Abstract: Harriet Jacobs was an escaped slave and abolitionist who wrote about her experiences in her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Jean Fagan Yellin, head of the Harriet Jacobs Family Papers Project, is Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Pace University in New York, N.Y., and author of The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers (2008), a two-volume collection of primary source material related to Jacobs and her family. The collection consists chiefly of materials collected by Jean Fagan Yellin in her work as the head of the Harriet Jacobs Family Papers Project. Included are several original letters by or about members of the Jacobs family; Yellin’s administrative files; email print-outs and correspondence with archives and research centers; photocopied primary source materials, including letters, newspaper clippings, and other documents; indexes of collected and consulted items; and background subject files compiled to supplement the research effort. Topics include the Jacobs family and the related Knox family; slavery and runaway slaves; abolition; Harriet Jacobs’s life in North Carolina, New York (with the Willis family), and Boston; her antislavery work during the Civil War; and other topics.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular interest are the original documents in Series 1, from the children and contemporaries of Harriet Jacobs, including letters to her daughter Louisa M. Jacobs (Folders 1 & 2).

Abstract: Lawyer of New Bern, N.C. Chiefly legal and business papers of New Bern, N.C., lawyer, Alexander Justice, including grants, deeds, indentures, plats, bills of sale for slaves, wills, amnesty oaths, marriage contracts, bills and receipts, and bank shares. Also included are a composition book, 1843-1845, of Justice when he was a student at the University of North Carolina; items regarding Justice, Sparrow, Green, and Tillman family history; and other items belonging to Justice and his family; and records of the Confederate Corps of Engineers at Fort Macon, N.C., April-October 1861, concerning the hiring and quartering of slaves and free blacks who worked on railroad and coastal defenses.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  The papers contain slave bills of sale and records from Fort Macon for the Corps of Engineers which contain information on the quartering and hiring of slaves (1861). See Volume 2 in Folder 13.

Abstract: Correspondence, drawings, scrapbooks and other materials by and about Norman E. Jennett, cartoonist for the Raleigh (N.C.) “News and Observer,” 1895-1898; the New York “Herald,” 1901-1917; and “Flying” and its successor, “Aerial Age Weekly,” 1917-1923; and art editor for McFadden Publications, 1923-1939. Included are letters from Josephus Daniels, Julian S. Carr, and others about North Carolina and national politics, especially the campaigns of 1898 and 1900, and letters from editors, publishers, and fellow artists about Jennett’s work.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Guy Benton Johnson was one of the original research assistants at the Institute for Research in Social Science and joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 1927, retiring in 1969. In 1923, he married Guion

Griffis, also a social science researcher. They had two sons: Guy Benton Jr. (Benny) (b. 1928) and Edward (b. 1933). Papers, mostly correspondence and research project files, relating chiefly to Johnson’s work at the University of Chicago and at UNC on the Ku Klux Klan; musical abilities of African-Americans and white Americans; African-American folksongs; the John Henry legend; the folklore and language (Gullah) of Saint Helena Island, S.C.; Lumbee Indians of Robeson County, N.C.; and the desegregation of higher education. Many items relate to his and Guion’s participation in the Gunnar Myrdal Study of the American Negro, 1939-1940. There are also materials documenting Johnson’s work with the Southern Regional Council, of which he was director in 1944-1947; the North Carolina Council on Human Relations; the Phelps-Stokes Fund; and the Howard University Board of Trustees; and his service to professional sociological organizations. Also included are writings by Johnson, pedagogical materials, photographs and other materials relating to his family in North Carolina and Texas and career. Johnson’s correspondents included Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson, C.C. Spaulding, H.L. Mencken, Carl van Vechten, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marion Wright, and many other intellectuals, scholars, writers, and activists, both black and white.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights:  Some of the materials on this collection have been digitized and are available online. Click here to link to the finding aid and to access the digital material.

Papers relate to Johnson’s extensive cultural and sociological studies and projects conducted under the auspices of organizations such as the Institute for Research in Social Science, the Southern Regional Council, the North Carolina Council on Human Relations, the Phelps-Stokes Fund, and the Board of Trustees of Howard University.

Subseries 1.2 and 1.3 (Correspondence) contain a number of letters discussing race relations, school desegregation, the Ku Klux Klan, Gullah/Geechee culture and language,  and as well as Johnson’s trip to Africa and the idea for an exchange program for African students. Additional items of interest include a sermon by Pauli Murray, entitled “Gifts of the Holy Spirit to Women I Have Known,” enclosed in a letter to Johnson dated 18 May 1978, and a letter, dated 12 October 1983, to Johnson discussing the controversy over Langston Hughes’ appearance at University of North Carolina in 1931.

