What is a Community Archive?

Community archives and other community-centric history, heritage, and memory projects work to empower communities to tell, protect, and share their history on their terms. In 2017, the Southern Historical Collection, a part of Wilson Library Special Collections, within UNC Libraries … Continue reading

Community archives and other community-centric history, heritage, and memory projects work to empower communities to tell, protect, and share their history on their terms. In 2017, the Southern Historical Collection, a part of Wilson Library Special Collections, within UNC Libraries in Chapel Hill was generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a grant to “form meaningful, mutually supportive partnerships that provide communities with the tools and resources to safeguard and represent their own histories.”  We argue that “Community archive models and community-driven archival practice address the ‘symbolic annihilation’[to quote Michelle Caswell] of historically marginalized groups in the historical record, and aim to create sustainable and accessible memory projects that address these archival absences.”[1]

So what does it mean? A whole host of complex, complicated moving parts that if done right could transform the historical record! And it wouldn’t just be the grant funded community driven archives team (CDAT) doing it, but rather a true collaboration between the CDAT and communities to keep communities in control of their narratives.

Communities can preserve their history in a myriad of ways. They can keep records in  brick and mortar buildings like the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum, or they can curate a digital archive like the South Asian American Digital Archive.[2]  Communal heritage or memory can be expressed through historic markers or murals, like the Portland Street Art Alliance’s “Keep on the Sunnyside Mural Project”[3] and through guided walking tours, such as those created by the Marian Cheek Jackson Center.[4] History and heritage can even be expressed through parades, commemorations, and community celebrations. In her article, “The records of memory, the archives of identity: Celebrations, texts and archival sensibilities” Jeannette A. Bastian notes,

the relationships between collective memory, records, community and identity as expressed through a particular celebration—a carnival— [is] located within the paradigm of a cultural archive. That paradigm theorizes that if an annual celebration can be considered as a longitudinal and complex cultural community expression, then it also can be seen dynamically as a living archive where the many events within the celebration constitute the numerous records comprising this expression.[5]

Community archival work can also be done in public libraries like the Queens Memory Project or with the support of universities like the SHC’s Community-Driven Archives project. We call our work community driven archiving because we take cues from community members on the best ways to support their memory work, we would not trample the long standing tradition of community owned and operated archives by co-opting their name.

We understand that working with communities to create archival, historical and heritage-based projects means grappling with complex issues of identity, ownership, and legacies of marginalization.  Community history has always been present; the community archives movement didn’t suddenly discover these histories.[6] We have a lot more to share about our perspective and experiences with community driven archival work, including its benefits and challenges for a large organization with a complex history like UNC Libraries. With this post we are signaling that boosting community voices in all their intersectional, diverse, complicated and creative outputs is a top priority in the Southern Historical Collection these days.

This is a model we created to help us visualize the relationship between traditional archival users and community-history creators. By changing the emphasis on who is being considered essential to the archives story, you can completely change the priorities.

We post every week on different topics but if there is something you’d like to see, let us know either in the comments or email Claire our Community Outreach Coordinator: clairela@live.unc.edu. 

Follow us on Twitter    #AiaB #yourstory #ourhistory #communityarchives #EKAAMP #HBTSA #SHC #SAAACAM #memory

[1] “About: Community-Driven Archives Overview,” https://library.unc.edu/wilson/shc/community-driven-archives/about/

[2] South Asian American Digital Archive, “SAADA”, https://www.saada.org/

[3] Portland Street Art Alliance, “Keep on the Sunnyside Mural Project”, http://www.pdxstreetart.org/articles-all/sunnyside-mural-project

[4] Marian Cheeks Jackson Center “Soundwalk of Northside,” https://jacksoncenter.info/northside-stories/soundwalk-of-northside/

[5] Jeannette A. Bastian, “The records of memory, the archives of identity: Celebrations, texts and archival sensibilities,” Archival Science, (2012), 122.

[6] Yusef Omowale, “We Already Here,” Medium: Sustainable Future, September 3, 2018, https://medium.com/community-archives/we-already-are-52438b863e31.

