Staff Finds – Southern Sources

Newly-Discovered Archival Materials Recall the Textile Union Organizing Work of Leaders Killed at the Greensboro Massacre (November 3, 1979)

Forty-four years ago today, five leaders of the Communist Workers Party (CWP) were shot and killed at a demonstration in Greensboro, N.C., by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The violence of the “Greensboro Massacre” lasted only eighty-eight seconds, but ended with the murders of CWP organizers Sandra Smith, James Waller, William Sampson, César Cauce, and Michael Nathan.

Since the massacre, families and friends of the people murdered have tried to keep the memories of their loved ones alive through commemorations, such as the 2015 placement of a North Carolina Highway Historical Marker at the site of the shootings. In 1980, families and survivors established the Greensboro Justice Fund (later the Greensboro Civil Rights Fund, or GCRF) to fundraise and organize for a civil suit on behalf of the victims. That lawsuit, Waller v. Butkovich, resulted in a jury finding two Greensboro police officers and six Klansmen and Nazis liable for the wrongful death of the deceased and a judgment of close to $400,000 in damages to the plaintiffs.

In 1992, the Southern Historical Collection acquired the Greensboro Civil Rights Fund’s immense archive of records relating to the massacre and subsequent legal cases. The library also preserves the papers of massacre survivors John Kenyon “Yonni” Chapman and Jim Wrenn and other related collections and published materials.

Recently, as part of a new project called “Print Culture of the Southern Freedom Movement,” SHC staff reviewed the contents of the GCRF records and this search surfaced a group of rare and unique bibliographic sources that offer important evidence of the labor organizing work that several of the Greensboro Massacre victims were doing in the years and months leading up to November 3, 1979. We’ll share some samples of the reports, union newsletters, flyers, and other sources and what they reveal about CWP’s involvement in organizing textile workers in North Carolina in the 1970s.

Dr. James Waller and the Granite Finishing Plant

Born in 1942, Jim Waller grew up in a Jewish household in Chicago. He later received his medical degree from the University of Chicago, trained as part of the Lincoln Hospital Collective in New York, and organized medical aid to American Indian Movement activists under siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973. He relocated to North Carolina in the mid-1970s when he received a medical fellowship at Duke University.

His activism continued in the South. Waller organized with the Carolina Brown Lung Association, where he provided textile mill workers with health screenings for byssinosis (or brown lung) and helped develop health clinics. But in 1976, Waller decided to abandon the medical profession to become a textile mill worker at the Granite Finishing Plant in Haw River, N.C.

Photograph of Dr. Jim Waller speaking at an African liberation event in 1978.

Waller was a member of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (WVO, later the Communist Workers Party) which believed in fomenting revolution through organizing rank-and-file workers. He began selling copies of the WVO’s newspaper outside of the gates of the Cone Mills-owned Granite Plant. He held training sessions for workers and shared educational literature to build up membership in Local 1113T of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU).

Then, in the summer of 1978, Waller was fired by Cone for failing to list his medical training on his employment application. Waller claimed it was in retaliation for his union organizing work in the plant. In response, workers organized a twelve-day wildcat strike and held an election to establish new union leadership, since they felt that ACTWU was not doing enough to support the workers. Waller was elected president of Local 1113T. The strike brought renewed energy to the union and its member rolls grew from 15 to 200 members under Waller’s tenure.

Jim and his wife Signe Waller produced and printed a newsletter, called Granite Workers Update, with a mimeograph machine they had at their home in Greensboro. Seven issues of the newsletter were printed during the strike. We uncovered copies of these issues of Granite Workers Update during our search of the Greensboro Civil Rights Fund Records and we are working on getting them cataloged as a separate serials title, to make them more accessible. According to the WorldCat library database, it appears that UNC Library holds the only extant copies of this newsletter.

Sandra Smith and the Revolution Mills

Photograph of Sandi Smith at a demonstration, circa 1979.

Like Jim Waller, Sandi Smith had medical training (as a nurse), a long history of activism, and an interest in organizing rank-and-file textile mill workers. Smith was a graduate of Bennett College in Greensboro, where she had served as president of the student body and a founding member of the Student Organization for Black Unity (SOBU). She was also a community organizer with the Greensboro Association of Poor People (GAPP). In the mid-1970s, Smith decided to become a worker at the Revolution Plant in Greensboro (also owned by Cone Mills Corporation) so that she could organize a union in the plant. She co-founded and was later elected chairperson of the Revolution Organizing Committee (ROC).

