Taylor Branch to Speak, Open Research Collection
5:00 p.m. reception; 5:45 p.m. talk
Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History
For information call: 919-962-4207
Printable flier (pdf)
Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the three-part history America in the King Years will speak at UNC-Chapel Hill on Thursday, April 6. His appearance celebrates the opening of the Taylor Branch Collection in the Southern Historical Collection in UNC's Wilson Library.
Branch's topic will be "Miracles and Myths from the King Years." A reception and book signing begin at 5:00 p.m. in the lobby of the Sonja Haynes Stone Cultural Center, where all three volumes of the trilogy will be available for purchase. Branch will speak and take questions at 5:45 p.m. in the Stone Center Theatre. The free and open public event is sponsored by the Friends of the Library at UNC. For information, call Liza Terll at 919-962-4207.
Branch's appearance marks both the conclusion of America in the King Years and the beginning of a next life for the painstaking notes, drafts, and recorded interviews that Branch has donated to the University Library and that will be available for use following his appearance.
The centerpiece of the Branch Collection is more than 500 hours of interviews that he recorded with leading figures of the Civil Rights movement and experts in the field. Ralph D. Abernathy, Harry Belafonte, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), James Farmer, and Sargent Shriver are all represented.
UNC's Dr. William Ferris, Joel R. Williamson eminent professor of history, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South and adjunct professor in the folklore curriculum says that Branch's work is essential to our understanding of the civil rights movement.
"The oral histories that Taylor Branch conducted are truly a national treasure," says Ferris. "This collection constitutes a legacy for future generations who will seek to understand the civil rights movement and the courageous people who made it possible."
The exhaustive historical detail of Branch's writing is well known. Even so, says Laura Clark Brown, head of public services in the Manuscripts Department of Wilson Library, "there are wonderful nuggets in these interviews that never made it into print." She expects those elements to inspire books and dissertations in a variety of disciplines and to give undergraduates a real sense of immediacy when they study the history of the civil rights era.
Tim West, curator of manuscripts and director of the Southern Historical Collection, sees the opening of the Branch Collection as part of a UNC continuum. Branch, who grew up in segregated Atlanta, graduated from the university in 1968 and "had his consciousness raised while he was here," West says. "He received a tremendous informal education at UNC about the political and social issues of the day."
Those who were influential to Branch are well represented in the Wilson library collections. For example, the Southern Historical Collection also houses the papers of activist and congressman Allard Lowenstein, who graduated from the university in 1949 and was an inspiration to Branch.
"The Branch Collection is important in its own right," says West. "Having it here gives it a rich context that's right at hand."
William Ferris agrees that the Branch collection "is very much at home here. It significantly expands and deepens the resources" that students and scholars have at UNC to study the civil rights movement and the conditions that created it.
Publisher Simon & Schuster released At Canaan's Edge earlier this year to the same critical acclaim as the previous installments of America in the King Years. The Washington Post called At Canaan's Edge a "deeply researched book that completes a superior narrative trilogy of America's civil rights struggles between 1954 and 1968." On January 9, Time magazine featured an excerpt from the book as its cover story.
Branch won the Pulitzer Prize for History and a National Book Critics Circle Award for Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, the first volume in the trilogy.
