Creator: North Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation records, 1922-1949.
Collection number: 3823
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Abstract: The North Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation was established in 1921 as a state affiliate of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation to work toward improved race relations in the state. Like its parent organization, the NCCIC, sought both to alleviate injustices and to change prejudiced racial attitudes. Its efforts included meetings with individuals, correspondence, press releases, radio programs, pamphlets, local meetings, and state-wide conferences. After closing its offices in 1949, the NCCIC became an affiliate of the Southern Regional Council in 1951 and, in 1955, changed its name to the North Carolina Council on Human Relations. The collection consists of correspondence and financial, legal, and other materials. Correspondence is primarily that of the directors of the North Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation concerning daily operations of the NCCIC and its county and city affiliates, investigations of instances of injustice and violence towards African Americans, and financial matters. Included are letters from officers and organizations including the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Regional Council, and the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company. There are also financial and legal materials, 1928-1949, including a 1946 agreement of affiliation between the Southern Regional Council and the NCCIC; a study concerning a Hamlet, N.C., murder in 1928; and an investigation of a Pender County, N.C., lynching in 1933. Other materials include pamphlets and other printed materials, speeches, radio program materials, reports, and other writings on topics such as race relations, education, religion, crime, discrimination, and civic involvement; responses to a 1948 survey of North Carolina public libraries about their holdings on minorities; conference materials; meeting minutes; and constitutions, by-laws, and resolutions.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Papers discuss such topics as racial attitudes, justice, education, transportation, employment, religion, crime, economics, discrimination, health, social welfare, agriculture, and civic involvement.
Included are notes on racial conditions in New Bern, North Carolina (1922-26); an NAACP appeal for state support in a case involving the fatal shooting of an African-American man in Hamlet, North Carolina (1927) in Folder 1.
Correspondence also include discussion about a lynching in Franklin County, North Carolina (1935); black voter registration (1936); segregated toilet facilities on the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad (1928-29); an African American’s application to the graduate school of the University of Virginia (1935); African- American employment, and African-American jury duty in Folder 2, 16-26.
This collection has been digitized and is available online. Click here to link to the finding aid for this collection and to access the digitized content.