Creator: Hodges, Luther Hartwell, 1898-1974.
Collection number: 3698
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Abstract: Luther Hartwell Hodges began his career as an executive for Marshall Field & Comapny, 1919-1950. He was later consultant to the Economic Cooperation Administration, 1950-1951; lieutenant governor, 1953- 1954, and governor, 1956-1960, of North Carolina; United Sates Secretary of Commerce, 1961-1965; head of the Research Triangle Foundation, 1966-1972; and president of Rotary International, 1967-1968. Correspondence, subject files, political files, speeches and other writings, scrapbooks, and other private papers and audiovisual materials of Luther H. Hodges. Much of the material concerns Hodges’s years with Marshall Field & Comapny, 1919-1950; his work with Rotary International, 1930-1972; and his chairmanship of Research Triangle Foundation, 1966-1972. Also included are some letters about the Economic Cooperation Administration in post-World War II Germany; a small amount of family correspondence; political speeches Hodges made as governor and Secretary of Commerce; books by and about Hodges; scrapbooks of clippings about Hodges’s political career and about school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark., as well as in North Carolina; materials relating to a study of the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees; and trip reports to friends and family from many trips overseas, including trips to Asia and Africa.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Series 2.7 (General Subject Files) contains various folders related to school desegregation and historically black colleges and universities in the area (See Folders 1774, 1815, 1816-1817).
Some copies of speeches in Series 4.2 also deal with Civil Rights and school desegregation as well.
Subseries 4.3 contains various reports about Hodges’s travel, including Africa, where he noted observations about various African nations after independence.
Scrapbooks in Subseries 5.1 contain several clippings, papers, and letters regarding desegregation in North Carolina and Arkansas from 1954-1961 and 1957-1958 (See Volumes S-72 to S-81).
Subseries 5.3 also contains letters, telegrams, clippings, and political pamphlets sent to Governor Hodges in the wake of Governor Orval Faubus’s summoning of the National Guard troops to prevent the integration of Central High School in Little Rock.