Skip to content

The Taylor Family in Chapel Hill

Taylor kids in Chapel Hill, December 1957: (l to r): Alex, James, Kate, Liv, Hugh

Taylor kids in Chapel Hill, December 1957: (l to r): Alex, James, Kate, Liv, Hugh

“The Taylor Family in Chapel Hill,” featuring a screening of the new documentary film “Kate Taylor: Tunes from the Tipi and other Songs from Home,” q&a with the filmmakers Liz Witham (daughter of Kate) and Ken Wentworth, and a musical performance by Kate. Tuesday, February 9, reception at 5:00, event at 5:30, Frank Porter Graham Student Union Auditorium on the UNC campus. Sponsored by the SHC and the Southern Folklife Collection.

2010 02 04 Tim West Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Legacy finding aids update

Over 50 additional newly updated and edited legacy finding aids are now available online.  Some of the notable collections in this group are:

William Wallace White Diaries, 1857-1910, #3265

William Wallace White was a planter and storekeeper at Holly Hill plantation in Warren (now Vance) County, N.C. His 48 diaries contain a full daily account of his farming activities, which included the cultivation of tobacco, cotton, grain, corn, vegetables, melons, livestock, etc., and of public life in the area.

Edwin McNeill Poteat Papers, 1925-1956, #3302

Edwin McNeill Poteat was a Baptist preacher, teacher, and missionary in China, 1917-1929, author, president of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, 1944-1948, and pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, Raleigh, N.C., 1929-1937 and 1948-1955, and at Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, 1937-1944. The collection includes personal and professional correspondence, mainly 1944-1955, and writings of Poteat. Included are letters, 1925-1929, discussing the Chinese nationalist movement and its effect on missionary work; correspondence with various religious and social action organizations, particularly concerning conscientious objection to World War I and interracial cooperation; and routine office correspondence. Also included are sermons, articles, speeches, and an unpublished book manuscript.

Elizabeth City Buggy Company Account Books, 1927-1932, #3334

Elizabeth City Buggy Company of Elizabeth City, N.C., apparently started in 1899 and acted as an agent for Hackney and Chase City Wagons and American Field and Hog Fencing and also manufactured buggies and phaetons. The collection includes daybooks and ledgers, 1827-1932, with names of customers, specifying equipment purchased and repairs for wagons, automobiles, and farm machinery.

Peter Spence Gilchrist Papers, 1901-1911, #3393

Peter Spence Gilchrist was an English immigrant and pioneer in chemical engineering of Charlotte, N.C. Gilchrist designed sulphuric acid plants and fertilizer plants and was a pioneer in the development of the phosphate industry and in chemical engineering in the southeast.The collection includes business letters, chiefly 1904-1910, received by Gilchrist’s firm, Southern Card, Clothing, and Reed Company, relating to the building of fertilizer plants and the installation of works for phosphate processes along the eastern seaboard.

A full list of all updated and published legacy finding aids can be found here.

2010 01 29 Jodi Berkowitz Finding Aids Comments (0) Permalink

Legacy finding aids update

A new batch of updated finding aids has just been posted.  Collections comprising this group include a number of family papers:

Hatch Family Papers, #2508-z

Thomas Hatch (1761-1868?) resided in Orange County, N.C. The collection includes a transcription of an autobiographical letter, 1813, by Thomas Hatch; other family data; and information about and photographs of old houses in Orange and Chatham counties, N.C., owned by Hatch and his connections.

Click Family Papers, #2537

The collection includes the papers of the Click family, early residents of Rowan County, N.C., consisting chiefly of deeds and wills; a letter, 1835, from relatives who had moved to Indiana reporting conditions there; family letters and papers related to the sale of tobacco, 1880-1895; and scattered items pertaining to the Lutheran church in North Carolina. The family name was also spelled Glucke and Gluicke.

Price Family Papers, #2850

Members of the Price family resided in Mecklenburg County, N.C., and Fayette County and Giles County, Tenn., where several members of the family moved to settle and where many of them owned land. The collection is primarily business and financial papers, with some family letters, of several generations of the Price family. Papers are mainly those of Isaac Price, Isaac Price Junior, and Isaac Jasper Price, and deal with farming, estate settlement, lands and property, medical services, settlement in Tennessee, the Steele Creek Church in Mecklenburg County, and family matters.

Harper Family Account Books, #2908

The Harper Family of Caldwell County, N.C., owned a general merchandise business in Lenoir, N.C., operating at times under the name Waugh and Harper. The collection includes extensive daybook and ledger accounts of Waugh and Harper and other records of scattered dates relating to this business, including invoices, inventories, shipping and hauling accounts, produce orders, barter accounts for such items as wild herbs, roots, bark, and sheepskins, and letterpress copies of business letters; and a cash book of the Chester & Lenoir Railroad, 1874-1882.

