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:
Virginia Foster Durr

Virginia Foster Durr, born in Alabama in 1903 (and profiled in Southern Cultures), was no southern belle. Proud of her roots in a fading southern aristocracy, she nonetheless devoted her life to struggling against race and class privilege. When her husband, Clifford Durr, joined the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, Durr became active in the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee, working to abolish the poll tax. She became one of the founders of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, among the first interracial anti-segregation organizations in the South. She supported Henry Wallace's Progressive Party candidacy for the presidency in 1948, and while she returned to Alabama and retreated somewhat from activism in the 1950s, she was still dragged before the Internal Security Subcommittee in 1954, where Senator James Eastland tried to tar her as a subversive. Thus exposed, Durr openly embraced the emerging Civil Rights Movement, including by bringing Rosa Parks to the Highlander Folk School (Parks is pictured with Durr above), a civil rights training ground Durr had long supported.

Sue Thrasher and Jacquelyn Hall (now our director) sat down with Durr in the spring of 1975, an interview that would lead to many more recordings, and would unite two generations of activists with a connection forged by a shared commitment to social and economic justice. In our interviews with Virginia Foster Durr, we hear, in her inimitable style, one story of a civil rights movement that reached well back into the 1930s and today remains unfinished work. Our collection includes interviews conducted in 1975 (first interview, second interview, and third interview) and 1991.

You can read more about Durr and take a look at some excerpts from these interviews in the latest issue of Southern Cultures.

In this excerpt, Durr remembers growing up in the segregated South in the early twentieth century, when white supremacy played a major role in southerners' lives. She remembers watching Ku Klux Klan parades and attending Confederate reunions. It's an excerpt that demonstrates the power of moral conviction to overcome learned prejudice.

 

To Right These Wrongs

To Right These Wrongs has arrived! The book, which draws on a series of interviews with members of the Fund conducted by the book's authors and SOHP researchers, is a new history of the North Carolina Fund by SOHP alumni Robert Korstad (Duke University) and James Leloudis (Carolina). The Fund was a forerunner to the War on Poverty. Korstad and Leloudis show that Fund’s initial successes grew out of its reliance on private philanthropy and federal dollars and its commitment to the democratic mobilization of the poor. Both were calculated tactics designed to outflank conservative state lawmakers and entrenched local interests that nourished Jim Crow, perpetuated one-party politics, and protected an economy built on cheap labor. By late 1968, when the Fund closed its doors, a resurgent politics of race had gained the advantage, led by a Republican Party that had reorganized itself around opposition to civil rights and aid to the poor. Take a look at their website for more and for information on ordering and events.

 

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 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 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 issue.

Neighborhood Voices

A few years back, the Southern Oral History Program recorded a series of interviews with residents of one Durham, NC, community changing because of Latino immigration. North Carolina has the eighth-largest immigrant population in the United States, and immigration has made it among the fastest growing states in the nation. The Southern Oral History Program wanted to use oral history to explore how new immigrants in one community were adjusting to the transition, and how longtime residents were reacting to their new neighbors. Neighborhood Voices chronicles life in Northeast Central Durham before the arrival of Latino immigrants, the experiences of those immigrants, and the challenges the Latino, black, and white communities have faced in trying to find shared space. We hope you enjoy it. Watch below, or watch a larger version here.

Neighborhood Voices was made by a large team of scholars and students (credits roll at the end of the film) led by Alicia J. Rouverol, Jill Hemming, Angela Hornsby, and Ted Richardson.

Neighborhood Voices from Southern Oral History Program on Vimeo.