Abstract: Harry E. Groves (1921- ), Colorado-born African-American lawyer and professor of law, with special interests in constitutional law, particularly of newly formed nations. He served as law school dean at Texas Southern University, 1956-1960, the University of Malaya, 1962-1964, and North Carolina Central University, 1976-1981; president of Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, 1965-1968; and Brandis Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1981-1986. Correspondence and other items, 1951-1999, relating to Groves’s work with Texas Southern University, the University of Malaya, the Asia Foundation, Central State University, North Carolina Central University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; to his interest in constitutional law, particularly relating to Malaysia; and to his law practice. Writings, 1942-1999, include articles, speeches, and lectures on affirmative action, domestic law, constitutional law, African-Americans in education, and the future of African-American institutions;unpublished book-length manuscripts, one of which is a Groves family history; and day journals containing travel descriptions, including one from 1984 with Groves’s impressions of South Africa. Personal papers include items relating to Groves’s school career and activities of family and friends, 1929-1998; military service, 1944-1946; real estate holdings in Ohio, North Carolina, and Houston, Tex.; Groves family history; and other items. There are also a few photographs of Groves engaged in various activities and of the institutions in which he served.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Writings, 1942-1999, include articles, speeches, and lectures on affirmative action, domestic law, constitutional law, African-Americans in education, and the future of African-American institutions; unpublished book-length manuscripts, one of which is a Groves family history; and day journals containing travel descriptions, including one from 1984 with Groves’s impressions of South Africa.

Abstract: Folklorist Daniel W. Patterson (1928- ) Kenan Professor Emeritus of English and the former chair of the Curriculum in Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Patterson played a pivotal role in the development of the Southern Folklife Collection (SFC), which opened to researchers in 1989. He has published several books about North Carolina folk life, southern traditional and religious folk music, Shaker art and music, and other topics. Folklorist Beverly Bush Patterson, born Beverly Bush in Mineola, Tex. She served on the North Carolina Arts Council, from 1992 until her retirement from the position in 2004, when she took the position of Executive Director of the North Carolina Folklife Institute. One of her focuses was southern religious music. The Pattersons have often collaborated in their work and research. They were both involved as consultants with Tom Davenport on his folklife films and also worked with Davenport on the Folkstreams project and website for streaming folklife documentary films. Daniel and Beverly Patterson collaborated with Jim Peacock and Ruel Tyson on the World and Identity Primitive Baptist collection. Another well-known collaboration was the Index of Selected Folk Recordings Project, which provided access via microfiche to over 500 albums with information on individual songs now held by the Southern Folklife Collection. Letters, subject files, films, photographs and slides of folk musicians and folk traditions, audio recordings of music (including field tapes), videotapes about folklore topics, and other materials involving Daniel and Beverly Patterson, independent film maker Tom Davenport, and others, including Bobby McMillon working together or independently to produce films, books, and other materials about life in the mountains; Sacred Harp singing; the Shakers, including interviews with Shakers and field recordings of Shaker music and songs; the legend of Frankie Silver; folk music and folklore; and other topics. SFC material traces its history from 1960s folk archive, through the acquisition of the John Edwards Memorial Collection in 1983, and the opening of the SFC in 1989 at the Sounds of the South conference. There are also student papers that were written by Daniel Patterson’s students in the Curriculum in Folklore. Correspondents include folklorist and writer Archie Green; writer D. K. Wilgus and wife Eleanor R. Long Wilgus; Ralph Steele Boggs, founder of the Curriculum in Folklore at UNC in 1939; professor Cecelia Conway; publisher Hugh McGraw; folklorist Bobby McMillon; archaeologist Stanley South; novelist Russell Banks; composer Thomas N. Rice; blues collector and record producer Peter B. Lowry; and professor John Garst. Some materials relate to religious tunebook compilers, including John G. McCurry, who wrote a shape-note songbook in 1855 that Patterson and Garst republished in 1973. Subject files contain materials about religious songs; religious groups and movements such as the Primitive Baptists; music styles; religious tunebooks; and many other topics.

Repository: Southern Folklife Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes an interview with J. Mason Brewer, a black folklorist who worked extensively in Texas and North Carolina, recorded by Dan Patterson in 1965. Brewer reads black folktales as well. [1 reel, Audiotape FT1651] Also includes unaccompanied spirituals sung by Mabry Shaw who is joined on two songs by his nephew. (These were recorded by Dan Patterson at Shaw’s home in Ebenezer Community, Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1971). [Audiotape FT-1830 and FT-1831].

