With election fever infecting a large part of the country, it is only appropriate that this month’s featured documents from Duke’s CCC Project digitized collections are newspaper advertisements about voter turnout from the Rencher Nicholas Harris Papers. What makes these documents particularly interesting—and disturbing—is the demographic group that they targeted: white voters frightened about the perceived usurpation of power by an African-American voting bloc.
Political Advertisement, Undetermined Newspaper, [May 1949?]: Rencher Nicholas Harris Papers, Box 10, Folder 2.Political Advertisements, Undetermined Newspaper, [May 1949?]: Rencher Nicholas Harris Papers, Box 10, Folder 2.These advertisements likely appeared in one of Durham’s newspapers in the days before the local elections of May 1949. I determined the probable date by looking at the other materials in the Harris Papers located near these clippings. Two possible dates emerged—May 1949 and November 1956. While both dates are plausible, the fact that the advertisements speak specifically to Durham’s leadership rather than a presidential or gubernatorial election makes 1949 more likely. In addition, the fact that Election Day was a Saturday is another strike against 1956. We encourage readers of this blog to decipher the exact date of these advertisements as well as their original newspaper(s) and the persons behind the generically-named “Public Spirited Citizens of the Community.”
Beyond determining the provenance of these advertisements, we anticipate that most readers will find these advertisements most interesting for their racial arguments. The fears that undergirded these advertisements relied on the two-pronged belief that African-American voters would turn out in large numbers and that all of those voters would cast their ballots monolithically. While the language in the advertisements is clearly prejudiced, its reliance upon believing that African-American leaders were successfully organizing get-out-the-vote efforts is an oddly-backhanded compliment to Harris and his political allies. The language in these advertisements is ripe for further analysis, so we encourage our readers to dive in and become immersed in the racial and political history of Rencher Nicholas Harris’s time on the Durham City Council.
The grant-funded CCC Project is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more about Rubenstein Library materials being digitized through the CCC Project, check out previous progress updates posted here at The Devil’s Tale!
Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Graduate Assistant.
In this month’s update of the CCC Project at Duke University, we are happy to announce the publication online of the records of Duke’s Department of African and African-American Studies. The items included in this collection document the beginnings of the department, the research and teaching of its faculty members, and the various social and cultural movements occurring within the African-American community during the 1970s and later. We encourage researchers to peruse the digitized documents, accessible from the collection inventory, to find a host of items sure to add to the scholarship of the long civil rights movement.
Our document spotlight for the month highlights the struggles that the African and African-American Studies Department, then known as the Black Studies Program, experienced in its earliest days. From its inception in 1969, the Black Studies Program had been offering several courses through adjunct faculty. Still, the Program lacked a director and its course slate remained minimal, although the Program did offer a major.
In addition, members of the African-American community at Duke contended that the university’s administration did not implement programs to encourage “black cultural representation.” The document shown below is a draft petition from late 1979 written by members of the African-American community at Duke asking the administration to ameliorate both the academic and cultural issues that hampered the growth of the African-American community at the university.
Draft Petition to Duke Administration Regarding Cultural Representation of the Black Community. Department of African and African-American Studies Records, Box 1, folder 30 (File ID daams01030169)
Although we do not have a completed petition in the Department’s records, the goals of the document did eventually become Duke’s policy. University administration would create new standards to recruit more African-American faculty members. In addition, the Program would soon become a fully-staffed Department. In terms of cultural engagement, the establishment of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture in 1983 helped to fulfill the demands listed in the petition. Researchers will now have the opportunity to learn even more about the beginnings of African-American Studies at Duke and how struggles for recognition led to a strong academic and cultural presence on campus.
The grant-funded CCC Project is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more about Rubenstein Library materials being digitized through the CCC Project, check out previous progress updates posted here at The Devil’s Tale!
Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Graduate Assistant.
Letter, Patricia Nixon to Elna Spaulding, June 30, 1969. Women-in-Action for the Prevention of Violence and Its Causes Records, Box 1, Folder 3 (File ID: wiams01003143).
In last month’s update for the progress of the CCC Project at Duke, I discussed how an interest group tried to lobby Congress to oppose civil rights reform. In that case, the National Restaurant Association lobbied Congress to block a piece of legislation that it felt would harm its members. Contacting officials to enact desirable policies is certainly one of the most important activities of advocacy organizations, yet before lobbying can occur, an organization must become sustainable through fundraising. This month, we take a look at the Women-in-Action for the Prevention of Violence Records and how that nascent organization contacted a wide array of individuals, corporations, and institutions to raise funds for their efforts to combat domestic violence and promote racial harmony.
The President of Women-in-Action, Mrs. Elna Spaulding, wrote letters to many of the luminaries of the late 1960s in her effort to garner funding. Potential benefactors included the Eckert Corporation, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, financial firm Lehman Brothers, Coretta Scott King, the producers of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Senator Jesse Helms, and (pictured here) first lady Pat Nixon. Many of the recipients did not respond; most responded like Mrs. Nixon, with well-wishes but no funding. However, Mrs. Spaulding was successful enough to take her fledgling organization and make it into a major community actor in both Durham and elsewhere in North Carolina. We encourage you to peruse the correspondence in the Women-in-Action Records to find out for yourself who gave to the cause.
The grant-funded CCC Project is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more information on this project, including updates on the progress of digitization, please check out the CCC website. As part of the outreach efforts of the CCC Project, monthly blog posts to The Devil’s Tale will provide updates on the latest Rubenstein Library collections to be digitized for the project. Stay tuned!
Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Graduate Assistant
It’s a sad news day with the report that North Carolina-native Andy Griffith has died at age 86. Best known for his role as sheriff of the fictional Mayberry, Griffith is also a prominent figure in our AdViews Collection of vintage television commercials. Along with commercials for the Andy Griffith Show, Griffith advertised for a number of products, including Scope mouthwash, Post cereals, and Gaines dog food.
Video links available through the AdViews digital collection.
Karen Glynn, long-time Photography Archivist in the Archive for Documentary Arts, retires today to move to South Africa. In her honor, we present some images of travel and farewell from our digitized collections. Happy trails, Karen! We’ll miss you!
Sidney Gamble, Men in boxcar ("Travelling Fourth Class"), China, 1917-1919. From the Sidney D. Gamble Photographs.William Gedney, South Dakota, 1966-1967. From the William Gedney Photographs and Writings.ca. 1980s, from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Archives.Gary Monroe, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1994. From the Gary Monroe Photographs.
This month, we feature an item from the Basil Lee Whitener Papers. Whitener was a Democratic Congressman representing Mecklenburg County (N.C.) from 1957 through 1968. Like many other Democrats from the South (who collectively became known as “Dixiecrats”), Whitener was a vehement opponent of integration and any federal action intended to address civil rights issues.
His papers contain a great deal of correspondence, speeches, bills, and other materials that reflect both the views of constituents regarding civil rights and how he acted in the House of Representatives to try to derail reform-minded legislation.
Whitener’s opposition was firm, but such groups as the NAACP and the North Carolina Baptist Student Union sent telegrams and letters to the Congressman arguing for strong civil rights legislation. Knowing that these efforts fell on deaf ears, who then actually lobbied against civil rights legislation? The answer is the NRA . . . but not that NRA. The organization in question is the National Restaurant Association; the letter that their representative Ira Nunn sent to Whitener in opposition to what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is presented below.
Letter, Ira H. Nunn of the National Restaurant Association to Basil Lee Whitener, November 1, 1963. From the Basil Lee Whitener Papers. (Click to enlarge.)
The given reason for the NRA’s opposition to H.R. 7152 was that its proposals “can only result in the diminution of free enterprise and of the rights and freedoms of all citizens.” Decode this political jargon and you will see that the NRA disapproved of the proposed ability of the federal government to mandate the integration of all public dining spaces.
Instead, the NRA offered the solution of voluntary integration. In his letter, Nunn claimed that voluntary integration had been a “widespread success.” While Nunn’s claim was literally true insofar as a certain percentage of restaurant owners had chosen to integrate their establishments voluntarily, the spirit of the argument is false. Restaurateurs were not en masse choosing to integrate their establishments, especially in the South. For example, only forty percent of businesses in Greensboro were integrated by the end of 1963. Nationally, out of a possible 60,000 districts where mandated integration could have existed, only 1,000 had integrated facilities. It is understandable that Nunn would like to present his industry as reform-minded while preserving laissez-faire standards, but the historical reality does not corroborate his argument.
Why would Nunn and restaurateurs more broadly oppose civil rights reform? While a culture of segregation may have contributed to the NRA’s opposition, it is much more likely that members of the NRA feared the potential loss of business that forced integration would entail, especially in the South. Therefore, at its core, the NRA’s argument against integration was primarily economic rather than cultural or social, making it stand out from most anti-integration documentation from the early 1960s. Furthermore, in an ironic twist given Whitener’s role as a representative of North Carolina, it is probable that the NRA’s economic argument was in part inspired by the events of the 1960 Greensboro Sit-In and subsequent protests across the South. In fact, such protests provided strong evidence of the social role of restaurants and the necessity for integrating their dining counters, even if the members NRA could only see the possibility of losing customers and profit.
The grant-funded CCC Project is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more information on this project, including updates on the progress of digitization, please check out the CCC website. As part of the outreach efforts of the CCC Project, monthly blog posts to The Devil’s Tale will provide updates on the latest Rubenstein Library collections to be digitized for the project. Stay tuned!
Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Graduate Assistant.
Rencher Nicholas Harris was Durham’s first African-American city councilman as well as a member of the Board of Education and the Secretary for the Board of Directors of Lincoln Hospital. His papers, collected at the Rubenstein Library and now digitized, cover the scope of his civic efforts from public health to transit planning. For example, the document shown below is a budgetary analysis of Durham school cafeterias in 1959—and a prime example of how civic documents demonstrate racial realities.
Click to enlarge.
At first glance, the document lists the budgets of all of the public school cafeterias in Durham, separated into white and “negro” categories. Examine the figures more closely and the depth of racism in the school segregation policy becomes clear. Compare, for example, the operation expenses of white Durham High and African-American Hillside High ($68,475.27 to $39,346.22, respectively). In addition, the white schools show a net income of $6,205.02 versus the net monetary loss of the African-American schools of $4,638.23. It is up to researchers to determine the full explanation and significance of these figures.
Fortunately, this document, along with a host of other records containing information on historic impetuses and efforts for civil equality in North Carolina, will soon become available online. Duke University Libraries’ Digital Production Center is currently participating in the Content, Context, and Capacity Project led by the Triangle Research Libraries Network (Duke, NC State, UNC, and NC Central).
This grant-funded initiative is designed to digitize selected manuscripts and photographs relating to the long civil rights movement. For more information on this project, including updates on the progress of digitization, please check out the CCC website. As part of the outreach efforts of the CCC Project, monthly blog posts to The Devil’s Tale will provide updates on the latest Rubenstein Library collections to be digitized for the project. Stay tuned!
Post contributed by Josh Hager, CCC Graduate Assistant.
One of the best parts about being the University Archivist is the unexpected treasure that sometimes arrives in the mail.
Recently, I received a small packet of photographs from the family of Charles Wesley Clay, a Methodist minister and alumnus from the classes of 1929 and 1932. Clay earned bachelor’s degrees from Trinity and Divinity, and he happened to be on campus from 1925 to 1932, during the heyday of construction on East and West campus.
This small collection of 42 snapshots includes Clay posing next to Duke buildings—some completed, some under construction—as well as shots of equipment, scaffolding, and snowfall on the as-yet unmanicured quads.
We have other construction photos taken by Duke’s construction company, but it is revealing to see the “student’s eye view” of what it was like to be at Duke in these early, exciting days.
Charles Wesley Clay in front of the East Campus Union in the spring of 1927.Duke's football stadium (now known as Wallace Wade Stadium) under construction in 1929.A view of West Campus from the Medical School in the fall of 1929. Note the railroad spur that brought Duke stone from Hillsborough directly to campus.
The University Archives is interested in documenting student life through materials like photographs, diaries, and scrapbooks. Please contact us if you have items you would like to donate.
Post contributed by Val Gillispie, Duke University Archivist.
The Archive of Documentary Arts monthly blog post highlights work in our holdings that has been digitized. This month, we remember the work of photographer Hugh Mangum (1877-1922), currently on exhibit at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. Graduate student Sarah Stacke curated the exhibit Keep All You Wish: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum as her final project for the Graduate in Liberal Studies degree, Spring 2012. The exhibit can be viewed at the Lyndhurst Gallery at the Center for Documentary Studies until October 20, 2012. Keep All You Wish will be viewable online through the Library’s exhibit site shortly.
Hugh Mangum primarily photographed in small towns between Durham, North Carolina, and southern Virginia. The collection is comprised of unidentified glass plate negatives. The images in this blog are jpegs of photographer Bill Bamberger’s inkjet prints created for the exhibit from the Library’s scans of the glass plate negatives.
Post contributed by Karen Glynn, Photography Archivist, Archive of Documentary Arts.
Special Collections Library reading rooms often require special equipment to view non-traditional record formats such as VHS players, cassette players, microfilm readers, etc. The Rubenstein Library recently welcomed a new piece to the set: a desktop computer.
Rubenstein Library Research Services staff check out the reading room's new e-records computer work station.
Though public computers have been available in our reference room for a long time to assist in finding and requesting physical materials in the reading room this new machine has been designed to support providing local access to electronic records and audio/video materials.
Some of the materials you can explore on the computer include:
