Restrictions to Access

To be used only with special assistance from Technical Services staff.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Reed Sarratt papers #4549, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from the estate of Reed Sarratt in March 1990.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Roslyn Holdzkom, April 1990; Revised by Suzanne Ruffing, March 1996

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Not fully processed.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• American newspapers--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• Charlotte news (Charlotte, N.C.)
• Civil rights--North Carolina.
• Journalism--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• Journalists--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• Sarratt, Reed.
• School integration--North Carolina.
• Segregation in education--North Carolina.
• Southern Education Reporting Service.
• Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.
• Winston-Salem journal and Twin City sentinel (Winston-Salem, N.C.)

Alexander Reed Sarratt, Jr., was born in Charlotte, N.C., in 1917. He was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in economics. During his senior year at UNC, he served as managing editor of the Daily Tar Heel. After graduation, he worked as a reporter and later city editor for the Charlotte News.

From 1946 to 1952, Sarratt was an editorial writer for the Baltimore Evening Sun. In 1952, he returned to North Carolina to begin an eight-year stint with the Winston-Salem Journal and Twin City Sentinel. At these papers, he served as editorial page editor, executive editor, and assistant to the publisher.

In 1960, Sarratt was appointed executive director of the Southern Education Reporting Service (SERS), a Ford Foundation- supported group that collected and published information on school desegregation throughout the South. From 1965 to 1968, he directed the journalism project of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) in Atlanta. During this period, he published The Ordeal of Desegregation: The First Decade (Harper & Row, 1966).

Sarratt became executive director of the 442-member Southern Newspaper Publishers' Association (SNPA) in 1973, after serving four years as the head of the Southern Newspaper Publishers' Association Foundation. It was at the 1986 mid-winter meeting of the Association board that Sarratt collapsed and died. Sarratt was inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame in 1985.

Sarratt was married to Elva Ann Sarratt, also a Charlotte native. The Sarratts had three children: Alexander Reed III, John L., and Ann.

(Adapted from articles in The News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 16 March 1986; the Charlotte Observer, 17 March 1986; and the UNC Journalist, April-May 1986.)

This collection contains a mixture of professional and personal papers. It is difficult to separate materials generated by Sarratt in the course of his journalism career from those that deal with more private matters, although little of the latter is included. There is also little material relating to either the Southern Education Reporting Service or the Southern Newspaper Publishers' Association. Because these papers are not fully processed, researchers will discover that there is great overlap in subjects, date spans, etc., among these files. While these redundancies will be ameliorated when the papers are fully processed, researchers using them in their present state should search broadly rather than narrowly for papers relating to specific topics. Many original folders have been replaced because of mildew damage; the papers, however, are generally in good condition.