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: 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: You Got To Move is a documentary film released in 1985 about southern social justice activists and the Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, in New Market, Tenn. Lucie Massie Phenix directed and edited the film. The collection primarily contains research files compiled by Lucie Massie Phenix on people and communities featured in the documentary You Got To Move. There is a small amount of material relating to funding the film and scattered correspondence of Lucie Massie Phenix about the film. The collection also contains a DVD viewing copy of You Got To Move.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: You Got To Move features several individuals involved in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Bernice Johnson Reagon and Myles Horton.

Abstract: Billy Brown Olive of Durham, N.C., is a North Carolina attorney who specializes in patent and intellectual property law. In 1957, he established Olive & Olive, the first patent law firm to serve the Research Triangle Park area, and taught proprietary and engineering law classes at the Duke School of Engineering and the School of Product Design at North Carolina State University. For more than 40 years, Olive was involved in civic affairs, specifically those relating to the environment and environmental racism. Locally, he was involved in the opposition to specific routes of Interstate 40 in Orange County, N.C., serving as coordinator with Opposition to I-40 in Orange County. He also opposed the Eubanks Road landfill site in Orange County, N.C. and the East/West Expressway route through the historically African American Crest Street community in Durham, N.C. The collection includes materials on environmental and social issues of interest to Billy Brown Olive, specifically his opposition to the Interstate 40 construction through Orange County, N.C.; the proposed landfill site near Eubanks Road in Orange County; and the proposed extension of the East/West Expressway (North Carolina Highway 147) through the historically African American Crest Street community in Durham, N.C. Interstate 40 papers consist of Olive’s office files related to Interstate 40 construction through North Carolina, including correspondence, meeting minutes of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, newspaper clippings, maps of routes, and petitions. Landfill site materials relate to the proposed placement of an Orange County landfill near Eubanks Road in Orange County, and include court documents, letters of opposition written by Olive, newspaper clippings, landfill drawings, and publications and reports. Crest Street papers include correspondence; court documents, specifically those related to the Save Our Church and Community Committee of Durham; maps of Duke Forest; publications and reports; and additional correspondence relating to I-40 construction in Durham. Also included is material related to the Orange County Municipal Waste Project, chiefly consisting of correspondence of Olive with state and local officials, newspaper staff, educators, and the Landfill Owners Group, but also including studies and reports on waste management. There are a few related photographs scattered throughout the collection.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: A number of the communities Mr. Olive worked with are African American, including the community on Crest Street. Series 3 contains correspondence, maps, and court proceedings relating to stopping the expansion of Interstate 40 through the Crest Street neighborhood.

Abstract: Greensboro Mayor David Schenck was born 7 January 1927 in Greensboro, N.C., and was the great-grandson of Judge David Schenck, a prominent 19th century lawyer and politician in Greensboro. Schenck received a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University in 1947 and attended the business school at the University of North Carolina in 1948. In 1959, Schenck was elected to the Greensboro City Council where he served as chair of the Transportation Committee and later on the Mayor’s Special Committee on Human Relations and Race Relations in 1960. On 8 May 1961, Schenck was elected mayor of Greensboro. He was reelected in 1963 and served until 1965. During his tenure as mayor, Schenck witnessed mass civil rights demonstrations by African-American students and others in Greensboro, culminating in his June 1963 decision to urge Greensboro businesses to voluntarily integrate their facilities. Schenck died in 1970 at age 43 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Materials include Schenck’s correspondence, texts of statements given to the press, appointment books, memos, notes, clippings, and other items mostly related to his handling of the 1963 civil rights demonstrations in Greensboro that led to integration of the city’s public accommodations. Correspondents include members of activist organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Greensboro A&T Alumni Association; Greensboro businessmen; and a number of concerned citizens. Many letters and telegrams are specifically in response to Schenck’s 7 June 1963 pro-integration statement that “selection of customers purely by race is outdated, morally unjust, and not in keeping with either democratic or Christian philosophy.” Other items include reports, resolutions, meeting agendas and other material of the Greensboro City Council and the Commission on Human Relations; annotated lists of Greensboro businesses noting whether or not they agreed to integrate their facilities; and a recorded telephone conversation between Schenck and North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford dated 24 May 1963.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: There is numerous documentation dealing with segregation and  the Civil Rights demonstrations in Greensboro when Schenck was mayor. The correspondence in Series 1 is particularly rich in understanding how African American and white citizens in Greensboro perceived desegregation and the Civil Rights protests going on in the city at that time.

