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This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the FAQ section for more information.
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Collection Overview
| Size | 21,000 items (59.5 linear feet) |
| Abstract | Gladys Avery Tillett of Charlotte, N.C., was vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, 1940-1950; co-director of Frank Porter Graham's senatorial campaign, 1950; United States delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, 1961-1968; proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment; and activist for other political and social causes. The collection includes correspondence, speeches and writings, press releases, news clippings, photographs, sound recordings, and other materials documenting Gladys Avery Tillett's work for the Democratic Party, the Frank Porter Graham campaign, the United Nations, the women's movement, the Young Women's Christian Association, and other causes. Significant correspondents include Molly Dewson and Lorena A. Hickock, with whom Tillett worked in the Women's Division of the Democratic Party; friend, teacher, and fellow Democrat Harriet Elliott; Eleanor Roosevelt; and Tillett's husband, lawyer Charles Walter Tillett. |
| Creator | Tillett, Gladys Avery, 1891-1984. |
| Language | English. |
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Information For Users
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Subject Headings
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.
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Biographical Information
Gladys Avery Tillett, daughter of Alphonso Calhoun Averyand Sallie Love Thomas Avery, was born in Morganton, N.C., on 19 March 1891. In 1915, she received a B.A. from the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, where she majored in political science under Harriet Elliott, who became a friend and life-long influence. She also received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1917. In July 1917, she married Charles Walter Tillett, Jr., a Charlotte lawyer. They had three children: Gladys, Charles, and Sara.
Tillett's interest in politics and her participation in the women's suffrage movement led her to help create the North Carolina state chapter of the League of Women Voters and a Mecklenburg County chapter; she served as president of the latter in 1922-1923, and of the former in 1934.
As a Democrat, one of Tillett's initial accomplishments was to increase the participation of women in North Carolina Democratic Party activities, first by becoming her precinct's vice-chair, and, in 1927, by insuring that party law provided that a man and woman would serve jointly as party chair and vice-chair on precinct, party, and state levels. Tillett herself was the North Carolina Democratic Party's vice-chair from 1934 to 1936. In 1932, 1936, and 1940, she was a North Carolina delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
Tillett headed the Speakers' Bureau of the Democratic National Committee in 1936 and 1940, recruiting and scheduling the appearances of speakers for Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1940, she became vice-chair of the Democratic National Convention, and chair of its Women's Division, delivering the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in July 1944. She resigned from those positions in 1950 to co-direct (with Jeff Johnson) the senatorial campaign of Frank Porter Graham, but continued to be active in national Democratic Party affairs, working on both of Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaigns in the 1950s.
Tillett was involved with the United Nations from its inception; she and her husband attended its Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in 1945, and the UNESCO conference in Paris in 1949. From 1954 to 1958, she was co-chair of the North Carolina Chapter of the American Association for the United Nations. President John F. Kennedy, for whom Tillett had actively campaigned in 1960, appointed her to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in March 1961. In that capacity, she traveled to such places as Nigeria, South and Central America, Japan, and Mongolia, studying the political, educational, social, and economic rights of women around the world. Reappointed to the Commission in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson, she served until 1968.
Tillett had been a proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment since the 1920s. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, she became increasingly involved with the movement for the ratification of the amendment, serving as president of the North Carolina chapter of E.R.A. United in 1974 and 1975.
Gladys Avery Tillett's health began to decline in the late 1970s, and in 1980, she entered a nursing home. She died on 21 September 1984.
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Scope and Content
Most of the collection documents Gladys Avery Tillett's participation in political and reform activities; there are relatively few personal or family-related items. Coverage is especially strong for Tillett's work with the Democratic Party in the 1930s and 1940s, and with the United Nations in the 1960s. Materials include incoming and outgoing correspondence, speeches by Tillett and others, news clippings, phonograph records and tapes, and photographs.
The additions of 1997 and 1998 have been arranged according to the organization scheme of the original deposit. Materials related to other Avery family members have been transferred to the Avery Family of North Carolina Papers (#33) and the Alphonso Calhoun Avery Papers (#3456). For papers regarding Gladys Avery Tillett's involvement in the litigation over lands acquired by her maternal grandfather William Holland Thomas for the Cherokee Indians, please see the Alphonso Calhoun Avery Papers (#3456).
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Series Quick Links
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Series 1. Democratic National Committee Materials, 1932-1977 and undated.
Correspondence, memos, speeches, press releases, and other materials documenting Gladys Avery Tillett's work with the Democratic National Committee. Items in the first four subseries of Democratic National Convention materials--general subject files, state files, Speakers' Bureau files, and Democratic Women's Day correspondence--are in their original order, with a few very minor modifications. Items in the fifth subseries, miscellaneous materials, arrived in no particular order, and arrangement was imposed on them during processing.
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Subseries 1.1. General Subject Files, 1936-1947 and undated.
Arrangement: alphabetical by file title.
Letters, memos, expense account statements and receipts,lists of attendees at various meetings, and other materialsrelating to the workings of the Democratic National Committee inthe 1930s and 1940s; coverage is strongest for the years1941-1947, when Tillett was its vice-chair. These files seemto be Tillett's own office files, rather than those of the Democratic National Convention.
Among the correspondents are many of Tillett's Women's Division co-workers, such as May Thompson Evans, Mary W. (Molly) Dewson, and Lorena Hickok, who was the Women's Division's executive secretary while Tillett was director. Others are prominent women politicians, such as Wyoming's Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876-1977), the first woman governor in the United States; and California Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas (b. 1900). The letters often combine personal news with discussions of Democratic National Convention activities on national, state, and local levels, political campaign efforts, the scheduling of speakers and meetings, personnel changes, and other matters.
