Image Credit: Anna J. Cooper 1858-1964, NC Highway Historical Marker Program
Anna J. Cooper
Feminist, Educator
A Voice from the South by
At the close of the 19th century, a black woman of the South presents womanhood as a vital element in the regeneration and progress of her race.
Image credit: John Hope Franklin Timeline, Duke University Libraries
John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915-March 25, 2009)
Historian, Educator
The Emancipation Proclamation by
While many historians have dealt with the Emancipation Proclamation as a phase or an aspect of the Civil War, few have given more than scant attention to the evolution of the document in the mind of Lincoln, the circumstances and conditions that led to its writing, its impact on the course of the war, and its significance for later generations. Professor John Hope Franklin′s answer to this need, first published in 1963, is available again for the first time in many years. This edition includes a new preface, photo essay, and a reproduction of the 1863 handwritten draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, making it an ideal supplementary text for U.S. and African American survey courses as well as for more specialized courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 by
John Hope Franklin has devoted his professional life to the study of African Americans. Originally published in 1943 by UNC Press, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 was his first book on the subject. As Franklin shows, freed slaves in the antebellum South did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Even in North Carolina, reputedly more liberal than most southern states, discriminatory laws became so harsh that many voluntarily returned to slavery.
Mirror to America by
John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5-million-copy bestseller, "From Slavery to Freedom." Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not help but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened--once with lynching--and consistently subjected to racism's denigration of his humanity. Yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard; become the first black historian to assume a full professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College; and be appointed chair of the University of Chicago's history department and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the world's most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees. But Franklin's participation was much more fundamental than that. From his effort in 1934 to hand President Franklin Roosevelt a petition calling for action in response to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment by President Clinton to head the President's Initiative on Race, and continuing to the present, Franklin has influenced with determination and dignity the nation's racial conscience. Whether aiding Thurgood Marshall's preparation for arguing "Brown v. Board of Education" in 1954, marching to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, or testifying against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Franklin has pushed the national conversation on race toward humanity and equality, a life long effort that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1995. Intimate, at times revelatory, "Mirror to America" chronicles Franklin's life and this nation's racial transformation in the twentieth century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.
Image Credit: "Who was Ella Baker," Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Ella J. Baker (December 13,1903-December 13, 1986)
Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
Ella Baker by
Praise for ELLA BAKER "Splendid biography . . . a valuable contribution to the growing body of literature on the critical roles of women in civil rights."--Joyce A. Ladner, The Washington Post Book World "The definitive biography of Ella Baker, a force behind the civil rights movement and almost every social justice movement of this century."--Gloria Steinem "This book will be received with plaudits for its empathy, insightfulness, and gendered narration of an astonishingly neglected life that was pivotal in the pursuit of American justice and humanity."--David Levering Lewis Pulitzer Prize-winning author of W. E. B. Du Bois "Pathbreaking. By illuminating the little-known story of how profoundly Ella Baker influenced the most radical activists of the era, Grant's graceful portrayal reveals Miss Baker's transformative impact on recent history."--Kathleen Cleaver
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by
One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned fifty years and touched thousands of lives. A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the black freedom struggle. She was a national officer and key figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a prime mover in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Baker made a place for herself in predominantly male political circles that included W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr., all the while maintaining relationships with a vibrant group of women, students, and activists both black and white. In this deeply researched biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Ransby shows Baker to be a complex figure whose radical, democratic worldview, commitment to empowering the black poor, and emphasis on group-centered, grassroots leadership set her apart from most of her political contemporaries. Beyond documenting an extraordinary life, the book paints a vivid picture of the African American fight for justice and its intersections with other progressive struggles worldwide across the twentieth century.
Image Credit: “Golden Frinks,” ECU Digital Collections
Golden Frinks (April 26, 1920-July 19, 2004)
Civil Rights Activist
The Williamston Freedom Movement by
During the summer of 1963 civil rights movements were taking place all over the South. In northeastern North Carolina the struggle for freedom focused on the small town of Williamston, where a legacy of voting rights advocacy and a history of violence caught the attention of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The Massachusetts chapter of the SCLC sent fifteen white ministers to Williamston in November in an attempt to increase media coverage. Just as the movement was gaining traction, John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the nation lost interest in Williamston. So far the Williamston Freedom Movement has remained little known, though its impact was significant locally. This book details the events and those who participated, and includes 19 interviews with members of both the black and white community. By studying local movements, historians can better understand how ordinary people contributed to the Civil Rights Movement.