New Collections: Activists, Educators, Families, and War

We have over a dozen new collections that are preserved, processed, and now available for research. Some highlights: New materials span from 1764 to 2010 Subjects geographically range from Mexico to China (with plenty of Alabama and North Carolina in … Continue reading

We have over a dozen new collections that are preserved, processed, and now available for research. Some highlights:

  • New materials span from 1764 to 2010
  • Subjects geographically range from Mexico to China (with plenty of Alabama and North Carolina in between)
  • Grassroots organizing, coal mining, and educational activism are common themes
  • There are 3 Civil War photographs and 2 books containing personal sketches from much of the UNC Chapel Hill classes of 1859-1865

Click on any of the collection titles to learn more about the materials, view any digital items, and request them for use in our reading room.


Records of Activists & Educators

James Franklin Cooley Papers (5663)

James Franklin Cooley was an educator, minister, police officer, World War II veteran, judge, civil rights activist, and college administrator in Little Rock, Ark. The collection contains Cooley’s resume; scattered printed materials relating to his candidacy in statewide and local elections; proclamations, certificates, and awards; pages from biographical dictionaries containing James Franklin Cooley’s entry; and clippings about him.

 

Lynch (Ky.) Colored High School-West Main Alumni Association, Inc. Collection (5590)

Lynch Colored School in Harlan County, Ky., served African American children, kindergarten through twelfth grade, who lived in the neighboring coal camps and company towns of Lynch, Ky., and Benham, Ky. United States Coal and Coke Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation established a segregated school system in 1923 to accommodate the children of the company’s black coal miners, many of whom had migrated from Alabama and Georgia.

 

Carol Wills Materials on Eddie Hatcher (5668)

Carol Wills worked for The Independent in Durham, N.C., during the time that Eddie Hatcher was on trial for holding hostages at the The Robesonian newspaper office. Eddie Hatcher was a Lumbee activist in Robeson County, N.C. He and Timothy Jacobs said they held hostages at The Robesonian to draw attention to racism, drug trafficing, and poverty in Lumberton and the county.

 

Leah Wise Papers (5645)*

Papers documenting social justice activities of Durham, N.C., activist Leah Wise including her work with global social justice organizations and in community action groups. There is particular focus on African and African American issues, workers’ rights, anti-racism and anti-Ku Klux Klan groups, women’s rights, and agricultural and agriculture workers’ issues.

*These materials are currently available only by request, and may require additional processing time to access. If you are interested in accessing materials in this collection, please contact wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

 

Kathleen Kitchen Wood Collection (5620)

The collection documents the local and grassroots political efforts of Kathleen Kitchen Wood (1926-2011) during the 1960s in Mobile, Ala., and Atlanta, Ga. Printed items, correspondence, and organizational documents illustrate the work of politically moderate and mostly white or all white organizations with which Wood affiliated including Alabamians Behind Local Education (A.B.L.E.), which advocated for keeping Mobile’s public schools open during the court ordered desegregation crisis, and the Georgia Council on Human Relations.


Family Collections

Benjamin Hickman Bunn Papers (5677)

Papers of lawyer, North Carolina state legislator, congressman, and Democratic Party politician, Benjamin Hickman Bunn (1844-1907) include political correspondence, legal documents, financial materials, and some items related to the Bunn family of Nash County, N.C. Political correspondence chiefly concerns congressional elections and North Carolina Democratic Party conventions in the 1880s and 1890s and contains frequent references to the North Carolina Farmers’ Alliance.

 

James McNeill Papers (5624)

The James McNeill Papers consist of letters written between 1846 and 1866 by James McNeill in Lauderdale and Kemper counties, Mississippi. The letters reveal that James McNeill was a Democrat, a slaveowner, and invested in several businesses, including lumber, cotton and corn crops, and buying and selling land in Mississippi and North Carolina. McNeill also wrote about family matters, settlers enacting vigilante justice against Mexicans in San Antonio, Tex., and the futility of the Civil War.

 

Guilford Mortimer Mooring Papers (5643)

Guilford Mortimer Mooring (1847-1916) was a farmer and politician in Pitt County, N.C. The Guilford Mortimer Mooring Papers consist chiefly of land indentures, deeds, and grants; personal receipts; and receipts relating to Mooring’s work as sheriff of Pitt County, N.C. Also of note are an 1862 promissory note pledging payment to Temperance Congleton for keeping a group of enslaved children and an 1867 indenture for Alexander Brown, a six-year-old orphan.