See also volumes 3 through 10.
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Subseries 1.2. State Files, 1941-1947.
Arrangement: chronological by one- to three-year span, then alphabetical by state (with a few exceptions).
Copies of outgoing letters to other Democrats, mostly women, who were involved in county and state party activities. Topics discussed are mostly such routine matters as scheduling speakers and fund-raising events. There is also correspondence concerning subscriptions and submissions to the Democratic Digest, the magazine published by the Democratic National Convention's Women's Division.
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Subseries 1.3. Speakers' Bureau Materials, 1932-1948 and undated.
Arrangement: by subject.
Lists of people who delivered campaign speeches for Franklin D. Roosevelt and other Democratic candidates, and on behalf of New Deal reforms; correspondence with and about speakers; application blanks filled out by prospective speakers; and handwritten, typed, and mimeographed copies of some speeches. Many speeches are by Tillett herself; others are by such prominent Democrats as Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and Vice-President Henry Wallace.
See also Volume 7.
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Subseries 1.4. Democratic Women's Day Materials, 1941-1947.
Mostly correspondence with state and county organizers of Democratic Women's Day, an annual fund-raising event held each September, sponsored by the Democratic National Convention's Women's Division. There are also press releases and texts of speeches concerning the occasion.
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Subseries 1.5. Other Materials , 1943-1977.
Correspondence, speeches by Tillett and others, press releases, newspaper clippings, political campaign fliers, and other informational literature. The materials are grouped first by decade, then by format, then chronologically.
Items from the 1930s and 1940s relate mostly to the work of the Democratic National Convention's Women's Division, and include correspondence with Molly Dewson and Lorena Hickok. Topics of the letters, as well as of the speeches and press releases, are similar to those in Subseries 1.1 and 1.3. See also Volume 11.
While Tillett was no longer vice-chair of the Democratic National Convention in the 1950s and 1960s, she continued to be active in Democratic Party politics. During the 1960 presidential campaign, when John F. Kennedy's religion became a controversial topic in the South, Tillett made a number of appearances addressing that issue. A copy of her speech, "Religious Freedom and the Ballot Box," is in folder 805. Correspondence reacting to it is also included (folder 801).
Tillett remained a participant in political affairs into the 1970s. In one of her last speeches, delivered at a regional Democratic Party conference in 1972, she called for a Women's Plank, featuring a demand for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, in the National Democratic Party Platform. (folder 818).
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Series 2. United Nations Materials, 1945-1975 and undated.
Correspondence, speeches, articles, press releases, itineraries, minutes of meetings, and other materials pertaining to the United Nations. Tillett attended the United Nation's founding conference in San Francisco in 1945, co-chaired the North Carolina Association for the United Nations from 1954 to 1958, and, in 1961, was appointed by President Kennedy to represent the United States on the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women, a position she held until 1968.
With the exception of Subseries 2.1, General Subject Files, items in Series 2 were not in folders when they arrived, and arrangement was imposed on them during processing.
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Subseries 2.1. General Subject Files, 1945-1968 and undated.
Letters, speeches, promotional literature, and other items relating to the founding of the United Nations, to United Nations conferences and seminars in which Tillett participated, and to Tillett's overseas travels on United Nations business.
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Subseries 2.2. Correspondence, 1945-1970 and undated.
Letters and memos to and from Tillett and other United Nations representatives, members of Congress, State Department officials, and private citizens. Topics discussed include United Nations programs and projects, and such related activities as the establishment of the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation. There are also requests for Tillett to speak on the United Nations before various groups, including the Daughters of the American Revolution and the National Council of Negro Women.
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Subseries 2.3. Speeches, Addresses, and Essays, 1946-1975 and undated.
Handwritten, typed, and mimeographed copies of speeches by Tillett (folders 893-932) and by others (folders 933-947), presented during United Nations sessions, concerning the Commission on the Status of Women, or before more general audiences, promoting the work of the United Nations.
Readers should note that many of these items are incomplete, and that in some cases attributions of dates and authorship of the speeches are tentative.
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Subseries 2.4. Other Materials, 1946-1975 and undated.
Notices, agendas, and minutes of meetings, itineraries for overseas travel, informational literature, and other items relating to Tillett's United Nations responsibilities.
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Series 3. Frank Porter Graham Materials, 1930-1973 and undated.
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Subseries 3.1. Senatorial Campaign Materials, 1949-1950 and undated.
Arrangement: by format.
Correspondence, lists of people to contact, including those compiled by the all-female Committee of Two Thousand, speeches and press releases, news articles, and political advertisements relating to Graham's unsuccessful campaign against Willis Smith for the Democratic Party's nomination for United States senator in the spring of 1950. Gladys and Charles Tillett and their daughters, especially Gladys Tillett Coddington, worked vigorously for Graham; much of the correspondence is addressed to the daughters.
Of particular interest are materials pertaining to the defamatory rhetoric and use of innuendo that Smith's supporters directed against Graham. Items in folders 993 through 996, for example, are mainly speeches and research notes refuting the suggestion that Graham was a Communist and other accusations. There are also pro-Smith and pro-Graham fliers and newspaper advertisements.
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Subseries 3.2. Other Materials, 1930-1973 and undated.
Letters to, from, and about Graham, mostly of a personal nature; speeches and statements by and about him; and printed matter concerning him. See also Volume 13.