Southern Historical Collection: Lumbee Indian Resources

Lumbee Indian Resources in the Southern Historical Collection (SHC)

Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I. Digitized Collections

Digitized content from the following SHC collections is available online. Links are to the collection’s finding aid (a descriptive guide to the collection with a contents listing). To locate the digitized content in the collection, examine and search the finding aid for relevant references. Digitized content is indicated by hyperlinks in the contents list.

A. Paul Green Papers (3693)

Paul Eliot Green (1894-1981) of Chapel Hill, N.C., was an author, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, and humanitarian. This collection contains material documenting many facets of Green’s life and work, material relating to the life and work of his wife, Elizabeth Lay Green, and numerous items relating to members of the Greens’ immediate and extended family. Paul Green’s work as a dramatist and writer is documented in his professional correspondence files (circa 34,400 items); by extensive files on his symphonic dramas, including background material, drafts, musical scores, and business records; and by drafts of poems, essays, and novels by Green.

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B. Guy Benton Johnson Papers (3826)

Guy Benton Johnson was one of the original research assistants at the Institute for Research in Social Science and joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 1927, retiring in 1969. The collection consists of papers, mostly correspondence and research project files, relating chiefly to Johnson’s work at the University of Chicago and at UNC on the Ku Klux Klan; musical abilities of African-Americans and white Americans; African-American folksongs; the John Henry legend; the folklore and language (Gullah) of Saint Helena Island, S.C.; Lumbee Indians of Robeson County, N.C.; and the desegregation of higher education.

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C. North Carolina Fund Records (4710)

The North Carolina Fund, an independent, non-profit, charitable corporation, sought and dispensed funds to fight poverty in North Carolina, 1963-1968. Governor Terry Sanford and other North Carolinians convinced the Ford Foundation to grant $7 million initial funding for a statewide anti- poverty effort aimed at rural and urban communities. This money–plus additional funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation; the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation; the U.S. Dept. of Labor; U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare; U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development; and the Office of Economic Opportunity–enabled the Fund to support a broad program of education, community action, manpower development, research and planning, and other efforts to fight poverty. Administrative and financial records (about 32,000 items), including policy statements; Board of Directors minutes and other records; correspondence, speeches, and other files of Executive Director George Hyndman Esser (1921- ) and other staff members; records of meetings and conferences; proposals and grants; materials documenting the Fund’s relationship with the Ford Foundation, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Foundation for Community Development, the Low-Income Housing Development Corporation, and other organizations; subject files; clippings, audit reports; and financial correspondence and other financial records.

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D. Wishart Family Papers (4624)

Wishart family members include Francis Marion Wishart (1837-1872) of Shoe Heel (now Maxton), near Lumberton in Robeson County, N.C., who served in the Confederage army during the Civil War and organized the fight against the Lowry gang, a group of Croatan (Lumbee) Indians that terrorized Robeson County around 1871.

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E. Odum Family Papers

Odum family of Robeson County, N.C., included Malcolm E. Odum (1884-1954), who raised tobacco, cotton, and corn as cash crops, and his daughters, who rented out shares to tenants after their father’s death. The family sold their farm in 1986. Correspondence, financial and legal items, notes, and other material relating to the fifty-acre farm of the Odum family. Records are arranged by fiscal year; this arrangement scheme was established by Estelle Odum Bullock, who managed the farm accounts from 1955 through 1982. Annual statements provide detailed documentation of the farm’s income and expenses for the year. Check register volumes include detailed descriptive information indicating why each check was written. Other noteworthy items include a drawing of the farm and scattered correspondence and debentures reflecting the Odums’ stock in the Farmers Cooperative Exchange, Inc., Raleigh, N.C.

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II. Other Collections

The following archival collections in the SHC have content pertaining to Lumbee Indian history and culture. Links are to the collection’s finding aid (a descriptive guide to the collection with a contents listing). To locate the content in the collection, examine and search the finding aid for relevant references.

A. Southern Justice Institute Records (4704)

The Southern Justice Institute, a public interest law firm, originally the southern division of the Christic Institute of Washington, D.C. It opened in 1985 as the Christic Institute South under director Lewis Pitts in Winston-Salem, N.C., relocating to Carrboro, N.C., a year later, and to Durham, N.C., in 1991. Formed to provide legal aid and organizing assistance to racial and other minorities in the South seeking political empowerment, the Institute incorporated as the independent Southern Justice Institute in 1992 and operated until 1994, handling, in its last two years of operation, mostly child advocacy cases. Many items pertain to the defense of Eddie Hatcher, a Lumbee Indian, and Timothy Jacobs, a Tuscarora Indian, charged with kidnapping while trying to bring attention to corruption in Robeson County, N.C.

