. The collection includes manuscript volumes and papers relating chiefly to the cotton plantations and family life of John Edwin Fripp; his wife, Isabelle Jenkins Fripp (1833-1883); and their eleven children. The plantations were located on St. Helena Island and at Chechessee Bluff (“The Bluff”), Beaufort County, S.C. Materials also relate to Fripp’s holdings in “The Village” on St. Helena Island and in Grahamville, S.C. Antebellum materials document plantation life and include slave lists, records of slave religious services, and Fripp’s accounts with various factors in Charleston, S.C. Post-war materials include records of how Fripp retired his debts and the small farming in which he engaged. Starting in the late 1880s, there is material relating to Fripp’s position as overseer for the Chelsea Plantation Club, Beaufort County, S.C., where he managed the hunt and rounded up poachers.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Antebellum materials include slave lists and records of religious activities and illnesses among slaves (Folder 3). Postbellum materials contain accounts and copies of letters concerning free black agricultural laborers (Folder 2).

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Seven tapes of stories of Demus Green, from a Gullah community in Charleston, South Carolina.

Abstract:  Candie Anderson and Guy Carawan met as a result of their mutual involvement in the civil rights movement and were married in 1960. The Carawans have been involved in the work of the Highlander Research and Education Center (formerly the Highlander Folk School) in Tennessee, an institution that supports and provides educational dresources for progressive social and political causes in the South. The original deposit of materials is chiefly audio tapes that reflect the Carawans’ efforts to document the cultures of various groups of people in the South and elsewhere, beginning in the early 1960s. Included are historically significant speeches, sermons, and musical performances recorded during major civil rights demonstrations and conferences in Nashville, Birmingham, Atlanta, and other southern cities. Featured are Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Len Chandler, and the Sea Island Singers. Field recordings of worship meetings, songs, stories, and recollections from Johns Island, S.C., document the African American heritage of the rural South Carolina Low Country. Also included are recordings of interviews with residents of south-central Appalachia concerning problems associated with coal mining and rural poverty and recordings of performances by Appalachian musicians, among them Hazel Dickens. Other items include recordings of remarks and musical performances by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax; a discussion between Guy Carawan and Studs Terkel; performances by singer-songwriter Mayne Smith and actor-comedian-musician Martin Mull; and recordings of Latin-American, Celtic, Australian, and Hungarian vernacular music. The Addition of 2006 contains audio recordings of musical performances and interviews collected by Guy and Candie Carawan, many of which feature members of the Johns Island, S.C., community. The Addition of 2010 primarily contains materials relating to the Carawan’s professional and personal projects in the areas of civil rights, folk music and culture, and social justice. Materials relating to civil rights were collected by Candie Carawan in 1960, when she was an exchange student at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., where she was arrested for participating in a sit-in to protest racial segregation of lunch counters. Also included are materials relating to books, articles, and other writing projects; albums recorded or produced by Guy Carawan; and concerts, lectures, Highlander Center workshops, festivals, conferences, benefits, vacations, reunions, and memorials that the Carawans led or attended. Other files relate to Appalachia, civil rights, the Highlander Research and Education Center, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, among other topics. Highlander files contain workshop materials, printed materials, songbooks and sheet music, memoranda, and correspondence relating to the Carawans’ employment and projects there. Sea Islands materials include interview transcripts, articles, and clippings related to the Carawans’ 1988 book, Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?; to the Moving Star Hall Singers of Johns Island, S.C.; and to Low Country culture and community issues. Other files include materials relating to conferences, concerts, projects requesting the Carawans’ assistance, and the song “We Shall Overcome!” and a related documentary.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Collection of several hundred sound recordings containing extensive documentation of musical and religious life in the Sea Island communities of Georgia and South Carolina (See recordings in Series 1) as well as events relating to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (See Series 2). See also the additions of 2010 relating to the Sea Islands (Folders 582-636).

The 2010 additions to the collection contain many materials related to the Carawan’s involvement in social justice and civil rights issues, including Candie’s semester at Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville (Folders 1-37).

