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: Correspondence, writings, notes, and other items of North Carolina journalist Reed Sarratt (1917-1986), whose career took him from editorial posts at the “Charlotte News” and the “Winston-Salem Journal and Twin City Sentinel” to directorships of the Southern Education Reporting Service and the Southern Newspaper Publishers’ Association. Sarratt’s chief editorial interest was civil rights, and he was particulary involved in monitoring the desegregation of public schools.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers reflect Sarratt’s chief editorial interest in civil rights and his involvement in monitoring the desegregation of public schools.

There are several subject files with research materials and clipping related to various topics such as school desegregation and Civil Rights (See the various folders entitled “Civil Rights” and “Desegregation” (by state) in Boxes 1-3).

Boxes 9-13 in Series 2 also contain a lot of information related to Sarratt’s book “The Ordeal of Segregation: The First Decade, 1960s”.

Abstract: A. Alexander Morisey was an African American journalist from North Carolina. He wrote for the “Twin City Sentinel” (Winston-Salem, N.C.) and the “Winston-Salem Journal” in the early 1950s and later was public relations manager of the “New York Times.” Articles and speeches written by and about A. Alexander Morisey. Morisey’s articles are mostly on the subject of African American affairs in Winston-Salem, N.C. There are also a few letters relating to professional matters.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection contains letters of A. Alexander Morisey, African American journalist, as well as articles and speeches written by and about A. Alexander Morisey. Morisey’s articles are mostly about African American life in Winston-Salem, N.C. Many of the articles are from the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel’s Sunday news page about African Americans, which Morisey edited. Also included is a letter, 1946, about the terms of his employment with the Norfolk Journal and Guide; a letter, 1949, about his employment with the Winston-Salem newspapers; and a letter, 1951, requesting information for a news story.

Abstract: The Rootes family of Fredericksburg, Va., and the Cobb, Jackson, and Prince families of Athens, Macon, and other locations in Georgia belonged to the elite of the southern planter artistocracy. Henry Jackson(1778-1840) served as United States charge d’affaires in France (1812-1818) and taught at Franklin College in Athens, Ga. (1811-1813 and 1819-1828). His wife, Martha Jacquelin Rootes Cobb Jackson (1786-1853) operated her husband’s Halscot Plantation outside Athens, Ga., and Cookshay Plantation in Chatham County, Ala., for over a decade after his death. Jackson’s son, Henry Rootes Jackson, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army, also served as minister to Austria (1853-1858) and to Mexico (1885-1886). Oliver Hillhouse Prince (1823-1875), Jackson’s son-in-law, was a Democratic Party newspaper editor deeply involved in Georgia politics in the 1840s, who became a large landholder and planter in Bibb and Baker counties. The papers consist of family, business, and political correspondence, financial and legal papers, and miscellaneous collected items. They include personal and plantation accounts; day books; slave records; deeds and indentures; diaries; scientific notes; and genealogical materials. The papers document the social and religious life of ante-bellum aristocratic women, including camp meetings and missionary activities, and offer insight into the economic and political life of Georgia. They also contain information on early American foreign affairs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers consist of personal and plantation accounts and slave lists and records (Series 2).  Correspondence includes discussing the treatment of slaves in Va. (1784-1811). See Folders 1-6.

Folders 103-105 also contain bills of sale for enslaved individuals.

Folder 134 also contains two letters from 1845 (5 May & 5 June) discussing Oliver Prince’s hiring of an enslaved man named Jefferson to work in his print shop. Folders 139-140 also contain correspondence from the late 1860s and 1870s discussing free people of color.

Folder 162B contains various clippings discussing issues around slavery from the Daily Georgian newspaper.