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Boxes 2–18b:  Robeson County, N.C., Hostage-Taking Case, circa 1988-1990

B. Guion Griffis Johnson (4546)

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. Correspondence, writings, subject files, and other materials relating to Johnson’s professional and family life. Topics of primary interest include civil rights, race relations, volunteerism, women’s equality, education, school desegregation, poverty, international cooperation, and general public welfare.

Alicia Blue (later Wise) began writing to Johnson in 1949 when Johnson started teaching and performing research in Pembroke, N.C., among the Lumbee Indians. Alicia Blue was a teenager and wrote about local happenings in her family and in the Lumbee community. These letters are sporadic, but continue throughout the 1950s.

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Folders 36–95:  1949–1959

C. John Harden Papers (4702)

John William Harden (1903-1985) of Greensboro, N.C., was a journalist, newspaper editor, author, advisor to North Carolina governors and textile executives, and founder of the state’s first full-service public relations company. The collection contains materials, 1914-1986, including business records, correspondence, writings, speeches and speech materials, administrative records, newspaper clippings, diaries, scrapbooks, photograph albums, family papers, sound recordings, and videocassettes relating to John Harden.

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Image Folder P-4702/32-33: Photographs of Jack Ivey, a Lumbee Indian, at work and with his family. These photographs were taken by Pete Range for the North Carolina Fund.

III. Southern Oral History Program Collection (4007)

Online Database

U.2.  School Desegregation in Robeson County, N.C.

Interviews focusing on the process and challenges of tri-racial school desegregation in Robeson County, N.C. Interviewees discuss the internal political dynamics of the Lumbee and Tuscarora Indians of Robeson County, as well as black and white, white and Indian, and black and Indian race relations. While these interviews focus broadly on school desegregation, they also range over multiple facets of the civil rights movement in Robeson County, 1954-1988. The mechanics of segregation and desegregation, interviewees’ experiences in a tri-racial community, and present-day attitudes are discussed.

Links are to the database records, which include the transcriptions of the interviews

Interview U-0001:  Allen, Young H. (*), 16 February 2004

Interview U-0002: Brooks, Martin L. (*), 23 April 2004

Interview U-0003: Dial, James (*), 4 February 2004

Interview U-0004: Hunt, Cecil and Elisha Locklear, 23 February 2004

Interview U-0005: Jones, James Arthur, 19 November 2003

Interview U-0006 : Legerton, Mac (*), 5 May 2004

Interview U-0007 : Locklear, Carnell, 24 February 2004

Interview U-0008 : Mangum, Robert Lee, 18 November 2003

Interview U-0009: Moore, Luther Harbert (*), 16 October 2003

No online files

Interview U-0010: Moore, Luther Harbert (*), 20 November 2003

No online files

Interview U-0011: Moore, James, 16 October 2003

Interview U-0012: Nakell, Barry, 1 October 2003

Interview U-0013: Oxendine, Henry Ward (*), 23 September 2003

Interview U-0014: Robinson, Willa V., 14 January 2004

Interview U-0015: Sider, Gerald and Bruce Jones (*), 22 January 2004.

CLOSED until 22 January 2014

Interview U-0016: Swett, Purnell (*), 19 February 2004

Interview U-0017: Thompson, Angus, Sr., 21 October 2003

Other Interviews

Interview A-0371: Blue, Daniel Terry, 19 January 1996

No online files

Interview B-0005-3:  Green, Paul Eliot, 30 May 1975

Interview B-0006: Johnson, Guy Benton, 16 December 1974

Interview G-0175 : Slifkin, Miriam, 24 March 1995

Interview J-0002: Blue, Daniel Terry, 27 March 1994, 30 March 1994

No online files

Interview J-0007: Nakell, Barry, 16 February 1993, 23 February 1993, 30 March 1993

No online files

Interview J-0011: Brooks, Dexter, 14 March 1994, 21 March 1994

No online files

Interview L-0078: Woods, Ruth Dial, 12 June 1992

Interview L-0251: Tindall, George, 7 January 2005

Interview O-0038: Barnes, Billy E., 7 October 2003

Interview O-0038: Barnes, Billy E., 6 November 2003