Under her leadership, ROC filed and won grievances with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against unfair firings and arranged to have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspect safety conditions at the mill for the first time in its history.

Those efforts are documented in a newsletter that ROC published throughout this period. We surfaced copies of the newsletter from our search of the GCRF collection and we will be cataloging and digitizing these to make them more widely available. They are believed to be the only extant copies of this union newsletter preserved by a library.

William Sampson and the White Oak Plant

Bill Sampson was born in Delaware in 1948. Active in the anti-war movement as an undergraduate student (and student body president) at Augustana College, Sampson spent his junior year studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, received a Masters in Divinity degree from Harvard in 1971, then studied medicine at the University of Virginia, where he organized health care workers to support liberation struggles in southern Africa.

Image of a campaign flyer for officer elections for ACTWU Local 1391 at White Oak Plant in Greensboro. Bill Sampson is shown at top left.

Sampson left medical school to work and organize at the White Oak Denim Manufacturing Plant in Greensboro. Initially assigned to the dye house, which was a dirty and dangerous part of the denim manufacturing process, Sampson’s co-workers did not think he would last long in this role. But he stayed, working at White Oak for the last two and a half years of his life.

During that time, Sampson filed grievances on behalf of his fellow workers, he built up union membership, and fought unfair firings of fellow union leaders. He then ran for and was elected president of the union (ACTWU Local 1391). He was serving as president-elect at the time of his death.

Sampson and the White Oak Organizing Committee (WOOC) published a union newsletter during this period. We discovered a near full-run of the publication during our search of the GCRF collection. Again, it is thought to be the only extant copy of the newsletter that is held by an academic library. We are working on cataloging and digitizing this newsletter to make it more broadly accessible to researchers.

Conclusion

These newly-discovered archival materials reveal important details about the lives and work of several of the activists killed on November 3, 1979, shedding new light on the intersections between racist violence, anti-Communism, and the labor movement in the South. We hope their re-discovery will inspire researchers to explore this and other lesser-known aspects of the legacy of the Greensboro Massacre.

Works Consulted:

Bermanzohn, Sally Avery. Through Survivors’ Eyes: From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003.

Chapman, John Kenyon Papers. Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC. https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/05441/

Gateway, University of North Carolina at Greensboro Libraries. “The Greensboro Massacre.” Accessed November 2, 2023. https://gateway.uncg.edu/crg/essay1979.

Greensboro Civil Rights Fund Records. Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC. https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/04630/

Greensboro Truth & Reconciliation Commission. “Final Report.” Accessed November 2, 2023. https://greensborotrc.org/index.php.

Magarrell, Lisa and Joya Wesley. Learning from Greensboro: Truth and Reconciliation in the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Waller, Signe. Love and Revolution: A Political Memoir: People’s History of the Greensboro Massacre, Its Setting and Aftermath.” New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.

Workers World. “40th Anniversary of Greensboro Massacre provides lessons for today’s movement.” Accessed November 2, 2023. https://www.workers.org/2019/11/44354/.

Wrenn, Jim Papers. Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC. https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/05625/

Guest post: Sketching the Civil War

A guest post by Emma Rothberg, a PhD student in UNC’s History Department.

When people think of the American Civil War, they generally conjure up images of battles. The flags, the cannons, the puffs of smoke, troops steaming across the landscape in varying shades of blue, gray, and butternut—the heat of battle is very visual. However, Civil War soldiers spent most of their time off the battlefield in camp. Between the marching and military exercises, soldiers of both the Union and Confederate Armies had a lot of free time.

Thousands of men, generally between the ages of 18 and 45, found many ways to pass the time. Some men played cards or dice with their fellow soldiers. Others played music and wrote letters or in diaries. In some cases, they played baseball. Other men were more creative. Ken Burns’s documentary The Civil War includes a vivid description of men finding entertainment in the lice that littered their clothing and hair; by heating up a tin plate from their packs, soldiers could make a quick buck by racing and betting on the lice they pulled from their bodies.

Other men sketched. Some soldiers included small sketches in letters home while others had more ornate sketchbooks. They sketched what they saw—the landscape, the camps, the fortifications, their fellow soldiers, or the aftermath of battle. Some sketched in black and white with pencils while others create more vivid watercolors. Civil War sketchbooks are not only beautiful but give insight into the preoccupations of a soldier’s day-to-day experience.

