Abstract: Otis N. Pruitt and Calvin Shanks photographed life in Columbus, Miss., between the 1920s and 1980s. Pruitt, born in Mississippi in 1891, became interested in photography while photographing his children. He moved to Columbus to work in Henry Hoffmeister’s photography studio, also attending the Illinois School of Photography early in his career. In or around 1920, Pruitt bought out Hoffmeister, becoming the sole photographer in Columbus. Pruitt ran the studio until around 1960, when he sold the business to his assistant, Calvin Shanks. Pruitt died in 1967, and Shanks continued to run the studio until his death in 1981, but the studio remained in operation until about 1986. The collection includes images taken by Otis N. Pruitt and Calvin Shanks between the 1920s and 1980s chiefly in Lowndes County, Miss. Most of the images were created by Pruitt circa 1920s-1950s. They document his work as a commercial (for-hire) and studio photographer in Columbus. Images primarily depict the town and people, including local businesses, churches, residential areas, schools, events, and people. Of particular interest are images of visits by Mississippi state politicians, historic homes, the African American community, and civic groups. The collection also includes images from outside Columbus, including other locations within Mississippi, as well as in Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Quite a number of the photographs document African American individuals and groups in Mississippi, from churches to fraternal organizations to social clubs. A few examples included an African American family working in agriculture (Sheet Film 05463/00031), Cedar Grove M.B. Church (Folder 05463/01254), and the Colored Young Mens Christian Association (Sheet Film 05463/01531).

A number of images from this collection have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized material.

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: Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, married sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates in 1843 and established homes and families in Wilkes County and later Surry County, N.C. The collection includes correspondence, bills, and receipts, including slave bills of sale, of Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker relating to their North Carolina property, planting interests, family matters, and arrangements for exhibition tours. Also included are an account book, 1833-1839, showing income from public appearances and itinerary; clippings; photographs; articles about the twins by Worth B. Daniels and Jonathan Daniels and related material; and Joined at Birth, a 1998 videotape about the twins that was made by Advanced Medical Productions of Chapel Hill, N.C., for the Discovery Channel. The Addition of November 2011 is a ledger with entries presumably penned by Chang and Eng’s business manager Charles Harris detailing the business-related and personal expenses of Chang and Eng during exhibition tours of Cuba, Europe, and the United States and for a period after they settled in North Carolina in 1839.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection highlights: Portions of this collection has been digitized and is part of the online exhibition “Eng & Chang Bunker: The Siamese Twins”. Click here to link to the exhibit and to access the digitized material.

Folder 2 contains bills of sale for enslaved persons for the Bunkers property in North Carolina. There is also a photograph of a formerly enslaved woman who belonged to the Bunker Family.

Abstract: Mary L. Woods was an African American woman from Smithfield, Va. The collection is a photograph album belonging to Mary L. Woods containing 69 snapshots of friends and family members, labeled with names, dates, and comments. The images are posed portraits of African Americans, including a few children; they were taken outdoors in rural settings, urban settings, and at the beach. Locations mentioned include Smithfield, Va., Yorktown, Va., Portsmouth, Va., and Washington, D.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

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: 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: William Shelburn was active as a photographer in North Carolina circa 1856-1907. During that period, he frequently relocated his studio and gallery, which at various times were in Oxford, Raleigh, Goldsboro, Asbury, Greenville, Kinston, Durham, and Burlington. The collection is a photographic print, circa 1870s, mounted on card stock. It depicts an African American man on a donkey on a dirt street in front of a building; the man is holding a crutch. On the verso is printed: “William Shelburn, Photographer, Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, N.C.” and “Additional copies can be obtained at any time by sending this number,” but no number is given.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Image P-5474/1 is an 1870s photograph card of an African American man on a donkey on a dirt street in front of a building. On the verso is printed: “William Shelburn, Photographer, Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, N.C.” and “Additional copies can be obtained at any time by sending this number,” but no number is given.

Abstract: The Royster family of Raleigh, N.C., descended from James Daniel Royster (1790?-1870?) and Mary Ashley Royster (1795?-1880?). The collection includes correspondence, writings, printed items, and financial, legal, and military documents, relating to Royster family members. The bulk of the material is correspondence, 1890s-1950s, of Hubert Ashley Royster, M.D., (1871-1959), grandson of James Daniel Royster and a prominent and pioneering Raleigh surgeon, concerning his practice, life in Raleigh, the Medical Department in Raleigh of the University of North Carolina, and related matters. Prominent among correspondents are psychiatrist James K. Hall and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. Also included are a few letters from Iowa Michigan Royster (1840-1863), a son of James Daniel Royster, two written in 1858 while he was a student at the University of North Carolina and three during his service with the 1st North Carolina Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War. The Addition of March 2010 consists of photographs, circa 1887-1904 (bulk 1898), of Royster family members, town scenes, African Americans, and soldiers at camp and in town during the Spanish-American War. Also included are photocopies of portraits of Hallie Lee High Royster and her sons, Percy Lake Royster and Wilbur High Royster, and panoramic postcards of Raleigh, N.C.; St. Mary’s College, Raleigh, N.C.; and North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now North Carolina State University), Raleigh, N.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Image Folder PF-4183/3 contains several images of African American men, women, and children, most of whom are unidentified. Those who are identified, perhaps by Hallie Lee High Royster, are “Mary,” the nurse of two boys, and “Aunt Mandy,” a cook, both of Raleigh, N.C.

Abstract: The Moore, Blount, and Cowper families of North Carolina were active chiefly in Wake, Franklin, and Halifax counties. Moore family members included B.F. Moore, an anti-secessionist lawyer and North Carolina attorney general, 1848-1851; his daughter Lucy Catherine Moore Henry Capehart and sons Bartholomew Figures Moore, Van Boddie Moore, and James Moore; and his grandson Bartholomew Figures Moore, who was married to Olivia Blount Cowper Moore. Other Cowper family members included Olivia’s paternal grandparents, Pulaski Cowper and Mary Blount Grimes, and maternal great grandparents, Bryan Grimes and Lucy Olivia Blount. The collection consists of correspondence, legal papers, volumes, pictures, family history, and other materials documenting the Moore, Blount, and Cowper families, as well as the Boddie, Coapman, Gatling, Grimes, Keeble, Ruffin, and Williams families of North Carolina. Nineteenth-century correspondence includes family letters, some mother-to-daughter and father-to-daughter, that offer a glimpse into plantation life, including social news, child-rearing, child mortality, epidemic illness, death during childbirth, courtship, and news about slaves, in antebellum North Carolina. Other 19th-century letters support ending the Civil War and discuss business affairs, agriculture, medicine, slavery, and academics at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Of particular note are copies of letters exchanged by B.F. Moore and Governor W. W. Holden in 1866 that discuss an 1863 conversation they had with Governor Zebulon Vance regarding further prosecution of the war. Twentieth-century correspondence consists chiefly of a series of Olivia Blount Cowper Moore letters exchanged with a French soldier during World War I; letters from her friend with a children’s clothing enterprise during the 1930s; frequent social correspondence, including invitations and greeting cards (bulk 1960s); and sympathy letters. Other 20th-century correspondence concerns business affairs, the Episcopal Church, genealogy, and potential Communist indoctrination at North Carolina State University. Legal materials consist of bonds, deeds, indentures, and cadastral maps regarding land and slaves, chiefly in Wake County, N.C., and in Alabama. There is also an 1852 list of slaves, where they lived, and from whom they were bought; wills and related estate materials for many family members; and account books, scrapbooks, and other volumes that document estate settlements, family life, women’s social life and customs, the Civil War, World War I, arts and cultural entertainment, influenza, the Episcopal Church, and various other subjects. Pictures depict family members and others and are primarily black-and-white photographic prints, some card-mounted, but there also are daguerreotypes, tintypes, and other formats. Family history materials include genealogical correspondence, biographical materials, and a record of slave births, circa 1828-1847. Most slave materials relate to North Carolina, but there are also items about slavery in Alabama and Texas. Also included are family bibles, a history of the Boddie family, blueprints for several family houses, a small amount of financial material, miscellaneous writings by family members and others, a mid-19th-century recipe for a medicinal cure for ague and the fever, Civil War pardons, newspaper clippings and other printed material, and World War II ration coupons and inspection records.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence in Series 1 frequently discusses the enslaved as well as the Civil War. For example, Correspondence of the junior Bartholomew Figures Moore (1838-1890) includes an 1863 letter he wrote to his father, B.F. Moore (1801-1878), while serving in the Confederate Army, in which he discussed the purchase of slaves in Alabama and the issue of runaway slaves during the Civil War. In Series 2 (Legal Materials), there are deeds of sale for slaves, as well an 1852 list of slaves, where they lived and from whom they were bought. In Folder 106, there is a list of slave births, c. 1828 – 1848.  Image Folder  P-4617/21 contains a photograph of an African American woman with two African American men and an ox drawn cart in front of the home of Lucy Olivia Blount Grimes and Bryan Grimes (1793-1860) on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, N.C.