A full list of all legacy finding aids published can be found here.

2009 12 30 Jodi Berkowitz Finding Aids Comments (0) Permalink

Dr. Reginald A. Hawkins: North Carolina’s first African American gubernatorial candidatecan

“The establishment has discounted the poor, the black, the low-income and liberal whites. It had been divide and conquer. This is the dream I have for North Carolina: to bring us together, black and white…Too long have black people sought a place at the bargaining table, only to receive the crumbs after dinner is over.”

These were the words of Dr. Reginald Armistice Hawkins, given in a speech in 1968 as part of his campaign to become North Carolina’s governor.  Dr. Hawkins, a dentist and ordained Presbyterian minister from Charlotte, made history with his 1968 gubernatorial bid as he was the first African American in the history of the state to make a run for the office.

Today we feature this photograph, from the SHC’s Allard Lowenstein Papers (#4340), of Dr. Reginald Hawkins (at right) with Dr. Ralph David Abernethy, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  This photograph is included in our current exhibit, “We Shall Not Be Moved: African Americans in the South, 18th Century to the Present,” on view until February 5, 2010.

Dr. Ralph David Abernethy (left) and Dr. Reginald Hawkins, from Allard Lowenstein Papers, #4340

Dr. Ralph David Abernethy (left) and Dr. Reginald A. Hawkins at a campaign event in Raleigh, N.C., 27 April 1968. Photograph from Allard Lowenstein Papers, SHC #4340.

2009 12 01 Biff Hollingsworth African American
Civil Rights
Politics Comments (2) Permalink

Legacy finding aids update

Over 40 additional newly updated and edited legacy finding aids are now available.  Some of the notable collections included in this group are:

Thomas Sparrow Papers, 1835-1871, #1878

Sparrow was a lawyer, North Carolina state legislator, and a Confederate officer.  There are references to several duels in this collection, and a diary Sparrow kept while serving in the Civil War is also included.

De Graffenried Family Papers, 1735-1958, #1692

Baron Christoph von Graffenried (1661-1743) of Switzerland, Landgrave of Carolina, founded New Bern, N.C., in 1710. His family and descendents resided in Switzerland and America.  One original item in the collection is a letter, 1735, from the Baron to his son about genealogy.

William Richardson Davie Papers, 1758-1819, #1793

Davie was a lawyer, state legislator, Revolutionary officer, member of the United States Constitutional Convention, Federalist governor of North Carolina, and peace commissioner to France, and was influential in the founding of the University of North Carolina.  These papers include letters to, from, and about Davie and his family. Two long narratives pertain to Davie’s Revolutionary War experiences as a cavalry officer in North and South Carolina and as commissary general to Nathanael Greene.

Joseph Hyde Pratt Papers, 1889-1942, #2169

Pratt was a mining engineer; mineralogist; geologist; and educator. He was the North Carolina state mineralogist, 1897-1906, and the N.C. state geologist, 1906-1923. Much material in the collection is related to the N.C. Geological Survey and to the Geological and Economic Survey.

A full list of all legacy finding aids published can be found here.

2009 11 24 Jodi Berkowitz Finding Aids Comments (0) Permalink

Creator of the Month…William Jesse Kennedy, Jr.

William Jesse Kennedy, Jr. (1889 – 1958) was a prolific businessman and community leader in Durham, N.C., who also served as the fifth president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.  During his lifetime, Kennedy participated in numerous professional and civic activities in addition to his duties at NC Mutual. He served as chair of the board of directors at Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and as a member of the Howard University Board of Trustees. He was a life-long proponent of education and a member of the James E. Shepard Foundation, an organization that awarded scholarships to students attending North Carolina Central University. In addition, Kennedy was very active with the Boy Scouts of American, the NAACP, and Durham’s Lincoln Hospital, among many others.

The collection is rich with correspondence, photographs, and organizational records that document Kennedy’s myriad business and civic activities. A few examples of photos from the collection are included below. Click the link below to learn more about the collection: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/k/Kennedy,William_Jesse.html.

The William Jesse Kennedy, Jr. papers are part of the African American Resources Collection that are held jointly with North Carolina Central University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Click here to learn about the six other collections that are part of this larger collection, which includes the White Rock Baptist Church records and the Floyd McKissick Papers.