Wilson Special Collections Library has two wonderful examples of the types of sketchbooks soldiers kept while serving in the Civil War. Both of them are from Union soldiers, which may be an unexpected holding for an archive located in North Carolina. The first sketchbook was by Herbert Eugene Valentine (1841-1917), a private in Company F of the 23rd Massachusetts Volunteers. He served in the Union Army from 1861-1864 in eastern Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. (See the finding aid, with a link to the digitized sketchbook, here.)

Pasted in between newspaper articles, his own writings, and newspaper photos of famous Union Generals and President Abraham Lincoln are sketches Valentine made during his time in the Union Army. Many are of landscape: a drawing of the harbor in Newburne, NC shows the church steeples and ships tucked in among neatly drawn houses (pg. 92). Others look more like cartographic maps, such as the image below of the North Carolina coast around Wilmington (pg. 52):

But Valentine also drew his fellow soldiers in extraordinary detail. Labeled “1st gun fired at New Berne,” Valentine carefully drew an artillery crew in action. While Valentine captures the explosion of cannon in pen and pencil, the men doing the work are depicted serenely: standing like sentinels overlooking a vista (pg. 94).

Valentine was not always so serious in his drawings and some included in his scrapbook could be classified as doodles. A personal favorite shows an unnamed officer’s profile drawn “By our own Artist, on the spot A.W. [Woodhull?] [GG] A.J.C” in 1863 (pg. 49). The man drawn seems almost startled; his eyes are wide as he stares off the side of the page.

Valentine pasted this drawing next to an article discussing the “Affair of Cold Harbor.” The Battle of Cold Harbor, which lasted from May 31 to June 12, 1864, included siege warfare, skirmishes and one of the bloodier assaults of the war (after a massive Union assault across an open field in the early morning of June 3, thousands of Union troops became causalities within an hour). The Herbert E. Valentine is fully digitized and viewable online through the collection’s finding aid.

Wilson Library also has the sketches of William Hedge, a lieutenant of the 44th Massachusetts Infantry that fought in North Carolina in 1862-1863. His collection includes six hand-drawn sketches made while in the vicinities of Washington and Williamston, N.C. (See the finding aid here.)

Like Valentine’s, Hedge’s sketches include a black-and-white map depicting the battlefield and troop placements of the “Skirmish at Little Creek near Williamston, N.C.” in November 1862.

Another colored sketch is of the “Block House No 4” at Fort Hamilton in Washington, N.C in April 1863.

Perhaps the most interesting sketch included in sketch is also the one where the viewer is unsure as to what exactly Hedge meant to draw. A depiction of 1863 camp life at “Shellir Town” in North Carolina, a soldier sits off to the side minding a pot on a stove. Directly to his right on the other side of a small fire, Hedge draws the bodies of two men.

What is interesting is that they very well may be “bodies”—one of the men drawn, laying on his back, is almost corpse-like at first glance. While Hedge did not add any red to indicate blood, the viewer is left wondering if the two men on the right of the image are sleeping or slain. That Hedge could leave this vital bit of information up to debate might be interpreted in support of various arguments about Civil War soldiers. The drawn bodies laying next to a soldier cooking supports the argument soldiers became immune and/or unfazed by death as the war continued. The image also speaks to how “dealing with the bodies” became an issue and industry in and of itself. (For more on this latter point, see Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War). On a more positive note, if the men on the right are merely sleeping, Hedge’s sketch speaks to the commradery between men. They were a “band of brothers” both on and off the battlefield.

Plenty of maps, lithographs, and engravings were produced during the Civil War. These sketchbooks are unique because they remind researchers, students, and the interested observer of the humanity and individualism of the individual soldiers. It is easy to lose sight of the individual when talking about the mass numbers of men of each army during the Civil War. Yet these sketches allow us to connect with these men in ways in which facts and statistics do not afford. Like letters, sketchbooks allow us to see and tease out the individual and their experience. In the end, we all doodle.

Emma Rothberg’s scholarship focuses on the constitution of identity through cultural practices, in particular parading, in the nineteenth-century United States. She was awarded a funded Clein Graduate Summer Internship from the History Department to work with Wilson Special Collections Library for summer 2018. The Clein Internship allows graduate students to undertake self-identified summer internships in a broad range of organizations outside of traditional academia. As a Clein recipient, she has primarily worked on creating library guides to assist researchers and students who are planning to use UNC’s special collections. Emma has written library guides about the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Richardson Preyer and the Thanksgiving Sermon of 1979

In “preparing” for our Thanksgiving posts, I came across a sermon from the Richardson Preyer Papers given at First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina on Thanksgiving weekend in 1979, where Preyer appears to have been a member. Closely related materials in the collection suggest Preyer is the author of the sermon, though it is not explicitly stated. The speaker used Thanksgiving as an occasion to reflect on several notable events from the past year, and I felt they each deserved some individual attention to reflect upon. I decided to do a deeper dive into the events, and see what other materials we might have relating to them in our collections!