 

Knox Family Papers (5553)

The Knox family is from Rowan County, N.C., where they have lived since the 1740s. The Knox Family Papers contain business and legal receipts for the Knox family through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also includes account books, indentures, intestate succession documents, slave lists, and receipts for blacksmithing, ministerial services, and other everyday purchases.

 

Ellen Whitehurst Papers (5634)

Ellen Cook Whitehurst was born in 1856 in Elizabeth City, N.C., to Nancy Cook, an enslaved woman, and an unknown father. The collection includes a letter, circa 1930, from Ellen Cook Whitehurst of New York to William White Griffin of Kinston, N.C., a cousin through their common Cook family line. The letter is a twenty-page manuscript written as reminiscences of Whitehurst’s life and family history.


Experiencing War

Jesse I. Ledbetter Reminiscence (5650)

Jesse I. Ledbetter (1922-2015), of Buncombe County, N.C., served as a U.S. Army Air Corps B-24 bomber pilot with the 485th Bomber Group, 831st Bomb Squadron in Venosa, Italy during World War II. The Jesse I. Ledbetter Reminiscence documents a 26 July 1944 bombing mission to Vienna, Austria.

 

John Grant Rencher and William Conway Rencher Autograph Books (5651)

John Grant Rencher and William Conway Rencher were students at the University of North Carolina during the Civil War. The John Grant Rencher and William Conway Rencher Autograph Books contain autographs, biographical information, quotes, and personal notes to the brothers from University of North Carolina students of the classes of 1859 through 1865.

 

Isaac O. Shelby Diaries and Photographs (5674)

The collection contains two diaries kept by Union solider Isaac O. Shelby while he served in the 25th Iowa Infantry Regiment during the Civil War and three carte des visites portraits of him. Diary entries describe his regiment’s involvement in the siege of Vicksburg; the Battle of Chattanooga; the siege of Atlanta; the Battle of Bentonville, and the surrender at Bennett Place.

New Collections: Activists, Educators, Families, and War

We have over a dozen new collections that are preserved, processed, and now available for research. Some highlights: New materials span from 1764 to 2010 Subjects geographically range from Mexico to China (with plenty of Alabama and North Carolina in … Continue reading

We have over a dozen new collections that are preserved, processed, and now available for research. Some highlights:

  • New materials span from 1764 to 2010
  • Subjects geographically range from Mexico to China (with plenty of Alabama and North Carolina in between)
  • Grassroots organizing, coal mining, and educational activism are common themes
  • There are 3 Civil War photographs and 2 books containing personal sketches from much of the UNC Chapel Hill classes of 1859-1865

Click on any of the collection titles to learn more about the materials, view any digital items, and request them for use in our reading room.


Records of Activists & Educators

 
James Franklin Cooley Papers (#05663)
James Franklin Cooley was an educator, minister, police officer, World War II veteran, judge, civil rights activist, and college administrator in Little Rock, Ark. The collection contains Cooley’s resume; scattered printed materials relating to his candidacy in statewide and local elections; proclamations, certificates, and awards; pages from biographical dictionaries containing James Franklin Cooley’s entry; and clippings about him.
 
Lynch (Ky.) Colored High School-West Main Alumni Association, Inc. Collection (#05590)
*Includes digital content
Lynch Colored School in Harlan County, Ky., served African American children, kindergarten through twelfth grade, who lived in the neighboring coal camps and company towns of Lynch, Ky., and Benham, Ky. United States Coal and Coke Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation established a segregated school system in 1923 to accommodate the children of the company’s black coal miners, many of whom had migrated from Alabama and Georgia.
 
Carol Wills Materials on Eddie Hatcher (#05668)
Carol Wills worked for The Independent in Durham, N.C., during the time that Eddie Hatcher was on trial for holding hostages at the The Robesonian newspaper office. Eddie Hatcher was a Lumbee activist in Robeson County, N.C. He and Timothy Jacobs said they held hostages at The Robesonian to draw attention to racism, drug trafficing, and poverty in Lumberton and the county.
 
Leah Wise Papers (#05645)*
Papers documenting social justice activities of Durham, N.C., activist Leah Wise including her work with global social justice organizations and in community action groups. There is particular focus on African and African American issues, workers’ rights, anti-racism and anti-Ku Klux Klan groups, women’s rights, and agricultural and agriculture workers’ issues.

