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: The Otey family of Meridianville, Ala., and Yazoo County, Miss., included William Madison Otey (1818-1865), merchant and cotton planter; his wife, Octavia Wyche Otey (fl. 1841-1891); and their children, Imogene Otey Fields, Mollie Otey Hampton; William Walter Otey; Lucille Otey Walker; Matt Otey, and Elliese Otey. The collection includes family and business correspondence, financial and legal papers and volumes, and personal items. Family correspondence is with members of the Wyche, Horton, Kirkland, Pruit, Landidge, and Robinson families in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, and Tennessee. A few letters from Confederate soldiers in the field appear as do some letters relating to difficulties on the homefront. There is also a letter dated 27 February 1863 from a slave in Mount Shell, Tenn., to his master about building a stockade. Business papers pertain mostly to William Madison Otey’s merchant activities in Meridianville, Ala., especially with Chickasaw Indians in the 1830s, and to the Oteys’ cotton plantations in Madison County, Ala., and Yazoo County, Miss. Others concern the financial affairs of the Wyche, Horton, and Kirkland families. Included are accounts with cotton factors and merchants, estate papers, deeds, loan notes, summonses, receipts, agreements for hiring out slaves, and work contracts with freedmen. Volumes include account books, plantation daybooks, a receipt book, and a diary of Octavia Wyche Otey that covers the years 1849-1888. The diary and other papers offer detailed descriptions of women’s lives, especially in nineteenth-century Alabama.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters from Rebecca Wyche in 1835 and Rodah Horton in 1832, as well as other family members throughout the 1820s and 1830s,  discuss buying and selling enslaved individuals (Folder 1).

Correspondence from William Otey to his wife in the 1850s and 1860s discuss the management of their property in Yazoo County, as well as the welfare of enslaved people on the property (Folders 4-17).  There is also a letter dated 27 February 1863 from an enslaved man named Thomas, in Mount Shell, Tenn., to his master, J. M. Oaty, asking him to get a substitute for him in the building of a stockade (Folder 17).

Financial and legal papers in Series 2 contain several references to enslaved persons. William Wyche’s 1829 papers concern hiring out slaves to the firm Otey Kinkle (Folder 30). There is also an order issued in 1838 for the delivery of a enslaved woman named Eliza, who had belonged to Dr. A. A. Wyche, deceased, to Joseph Leeman. Also included is a receipt for Eliza signed by Leeman in 1838. There is also agreement dated 1849 for the hire of an enslaved woman and three children belonging to the estate of Jackston Lightfoot, which John Wyche was executor of (Folder 31).

Octavia Wyche’s antebellum diary (Folders 39-42) contains frequent mentions of managing and punishing enslaved people on her property, as well as instances of illnesses.

After the Civil War, Octavia wrote in a large volume about interacting with free people of color on her plantation, as well as copies of contracts in 1866 for Maria, Nina, and Anderson, former slaves at Green Lawn plantation. (Folder 38 also contains a contract Octavia Otey signed in 1866 with Maria, who worked as a laundress and cook). Of particular note in the diary are descriptions, dated 29 November and 6 December 1868 and 19 January and 1 February 1869, of visits to Green Lawn by the Ku Klux Klan.Also included is an entry for 22 November describing wedding preparations for the daughter of a former slave, Maria, and another for 12 January 1880, in which Octavia complains that local blacks “will not work for white people if they can help it.” (Folders 43-63).

A merchant’s account book of William Madison Otey contains an account from at least one customer, Sally Shochoty, is listed as a Negro; the spelling of her name as Shock.ho.ty at one point suggests that she may have intermarried with the Chickasaws (Folder 64).

The daybook from 1857 in Series 4.2 contains records of cotton picked by enslaved individuals on Otey’s plantation, listed by name (Folder 65). Folders 67 & 68 also contain daybooks from the Civil War era.

Folder 74 contains an 1849 clipping related to the enslaved African American musician “Blind Tom” at Camp Davis. Tom Wiggins was born in Columbus, Ga., and was an extremely talented musician who composed a number of songs and could play music by ear. He was an autistic savant and was unfortunately exploited throughout his lifetime for his musical abilities. Click here to link to a website dedicated to preserving Blind Tom’s legacy.

After the war, Octavia Otey’s correspondence received from family in the late 1860s and mid 1870s discusses relations with free people of color (Folders 18 – 23).

