The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Southern women

Repository: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Southern Oral History Program

Collection Description (Extant): Interviews in this series focus on women's participation in movements for social change. The idea for a series of interviews with southern women originated with Jacquelyn Hall's study, Revolt Against Chivalry (Columbia University Press, 1979), which looks at the role of women in the anti-lynching movement of the Depression decade. Other interviews, financed by a 1974 Rockefeller Foundation grant to the Southern Oral History Program, expanded this focus to include labor relations, race relations, and reform movements.

Many of the earlier interviews in this series deal with the experience of southern women in the critical period between the women's suffrage movement of the 1920s and the feminist movement of the 1960s. The individuals interviewed were active participants in many reform movements during this period. The interviews particularly explore the interaction between the women's private lives and their public activities.

Many of the women interviewed were born between 1890 and 1910. Thus, they matured politically during the 1930s, the era of the Great Depression, labor organization, and New Deal reform. They are from various social classes and are of different races. Many of the women can be grouped into three categories: women involved in labor and workers' education movements either as students or as teachers; black and white women active in the civil rights movement; and women who, in addition to their contributions to these reform movements, also pursued professional careers. A great number of them were affiliated with the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, the Women's Division of the Southern Methodist Church, the Young Women's Christian Association, or the Southern Summer School for Women Workers.

Other interviews with and about women are periodically added to this series.

G.2.2. Black and White Women in Atlanta Public Life Project.
7 items.

These seven interviews were conducted by Kathryn L. Nasstrom for her 1993 Ph.D. dissertation, "Women, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Historical Memory in Atlanta, 1946-1973." The six African-American women and one white woman interviewed were involved in various phases of the civil rights movement in Atlanta, Ga. The interviews concern the civic and political work of the women interviewed and social and political developments in Atlanta beginning in the 1940s. The interviews also contain biographical information on the interviewees. Copies of these tapes and transcripts are also available through the Georgia Government Documentation Project, Special Collections Department, Pullen Library, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Ga. Tapes and transcripts of these interviews are available for research. For these interviews, in contrast with other interviews in the collection, all quotations must be taken from transcripts. Additional contributions to this group are expected.

Access Copy Note: Some interviews are restricted or closed as noted in the finding aid.
Interview transcripts are CLOSED while they are being digitized. Please contact the The Southern Historical Collection for more information.
If an interview has been transcribed, researchers should quote from the transcript. If no transcript is available, reference to material in the interview should be taken from the audio recording. Some interviews have restrictions imposed by the interviewees or interviewers; restricted interviews are clearly marked. Researchers may, for example, be required to obtain written permission from the interviewee or interviewer to quote from the interview.
Use of audiotapes or videotapes may require production of listening or viewing copies.

Collection URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/sohp/projects.html

Digital Status: Yes

Existing IDs: Collection Number: 04007 G

Extent: 264 items

Finding Aid URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/s/Southern_Oral_History_Program_Collection.html

Language: English

Interviewees: Jessie Daniel Ames, Lulu Daniel Ames, Ella Baker, Thelma Barnum, Lorena Barnum Sabbs, Daisy Bates, Vivion Lenon Brewer, Septima Poinsette Clark, Mildred Price Coy, Edith M. Dabbs, Leslie Dunbar, Virginia Foster Durr, Grace Towns Hamilton, Guion Griffis Johnson, Brownie Lee Jones, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Margaret McDow MacDougall, Emily MacLachlan, Pauli Murray, Myra Page, Frances Freeborn Pauley, Modjeska Simkins, Thelma Stevens, Olive M. Stone, Josephine Wilkins, Alice Norwood Spearman Wright, Louise Young, Isabel Bittinger, Elizabeth Conrad, Susan Dees, Ruth Henley, Roletta Jolly-Fritz, Jean McAlister, Dorothy Naumann, Sujette Crank, Pearlie Dove, Narvie J. Harris, Annie L. McPheeters, Nan Pendergrast, Alice Holmes Washington, Lottie Watkins, Willie Mae Winfield, Helen M. Lewis

Rights (Extant): When the copyright has not been assigned to the University of North Carolina, copyright is retained by the interviewers/interviewees, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Subjects:

African American women
African American women civil rights workers
Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching
Commission on Interracial Cooperation
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Southern Conference for Human Welfare
Southern Regional Council
Women civil rights workers
Women labor leaders
Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (Little Rock, Ark.)
Women's rights
Women--Political activity
Young Women's Christian Association of the U.S.A.

Genres:

Interviews
Sound recordings
Transcripts