*These materials are currently available only by request, and may require additional processing time to access. If you are interested in accessing materials in this collection, please contact wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.
 
Kathleen Kitchen Wood Collection (#05620)
The collection documents the local and grassroots political efforts of Kathleen Kitchen Wood (1926-2011) during the 1960s in Mobile, Ala., and Atlanta, Ga. Printed items, correspondence, and organizational documents illustrate the work of politically moderate and mostly white or all white organizations with which Wood affiliated including Alabamians Behind Local Education (A.B.L.E.), which advocated for keeping Mobile’s public schools open during the court ordered desegregation crisis, and the Georgia Council on Human Relations.


Family Collections

 
Benjamin Hickman Bunn Papers (#05677)
Papers of lawyer, North Carolina state legislator, congressman, and Democratic Party politician, Benjamin Hickman Bunn (1844-1907) include political correspondence, legal documents, financial materials, and some items related to the Bunn family of Nash County, N.C. Political correspondence chiefly concerns congressional elections and North Carolina Democratic Party conventions in the 1880s and 1890s and contains frequent references to the North Carolina Farmers’ Alliance.
 
James McNeill Papers (#05624)
The James McNeill Papers consist of letters written between 1846 and 1866 by James McNeill in Lauderdale and Kemper counties, Mississippi. The letters reveal that James McNeill was a Democrat, a slaveowner, and invested in several businesses, including lumber, cotton and corn crops, and buying and selling land in Mississippi and North Carolina. McNeill also wrote about family matters, settlers enacting vigilante justice against Mexicans in San Antonio, Tex., and the futility of the Civil War.
 
Guilford Mortimer Mooring Papers (#05643)
Guilford Mortimer Mooring (1847-1916) was a farmer and politician in Pitt County, N.C. The Guilford Mortimer Mooring Papers consist chiefly of land indentures, deeds, and grants; personal receipts; and receipts relating to Mooring’s work as sheriff of Pitt County, N.C. Also of note are an 1862 promissory note pledging payment to Temperance Congleton for keeping a group of enslaved children and an 1867 indenture for Alexander Brown, a six-year-old orphan.
 
Knox Family Papers (#05553)
The Knox family is from Rowan County, N.C., where they have lived since the 1740s. The Knox Family Papers contain business and legal receipts for the Knox family through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also includes account books, indentures, intestate succession documents, slave lists, and receipts for blacksmithing, ministerial services, and other everyday purchases.
 
Ellen Whitehurst Papers (#05634)
*Includes digital content
Ellen Cook Whitehurst was born in 1856 in Elizabeth City, N.C., to Nancy Cook, an enslaved woman, and an unknown father. The collection includes a letter, circa 1930, from Ellen Cook Whitehurst of New York to William White Griffin of Kinston, N.C., a cousin through their common Cook family line. The letter is a twenty-page manuscript written as reminiscences of Whitehurst’s life and family history.


Experiencing War

 
Jesse I. Ledbetter Reminiscence (#05650)
Jesse I. Ledbetter (1922-2015), of Buncombe County, N.C., served as a U.S. Army Air Corps B-24 bomber pilot with the 485th Bomber Group, 831st Bomb Squadron in Venosa, Italy during World War II. The Jesse I. Ledbetter Reminiscence documents a 26 July 1944 bombing mission to Vienna, Austria.
 
John Grant Rencher and William Conway Rencher Autograph Books (#05651)
*Includes digital content
John Grant Rencher and William Conway Rencher were students at the University of North Carolina during the Civil War. The John Grant Rencher and William Conway Rencher Autograph Books contain autographs, biographical information, quotes, and personal notes to the brothers from University of North Carolina students of the classes of 1859 through 1865.
 
Isaac O. Shelby Diaries and Photographs (#05674-z)
The collection contains two diaries kept by Union solider Isaac O. Shelby while he served in the 25th Iowa Infantry Regiment during the Civil War and three carte des visites portraits of him. Diary entries describe his regiment’s involvement in the siege of Vicksburg; the Battle of Chattanooga; the siege of Atlanta; the Battle of Bentonville, and the surrender at Bennett Place.

