Abstract: The Southern Governors’ Association, formerly the Southeastern Governors’ Conference, is a regional association of state governors that was founded in 1934 to represent the common interests of chief executives of the southern states and to provide a vehicle for promoting those interests. The collection consists of annual meeting transcripts and programs, annual reports, and other related publications. Materials span 1983-2010 and cover such topics as aging, agriculture, banking, business, climate change, diversity and race issues, drug prevention, economic development trends, education, emergency response management, energy, environmental concerns, finance, globalization, government, health care, infant mortality, housing and urban development, immigration, industry regulation, international relations with Latin American and African nations, national and international politics, poverty, the prison system, regional challenges and cooperation, technology, tourism, trade, transportation, and welfare reform. Annual meeting speakers include southern governors and other politicians, academicians, and military and business leaders.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Materials in the collection cover a vast number of topics, including race relations and diversity. Annual Meetings discuss issues such as race and diversity (Folders 28-29) and include prominent African American politicians as speakers, including Marian Wright Edelman and Andrew Young. Folder 84 also contains a 1993 report on the “African Heads of State” summit for that year.

Abstract: Bedford Brown was a state legislator and United States senator from Caswell County, N.C. The collection includes scattered papers of the family of Bedford Brown and of his son, Livingston Brown, whose wife was a daughter of John Bullock Clark (1802-1885), United States and Confederate congressman of Fayette, Mo. Papers include Brown and Clark family letters, beginning in 1836; political correspondence of Bedford Brown only in 1860, and of Livingston Brown, 1866-1876; and Caswell County deeds and miscellaneous papers.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 3 contains a 12 May 1860 letter from an enslaved man in Arkansas (name unknown) to his Uncle Ned on another plantation. There is also a bill of sale dated 31 August 1863 for an enslaved woman named Lucy.

Abstract: Raymond Bowden Mallard was born in Faison, N.C., in 1908. He was an attorney, state legislator, North Carolina Superior Court judge, and first chief judge of the North Carolina State Court of Appeals. Mallard died in 1979 in Tabor City, N.C. The collection documents Raymond B. Mallard’s judicial career and related civic activities. Materials include correspondence; briefs and other legal documents for a variety of cases, most of which probably duplicate the official records that are filed with the North Carolina Court System; writings; court notes; his diary from the Superior Court special terms of 1964; informal notes and annotations on envelopes and other materials; speeches; newspaper clippings; and photographs, including a few relating to the civil rights protests in Chapel Hill, N.C. The bulk of the materials documents Mallard’s judicial career on the North Carolina Superior Court and the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Topics include the establishment and function of the Court of Appeals; the trials stemming from the civil rights demonstrations in Chapel Hill; the North Carolina Civil Rights Advisory Committee’s reports on African American participation in instrumentalities of justice and voting history; judicial responsibility for protection of rights of the defendant in high profile cases; preparation and delivery of jury charges; inherent powers of the courts of North Carolina; the Henderson Cotton Mills trials; conflicts with the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI); inmate requests for parole and Mallard’s opinions on criminal recidivism; his interest in student activism on campus; and the North Carolina Bar Association position on legal aid clinics. The collection also documents Mallard’s early work as an attorney for the town of Tabor City, N.C., and board of trustee matters at Pembroke State College, including the conflict over administrative decisions and planning that purportedly diminished the roles and presence of Native Americans at the school.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folders 186-188, 196, 197 document cases in the Superior Court relating to Civil Rights. Folders 206-233 particularly contain legal documentation, clippings, letters, and other materials related to the Civil Rights protests in Chapel Hill in 1964.

Image Folder PF-5518/1 also contains a number of photographs of the protests from 1964.

Abstract: Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, married sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates in 1843 and established homes and families in Wilkes County and later Surry County, N.C. The collection includes correspondence, bills, and receipts, including slave bills of sale, of Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker relating to their North Carolina property, planting interests, family matters, and arrangements for exhibition tours. Also included are an account book, 1833-1839, showing income from public appearances and itinerary; clippings; photographs; articles about the twins by Worth B. Daniels and Jonathan Daniels and related material; and Joined at Birth, a 1998 videotape about the twins that was made by Advanced Medical Productions of Chapel Hill, N.C., for the Discovery Channel. The Addition of November 2011 is a ledger with entries presumably penned by Chang and Eng’s business manager Charles Harris detailing the business-related and personal expenses of Chang and Eng during exhibition tours of Cuba, Europe, and the United States and for a period after they settled in North Carolina in 1839.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection highlights: Portions of this collection has been digitized and is part of the online exhibition “Eng & Chang Bunker: The Siamese Twins”. Click here to link to the exhibit and to access the digitized material.