 

 

Abstract: The Susan Massingale collection consists of 243 videotapes from four documentary productions, 1987-1995. Massingale co-produced and co-directed one of the productions, Step It Up and Go: Blues in the Carolinas, with Glen Hinson. The other productions are Boogie in Black and White, a film about the Cherokee Indians, and another film about Black Mountain College. Massingale’s connection to these three documentaries is unclear, but they appear to related to UNC-TV and are chiefly about North Carolina. Videotape formats include Betacam, Umatic, and VHS. Step It Up and Go: Blues in the Carolinas traces the development of blues music in the Carolinas through interviews with musicians and still photographs of them. North Carolina musicians talk about how they learned to play and perform different styles on the banjo, fiddle, guitar, piano, bottle, and spoons. Performers include Odell Thompson, Nate Thompson, Joe Thompson, Etta Baker, Cora Phillips, Junior Thomas, Thomas Burt, Guitar Slim, Moses Roscoe, and Anthony Pough. The UNC-TV documentary Boogie in Black and White is a film about the making of Pitch a Boogie Woogie, a film shot in Greenville, N.C., in 1947 by John W. Warner, then owner of Greenville’s Plaza Theatre. Pitch a Boogie Woogie, released by Lord-Warner Pictures, Inc., in 1948, was the first movie made by a production company based in North Carolina. It had an all-African American cast of mostly local Greenville musicians and actors and enjoyed success in the Carolinas, but was never shown outside that area. The Cherokee Indian production appears to be mostly about Joyce Dugan, who was elected Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1995. She was the first woman to hold that position. The Black Mountain College production appears to be about the history of Black Mountain College in Black Mountain, N.C. Black Mountain College was founded in 1933 and guided by the principle that the study of art was central to a liberal arts education. Black Mountain College closed in 1957.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: Series 1 contains video of the documentary Step It Up and Go: Blues Music in the Carolinas

Series 2 contains video from the documentary Boogie In Black & White, about the making of the 1947 film Pitch A Boogie Woogie, featuring a primarily African American cast of musicians mostly from Greenville, N.C.

Series 3 contains video from a documentary about Joyce Dugan, who was elected Principle Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in 1995.

Abstract: Norvell Winsboro Wilson (1834-1878) was a Baptist minister in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Hillsborough, N.C., 1861-1867; Farmville, Va., and Richmond, Va., 1867-1875; and New Orleans, La., 1877-1878. The collection includes the intermittent diary, 1862-1878, recording pastoral visits, Baptist conventions, social news, and cash accounts of Norvell W. Wilson; a scrapbook of clippings relating to Wilson’s career and writings; miscellaneous family letters, 1842-1869, from members of the Scott and Pearman families of Virginia with no apparent relationship to the rest of this collection. Letters are from family members, possibly mulatto or part Indian, who had gone to Ohio and then Canada, describing their life and feelings to their relatives or friends in New Kent County, Va.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Wilson’s diary contains many references to attending “colored conferences” and preaching to enslaved and possibly free African Americans. Folder 2 also contains letters from the Scott and Pearman families, who are possibly mulatto or part Indian.

Abstract: The marriage in June 1905 of African Americans Jessie Early and Thomas A. Wylie united the Early family of Peoria, Ill., and the Wylie family of Coulterville, Ill. Chiefly

family photographs taken in Illinois and Kentucky between 1893 and 1982, with most dating between 1900 and 1940. Early photographs document members of Jessie Early Wylie’s family in Peoria, Ill., and the family of her husband, Thomas A. Wylie, of Coulterville, Ill. Thomas’s sister, Mary Wylie Blakeley, is the most frequent subject. There are also many images of Jessie Early Wylie and Thomas A. Wylie’s children, especially Minnie Wylie Graves.Other extended family represented include Payne and Reed cousins. Some photographs are formal portraits; others are casual snapshots. Notable images depict Everett Wylie in his World War II uniform; Mary Wylie Blakeley’s restaurant in Paducah, Ky.; E. Payne Wylie, a Cherokee Indian who was Thomas A. Wylie’s cousin; and Bernice Wylie as a bridesmaid in a 1933 wedding party. Also included are copies of newspaper obituaries, an 1890 prayer card, a photocopy of an 1896 marriage license, and a postcard from the Union Depot in Coulterville, Ill.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The Wylie family papers consist chiefly of family photographs taken between 1893 and 1982, with most dating between 1900 and 1940. The majority depict the African American family in Illinois and Kentucky in the first half of the 20th century. Notable images depict Everett Wylie in his World War II uniform; Mary Wylie Blakeley’s restaurant in Paducah, Ky.; E. Payne Wylie, a Cherokee Indian; and Bernice Wylie as a bridesmaid in a 1933 wedding party.