Creator of the Month… Guion Griffis Johnson

[Each month we feature a “creator” or one of the SHC’s manuscript collections. In archival terms, a creator is defined as an individual, group, or organization that is responsible for a collection’s production, accumulation, or formation.] Guion Griffis Johnson of … Continue reading

[Each month we feature a “creator” or one of the SHC’s manuscript collections. In archival terms, a creator is defined as an individual, group, or organization that is responsible for a collection’s production, accumulation, or formation.]

Guion Griffis Johnson of Chapel Hill, N.C., was a professor, author, scholar, journalist, women’s advocate, and general civic leader. Johnson held a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina. She published three books: A Social History of the Sea Islands (1930), Antebellum North Carolina (1937), and Volunteers in Community Service (1967). Her husband was Guy Johnson, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the 1920s and 1930s, Johnson and her husband worked together at the Institute for Research in Social Science at University of North Carolina.

Guion Griffis Johnson was born in Wolfe City, Tex. After graduating from Greenville (Tex.) High School, Johnson attended Burleson College for two years, then received her A.B. from Mary Hardin-Baylor College, where she later served as head of the Department of Journalism. Johnson also earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri (1923) and a Ph.D. in history and sociology from the University of North Carolina (1927). On 3 September 1923, she married Guy Benton Johnson.

Beginning in 1924, the Johnsons worked at the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, where Guy also served as professor in the Department of Sociology. For the most part, Johnson spent most of her academic career researching historical and current problems of the poor and disadvantaged. After completing her dissertation, Johnson studied the African American population on St. Helena Island, S.C., as a staff member for the National Research Council Study of the Negroes of St. Helena Island. In 1930, she published her first book, A Social History of the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, which was based on this research. Her later research on North Carolina history resulted in Antebellum North Carolina: A Social History in 1937. During 1939-1940, Johnson participated in the Carnegie-Myrdal Study of the Negro in America.

During World War II, Johnson took an active role in the civic life of Chapel Hill. As a volunteer, she was head of the Community Service Committee of the Chapel Hill Rationing Board, information executive for the Chapel Hill Office of Civilian Defense, and collector of war records for Orange County, N.C.

For three years, Johnson lived in Atlanta, Ga., where she was heavily involved in church work. Upon returning to Chapel Hill in 1947, she began an intense period of work with women’s organizations. During this time, she founded the North Carolina Council of Women’s Organization, while also serving on the boards of the American Association of University Women, the North Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs, the North Carolina Council on World Affairs, and Church Women United, and working with other organizations at both the local and national level.

North Carolina delegation to the Biennial Convention of the AAUW, Atlantic Ciy, N.J., 22 April 1951 (Guion Johnson shown front row, second from right)

North Carolina delegation to the Biennial Convention of the AAUW, Atlantic Ciy, N.J., 22 April 1951 (Guion Johnson shown front row, second from right)

The Johnsons were frequent visitors to Africa, touring and working in Liberia, Nigeria, Zaire, Morocco, and South Africa, where Johnson lectured at Rhodes University in 1960. Johnson’s trips to Africa permitted her to continue her academic research and promote her educational goals, and also be involved in Christian missionary work. Her missionary work also took her to Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Johnson published her third book, Volunteers in Community Service, funded by the North Carolina Fund, in 1967. She also collaborated with Guy on a history of the Institute for Research on the Social Sciences (1980).

Johnson was progressive politically, acting as a strong proponent of school desegregation, social welfare programs, and women’s equality. She was also an advocate of greater concern for and involvement in world affairs and supported the effort to build a strong United Nations.

In her later years, Johnson continued to serve on advisory boards and gave many lectures in North Carolina. She was also honored with many lifetime achievement awards, including the University of North Carolina’s Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Chi Omega Distinguished Service Award for Women. Johnson died at her home in Chapel Hill on 12 June 1989.

The Southern Historical Collection is proud to serve as the repository for the personal and professional papers of Guion Griffis Johnson. The Johnson collection contains over 32,000 items ranging in dates from 1873 to 1987. Materials in the collection include correspondence, writings, subject files, and other materials relating to Johnson’s professional and family life.

View the finding aid to see a complete list of the contents of the Guion Griffis Johnson Papers in the SHC.