Creator: Williams, Kenny J.
Collection number: 5182
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Abstract: Kenny Jackson Williams (1927-2003), an African American studies scholar, taught at Duke University and was appointed to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Correspondence, writings, clippings, photographic slides, and other miscellaneous papers of Kenny J. Williams. The correspondence is chiefly professional, with publishers, students, members of the English Department at Duke University, and others, regarding publishing, teaching, and faculty matters, and her NEH appointment. Also included are some personal letters from friends and other correspondence regarding membership in a women’s club. Writings include drafts of various articles on African American writers, Sherwood Anderson, and midwestern writers of the nineteenth century, and Williams’s conservative positions, considered controversial in the academy, on multiculturalism, affirmative action in higher education, and the ideological implications of studying African American literature. The photographic slides document travel to Liberia, Romania, Hungary, and China during the 1960s.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: There are several folders that contain materials from William’s work on African American writers such as Phyllis Wheatley (Folder 36) and Sherwood Anderson’s work (folder 20).
Folder 59 also contains clippings related to African Americans in Durham, N.C.