Abstract: Charles Horace Hamilton was a rural sociologist with particular interests in rural life, the rural church, the rural family, rural health issues, the land tenure system, farm labor, internal migration, methods of population analysis, and social statistics. After teaching at many institutions, including at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Tex., the University of North Carolina, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Hamilton was appointed professor of rural sociology at North Carolina State University and consulted widely in his field. Chiefly Hamilton’s professional and personal correspondence. Personal correspondence includes a number of letters from family members. Most of the papers cover Hamilton’s years at Lon Morris College, UNC, VPI, and NCSU, and treat topics such as rural sociology, farm tenancy, interracial cooperation, and African-American education. Correspondence provides information about the interracial cooperation movement in Texas and the study of social science at UNC in the 1920s and 1930s. Correspondents include George Collins of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Rupert Vance, and Howard Odum. There are also a few items relating to Jessie Daniel Ames.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Professional and personal correspondence of Hamilton, rural sociologist with interests in rural life, the rural church, the rural family, rural health issues, the land tenure system, farm labor, internal migration, methods of population analysis, and social statistics. Before gaining a professorship of Rural Sociology at North Carolina State University, Hamilton taught at Morris College; the University of North Carolina; and Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Correspondence discusses, among other topics, interracial cooperation and African-American education.

Abstract: Transcriptions of interviews in the Oral Histories of Low Income and Minority Women project of the Southwest Institute for Research on Women at the University of Arizona in collaboration with the Schlesinger Library on the History of American Women at Radcliffe College with funding from the Ford Foundation. The fifty-six interviews, with transcriptions ranging in length from 17 to over 2,000 pages, were conducted by Fran Leeper Buss during the 1970s and 1980s. Interviewees, some of whom chose to remain anonymous, include three Asian-Americans, twelve African-Americans, and six Native-Americans. The women resided in fourteen states: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas in the South; Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Wyoming in the West; Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in the Midwest. Appalachia is represented by women from Kentucky and Tennessee. The subjects covered document all aspects of these women’s lives–their personal lives, their attitudes and interactions with members of their families and others in their communities, and their feelings about their status at the time of the interview and about their prospects for the future. An extensive subject index is provided. The Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is one of seven depositories for this material; the original tapes and other materials are housed at the Schlesinger Library.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: James Robert Hamilton was District Court judge of Travis and Williamson counties, Tex.; Democratic Party executive committee chair; and congressional candidate in 1926. Scattered papers, correspondence, and other items of James Robert Hamilton, principally relating to his political and legal career, especially his charges to grand juries to investigate the Ku Klux Klan, 1921-1922; bootleggers; and deserters of children. It includes two scrapbooks of clippings, 1881-1916 and 1921-1927, concerning his public life.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Materials chiefly relate to Hamilton’s political affairs and legal career, especially his charges to the grand juries of Travis and Williamson Counties concerning investigations of the Ku Klux Klan (1921-1922). Documents relating to this matter include a typescript of Hamilton’s charge to the grand jury (1921); a typed report from the grand jury to the judge concerning a specific case of Klan violence (1921); and letters received by Hamilton following his charge (1921-1922). The collection also includes an undated anti-Klan poem and a postcard of a gathering of approximately 1,000 Ku Klux Klansmen and onlookers with the caption “Initiation — Dec. 8th, 1921 — Houston Tex. Photo by A. Kluker.” Microfilm available.

Abstract: Nullification governor of South Carolina and diplomat of the Texas Republic. Materials gathered by J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, historian, in contemplation of a biography of James Hamilton. The collection consists of 50 original 19th-century manuscripts of Hamilton, mostly letters written by him; 30 manuscripts of his sons in Texas and the Confederate Army; many copies of Hamilton manuscripts in other repositories; notes, correspondence, and unpublished writings of J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton about James Hamilton; and microfilm copies of Hamilton family letters and writings of Samuel Prioleau Hamilton about his father, James. Original letters concern politics and private business in South Carolina, and diplomacy, finance, politics, and private business in Texas.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included in the collection are Confederate government receipts for slaves and goods (1860-1865) and letters discussing the sale of slaves, the care of slaves during the war, and abolition. Microfilm available.

Abstract: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, organized at Poinsett County, Ark., in 1934, was especially active in Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. The Union spread into the southeastern states and to California, affiliating off and on

with larger national labor federations, and maintaining headquarters at Memphis, Tenn., or, from 1948 to 1960, at Washington, D.C. It has become successively the National Agricultural Workers Union and the Agricultural and Allied Workers Union. Correspondence files of H. L. Mitchell and others at union headquarters at Memphis, Tenn., Washington, D.C., and in Louisiana; executive committee minutes, legal papers, surveys, annual reports, special reports, membership records, applications for local charters, financial records, and contracts; data on conventions, strikes, litigation, and legislation; histories and articles; clippings; relevant mimeographed and printed matter; and miscellaneous forms, lists, and routine local organization papers. The papers concern union organizing, financing, relationships with various federal agencies, strikes, legal defense, and other activities, mainly among cotton field workers in Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas, sugar cane workers in Louisiana, and migrant laborers in Florida and California, but also among agricultural workers in other states.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Formed to challenge many of the injustices remaining from the old plantation system, the Union papers include thousands of letters from members, including African-American sharecroppers.

