Child labor, along with prohibition, was championed by the women suffragists. Here, they are picking up one of the causes they had advocated during the suffrage movement. The article addresses issues of education, health, and compares labor laws in North Carolina versus other states.

On Febuary 19, 2000 David Duke held a rally in Siler City, NC. David Duke went from being former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan to being a member of the Lousiana House of Representatives. He spoke on the steps of the town hall, mostly against immigration. Rick Givens, the then head of the County Commisioners had recently come back from a trip to Mexico and Duke called for his removal. He also spoke against Zionism and signed copies of his books. The police had roped off the area nearest where he was to speak and the space was packed with Duke’s supporters and their signs reading things like, “The Melting Pot is Boiling Over” or a picture of the United States with the word “Full!” printed on it.

The area with the supporters was not large enough so further back Duke’s supporters were mixed in with a sizable crowd that had come to protest his speech. Pictured on the left is a man who walked between the two barricades with his sign “No Justic No Law”. Police were tollerant until he tried to mount the steps to town hall and he was then turned away back into the crowd.

This is a photograph of four North Carolina Agriculture and Technical College students participating in the first non-violent sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1,1960. The students were freshman from the university and decided to sit at the ‘whites only’ counter at the local Woolworth drug store in protest of segregation.

The students remained at the counter, without service, till the drug store closed at 5:30. The following day the students returned with friends and continued their non-violent protest against racial segregation in public places. The sit-in spread to several other Greensboro businesses over the six days until Woolworth closed its doors . By April of 1960 Black American student leaders met in Raleigh, North Carolina and formed the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee used the sit-in tactic in many protest against racial segregation. By October of that year over 112 sit-ins had taken place across the South. In the six years after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling desegregation was proceeding at 1% per year. At this rate the nation would be completely desegregated by 2054. These NC A&T students in 1960 were asking for immediate desegregation. Even moderate whites and some blacks felt that immediate desegregation would cause violent riots. These students were attempting to bring about immediate desegregation without violence. The efforts of these students and thousands of other protesters across the country were successful in the Civil Rights Movement which ended the rule of Jim Crow.

This photograph was found at www.bbc.co.uk

The above image was taken in March 1964 outside the post office on Franklin Street.  Copyright belongs to Al Amons.  The Photo is part of the Manuscripts Department at the Wilson Library on the Campus of UNC Chapel Hill. 

These students are fasting in protest to segregation.  During this time protests in the South were a daily occurrence.   Segregation was a hot topic which some politician, such as George Wallace, used as a platform of segregation during his time as governor of Alabama.  He also ran for President of the United States four times.  Wallace is best known for his quote, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”  He is also immortalized in the film Forest Gump for standing in the door at the University of Alabama in protest to the desegregation of the university.

World War II sent back Southern black and white veterans transformed by their fight for democracy abroad returned home with the goals of democratizing the political system of the South. By executive order, President Truman created the President’s Committee on Civil Rights to give recommendations on how local, state and federal laws could be improved to protect all citizens’ civil rights. The PCCR’s report suggested the President support multiple civil rights legislations such as anti-poll tax and anti-lynching measures. The PCCR also suggested that Truman desegregate the Armed Forces, which he did by executive order 9981 in July of 1948.

Many Southern whites, especially in the Black Belt region, grew fearful that Truman would begin to impose federal regulations to change the economic and social structure of the South. The Governor of South Carolina, Strom Thurmond along with the Governor of Mississippi, Fielding Right, led a group of white Southerners to protest the National Democratic Party’s nomination of Truman and their adoption of civil rights to the platform for the 1948 election. When their demands were ignored at the National Democratic Convention, Thurmond and Wright led white Southerners to form a States’ Rights Democratic Party that would nominate its own candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in their own states. The States’ Rights Democratic Party hoped to receive all the votes of the solid South and force the election into the House of Representatives where they could debate the civil rights platform of both parties. The States’ Rights Democratic Party quickly received the nickname “the Dixiecrats” for their stance against civil rights and white supremacist rhetoric used throughout their campaign.

While the Dixiecrats only carried four states in the 1948 election, they created political room to maneuver in the once one-party South by leading the Black Belts exodus from the National Democratic Party. The Dixiecrat revolt’s conservative platform also provided the foundation for the resurgence of the Republican Party in the South.

Photo by Jessica Thompson, taken from the Guthrie T Meade Collection, call number 20246

in the Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library, Chapel Hill, NC.

In an undated 1950 letter to Willis Smith, Wesley Critz George, a professor of Anatomy at the University of North Carolina, outlines his opposition to Frank Porter Graham’s position on desegregation.  Frank Porter Graham, who had served as President of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had dealt with George before. 

In 1947, George reiterated his argument that segregation was important in protecting white racial purity.  The mixing of races would lead to a “stormy sea of race conflict.”

Frank Porter Graham, who was a gradualist, faced many problems in another campaign for governor for many of the same reasons.  George’s view that Graham was using schools and churches as an instrument for the desegregation of the South was thought to be a political propaganda.

Terry Sanford, who later ran for Governor, had learned from Graham’s mistakes.  His choice to avoid discussion on desegregation when possible helped him to win against his opponent in the 1960 gubernatorial race.  This letter helps to see the opposing side to some of Frank Porter Graham’s platforms and shows how his progressive ideals were not widely accepted throughout North Carolina.  Furthermore it shows the staunch resistance to desegregation in the South in the 1950’s.

Images thanks to Manuscripts Department at Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Wesley Critz George Papers, 1888-1982 (#3822).

 

“Urban Renewal a Farce or Reality,” Carolina Times, September 25, 1965.  

The discussion surrounding urban renewal in Durham, N. C. began in the 1950s, a few years after the federal government began allocating funds for “blighted areas” under the Housing Act of 1949.  In 1957, a stagnant Durham realized that if it wanted to grow as a city, it would have to make some drastic improvements to its downtown area in order to recruit new businesses.  Additionally the city wanted to capitalize on the fledgling Research Triangle Park and resist the growing trend toward suburbanization sweeping the country.  Much like urban renewal in most cities, which targeted all black sections, Durham was no exception.  In April 1957, the North Carolina State legislature passed an act authorizing cities in the state to participate in programs of urban renewal allowing them to receive federal funding.  That same year, the city of Durham commissioned a group of University of North Carolina graduate students from the Department of City and Regional Planning to assist in preparing a report.  In 1954, several years after Congress passed the 1949 Housing Act, it expanded the urban renewal program so that there would be money for the prevention of “urban blight” as well as money for fixing the problem.  The plan identified the Hayti section of Durham, the city’s major black section, as a “blighted” area.  Under the previously mentioned Housing Act, the federal government provided qualified cities with two-thirds of the total costs for redevelopment in proposed areas.  The program of urban renewal was advertised as something positive that would assist the city in removing unwanted problem areas.   

Louis Austin, editor of the city’s black newsweekly the Carolina Times, gave overwhelming support to the urban renewal program in the beginning.  But, by 1965 Austin began expressing skepticism about the urban renewal program.  In this newspaper article Austin called the whole idea “about the biggest farce ever concocted in the mind of mortal man” because of “the swiftness and efficiency with which Urban Renewal acts in tearing down houses and the lack of speed which it has exhibited in replacing them…”  According to Austin: 

So far as the Hayti section of Durham is concerned, Urban Renewal is not only a farce but just another scheme to relieve Negroes of property they own too close to the downtown business section of the city. Austin went on to point out that the low income apartments that were promised by urban renewal had not been built. 

Moreover, he explained that blacks’ sentiment at the misconception of urban renewal can be found in a black citizen who remarked: 

I have already put it in my will that when my grandson’s great grandson moves into one of the apartments erected under the Urban Renewal program to not forget that his old great great grandpappy dreamed of such a day. 

This newspaper article exposes the failures of urban renewal in Durham in addition to the truth about its role in the “New South.”  In Durham urban renewal was no more than a way to make room for a proposed thoroughfare that would provide an easy travel route for commuters making their way to Research Triangle Park.  The loss of businesses and residents in the Hayti district, as it turned out, were part of a relentless process.  As a result, it did little to eradicate poverty and revitalize the city.    

recorded for their album “Southern Rock Opera,” this song discusses the Bear Bryant, Ronnie Van Zandt, and our favorite— George Wallace.

Definitely worth the listen

Recipe from the Routh family collection

Tristan Routh

The Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina faced many obstacles to the rule of Jim Crow and the fight for social, economic, and political equality with white citizens just as African Americans faced these same problems throughout the rest of the South. While heroic figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. stand at the forefront of everyone’s minds when thinking of the Civil Rights Movement, there are so many people who deserve to be honored for their achievements during the fight for equality. One could not name them all; in every community in every state in the South there are numbers of African Americans who fought for justice and equality. This posting highlights two such people and their work in Durham, North Carolina.

A pamphlet entitled “Civil Rights Movement in Durham: A Pictorial Perspective” highlights two of these such heroes. It was published by the Durham Civil Rights Reunion Committee in 1994. The publication was produced to highlight a few important events in Durham during the desegregation and integration era of the 1960s. The first influential person, Floyd B. McKissick Sr., is highlighted for his service as advisor of the youth chapter of the NAACP-CORE organization in Durham. During his leadership, the African American community was fighting for open accommodations, more employment opportunities, and a more integrated society. This first civil rights movement in Durham is even referred to as the “McKissick era.”

The second large civil rights movement in Durham reflects the leadership of Margaret H. Turner, who followed McKissick in leading the youth chapter of the NAACP-CORE organization. Under her leadership, the African American community fought for better housing, paved streets, and more recreational opportunities for black citizens. The postings show portraits of both McKissick and Turner as well as a picture of the NAACP-CORE in action. The photo of the picketers is outside of an Eckerd’s in Durham for the store’s failure to hire African American’s in any other capacity than menial jobs. This photo was taken on August 4, 1962. Other NAACP-CORE demonstrations in Durham focused on segregation at various hotels and restaurants in the area.

Hannah S Hawley

North Carolina Collection

Call No.: Cp326 D96c