Richard Preyer Papers, Sermon, Page 1 Continue reading “Richardson Preyer and the Thanksgiving Sermon of 1979”

American Wit and Humor at the Dawn of Mass Media: The Billy Arthur Collection

The Fall 2017 Southern Historical Collection undergraduate student assistant, Ayush Dagar, UNC class of 2020, wrote this blog post. Ayush also provided research support and transcription work for other projects in the Southern Historical Collection during his semester on staff.

Radio personality Ted Malone and Chapel Hill, NC writer and photographer Billy Arthur (holding camera). Portrait taken at the Wilmington, NC Azalea Festival. Hugh Morton Photographs and Films (P081)

While many may remember Billy Arthur (1911 – 2006) for his size – he played many roles in his life: politician, hobby shop owner, vaudeville performer, mascot, newspaper editor, Pulitzer Prize hopeful, but through and through he was a comedian. I discovered Billy Arthur while doing research in the Southern Historical Collection on North Carolina politicians and was struck by the incredible diversity of his talents and occupations.

Undated photograph of Arthur, presumably middle-aged. Found in series 6, folder 1.

During his time at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Arthur was voted the “Wittiest Man” in his fraternity (Series 3, Folder 35). While chief editor of Jacksonville’s (N.C.) News and Views newspaper, their motto was “The Only Newspaper in the World That Gives a Whoop About Onslow County” (Series 3, Folder 35) And his is the only collection in the Southern Historical Collection that includes the “American wit–20th century” Library of Congress subject heading.

Continue reading “American Wit and Humor at the Dawn of Mass Media: The Billy Arthur Collection”

Juneteenth: Building on Freedom

On June 19^th, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order #3 in Galveston, Texas. It read, in part:

THE SLAVES ALL FREE.

GENERAL ORDERS, No. 3. — The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, “all slaves are tree.” This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.¹

Though Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army in April of 1865, it took some months for hostilities to cease and for word to travel to the western arm of the Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation, which went into law on January 1^st, 1863, was supposedly difficult to enforce in Texas due to the weak Union presence in that state at the time.

June 19^th, 1865 saw more confusion than celebration, but the following year marked the first-ever celebration of the Juneteenth holiday – a combination of “June” and “nineteenth” – commemorating emancipation. The Southern Historical Collection has few holdings related to Juneteenth celebrations in particular, but we have many items that recorded how Freedpeople recognized and built new lives after emancipation.

The image gallery below features two sharecropping contracts (1866 and 1868) signed by a number of Freedpeople from Green, Hale, and Marengo counties in Alabama. Click on a thumbnail to expand and learn more about the contracts.

“Contract of W[illia]m M. Johnston Adm[inistrator] of Estate of R.H. McFaddin and Freedmen on Canebrake place 1866”

“Contract / This agreement and contract made and entered into this the first day of January AD 1866 by and between Thomas M. Johnston Adm[inistrator] of the estate of R.H. McFaddin or his agent W[illia]m E. King party of the first part, and the following Freedmen laborers, parties of the second part.”

It was customary for people of any race or legal standing who could not write their own names to sign an “X” next to where someone else had written their name. Here are the Xs of a number of sharecroppers from January of 1866.

The full list of Freedpeople who entered into this sharecropping contract as paid laborers for the year 1866.

“This agreement made and entered into between Thomas M. Johnston of the first part and the undersigned Freedmen employed to work on the canebreak Witherspoon plantation in Hale County State of Alabama for the year AD 1868 of the second part.”

“The said employees & laborers agree that they will faithfully and industriously work on said plantation from the date of signing this contract untill the crop of the above named year shall be gathered and housed.”

The front and back of a January 1868 sharecropping contract signed by Freedpeople.

All images from the Johnston and McFaddin Family Papers (#02489-z), Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Educating Voters During the Civil Rights Movement

This powerful image, part of the James A. Felton and Annie Vaughn Felton Papers (#05161), is a flyer used by the Voter Education Project in 1970. James A. Felton co-founded an African American organization in North Carolina called the People’s Program on Poverty. Its aim was to study and change poverty at the grass-roots level. This flyer shows one way it worked with the Voter Education Project to support the education of African American voters in The South during the civil rights movement.

