African American – Page 2 – Southern Sources

Rev. James A. Felton: Montford Point Marine, Grassroots Organizer, Educator, and Family Man

[Today we feature the life and work of Reverend James A. Felton of Hertford County, North Carolina. The Southern Historical Collection is proud to be the repository that preserves a small collection of papers from the Felton family (the James A. and Annie V. Felton Papers, Collection #5161, finding aid). The following biographical note comes from the finding aid for the Felton Papers.]

James Andrew Felton was born on 6 July 1919 in Hertford, Perquimans County, N.C. After spending almost three years in the United States Marine Corps, he earned his B.S. from Elizabeth City State Teachers College (now Elizabeth City State University) and his M.A. from North Carolina College at Durham (now North Carolina Central University). He taught in the Greene and Hertford County school systems for 20 years, and, in 1965 he published “Fruits of Enduring Faith,” a story that dramatizes the human issues behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In the mid-1960s, Felton and Reverend John L. Scott of New Ahoskie Baptist Church formed the People’s Program on Poverty, an African American organization created to study and fight poverty on the grass-roots level. Through his work in this program, Felton founded the first Family Training Center in the United States. During this time, he was also actively involved in organizations such as the President’s Commission on Rural Poverty, the North Carolina Family Life Council, and a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In 1980, Felton established the C. S. Brown School Auditorium Restoration Association to restore Brown Hall, a building that had been part of the campus of Chowan Academy, an African American school founded in 1886 by Calvin Scott Brown. The C. S. Brown Regional Cultural Arts Center and Museum in Winton, N.C., opened in 1986.

James A. Felton married Annie Vaughan on 3 August 1947. They had six children: James Andrew, Jr., Keith, Maria, Sharon, Michele, and Camilla. James A. Felton died in Winton, N.C., on 6 October 1994.

[To learn more about the contents of the SHC’s Felton Papers collection, please see the finding aid].

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 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. Continue reading “Creator of the Month… Guion Griffis Johnson”

Early interracial conferences, Part III

Negro-White Conference, Shaw University — Pamphlet, #4107 Olive M. Stone papers, folder 29

Southern Conference for Human Welfare
20-23 November 1938, Birmingham Ala.
This is a pamphlet from a third interracial conference attended by Olive M. Stone. Inside it describes topics to be discussed at the conference, as well as the purpose of having such a conference: bringing together progressive leaders in the South.

“The Conference issues an urgent invitation to all Southern progressives -individuals and organizations- to attend its sessions and participate in the discussions and conference decisions on suggested remedies for Southern ills. Subjects to be discussed will include public health, education, child labor and youth problems, race relations, prison reform, labor relations, farm tenancy, suffrage, and constitutional rights…
…There are many liberal thinkers and leaders in the South. Their number is rapidly increasing. Progressive ideas and the desire for progressive action are spreading. Their leaders have heretofore been isolated and scattered, the effectiveness of their work limited by lack of coordination. It is believed that the Conference, by providing a meeting ground for all Southern progressives, will promost mutual trust and cooperation between them for greater service to the South.”

Finding Aid for the Olive M. Stone Papers (#4107)

Related Posts:

Early Interracial Conferences, Part I

Early Interracial Conferences, Part II

Early interracial conferences, Part II

Southern Conference for Human Welfare — "Findings of the Negro-White Conference Held at Shaw University," #4107 Olive M. Stone papers, folder 6

Negro-White Conference, Shaw University, Raleigh, N.C.
30 November – 2 December, 1934
Pictured here are the findings of another month-long interracial conference attended by Olive M. Stone, which historian Glenda Gilmore has called “the first southern interracial conference that dared endorse integration” (Defying Dixie, p. 221). The conference also challenged the approaches taken by several of the major civil rights organizations of the time, as is shown in the following excerpt:

“The conference agrees that the criteria of interracial work should be 1) to work for complete social, political, and economic equality of the races, and 2) to work for the organization of the masses of both races for goals that have to do with their common status.
Existing organizations such as the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Commission on Interracial Cooperation etc., have been examined in the light of these criteria, and it was felt that they should change their character and structure to conform to them, if they are to work effectively for the solutions of the problems involved.”