Abstract: Three letters, 1852-1854, to William Raiford Myers, Charlotte, N.C., from the overseer on his cotton plantation in Cass County, Tex., discussing crops, land claims, and other matters; and other items, including manuscript music and lyrics to “Old North State,” words by William Gaston, music by Mary J. Lucas, annotated by the latter in 1879.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: John Perkins, cotton planter and lawyer of Somerset Plantation, Ashwood, La., was appointed judge of the Circuit Court for Madison Parish in 1851; served as Democratic representative from Louisiana in the U.S. Congress, 1853-1855; represented Madison Parish in the permanent Confederate Congress at Richmond, Va., 1862-1865; and emigrated to Mexico in 1865 where he worked as a colonization agent. In 1866, Perkins moved to Paris and thereafter travelled extensively in Europe and in Canada before returning to the United States in 1878. The collection includes correspondence, financial, legal, and other papers primarily documenting the political and financial interests of John Perkins. Some papers reveal Perkins’s financial and personal relationship with his father, but there is little other material related to his personal or family life. Correspondence about politics is especially heavy for 1853 to 1855, the years of Perkins’s service in the U.S. Congress. Civil War materials include correspondence about Confederate government business and letters from soldiers requesting assistance with transfers and discharges from the Confederate Army. Most of the postwar correspondence concerns Perkins’s emigration to Mexico and work as a colonization agent there. Other correspondence concerns the management of Perkins’s Somerset and other plantations in Louisiana in the 1850s and 1870s and Cottonwood Plantation, Ellis County, Tex., in the 1860s.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folders 2 thru 4 contain letters from the years of Perkins’s service in Congress (1853-1855)that discuss the situation of the slaveholding states.

Letters from Perkins’s plantation manager, William Rhodes, at Somerset in July and August 1857 report on the crops, progress of work, and a proposed purchase of slaves there (Folders 6 and 7)  Rhodes also enclosed letters from the overseers at Perkins’s other plantations. These and letters of 1859 and 1860 from overseers J. M. Stanbrough and J. J. Smiley at Homestead, Lewis Carter at Viamede, and A. M. Taylor at Backland, report on conditions at those plantations. E. F. Furniss also wrote to “cousin John” about the plantations. (Folders 9 and 10)

Letters from Henry Pannill and G. W. Smith to John Perkins in 1863 and 1864 report on weather, work, overseers, slaves, and stock at Cottonwood Plantation in Ellis County, Texas. (Folders 13 to 15a).

Abstract: Daniel A. Powell was born on 29 July 1911 in Wilson, N.C. In the 1930s Powell worked as a salesman for the American Circulation Company, the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, and as advertising salesman for the Memphis Press-Scimitar. He was an account executive for the O’Callaghan Advertising Agency in 1939-1940 and served in the United States Army Air Force in World War II. Powell was briefly the Assistant Information Director for the West Tennessee Office of Price Administration in 1945 and in the same year became the Southern Director of the Political Action Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.When the CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor in 1955, the AFL’s League for Labor Education joined with the CIO’s PAC to cbecome the Committee on Political Education (COPE). Powell then became director of COPE Region 5, roughly the same territory he had covered for PAC. Powell served in that position until his death, 6 Aug Correspondence, subject files, audio tapes and discs, photographs, and other material of Daniel Augustus Powell (1911-1983), labor union official and civic leader of Memphis, Tennessee. The great bulk of these papers relates to the work of the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) for Area 5, which Powell directed from 1955-1983. There is also material on Powell’s work as head of the CIO Political Action Committee (PAC) in the southeast from 1945-1955; his membership in the Newspaper Guild; and his activities with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Memphis, the West Tennessee Civil Liberties Union, the Tennessee Council on Human Relations, the United States Civil Rights Commission, and the Tennessee Committee for the Humanities.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Correspondence in Series 1 (AFL-CIO PAC/COPE: State Files) contains letters to and from PAC/COPE national officers discussing topics such as responding to issues of race, anti-union activity, and the rise of the radical right.

Series 3 contains Powell’s personal writings. Folder 293 contains materials relating to the Civil Rights Commission of 1966 – 1977.

Folders 297 – 300 contain texts of reports or notes for speeches on such subjects as the attitudes of African Americans in various American cities in 1964, the Memphis garbage strike in 1968, and the rise of the radical right in American politics.

Audiotape T-4364/32 consists of recordings from the 1970 Symposium, “The Emerging South” of the LCQ Lamar Society. Participants include George Esser and Maynard Jackson; topics discussed include “The Black Man in Southern Politics”

Image folder P-4364/26-32 contains an image of a parade in Memphis after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.