Folder 1 contains numerous letters from individuals and businesses either in support or again integration of restaurants and other public facilities in Greensboro. Some letters, such as one written by Eugene Hood on 11 April 1963, decry hypocrisy of the Mayor’s Integration Committee by forcing restaurant owners to integrate their facilities but maintaining segregation in social clubs and other areas within the city and government.

There are also copies of resolutions and statements from groups like the Coordinating Council of Pro-Integration Groups and the Gate City Chapter of the N.C. A & T College Alumni Association, stating their support for the civil rights demonstrators and an end to discriminatory practices in a number of institutions. There are also copies of statements such as the letter issued by W.H.  Long Marketing Company, calling for businesses to reject “forced” integration by the state government.

Folder 10 contains correspondence and documentation from the Greensboro Commission on Human Relations, established in May 1963. There is also a 23 May 1963 letter from attorney J. Kenneth Lee, who was one of the first African American students to desegregation the law school at UNC Chapel Hill. Click here to access the online finding aid for the J. Kenneth Lee Collection in the Southern Historical Collection

Folder 11 contains a 19 page booklet from an initial report by The Durham Interim Committee, established on 22 May 1963 to address civil rights demonstrations in Durham, North Carolina.

There is also an audio clip of a phone conversation between Mayor Schenck and Governor Terry Sanford about the civil rights demonstrations going on in Greensboro at the time. Click here to link to the finding aid and access the digitized material.

Abstract: Political activist Allard Kenneth Lowenstein (1929-1980) served as a lawyer, teacher, speaker, author, United States congressman from New York, United States representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and founder and leader of several organizations. Correspondence, organizational records, political campaign records, congressional files, writings, speeches, press clippings, research materials, scheduling files, financial and administrative records, diaries, scrapbooks, family papers, photographs, sound recordings, videocasette tapes, and other items documenting the life and career of Allard K. Lowenstein. Correspondence, 1940s-1970s, covers Lowenstein’s service in World War II; years as a student activist at the University of North Carolina; work with the United States National Student Association, Democratic Party, Coalition for a Democratic Alternative, and other organizations; relations with Eleanor Roosevelt, Frank Porter Graham, Adlai Stevenson, William F. Buckley Jr., Aaron Henry, Eugene J. McCarthy, Norman C. Thomas, and Hubert H. Humphrey; interests in political and social affairs including civil rights, voter registration, and political reform in the United States and relations with other countries, especially Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the Soviet Union; work at Stanford University; anti-Vietnam War activities; the Ditch Johnson campaign; his successful campaign for Congress from the Fifth Congressional District of New York; various unsuccessful political campaigns for United States House and Senate seats from New York; his investigation of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination; his United Nations work; his work on Edward M. Kennedy’s 1980 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination; and other matters. Activity files, 1935-1980, document Lowenstein’s various United Nations appointments during the Carter Administration; attempts to reopen the investigation of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination; involvement in Americans for Democratic Action; attendance at the University of North Carolina; African travels; and other activities relating to civil rights, international relations, and other topics. Political campaign materials, 1942-1980, relate to campaigns of Lowenstein and others, chiefly Democrats. United States Congress materials, 19

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection documents Lowenstein’s deep interest in issues of race, especially in the Civil Rights Movement. Materials documenting his activities and interests in civil rights include research notes from 1940-1968 (Series 6); speeches from 1951-1980 (Series 7.3); and interviews from between 1952-1980 (Subseries 10.2 ). The collection also contains manuscripts recording Lowenstein’s involvement in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1967-1980 (Subseries 2.18); Americans for Democratic Action from 1947- 1957 and 1966-1980 (Subseries 2.22); United States National Student Association from 1950-1967 (Folder 87 in Series 2.3 and also in Subseries 2.6); and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1963- 1964; in Subseries 2.14). Included are papers relating to Lowenstein’s opposition to apartheid in South and Southwest Africa from 1954-1963 (Subseries 2.11 and 2.27).