Folder 2 contains bills of sale for enslaved persons for the Bunkers property in North Carolina. There is also a photograph of a formerly enslaved woman who belonged to the Bunker Family.

Abstract: Mary L. Woods was an African American woman from Smithfield, Va. The collection is a photograph album belonging to Mary L. Woods containing 69 snapshots of friends and family members, labeled with names, dates, and comments. The images are posed portraits of African Americans, including a few children; they were taken outdoors in rural settings, urban settings, and at the beach. Locations mentioned include Smithfield, Va., Yorktown, Va., Portsmouth, Va., and Washington, D.C.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The collection is a bill of sale, dated 11 January 1841, from Anson County, N.C., for a 20-year-old male slave named Sam. The seller was John A. Watkins, and the buyer was Mumford D. Watkins.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: Benjamin Watkins Leigh was born in 1831 in Richmond, Va. Leigh practiced law until he enlisted as a captain in the Confederate army on 21 May 1861, receiving a commission in the 1st Batallion, Virginia Infantry Regiment. By June 1863, he had been transferred to the 42nd Virginia Infantry Regiment and promoted to full major. Leigh died in the Battle of Gettysburg on 3 July 1863. The collection consists of a highly detailed travel diary kept by Benjamin Watkins Leigh in April 1861 during a trip through the South, taken with his brother a month before Leigh enlisted in the Confederate Army. The brothers began their trip in Virginia and proceeded through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, before returning to Virginia through Mississippi and Tennessee. The diary contains lengthy, often block-by-block descriptions of the buildings and landmarks in the cities and towns Leigh visited, including Wilmington, N.C., Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans, La., among others. The diary details Leigh’s travel route, opinions on traveling by steamboat and rail, and observations on landscape and climate, as well as descriptions of meetings with family, friends, and other associates, including Abraham Minis and James Louis Petigru, as well as several encounters with slaves. Several entries mention local reaction to events in the Civil War, including the ratification of the Constitution of the Confederate States, the Battle of Fort Sumter, and the secession of Virginia from the Union.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Several of the entries contain descriptions of interactions with enslaved individuals.