Learn more about the collection using its finding aid:
The James A. Felton and Annie Vaughan Felton Papers #5161, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It’s All Up to You! North Carolina and the Good Health Program, Part 1

During World War II, the state of North Carolina received an enormous number of draft rejections due to the poor health of its citizens compared to other states, including problems such as poor teeth and eyesight, chronic infections, malnutrition, tuberculosis, hookworm, and even malaria. The conditions of medical care in the state prompted the Medical Society of the State of North Carolina to urge Governor Broughton to take action, resulting in the formation of the State Hospital and Medical Care Commission in 1944. Their study of health conditions demonstrated that a lack of hospitals, lack of doctors, and limited understanding of health and nutrition were among the reasons for North Carolinians’ poor health. At the same time, statistics showed that while 41% of white draftees and 61% of African American draftees were being rejected in North Carolina, young men raised in orphanages (receiving state supported medical care and nutrition) had a draft acceptance rate of 99%.

Medical Department: Dr. Wright, 20 September 1942 (Left), and Physical tests, circa 1942. From the United States Navy Pre-Flight School (University of North Carolina) Photographic Collection #P0027, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.

In response to this study, lawmakers, administrators, health officials, and prominent citizens launched the Good Health Program to educate North Carolinians about health needs, raise money for the building of hospitals, and generate support for increased medical training in the state.

One of these prominent citizens was Kay Kyser, a Rocky Mount, NC native whose career as a band leader had taken him to Hollywood. Kyser’s dedication to the Good Health program resulted in the talents of well known musicians, radio personalities, and film stars being recruited for the public awareness campaign, encompassing film, radio, and various print media.

Kay and Company — Counterclockwise from top: Kay Kyser (Rocky Mount, NC), Ava Gardner (Actress, Smithfield, NC), Kathryn Grayson (Actress, Winston Salem, NC), Skinnay Ennis (Bandleader and singer, Salisbury, NC), and John Scott Trotter (Bandleader, Charlotte). From folder P-3550/1, North Carolina Good Health Association Records, #3550, Southern Historical Collection.

North Carolina natives including film stars Ava Gardner, Kathryn Grayson, Randolph Scott, and Anne Jeffreys, as well as bandleaders Edgar “Skinnay” Ennis and John Trotter, participated in programs and advertisements via radio and movie trailers to increase awareness of the project’s goals. Popular radio personalities Burns & Allen and Fibber McGee & Molly contributed radio announcements as well.

"It's All Up To You" sheet music cover. From the Kay Kyser and Georgia Carroll Kyser Papers #5289, Southern Historical Collection. — “It’s All Up To You” sheet music cover. From the Kay Kyser and Georgia Carroll Kyser Papers #5289, Southern Historical Collection.

One of the most well remembered publicity efforts of the Good Health Program was the creation of its theme song, “It’s All Up to You!” Written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne (authors of “Let It Snow” among other popular songs), the song was played by Kay Kyser’s Orchestra and sung by Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore. Copies of the recording were played and distributed to the public by every radio station in state and sent to juke box operators in all major North Carolina cities. Sheet music was made available to the public through Columbia dealers and sent to the superintendent of each county and city school system.

Click the play button below to hear a recording of “It’s All Up To You” from the J. Taylor Doggett Collection (#20286) in the Southern Folklife Collection:

"It's All Up to You" music and lyrics. From the Kay Kyser and Georgia Carroll Kyser Papers #5289, Southern Historical Collection. — “It’s All Up to You” music and lyrics. From the Kay Kyser and Georgia Carroll Kyser Papers #5289, Southern Historical Collection.

So how did the Good Health Plan affect change in North Carolina? Tune in Friday morning for our exciting conclusion…

It’s All Up to You! North Carolina and the Good Health Program, Part 1

Click the play button below to hear a recording of “It’s All Up To You” from the J. Taylor Doggett Collection (#20286) in the Southern Folklife Collection:

So how did the Good Health Plan affect change in North Carolina? Tune in Friday morning for our exciting conclusion…

“And a two winged aeroplane that will fly”: Kids’ Letters to Santa from 1932

Check out these Christmas wish lists from cousins Niles Grosvenor and Phoebe Evans of Memphis, Tennessee from November, 1932. The corresponding orders to Sears, Roebuck, and Co. from their grandmother and Phoebe’s father show that Santa got it right.

From folder 293 in the Hill and Grosvenor Family Papers #4191, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.