Given a certain recent historic election, it seems quite timely to highlight another that undoubtedly helped pave the way — the 1969 election of Howard Lee (on right, above) as the first black mayor of a predominantly white southern town since Reconstruction.

As the Daily Tar Heel reports, Lee has recently released a new memoir entitled The Courage to Lead: One Man’s Journey in Public Service, in which he describes the blatant discrimination he faced while campaigning in the South, e.g., being barred from from addressing white audiences. Certainly a different political climate than the one in which Barack Obama has risen, though there are some similarities in the grassroots nature of their campaigns.

From what I’ve seen so far, there are only a few photos of Lee in the Morton collection, such as the one above, in which he is pictured with Agriculture Commissioner Jim Graham (L) and Congressman L. H. Fountain (center). Does anyone know what event this is? Why are some people wearing leis?

Lee’s 1969 campaign is heavily featured in the Billy Ebert Barnes Collection held by the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. (A digital collection of a selection of Barnes’s photographs is available, but because the Howard Lee photos are not part of his North Carolina Fund images, they are not represented online yet.  Keep your eyes out for them!)

A small portion of the NCC Gallery’s current exhibit, “Soapboxes and Treestumps: Political Campaigning in NC,” is also devoted to Lee. The image below (a Billy Barnes photo) and text are drawn from that exhibit. Visit the Gallery to see the rest!

“Lee moved to Chapel Hill in 1964 to attend graduate school at the University of North Carolina. When he and his wife moved into the Colony Woods neighborhood, he found that many whites in the area were still uncomfortable living near blacks. He received harassing phone calls and a cross was burned on his lawn. These experiences encouraged him to become involved in local politics. Lee ran in and won the mayoral election over his opponent Chapel Hill Alderman Roland Giduz.

Lee’s campaign was successful because he generated support at the grassroots level. One of his supporters owned a Greyhound bus and drove voters to the polls, which resulted in a record turnout for Chapel Hill’s African American voters. Newspapers around the world covered the historic race, and both Newsweek and Time ran profiles on the the new mayor.

Lee ran unsuccessful campaigns for U.S. Congress in 1972 and lieutenant governor in 1976. He served in the state senate from 1990 to 1994 and from 1996 to 2002. In 2003 he became the first African American elected as chair of the North Carolina Board of Education.”

Thus far, our student assistant David’s scanning efforts have been focused on what I call the “loose strips”—the unlabeled, unidentified masses of negatives that need to be inspected before we can decide what to do with them. (The inspecting, of course, becomes much easier when you can look at a positive on a computer screen versus a negative on a light box).

We decided recently, however, that since David is so darn good at scanning, we should probably have him work on some of the “good stuff” as well. (This term refers to Morton’s images of well-known people and events—it’s certainly not to say that the loose strips aren’t loaded with “good stuff”). So, I got David started on the images that were either considered for or used in Hugh Morton and Ed Rankin’s 1988 book, Making a Difference in North Carolina. As the book’s introduction reads:

The people, groups and events [depicted in the book] were chosen on the basis of the impact they have had, or are having, on life in North Carolina. Most of the photos have never been published before. And all have captions and text brimming with first-hand knowledge and experiences of the authors.

What could be better? Certainly a far cry from the jumble of “loose strips.” And the images themselves are beautiful. Take for example this portrait of Governor J. Melville Broughton, a cropped version of which appears on page 47 of the book (click the image to see the description):

I also love this image of the “Iron Major” Governor, R. Gregg Cherry, with a group of (Miss North Carolina?) pageant contestants. This one wasn’t used in the book, so I don’t know the details. But I do wish they still made swimsuits like these!

And then there’s that perennial Morton favorite, Luther Hodges (on crutches, below—this image wasn’t used in the book, either). That’s Grandfather Mountain in the background, and they appear to be on a golf course, so perhaps this image is somehow related to the Grandfather Golf and Country Club? Anyone know what’s wrong with Luther’s foot, or who these other men are? (Based on the IDs you lovely readers provided for this photo, I think that’s John Williams to the left of Hodges).

It’s been an exciting few weeks in North Carolina politics! Not only did last Tuesday’s primary inspire huge numbers of new voter registrations and shatter voter turnout records, for the first time in seemingly forever, it appears the state may have played a very important role in determining the Democratic nominee for President. I suspect these events would have thrilled Morton—a lifelong, committed Democrat and onetime gubernatorial candidate.

So it seems like a good time to share these two Morton slides, scenes from the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, showing supporters of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson, respectively. Despite heated clashes between the two during the primaries, Kennedy and Johnson ended up forming a joint ticket (with Kennedy on top), which went on to (narrowly) defeat Richard Nixon in the general election.

Here’s an interesting quote from the Wikipedia page about the 1960 election:

Kennedy was initially dogged by suggestions from some Democratic Party elders (such as former President Harry Truman) that he was too youthful and inexperienced to be president; these critics suggested that he agree to be the running mate for a “more experienced” Democrat. Realizing that this was a strategy touted by his opponents to keep the public from taking him seriously, Kennedy stated frankly ‘I’m not running for vice president, I’m running for president.’