Series 2 (Alumni Office Files) contains letters on various topics including race relations, civil rights, music,  and different African American Freedom Celebrations. Johnson’s correspondents include a large number of black political leaders, journalists, and intellectuals, such as Will W. Alexander, Sterling Brown, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, and Mary McLeod Bethune.

Of particular notes in Subseries 3.2.2 (Publications) are drafts and research notes for “The Police and The Negro” (Folders 795-797).

Also of note are the various research projects Johnson conducted with focus on African American life and culture. See Series 5 for a complete listing of the projects. Of particular note is the study he conducted on Gullah language and culture in South Carolina, entitled Folk Culture of Saint Helena Island. This research study includes stories and riddles from students of the Penn Center on the island, as well as some recordings of songs. Some of these materials have been digitized.

There are also a number of photographs in this collection related to Johnson’s family life and his research. Of note are the photographs of African American churches in Chapel Hill, N.C. (Image folder 3826/41) and various scenes and houses in the African American communities on Saint Helena Island, S.C. (Image Folders 3826/35-36).

Folders 94-99, 313, and 320 contain materials relating to the “Encyclopedia of the Negro” project in the 1930s and 1940s, including correspondence with Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois (who was principle editor of the Encyclopedia) and other noted academics.

Folder 97 also contains a letter dated 4 November 1939 from Anson Phelps Stokes as a representative from the Marian Anderson Committee, which was formed after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitutional Hall in DC based on the fact she was an African American artist. The Committee formed after this refusal, to continue to petition the DAR to allow Ms. Anderson to perform.

Abstract: The Rootes family of Fredericksburg, Va., and the Cobb, Jackson, and Prince families of Athens, Macon, and other locations in Georgia belonged to the elite of the southern planter artistocracy. Henry Jackson(1778-1840) served as United States charge d’affaires in France (1812-1818) and taught at Franklin College in Athens, Ga. (1811-1813 and 1819-1828). His wife, Martha Jacquelin Rootes Cobb Jackson (1786-1853) operated her husband’s Halscot Plantation outside Athens, Ga., and Cookshay Plantation in Chatham County, Ala., for over a decade after his death. Jackson’s son, Henry Rootes Jackson, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army, also served as minister to Austria (1853-1858) and to Mexico (1885-1886). Oliver Hillhouse Prince (1823-1875), Jackson’s son-in-law, was a Democratic Party newspaper editor deeply involved in Georgia politics in the 1840s, who became a large landholder and planter in Bibb and Baker counties. The papers consist of family, business, and political correspondence, financial and legal papers, and miscellaneous collected items. They include personal and plantation accounts; day books; slave records; deeds and indentures; diaries; scientific notes; and genealogical materials. The papers document the social and religious life of ante-bellum aristocratic women, including camp meetings and missionary activities, and offer insight into the economic and political life of Georgia. They also contain information on early American foreign affairs.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Papers consist of personal and plantation accounts and slave lists and records (Series 2).  Correspondence includes discussing the treatment of slaves in Va. (1784-1811). See Folders 1-6.

Folders 103-105 also contain bills of sale for enslaved individuals.

Folder 134 also contains two letters from 1845 (5 May & 5 June) discussing Oliver Prince’s hiring of an enslaved man named Jefferson to work in his print shop. Folders 139-140 also contain correspondence from the late 1860s and 1870s discussing free people of color.

Folder 162B contains various clippings discussing issues around slavery from the Daily Georgian newspaper.

Abstract: Letters, 14 July 1865 and 9 September 1865, from Johnson, a federal soldier from Maine serving with U.S. Army forces occupying South Carolina, to a friend, recounting activities of the occupying forces around Charleston, S.C., and describing disordered conditions in the area.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Letters from Johnson, a federal soldier in South Carolina, to a friend, recounting the activities of the occupying forces around Charleston. One letter refers to arrangements of work contracts between blacks and their former masters.

Abstract: William Hall Johnston was the son of Dorcas Hall Knox and Robert Johnston of Mount Vernon, Rowan County, N.C. Family letters dealing with conditions in Rowan County, N.C., at Davidson College, and at Princeton Theological Seminary, 1840-1844; love letters to Susan Adams in which William Johnston explained his reasons for becoming a Presbyterian minister in Lafayette, Ga., 1846; a list of the values and ages of slaves belonging to the estate of Robert Johnston, 1842; and other items.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included is a list of the values and ages of slaves belonging to the estate of Robert Johnston (1842).