Abstract: John Hughes was a Patrick County, Va., planter. The collection is chiefly court orders and debt settlements concerning John Hughes. Also included are several slave bills of sale.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Abstract: The Lewis family arrived in Raleigh, N.C., in 1923, when John D. Lewis Sr. took a job as a district manager for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company of Durham, N.C. He and his wife, Luella Alice Cox Lewis, and their two children, J.D. Lewis (John D. Lewis Jr.) (1919-2007) and Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004), lived in southeast Raleigh and were members of First Baptist Church. J.D. Lewis was a Morehouse College graduate, one of the first African American members of the United States Marine Corps, and the first African American radio and television personality, corporate director of personnel, and director of minority affairs for WRAL of the Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC). J.D. Lewis also worked as the special markets representative for the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company; as the project director of GROW, Incorporated, a federally funded program for high school dropouts; and as the coordinator of manpower planning for the state of North Carolina. Lewis was active in many civic and community organizations as well. Vera Lewis Embree (1921-2004) graduated from the Palmer Institute for Young Women and Hampton Institute. She built a successful and celebrated career as a choreographer and professor of dance at the University of Michigan. The collection consists of papers, photographs, and audiovisual materials that chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s working life and the civic and community organizations he supported. Lewis’s career is documented by materials from Capitol Broadcasting Company, including editorials he wrote and produced; GROW, Incorporated; Manpower; Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company; National Association of Market Developers; and the National Business League. Lewis’s civic leadership is evident in records of the Raleigh Community Relations Committee, which worked to integrate Raleigh public schools; political campaigns; and the Team of Progress, a group interested in political leadership at the city and county levels of government. Community organizations represented in the collection include the Garner Road YMCA; Alpha Kappa Alpha Debutante Ball; the Eastside Neighborhood Task Force; the Citizens Committee on Schools; Omega Psi Phi; and Meadowbrook Country Club, which was founded in 1959 by a small group of African American community leaders. Other materials document the Method Post Office dedication in 1965; the Montford Point Marine Association; and a youth charrette, possibly on integration of Durham schools. There are also clippings and printed materials on such topics as black power, African American history, Morehouse College, and Shaw University. There are several issues of Perfect Home, a home design and decorating magazine published by John W. Winters, a real estate broker, home builder, city councilman, state senator, and civic leader. Family materials are mainly biographical and include newspaper clippings, funeral programs, school materials, awards and certificates, and photographs. There are a few family letters, including one from 1967 with a first-hand account of rioting on Twelfth Street in Detroit and a copy of a 10 January 1967 letter in which the Lewis family opposed the selection of Mark Twain’s Mississippi Melody for student performance on the grounds that it perpetuated stereotyped images of African Americans. Photographs include portraits and snapshots of four generations of the Lewis and related Cox families, documenting family life from the 1910s through the 2000s. There are non-family group portraits of Omega Psi Phi members of Durham, North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company employees on its 21st anniversary, and of unidentified groups at other civic and community events. There is one folder of J.D. Lewis photographs that depict him in various work contexts. Also included is a portrait of a young Clarence Lightner, who owned a funeral home business and later served as the first African American mayor of Raleigh. Audiovisual materials chiefly relate to J.D. Lewis’s work at Capitol Broadcasting Company/WRAL and his interest in African American community and history. Included are audiotapes of his editorials for WRAL; videotape of Harambee, a public affairs program about the concerns of the general public and especially African Americans; audiotape of musical performances, possibly for Teen-Age Frolic, a teenage dance and variety show; audiotape of Adventures in Negro History, an event sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Raleigh; and film of unidentified wedding and seashore scenes. Also included are several published educational film strips on African American history with accompanying audio.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Of particular note are the letters J.D. Lewis received from musicians and students desiring to appear on Teen-Age Frolic, the dance/variety show Lewis hosted on WRAL (Folder 140). There are also numerous editorials Lewis did during his years as a broadcaster, on a variety of topics (Folders 21-140). Additionally, there is corresponding audio for many of these transcripts (See Series 3).

Folder 16 also contains a 1967 letter with a first-hand account of the rioting in Detroit and a copy of a 10 January 1967 letter in which the Lewis family opposed the selection of Mark Twain’s Mississippi Melody for a school-wide student performance on the grounds “it will by no means further relationships in an integrated situation, where students as a whole, do not have a sufficient background or appreciation of Negro History to comprehend this as perhaps an exaggerrated situation of a particular and past era, but rather, would perpetuate an image already deeply established as stereotyped.”

There are also numerous photographs of the Lewis and Cox Family, including J.D. and Vera Lewis’s father during his time at Morehouse College. There are also photographs of J.D. Lewis on the set of Teen-Age Frolic, introducing different bands, and at different community events (Image folders 1-10).

Abstract: Alfred Chapman (1813-1876), native of Orange County, Va., was an official of the United States and Confederate war departments. The collection includes scattered family and professional papers, chiefly 1845-1869, of Alfred Chapman. Included are early papers of Chapman’s ancestors in Orange County, Va.; payrolls of Virginia militia units during the Revolutionary War; family and business correspondence of Chapman at Staunton, Va.; about 40 letters from Chapman to his wife, Mary Edmunds Kinney Chapman, 1850-1852, while he was in Washington, D.C., working in the pension and Indian offices, about family matters, his work, and other topics. Among the letters is a brief recommendation letter, 23 June 1851, written by Daniel Webster on behalf of his former slave Paul Jennings, whom he had freed in 1847. Jennings had originally been owned by President James Madison. There are also very scattered papers pertaining to Chapman’s appointment in the Confederate government and to its operations; and letters, 1876, to Mrs. Bedford Brown, Alexandria, Va., from her son.

Repository: Southern Historical Collection

Collection Highlights: Folder 3 includes a recommendation letter, dated 23 June 1851 written by Daniel Webster on behalf of Paul Jennings, an enslaved man Webster formerly owned. Jennings had been raised a slave under the ownership of President James Madison. He was later sold to Webster, from whom he purchased his freedom in 1847.