Finding Aid for the Olive M. Stone Papers (#4107)

Related posts: Early interracial conferences, Part I

Early interracial conferences, Part I

Olive M. Stone, an Alabama native, was a sociologist whose work focused on social welfare, race relations, and southern farmers. That’s her, pictured here in Russia, 1931. Stone’s involvement in civil rights and radical politics brought her to a number of southern and northern interracial conferences in the 1930s. This post is the first of three that will highlight some of the documents that represent these conferences in the Olive M. Stone Papers, illustrating some of the earlier stirrings of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Swarthmore institute of Race Relations
July 1934, Swarthmore College, P.A.
Stone wrote this evaluation of the conference, praising it for it’s “truly inter-racial character.” The conference was sponsored by Pennsylvania Society of Friends, lasted twenty-nine days, and featured twenty-nine African American speakers.
Excerpt:

“Too often, at inter-racial conferences which I have attended in the South, there is a patronizing approach on the part of the whites and an ingratiating appeal from the Negroes. At such meetings, the races usually sit on opposite sides of a public hall and are discreetly careful to discuss only the most flagrant abuses of discrimination which neither would dare challenge; as, for example, the undue cruelty administered to a certain Negro on a “jim-crow” street-car rather than the whole question of segregation in transportation…”

Finding Aid for the Olive M. Stone Papers (#4107)

Holdings on minorities in NC libraries

“Readings on minorities in the United States, with emphasis on the negro,” 1948

The North Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation Records (finding aid) contains a group of surveys done in 1948 to assess the holdings of NC public libraries related to minorities, especially African Americans. A list of titles was sent out to white and black libraries around the state, and librarians indicated which titles they had in their collection and sent them back.

Some libraries had none of these materials, though a few of them responded saying that they would turn the list over to their book committee. After thumbing through the surveys, the library with the most titles by far was the Stanford L. Warren Library of Durham (a page from their survey results is pictured at right). This should come as no great surprise, as Stanford L. Warren was North Carolina’s second black library, established in 1916 (the first was the Brevard Street Library for Negroes, which opened in Charlotte in 1905). The Stanford L. Warren Library is pictured at its former location in the postcard below (from North Carolina Postcards).

National Park Service opens Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site

This past Friday, October 10, 2008, the National Park Service held a dedication and a grand opening ceremony to officially open the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama.

“The Tuskegee Airmen” was the popular name of a group of black pilots who flew with distinction during World War II as the 332nd Fighter Group of the US Army Air Corps. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American military aviators in the United States.

The museum, housed within a converted airplane hangar at Moton Field where the Airmen once trained, is a long overdo permanent tribute to the heroic group of airmen who flew more than 15,000 combat trips throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa during World War II – all while fighting discrimination on the homefront in the Jim Crow South.

A full news release from the National Parks Service is available here:
http://www.nps.gov/tuai/parknews/national-park-service-opens-tuskegee-airmen-historic-site.htm

1000 Words Isn’t Enough

baldwin — Unidentified children, circa 1880-1900

Unidentified man holding accordion, circa 1880-1900.

Today we would like to share two photographs with you. These images come from a photograph album of tintypes out of a collection called the Lester-Gray Collection of Documents Relating to Joseph Glover Baldwin, 1838-1949.

This collection, including the photo album of tintypes, was received by the SHC in 1954. Very little is known about the album’s origins. Actually, not much is known about the album’s connection with the greater Lester-Gray collection. The album holds 17 tintypes and one carte-de-visite picturing African Americans — women, men, and children — well-dressed and formally posed. The album arrived with this curious label: “Negroes, born and Bred on Gen. Lee’s Land, 1862.”

Over the years, many people have inquired about the accuracy of this description and date on the album. More importantly people have often asked us about the identity of the individuals portrayed in these photographs. Could these individuals really have lived at Arlington House (the historic home of the Lee and Custis families of Virginia, and home to the Robert E. Lee Memorial)?

In fact, it was one of our researchers who helped us more accurately date these photographs. Several years ago a researcher, who is a maker of historically accurate dolls, agreed to give us her expert opinion of the dress and hairstyles. Her assessment dated the majority of these images to the time period between 1880 and 1900. Following additional research and consideration, our staff then updated our description to include the following statement: “Despite the label on the album, most of the images appear to date from 1880-1900, and there is no direct evidence of connection with Robert E. Lee.”

We have long believed that someone else out there might have additional knowledge that could help to identify some or all of these individuals. Or, perhaps, with some work between the archives at the Arlington House and these materials here in the SHC, more could be unearthed.

Any ideas?