2009 11 16 hasmith African American
Business
Education
Links
Race Relations
Religion
Subjects Comments (0) Permalink

Thirty Years Later: Remembering the Greensboro Massacre

Thirty years ago today, on November 3, 1979, the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later renamed the Communist Workers Party) sponsored an anti-Klan march and conference in Greensboro, North Carolina.  Members of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party attacked the demonstrators, killing five and injuring eleven Communist Workers Party members.

Greensboro_Civil_Rights_Fund_4630-002.jpg

Flyer from the Records of the Greensboro Civil Rights Fund, SHC #4630.

Family and friends of the deceased organized the Greensboro Civil Rights Fund, raising some $700,000 to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party, as well as local and federal law enforcement agencies–whose undercover agents and paid informants in the Klan and Nazi Party allegedly participated in planning the attacks.

In 2004, around the time of the 25th anniversary of the Massacre, a Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission was impaneled by the Greensboro community in order to “examine ‘the context, causes, sequence and consequence of the events of November 3, 1979′ for the purpose of healing transformation for the community” (from the Commission’s mandate).  Over the course of nearly two years the commission sponsored public hearings, meetings, scholarly panels, interfaith religious services, and other community gatherings.  Their activities culminated in a lengthy report giving a set of conclusions and recommendations which they hoped would continue the process of reconciliation and map the way forward.  To quote their report,

We believe the truth and reconciliation process in Greensboro opened up the debate around Nov. 3, 1979, in a positive way and has successfully engaged a broad spectrum of the community in an effort that offers hope for reconciliation. As a Commission that looks a bit like Greensboro in microcosm, we found that this process –and our own struggle to hear and understand each other- had a profound impact on our perceptions of the issues we explored. Our individual and collective commitment to the truth helped us persevere. And the human stories and emotions we encountered along the way moved us to do our best to leave behind a legacy we hope will serve Greensboro for years to come. We cannot say what the future will hold for this community or what the long-term impact of this process will look like, but we hope that this process also serves as a learning tool for others in this country who, like Greensboro, are burdened by a legacy of hurt and inspired by the possibility of honestly coming to terms with their own history.

So today we honor the memories of those lost to the violence of the Greensboro Massacre, thirty years ago today.  We also honor the courage of the Greensboro community which sought to heal itself through the truth and reconciliation process.

And finally, we especially want to honor the life and work of Dr. John K. “Yonni” Chapman, a long-time and loyal supporter of the Southern Historical Collection.  On October 22, 2009, following a lengthy battle with a rare blood cancer, Yonni Chapman passed away at his home in Chapel Hill. Yonni Chapman was one of the anti-Klan demonstrators who survived the attack of November 3, 1979.  Later, he was involved in the truth and reconciliation process (his statement before the Commission is available here) and continued racial justice organizing in North Carolina for nearly three decades.

2009 11 03 Biff Hollingsworth Activism
Civil Rights
Politics
Race Relations Comments (0) Permalink

Legacy finding aids update

The latest group of finding aids updated and encoded during this project are now available.  For a full list of these finding aids, please click here.

A few highlights from this set include:

Andrew Henry Patterson Papers, #1419

In addition to his work as a professor of physics at the University of North Carolina, Patterson was a cooperative observer for the Weather Bureau, United States Department of Agriculture. The collection includes correspondence of Andrew Henry Patterson and members of his family, and weather records made by Patterson. There are seven volumes, 1908-1920, of daily records of temperature, rain, and wind at Chapel Hill.

William Dorsey Pender Papers, #1059

William Dorsey Pender (1834-1863), of Edgecombe County, N.C., was a West Point graduate and United States Army officer. He served briefly as colonel of the 3rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment, Confederate States of America, and as a colonel of the 6th North Carolina Infantry Regiment before transferring to A. P. Hill’s division and being promoted to major general, May 1863. He participated in many of the major engagements in Virginia and died in July 1863 as the result of a wound received at Gettysburg. The papers are almost entirely letters from William Dorsey Pender to his wife, Mary Frances (Fanny) Shepperd. Civil War letters were written chiefly from camps in North Carolina and Virginia to Fanny in North Carolina, giving an intimate account of Pender’s personal feelings, religious experiences, activities, ambitions, and opinions of his associates and superiors.

Jethro Sumner Papers, #705

Jethro Sumner (1733?-1785) was a Contintental Army officer. The collection contains Revolutionary War military correspondence of Continental Brigadier General Sumner. The bulk of the collection relates to the period 1781-1782, when Sumner was raising troops for General Nathanael Greene, whom he reinforced at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, and while he was in charge of forces in North Carolina.

2009 10 30 Jodi Berkowitz Finding Aids Comments (0) Permalink