Abstract: Guy Benton Johnson was one of the original research assistants at the Institute for Research in Social Science and joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 1927, retiring in 1969. In 1923, he married Guion

Griffis, also a social science researcher. They had two sons: Guy Benton Jr. (Benny) (b. 1928) and Edward (b. 1933). Papers, mostly correspondence and research project files, relating chiefly to Johnson’s work at the University of Chicago and at UNC on the Ku Klux Klan; musical abilities of African-Americans and white Americans; African-American folksongs; the John Henry legend; the folklore and language (Gullah) of Saint Helena Island, S.C.; Lumbee Indians of Robeson County, N.C.; and the desegregation of higher education. Many items relate to his and Guion’s participation in the Gunnar Myrdal Study of the American Negro, 1939-1940. There are also materials documenting Johnson’s work with the Southern Regional Council, of which he was director in 1944-1947; the North Carolina Council on Human Relations; the Phelps-Stokes Fund; and the Howard University Board of Trustees; and his service to professional sociological organizations. Also included are writings by Johnson, pedagogical materials, photographs and other materials relating to his family in North Carolina and Texas and career. Johnson’s correspondents included Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson, C.C. Spaulding, H.L. Mencken, Carl van Vechten, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marion Wright, and many other intellectuals, scholars, writers, and activists, both black and white.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  Some of the materials on this collection have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid and to access the digital material.

Papers relate to Johnson’s extensive cultural and sociological studies and projects conducted under the auspices of organizations such as the Institute for Research in Social Science, the Southern Regional Council, the North Carolina Council on Human Relations, the Phelps-Stokes Fund, and the Board of Trustees of Howard University.

Subseries 1.2 and 1.3 (Correspondence) contain a number of letters discussing race relations, school desegregation, the Ku Klux Klan, Gullah/Geechee culture and language,  and as well as Johnson’s trip to Africa and the idea for an exchange program for African students. Additional items of interest include a sermon by Pauli Murray, entitled “Gifts of the Holy Spirit to Women I Have Known,” enclosed in a letter to Johnson dated 18 May 1978, and a letter, dated 12 October 1983, to Johnson discussing the controversy over Langston Hughes’ appearance at University of North Carolina in 1931.

Series 2 (Alumni Office Files) contains letters on various topics including race relations, civil rights, music,  and different African American Freedom Celebrations. Johnson’s correspondents include a large number of black political leaders, journalists, and intellectuals, such as Will W. Alexander, Sterling Brown, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Of particular notes in Subseries 3.2.2 (Publications) are drafts and research notes for “The Police and The Negro” (Folders 795-797).

Also of note are the various research projects Johnson conducted with focus on African American life and culture. See Series 5 for a complete listing of the projects. Of particular note is the study he conducted on Gullah language and culture in South Carolina, entitled Folk Culture of Saint Helena Island. This research study includes stories and riddles from students of the Penn Center on the island, as well as some recordings of songs. Some of these materials have been digitized.

There are also a number of photographs in this collection related to Johnson’s family life and his research. Of note are the photographs of African American churches in Chapel Hill, N.C. (Image folder 3826/41) and various scenes and houses in the African American communities on Saint Helena Island, S.C. (Image Folders 3826/35-36).

Folders 94-99, 313, and 320 contain materials relating to the “Encyclopedia of the Negro” project in the 1930s and 1940s, including correspondence with Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois (who was principle editor of the Encyclopedia) and other noted academics.

Folder 97 also contains a letter dated 4 November 1939 from Anson Phelps Stokes as a representative from the Marian Anderson Committee, which was formed after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitutional Hall in DC based on the fact she was an African American artist. The Committee formed after this refusal, to continue to petition the DAR to allow Ms. Anderson to perform.