Abstract: Robert V. N. Brown (1933-2006) was born in Belle Harbor, N.Y., and grew up in the Bronx, N.Y. In 1958, Brown moved to Chapel Hill, N.C., to study southern history at the University of North Carolina. In 1961, Brown began publishing the literary magazine “Reflections from Chapel Hill.” In 1963-1964, at the height of the local civil rights movement, Brown published “The Chapel Hill Conscience,” a newsletter of the Committee for Open Business. His role in the Chapel Hill civil rights movement is chronicled in John Ehle’s book “The Free Men” (1965). In 1966, Brown, along with writer Leon Rooke, began publishing the alternative newspaper “The North Carolina Anvil,: which ran until 1983, when Brown retired from publishing. Brown also operated a job printing studio called Buffalo Printing during the 1970s and 1980s to support his other activities. He died on 5 February 2006 in Hillsborough, N.C. The collection consists of subject files, letters to the editor, business and financial records, and other materials that document Robert V. N. Brown’s work in newspaper publishing, especially as the publisher of the alternative weekly newspaper “The North Carolina Anvil.” Subject files include correspondence, notes, writings, clippings, and other materials primarily relating to the operations of “The North Carolina Anvil” as well as notes and correspondence relating to the literary magazine “Reflections from Chapel Hill” published by Brown, 1961-1964. Letters to the editor consist of correspondence created and received by co-editors of “The North Carolina Anvil,” Brown and Joel Bulkley, 1967-1982. Among the correspondents are politicians, social activists, university professors, writers, fellow publishers, and many others. Correspondents include Mary Barnett Gilson, Bill Hicks, Joe Hackney, Daniel Okun, and Kemp Nye. Business and financial records consist of materials relating to the business operations of “The North Carolina Anvil” and Brown’s other publications and projects. Also included are personal planners, pamphlets and other printed materials, copies of the items published by Brown, printing plates, digital scans of photographs of Brown with his publishing staff and other photographs, and other materials.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Mississippi Freelance was begun in Greenville, Miss., in April 1969 as a “non-profitable sideline” for its editors, Lew Powell and Ed Williams who, then in their twenties, were reporters for the “Delta Democrat-Times” in Greenville. “Mississippi Freelance” was a liberal monthly newspaper, dedicated to “reporting the otherwise unreported.” All of its writers worked on a volunteer basis. The paper had about 700 subscribers in and out of Mississippi. “Mississippi Freelance” ceased publication in March 1970, after twelve issues. As of April 1983, Powell and Williams were writing for “The Charlotte Observer.” Business correspondence, financial material, writings and research material, distribution material, printed material (including a copy of each issue of “Mississippi Freelance”), and other material. The correspondence includes comments on contemporary social and political issues, especially race relations and civil rights, chiefly in Mississippi.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The correspondence contains views on issues such as race relations and civil rights, predominantly in Mississippi.

This collection has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.

Abstract: The first African-American woman undergraduate to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Karen L. Parker was born in Salisbury, N.C., and grew up in

Winston-Salem, N.C. Parker worked for the Winston-Salem Journal before attending UNC-Chapel Hill. She majored in journalism and was elected vice-president of the UNC Press Club and served as editor of the UNC Journalist, the School of Journalism’s newspaper, in 1964. After graduating in 1965, Parker was a copy editor for the Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Mich. She also worked for the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers before returning to the Winston-Salem Journal. Karen L. Parker’s diary with entries 5 November 1963-11 August 1966. The entries appear regularly every few weeks in the beginning of the diary and gradually appear less often, ending with entries every several months. Parker began the diary while she was a student majoring in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One of the first entries concerns the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, her observations of reactions in Chapel Hill to the assassination, and her own thoughts and feelings about it. Diary entries describe her experiences as the first African American woman undergraduate to attend UNC-Chapel Hill, her involvement with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), her participation in civil rights demonstrations against segregation in Chapel Hill, and her arrest after entering a segregated Chapel Hill restaurant. An entry dated 30 April 1964 describes the visit of former segregationist governor of Mississippi Ross R. Barnett to the UNC-Chapel Hill campus and his remarks about the inferiority of African Americans. The diary also includes entries detailing Parker’s observations and experiences concerning race relations and discrimination in Grand Rapids, Mich., while copy editor for the Grand Rapids Press and her changing views of the civil rights movement as she considered the merits of self-defense as opposed to non-violent resistance. Entries throughout the diary describe her thoughts about where she belonged as an educated African-American female during the civil rights era. The Addition of February 2008 consists of a letter from Katherine Kennedy Carmichael, Dean of Women at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to Karen L. Parker’s mother, F.D. Parker, concerning Karen L. Parker’s arrest on 19 December 1963. Also included are newspaper clippings about Karen L. Parker’s accomplishments as a journalism student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Karen Parker’s diary  has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link the finding aid and access the digitized content.

