Southern Oral History Program

“You Don’t Have to Be Famous for Your Life to Be History”

The words of a Depression-era millhand remind us of the extraordinary significance of ordinary lives. Since 1973, the SOHP has worked to preserve the voices of the southern past. UNC students and faculty have interviewed more than 4,000 men and women—from mill workers to civil rights leaders to future presidents of the United States. Freely available at UNC’s renowned Southern Historical Collection and increasingly online, these interviews capture the vivid personalities, poignant personal stories, and behind-the-scenes decision-making that bring history to life. Start searching our collection to begin your research project, or learn more about what we do.

Featured Interview: Anne Queen

Anne Queen was wrong. She had always thought that "poor people couldn't go to Yale," but there she was, earning a divinity degree in the late 1940s. Queen, who worked for a decade at the Champion Paper and Fibre Company in her home town of Canton, North Carolina, would take leadership of the University of North Carolina's YMCA in the 1960s. She steered what would come to be called the Campus Y to the forefront of campus activism, from anti-war protests of the Vietnam era to the university's foodworkers' strike. Queen's long tenure working as an advocate of social justice, particularly for the labor movement and the civil rights movement, Queen is able to offer a comprehensive assessment of the changing social landscape of the South during the middle of the twentieth century. In so doing, she offers insight into the leadership abilities of southern women, the process of integration at two major southern universities, and the nature of politics in North Carolina.

In this excerpt, Queen considers North Carolina's carefully cultivated--but not entirely accurate--reputation as progressive. Read and listen to the whole interview here.

Race and the Public Schools

For decades, public schools in the South have been sites of progress and conflict in the history of race in the region and the SOHP has been there to document it. We have collected hundreds of interviews with friends and foes of integration around the South. We spoke to a black student in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, entering a white school for the first time. A white governor defending his opposition to integration. A pastor who lost his job because he supported desegregation. A black woman worrying about what desegregation did to her community's educational traditions. From Louisville to Charlotte to Birmingham to Charleston, our interviews tell stories of heroism and pain in the ongoing struggle to recreate our public schools as site of learning for all citizens. Click here to learn more about our scholarship on this pressing issue.

Remembering Dan Pollitt

Daniel H. Pollitt, who died on March 5, was was, in his own words, "a teacher and a family man and a civil libertarian, an activist who tries to get things done." Pollitt defended clients before the House Un-American Affairs Committee before taking a job as a law professor at the University of Arkansas. But when the university demanded that Pollitt sign a loyalty oath, he quit, making his way to Chapel Hill and taking a professorship at the UNC School of Law. He would remain in Chapel Hill for the remainder of his career, teaching law while leading pickets to desegregate the town's movie theaters, recruiting Charlie Scott to become the first black Tar Heel basketball player, and defending the activists who staged the now famous sit-ins in Greensboro. He stood up against the death penalty and for free speech, even when the speaker was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Read more about him here.

We were lucky to conduct twelve interviews with Dan Pollitt over the course of many years. We hope that these interviews will stand as a modest memorial to a generous teacher and a man dedicated to civil rights and civil liberties. Listen to Dan here.

 
In this clip, Dan Pollitt remembers the protests that desegregated Chapel Hill's theaters.