Abstract: Howard Anderson Kester was a theologian, educator, and administrator active in Christian movements relating to race relations, pacifism, and economic reform in the South from the 1920s until his retirement in 1970. Correspondence of Howard A. Kester and his wife, Alice Harris Kester, together with reports, leaflets, pamphlets, newsletters, organization reports, writings, and other items. Included are materials about Kester’s association, beginning in the 1930s, with such organizations as the YMCA, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Committee on Economic and Racial Justice, the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, the Socialist Party, and others active in the movement for social change. Also included are materials relating to Kester’s work, beginning in the 1940s, with such institutions as the Penn School, the John C. Campbell Folk School, and Montreat-Anderson College. There is also material relating to Kester’s later work as an educational innovator and about Kester himself and his development as a Christian radical, social reformer, administrator, and teacher. Some of Kester’s correspondents are listed below.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  The collection documents his activities in various organizations including the YMCA; the Student Christian Movement; the Southern Tenant Farmers Union; the NAACP, for whom he investigated lynchings; the Committee on Economic and Racial Justice; and the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, for whom he investigated opinions on and problems with desegregation (1955-1959). The collection also contains material reflecting Kester’s duties as Principal of the Penn Normal Industrial and Agricultural School, St. Helena Island from 1943-1948 (See Series 2, part I and II).

Additional materials include his writings, such as his reports on lynching and farm tenancy; his financial records while he was employed by the Committee on Economic and Racial Justice; and conference programs for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Conference on Education and Race Relations, and the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching (see particularly folders 216-217 for reports on lynching).

This collection contains materials that have been digitized. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digital material.

Abstract: David Franklin Thorpe was plantation superintendent on Saint Helena Island, 1861-1869, and later Rhode Island businessman and state representative. Correspondence, legal and financial material, subject files, diaries, and account books relating principally to cotton production and trade, to affairs in the Sea Islands and in the North, and to family matters. Most of the papers are letters to David Thorpe from William G. Weld, his Boston business partner, from friends and relatives in the North, and from plantation superintendents, military officials, and other Sea Island residents. Correspondence between Weld and Thorpe concerns management of plantations they jointly owned and leased. Topics discussed include cultivation, preparation for shipping, and marketing of cotton; gold prices; labor; land sales; and the general store Thorpe ran. Letters from family and northern friends, many of whom were abolitionists, concern political, intellectual, and social life, particularly in Rhode Island and Boston during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Twentieth-century correspondence consists of letters from Penn School Principal Rossa B. Cooley and other Saint Helena residents to Thorpe’s son and daughter-in-law. There are volumes of Thorpe’s diaries, 1861-1869, noting his daily activities and data on planting and African American laborers; two other diary volumes, 1865-1866, probably of Thorpe’s sister, Mary Thorpe; Saint Helena Island plantation account books, 1854-1868, that include records of payments to free blacks and freedmen; a record book each for the Planters Association, 1866-1867, and the Rifle and Sporting Club, 1866-1868, both of Saint Helena Island; a booklet of slave songs, presumably from the 1860s; magistrates’ records of Beaufort County, S.C., 1868-1869; and other volumes.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Diaries discuss plantation affairs and slave and free labor (1861- 1869), while correspondence mentions religious practices of freedmen. Included in the collection are several letters from northern friends and family members who were abolitionists and a booklet of slave songs of the Sea Islands (folder 24).

20th century correspondence in Folder 13 contains letters from Rossa Cooley, president of the Penn School.

One account book, Volume 9, was begun by William M. Murray in 1854 as a record of slaves on his Edisto and Fenwick Island plantations and was later used to list what appear to be names, occupations, and other details of freedmen (Folder 31). Folder 32 contains an account book showing payments  to free people of color. See also Folders 37 and 38.

Abstract: Marion Allan Wright (1894-1983) of South Carolina was an attorney, author, member of the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union, and civil rights supporter. Chiefly correspondence, financial and legal materials, speeches and writings, subject files, and other papers relating to the Southern Regional Council, 1951-1971; Penn Community Services, 1947-1965; and North Carolinians Against the Death Penalty, 1964-1971. The papers document Wright’s association with these organizations and his interest in human rights, desegregation, the abolition of the death penalty, and civil liberties. Correspondents include Guy B. Johnson, James McBride Dabbs, Raymond Wheeler, Benjamin Mayo, Paul E. Green, and Wright’s wife, Alice Spearman Wright.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers relate to the Southern Regional Council (1951-1971), the Penn Community Services, St. Helena Island, South Carolina (1947-1966), and the civil rights movement.

Series 2 (Folders 177-298) focuses on Wright’s tenure on the Board of Trustees at Penn Community Services and contains minutes, correspondence, printed materials, and financial records.

Series 4 contains various speeches on topics such as segregation (Folders 435) civil rights (Folders 430, 431, 434-436) and race relations (Folders 439-443; 461). There is also an audio tape of a speech at Tuskegee Institute.

Subject files in Series 6 contain documentation from the Civil Rights Commission from the North Carolina Advisory Committee (Folders 616-630).

Abstract: The Penn School on Saint Helena Island, S.C., was founded during the Civil War by northern philanthropists and missionaries for former plantation slaves in an area occupied by the United States Army. Over the years, with continuing philanthropic support, it served as school, health agency, and cooperative society for rural African Americans of the Sea Islands. The first principals were Laura M. Towne and Ellen Murray, followed around 1908 by Rossa B. Cooley and Grace B. House, and in 1944 by Howard Kester and Alice Kester. The school became Penn Community Services in 1950, with Courtney Siceloff as the first director, and the Penn Center, Inc. in the 1980s. The original deposits are papers, mostly 1900-1970, mainly from the Penn School, and primarily correspondence of the directors and of the trustees, treasurers, and publicity workers located elsewhere. Topics include African American education, Reconstruction, political and social change in South Carolina, agricultural extension work, public health issues, damage from hurricanes, World War I, the boll weevil and the cotton industry, the effects of the Great Depression on the school and the local population, changes in the school leading to a greater emphasis on social action in the outer world, and the end of the school and the turn to community service. Volumes include diaries, extracts from letters, recollections, minutes of the board of trustees, ledgers, cashbooks, inventories, financial records, registers of students and teachers, and minutes of various clubs and societies. Printed materials consists of newspapers clippings, pamphlets, promotional literature, school materials, administrative circulars, and annual reports. There are also about 3,000 photographs in the collection, dating from the 1860s to 1962 (bulk 1905-1944), documenting school activities, Island scenes and Islanders, classes and teachers, baptisms, agricultural activities, parades, fairs, and special events at the Penn School. Also included are about 300 audiotapes with oral history interviews and recordings of community acivities, 1954-1979. The Addition of 2005, contains papers of Courtney Siceloff, director of Penn Community Services, 1950-1970, and secretary of the South Carolina Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, circa 1960-1970. Penn Community Services materials are chiefly administrative and financial. Material relating to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and its state advisory committees, especially the South Carolina Advisory Committee, includes some information about specific discrimination cases.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Administrative correspondence and records of Penn Normal Industrial and Agricultural School, a school for black students established in 1862 on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. The collection also contains material on Penn School’s successor, Penn Community Services, which commenced its activities in 1948. Materials include approximately 3,000 photographs of students, teachers, school buildings, school events, and island life and inhabitants (1860s-1962). Numerous volumes include trustee minutes; account books and inventories; school and community club records; and guest books. The collection also includes diaries and papers of Laura M. Towne, founder of the school, and of others associated with the area in the 1860s. Microfilm available.

The Penn School papers cover myriad topics such as enslavement, education, agriculture, environmental conditions, family, social justice, Gullah/Geechee heritage, and Civil Rights, to name a few.

Of particular interest in the diary of Laura Towne, one of the first principles of Penn School (Folder 355a-b). She discusses life during the establishment of the school and interactions with the African American community, as well as with Union and Confederate Soldiers coming to St. Helena Island.

The printed materials in Series 3 also contain numerous annual reports, including reports from African American teachers at the school.

Of particular interest are the more than 3,000 photographs that are in the collection. They document Penn from its earliest days as a school in the 19th century, to the shift from Penn Community Services during the 1950s. The people and landscape of Saint Helena are prominently featured. Many of the images have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link the finding aid and to access the digitized content.

 

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Interview, conversation and narrative in Gullah dialect by African Americans Jim and Christina Milligan and Nettie Whaley, recorded by Herman Bell on Edisto Island, South Carolina in 1967. Topics include the Civil War, houses, food, fishing, school, local people, and some animal tales. [1 reel, FT1200]