Abstract: This collection is comprised primarily of broadcast master videotapes in cassettes generated by television station WTVD in Durham, N.C., 1976-1992. Included are tapes from locally produced shows “Reflections,” “Reel Perspectives,” “Primetime,” “Primetime Saturday,” and “Primetime Sunday.” The videotapes treat a wide variety of subjects, many of which focus on community-related issues and African American life in North Carolina. Programs feature personalities of local and national significance, including African American journalists Ervin Hester, Cathy Stowe, Gail Paschall, and Miriam Thomas. Also included are production and background materials relating to some of the programs; a small number of transcripts, only one of which corresponds to a videotape in the collection; and a few unidentified open-reel videotapes and films.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Darley Hiden Ramsey, of Asheville, N.C., was a newspaper editor, public speaker, city and state official, member of educational boards, writer, and sportsman. Correspondence, speeches, and writings of Ramsey, including more than 200 manuscript speeches on a wide variety of subjects and occasions and 30 essays and articles on public issues and events. Correspondence is with politicians, businessmen, educators, writers, and conservationists concerning the North Carolina Democratic Party and the civic life, economic development, and history of the North Carolina mountain region. Correspondents included Emily Bridgers, Oliver Max Gardner, Josiah William Bailey, Clyde Roark Hoey, Robert F. Campbell, John Temple Graves, Richard Heath Dabney, Virginius Dabney, Hoyt M. Dobbs, Josephus Daniels, Jonathan Daniels, Josh L. Horne, Glenn Tucker, and Wilma Dykeman. The bulk of the papers are 1940-1965, although the speeches date back to 1912. Also included are materials pertaining to the Asheville municipal government in the early 20th century, personal recollections concerning Thomas Wolfe and Woodrow Wilson, and information on the death of Elisha Mitchell.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 147 includes a 1913 lecture on race relations.

Correspondence pertaining to race relations is primarily found between the years 1942 – 1949 (Folders 10 – 53). This includes letters written by Ramsey concerning his perception of an impending racial crises (1942); his opinion that school segregation was imperiled by the lag of some counties in supplying facilities for African Americans (1948); and his opinion concerning opportunities for African-American teachers in North Carolina as compared to opportunities in the North (1947).

Abstract: Wilmington, N.C., lawyer, Confederate Army officer, Republican leader of eastern North Carolina, judge, U.S. Representative, 1879-1881, and Republican-Populist governor, 1897-1901. Half of the collection consists of papers, 1900-1905, related to the South Dakota Bond Case, a famous and complicated litigation over North Carolina’s repudiation of bonds issued during Reconstruction. Correspondents include Marion Butler, Alfred Russell, and Addison G. Ricard. Also, an extensive political correspondence, chiefly 1874-1897, about the efforts to strengthen the Republican Party in North Carolina. Other papers include correspondence with Russell’s New York cotton brokers, papers concerning his Confederate Army court martial, 1863-1864, a biography of Russell by two friends, Louis Goodman and Alice Sawyer Cooper (typescript, 111 p.); and a biography of his wife, Sarah Amanda (Sanders) Russell (1844-1913). Also, some correspondence with his law partner, Louis Goodman.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In folder 19, there are letters discussing African American and voting.   including one from John Leary in 9 December 1896, and  J.B. Hill on 14 December 1896;

There is also a 15 December 1896 letter from John Ray, Principle of the North Carolina Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, where black and white children attended,  about Russel’s upcoming visit to the school.

There is also a copy of an 18 August 1898 editorial from The Daily Record in Wilmington, N.C., written by prominent African American journalist and editor of the paper, Alex Manly. This editorial decries lynching and disputes the fact it preserves “white womanhood” and protects them from African American men. This editorial angered many whites, who terrorized the African American community and drove many blacks from the town, including Alex Manly. This violent and deadly period became known as the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898.

There is a a copy of an essay, c. 1899 – 1900 presumably written by Russel, entitled “Republicanism In The South”. This essay discusses the history of the party, as well as slavery and African American voting within the party.