Abstract: Chiefly correspondence of Nims, Rankin, and Spratt family members, most in Mount Holly, Gaston County, N.C., and Fort Mill, York County, S.C. Included are several letters, 1850s, describing railroad building in the South; some letters with detailed information about slaves and Native Americans in Georgia; and a few letters, 1860-1865, showing the centrality of the Civil War in the lives of family members and discussing life in the Confederate army.Letters, 1865-1907, deal chiefly with family life, including discussions of the family’s agricultural interests and its cotton mill in Mount Holly, N.C. A few letters relate to service in a hospital in the Philippines during the Insurrection. After 1910, correspondence increasingly centers around Spratt family members in Mount Holly, chiefly the women, who included a Gaston County, N.C., social worker and a professor of home economics at Cornell University.All of these women wrote frequent and highly detailed letters, most dealing with their time as college students and later with routine family matters, fashion, and sewing. Also included are family financial and legal papers, including labor contracts with freedmen in 1866; writings; school materials; genealogical materials relating to the White, Spratt, Jenkins, Rankin, and Campbell families; diaries with short entries by some of the Spratt and Rankin women; clippings; and photographs, chiefly of family members and soldiers from Camp Greene in Charlotte, N.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  Included are descriptions of the conditions of slaves and native Americans in Georgia (1830s) in Folder 1; hiring slave labor for railroad work (1850s) in Folders 3 -13; and of racial tensions and riots in the South (1865- 1907). The collection also contains labor contracts between Frederick Nims and freedmen (1866) in Folder 212.

Abstract: James Allen was a planter of Warren County, Miss. Charles B. Allen was his son. Personal, family, and business correspondence of James Allen and Charles B. Allen, including European correspondence in the 1850s, mostly from Paris and the Hague, where James was apparently conducting business, and from European schools Charles attended; Civil War letters from Charles while a Confederate soldier in Mississippi and Alabama and from James in Richmond, Mobile, and other places, while he was involved in a variety of enterprises, including salt manufacture; James’s official correspondence as provost marshall of freedmen in Warren County, 1865-1866; and some post- war plantation papers, mainly concerning land transactions and the sale of cotton. Also included is a notebook, 1788-1796, of Garret Rapalje of Alabama, containing accounts, records of Indian words, etc. (incomplete typed transcription of an original manuscript at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History).

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers of the family of Colonel James Allen of Warren, Mississippi, Provost Marshal of Freedmen. Includes a notebook containing records of accounts with “Indians and Negroes” (1788- 1796). Microfilm available.

Abstract: Mississippi and Arkansas planter, Confederate general, and U.S. Indian agent. Scattered papers of Govan, including Civil War letters from him to his wife, Mary (Otey) Govan, in which he discussed camp life at various forts in Tennessee and Kentucky; postwar letters received in response to his manuscript articles discussing military history in the Tennessee theater; correspondence, 1894-1900, as Indian agent at the Tulalip Agency, Washington State, mostly with Indians and concerning their problems; selections from a scrapbook of letters and clippings (microfilm); and part of the Civil War recollections of Confederate General St. John Richardson Liddell (1815-1870) of Louisiana.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: From 1894 – 1898, there is numerous documentation of Govan’s interactions with Native Americans during his time as an agent for the Tulalip Agency. There is a letter dated 12 Dec 1895 from an African American man, Ulysos Govan (formerly Andrew Haynes) writing Govan for a recommendation.

Abstract: J. Bryan Grimes of Pitt County, N.C., was a conservative leader of the Farmers’ Alliance, the Grange, and other agricultural organizations; managed the family farms in Pitt and Beaufort counties; and was North Carolina secretary of state, 1900-1923. The collection includes business, personal, and official correspondence, chiefly 20th century, of J. Bryan Grimes, the bulk concerning his service as North Carolina secretary of state and during Democratic political campaigns. Volumes include a law notebook on North Carolina court cases, 1783-1815; mathematics exercise book, 1821-1829; bank book of John Heritage Bryan (1798-1870) in account with the Bank of New Bern (N.C.), 1831-1834; land title trace to 1910 for Avon Plantation, Pitt County (typescript); and an undated essay or speech on the Republican Party in North Carolina.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: In Folders 1 and 2, there are 18th century land treaties with Native Americans groups, and copies of wills that bequeath enslaved men, women, and children to various family members. In Folder 17, there are copies of speeches discussing Confederate concerns.

Abstract: Alice Eley Jones is a writer and historian specializing in North Carolina and African American history. She taught history at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C., 1987-1992. In 1992, she began a history consulting business called Historically Speaking and, in 2002, began a publishing company, Minnie Troy Publishers. In 2002, Jones wrote a book called “Hertford County, North Carolina” for Arcadia Publishing’s Black America Series. The book is about the history of Hertford County, its Native American Meherrin tribe roots and African American heritage. Materials collected by Alice Eley Jones for Hertford County, North Carolina. They chiefly concern Ahoskie, Winton, and Murfreesboro, N.C. Articles, souvenir church programs, and other materials provide information on prominent Hertford County African Americans, including Calvin S. Brown, Dr. Dudley E. Flood, Howard Hunter, Jr., the Reverend George T. Rouson, artist Wilbur Homer Rouson, and members of the Jones family.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection