HIST 4600: U. S. South 1860 to Present

Public papers of a Charlotte politician and civil rights leader. Primarily material created and received by Alexander as the first African-American member of the Charlotte City Council in the 20th Century (1965-74) and as a North Carolina state senator (1975-80). Includes minutes and other papers related to council and senate activities; material on campaigns and voter registration drives; files on the local, state, and national Democratic Party; correspondence; speeches; clippings; photographs; and some personal and business material.

Papers documenting Alexander's service with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, including the Charlotte branch, his presidency of the North Carolina State Conference of Branches, and his membership on and chairing of the national board of directors. Includes minutes, correspondence, reports, speeches, programs, news releases, membership records, documentation on NAACP-initiated court cases, and material on voter education projects. Also includes material on the 1965 bombing of his home, the Charlotte Area Fund, health care, school desegregation, and housing.

Thereasea Delerine (T.D.) Elder is active in community nursing, church work, and the Charlotte African American community, particularly in efforts to preserve Charlotte's African American history. Materials document the importance of African Americans in politics and community, the value of a healthy and safe neighborhood, and access of education and employment.

Papers of a Charlotte artist, poet, civil rights activist, and UNC Charlotte alumnus, highlighting his role as one of the Charlotte Three and his interest in the civil rights movement. Consists primarily of correspondence, legal documents, and other material concerning his controversial arrest, trial and conviction for arson; subsequent legal proceedings; and the activities of the North Carolina Political Prisoners' Committee. Also includes files on the Wilmington Ten, the North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, and periodicals and monographs published by left-wing and civil rights groups.

This collection includes papers of Gerson Stroud, an educator and principal in the public school system in Charlotte, NC, in the second half of the twentieth century. His papers reflect his personal life and career in education, including his attention to assisting African-American youth.

This collection contains the records of the North Carolina Extension Homemakers Association, of Charlotte, North Carolina from 1925 to 2008. Home demonstration activities began in North Carolina as early as 1911 with the establishment of the first “tomato club” in Guilford County. Within a few years, the US Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 for the establishment of the Agricultural and Home Economics Extension Service. The purpose of this act was to “aid in diffusing among the people of the U.S. useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics and to encourage the application of the same to those not resident in said colleges.” The purpose of the Extension Homemakers Association was to provide education and training useful to homemakers in rural and agricultural areas at a time when electricity in rural areas was rare, paved roads were few, sanitation conditions were primitive, and the cost of groceries was relatively high. Economizing in all aspects of homemaking was very important to farm families that lived on a modest income.

Papers of a family that settled in Charlotte in the 1850s. Contains extensive records involving the purchase and operations of gold mines, mills, and other businesses owned by the family and by their Renwick and Smedberg relations in North Carolina and South Carolina beginning in the 1820s. Also contains papers of Admiral Charles Wilkes (1798-1877), and of his son, John Wilkes (1827-1908). This series contains various subject files including correspondence, journals, legal documents, reports, scrapbooks, and slave records.

Primarily material relating to the involvement of this Textile Workers Union of America official in a strike at Harriet-Henderson Mills in Henderson, N.C. (1958-61), his conviction and subsequent imprisonment amidst allegations of a state-supported frame-up, and his eventual pardon. Includes correspondence, transcripts of radio broadcasts, clippings, audio-visual material, and manuscripts of his book, Scapegoat (1970).

Records of the Charlotte and Metrolina chapters of the National Organization for Women, and date from 1972 to 2009. The collection contains files that were produced as a result of the chapters' organizational functions, and also concern issues of interest to the chapter; key among them was the Equal Rights Amendment, and abortion rights.