Abstract: John Marsden Ehle, Jr., author of novels and works of non- fiction, was born in Asheville, N.C., and has lived most of his adult life in Winston-Salem. He served as special assistant to North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford, 1963-1964, and has been instrumental in establishing and furthering many significant educational, desegregation, and anti-poverty projects. He is married to British actress Rosemary Harris. Included are materials documenting both the literary career and public service activities of John Ehle. Literary materials include correspondence, clippings, and financial items relating to Ehle’s novels and other works, as well as notes, drafts, and galleys. Family items include correspondence of Ehle’s parents and a few items relating to Rosemary Harris. Other materials relate to Ehle’s work with various public and private institutions. These include files generated in the course of Ehle’s work in the Governor’s Office, especially his efforts on behalf of the North Carolina School of the Arts and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. There are also files relating to the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Federation for the Arts and Humanities, Duke University, and the Penland School of Crafts. Photographs and audio-visual materials include family photographs and photographs used as book illustrations; audio disks of radio shows that Ehle wrote or acted in; tapes of interviews done for various books; and filmstrips, chiefly on North Carolina history, which Ehle produced, sometimes in collaboration with others. A few items relate to Rosemary Harris.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Includes reports and correspondence regarding the North Carolina College for Negroes and materials pertaining to his 1965 book, The Free Men. As a special assistant to North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford, 1963-1964, he worked on several desegregation and anti-poverty projects.

Abstract: The North Carolina Fund, an independent, non-profit, charitable corporation, sought and dispensed funds to fight poverty in North Carolina, 1963-1968. Gov. Terry Sanford and other North Carolinians convinced the Ford Foundation to grant $7 million initial funding for a statewide anti- poverty effort aimed at rural and urban communities. This money–plus additional funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation; the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation; the U.S. Dept. of Labor; U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare; U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development; and the Office of Economic Opportunity–enabled the Fund to support a broad program of education, community action, manpower development, research and planning, and other efforts to fight poverty. Records of the North Carolina Fund, primarily the files of the central office staff, especially Executive Director George Hyndman Esser (1921- ), and records of the Manpower Improvement Through Community Effort (MITCE) program. Among the programs documented are the North Carolina Volunteers; training of community action technicians to work in North Carolina and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA); a summer internship and curriculum development program; and research on poverty in North Carolina, community problems in areas served by community action programs, the community action process, and manpower and economic development. Also documented are programs funded by the North Carolina Fund, chief among them the 11 community action agencies and the projects they operated. Two grassroots organizations of poor people also received financial support from the North Carolina Fund, as did programs to improve education in North Carolina, manpower programs, and low-income housing programs. Records related to attacks on the North Carolina Fund’s programs shed light on politics and race relations, as well as on economic and social conditions in North Carolina in the 1960s. Note that there are separate catalog records for the Administrative Series; the Volunteer Programs Series; the Training Programs Series; the 11 Community Action Programs; the Manpower Programs Series; the Research Department Series; the Study Committee Series; and the Public Information Department Series.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Official records of a five-year experimental antipoverty agency that conducted studies and surveys of low-income housing, food, community organization, and other aspects of poverty. Many records in this voluminous collection document the experiences of African American and the intersections of poverty, race, and class.

Some materials 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 content.

For an in depth analysis of the North Carolina Fund, politics, and race, see the book To Right These Wrongs: he North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America by Robert R. Korstad and James L. Leloudis. Click here for more information about this publication