Golden Asro Frinks by
Golden Asro Frinks was a hero behind the scenes of the national high-profile activists, but he was as dedicated as Martin Luther King, Jr. or Nelson Mandela. He was arrested 87 times for the civil rights causes he championed.
Image Credit: "Hood, James Walker" NCpedia
James Walker Hood (May 30, 1831-October 30, 1918)
Clergyman, Politician
The Negro in the Christian pulpit or, The two characters and two destinies, as delineated in twenty-one practical sermons by 
For God and Race by
An examination of the career of James Walker Hood (1831-1918), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. It recovers his career as a representative of the builders of black Christianity, and his success in promoting leadership for the abolitionist movement.
Image Credit: "Sebastian, Martha Josephine Oxford," NCpedia
Martha Josephine Oxford (May 6, 1896-April 24, 1948)
Pioneer Librarian
School Segregation in Western North Carolina by
Although African Americans make up a small portion of the population of western North Carolina, they have contributed much to the area's physical and cultural landscape. This enlightening study surveys the region's segregated black schools from Reconstruction through integration and reveals the struggles, achievements, and ultimate victory of a unified community intent on achieving an adequate education for its children. The book documents the events that initially brought blacks into Appalachia, early efforts to educate black children, the movement to acquire and improve schools, and the long process of desegregation. Personnel issues, curriculum, extracurricular activities, sports, consolidation, and construction also receive attention. Featuring commentary from former students, teachers and parents, this work weighs the value and achievement of rural segregated black schools as well as their significance for educators today.
Along Freedom Road by
David Cecelski chronicles one of the most sustained and successful protests of the civil rights movement--the 1968-69 school boycott in Hyde County, North Carolina. For an entire year, the county's black citizens refused to send their children to school in protest of a desegregation plan that required closing two historically black schools in their remote coastal community. Parents and students held nonviolent protests daily for five months, marched twice on the state capitol in Raleigh, and drove the Ku Klux Klan out of the county in a massive gunfight. The threatened closing of Hyde County's black schools collided with a rich and vibrant educational heritage that had helped to sustain the black community since Reconstruction. As other southern school boards routinely closed black schools and displaced their educational leaders, Hyde County blacks began to fear that school desegregation was undermining--rather than enhancing--this legacy. This book, then, is the story of one county's extraordinary struggle for civil rights, but at the same time it explores the fight for civil rights in all of eastern North Carolina and the dismantling of black education throughout the South.
A history of the education of Negroes in North Carolina by 
The Impact of Slavery on the Education of Blacks in Orange County, North Carolina by Carter, David C. “The Williamston Freedom Movement: Civil Rights at the Grass Roots in Eastern North Carolina, 1957-1964.” The North Carolina Historical Review 76, no. 1 (1999): 1–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23522168.
Hawkins, Karen M. “Rising Phoenix-Like: The African American Struggle and Mobilization for Political Rights in New Bern, North Carolina, 1968-1979.” The North Carolina Historical Review 85, no. 4 (2008): 379–415. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23523967.
Huddle, Mark Andrew. “To Educate a Race: The Making of the First State Colored Normal School, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 1865-1877.” The North Carolina Historical Review 74, no. 2 (1997): 135–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23521221.
Richardson, Michael B. “‘Not Gradually... But Now’: Reginald Hawkins, Black Leadership, and Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina.” The North Carolina Historical Review 82, no. 3 (2005): 347–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23523030.
Thompson, Natasha. “‘Give Us a Status above That of a Submarginal People’: Racial Policies, Practices, and Activism in North Carolina 4-H.” The North Carolina Historical Review 93, no. 3 (2016): 308–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44114522.
Valentine, Patrick M. “Steel, Cotton, and Tobacco: Philanthropy and Public Libraries in North Carolina, 1900-1940.” Libraries & Culture 31, no. 2 (1996): 272–98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25548437.
Valentine, Patrick M. “The Struggle to Establish Public Library Service in Wilson, North Carolina, 1900-1940.” Libraries & Culture 28, no. 3 (1993): 284–306. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25542562.