Abstract: Members of the Johnston and McFaddin families lived in Alabama. Most items refer to Thomas M. Johnson, cotton planter of Greensboro, Ala., with land in Greene, Hale, and Marengo counties, Ala., and Noxubee, Winston, and Kemper counties, Miss. In 1860, Johnston became administrator of the Marengo County plantation of his son-in-law, Robert H. McFaddin, and guardian of the children of Robert and Mary A. McFaddin. The collection includes financial papers, slave lists, legal documents, business and personal correspondence, and a few miscellaneous items chiefly relating to the Johnston and McFadden families. Many documents relate to Thomas M. Johnston’s property taxes and those levied against the estates of Robert H. and Mary A. McFaddin. Several slave lists and other items relating to plantation life are included. In 1866 and 1868, there are agricultural contracts between Johnston and freedmen for agricultural work. In 1866-1868 there are several letters from the Stonewall Institute in Dallas County, Ala., about the education of Johnston’s grandsons, and, in May 1869, a letter from St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, N.C., about the education of his granddaughters. There are also several items relating to others with unclear connections to the Johnstons and McFaddins, including a 1839 legal order against members of the Green family in Lincoln County, N.C., and a few letters, 1873-1875, about business investments to Mrs. V. F. Dalton of Uniontown, Ala.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: The collection includes several slave lists, some undated. There is a 9 May 1863 letter from Thomas Johnston to W. C. Oliver of Eutaw, Alabama, advising him on the procedure for selling a slave. The collection also contains contracts between Thomas M. Johnston and freedmen for agricultural labor in 1866 and 1868 on Canebrake (also spelled Canebreak) Plantation, Hale County, Alabama (Folders 1 & 2)

Abstract: Robert L. Johnson (Robert L. Johnson Jr.) graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1952. In 1954, he was ordained in the United Methodist Church. The following year, Johnson received a master of divinity degree from the Union Theological School in New York City, N.Y. He also received a master of theology degree from the Harvard Divinity School in 1968. In 1957, Johnson was hired as the director of the Wesley Foundation in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he served for 18 years. The collection includes a scrapbook created by Robert L. Johnson primarily about the Reverend Charles Miles Jones, a Chapel Hill, N.C., minister involved in the civil rights movement. The scrapbook contains articles about Reverend Jones’s removal from the Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill, N.C., by the Orange Presbytery and other articles pertaining to clergy involved in the desegregation movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The collection also contains a dissertation by Andrew Niles McLean entitled “Collective Identity and Institutional Change in the Campus Ministry 1964-1973: Weaving the Cloak of Righteousness” (UCLA, 2000), which includes a chapter on Chapel Hill, and letters to Johnson, including two from Methodist bishops declining to become involved in the 1963 Speaker Ban debate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: An item of particular interest is a scrapbook created by Robert L. Johnson primarily about the Reverend Charles Miles Jones, a Chapel Hill, N.C., minister involved in the civil rights movement. The scrapbook contains articles about Reverend Jones’s removal from the Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill, N.C., by the Orange Presbytery and other articles pertaining to clergy involved in the desegregation movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Folder 3 contains a copy of “Dr. Shrader’s Statement to the Congregation” on desegregation, with comments by an unknown person

Abstract: The collection includes business and family letters, chiefly 1783-1849, of the family of William Johnson, a Franklin County, N.C., planter, including correspondence concerning such matters as the Philanthropic Society at the University of North Carolina, 1812, the hiring out of slaves, conditions in Alabama in 1838, and life on the home front during the Civil War; financial and legal papers, chiefly 1840-1854, of John H. Hawkins and various members of the Johnson family; and an undated manuscript by Simon Blank of the 6th New York Cavalry Regiment, “Anecdotes of a Soldier who Fought in the War of Rebellion under Generals Grant and Sheridan.” Correspondents include William Johnson’s brother, George W. Johnson, merchant of Milton, N.C.; sisters Elizabeth (“Betsy”), Sally Adams, Rebecca (d. 1838), and Emily C. C. Johnson; and Robert A. Jones.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Included are letters discussing the hiring out of slaves primarily between 1825-1860 (Folders 4-10) and slave bills of sale between 1760-1813 (Folders 11).