Anne Queen, director
of the Campus Y,
leads students in a
peace march on
Franklin Street dur-
ing the “National
Moratorium of the
Vietnam War,” Oct.
15, 1969.
Members of the N.C.
Highway Patrol guard
Manning Hall after
the evacuation of the
Black Student Move-
ment from the build-
ing, March 13, 1969.
sity and multicultural affairs in the provost’s
office, and an endowment formed under
the leadership of Faryl Sims Moss ’ 66.
It is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. Four
panel discussions also were held in January
and February. The schedule and other
details of the exhibit are at
www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/protests/.
— Laura Oleniacz
The brochure accompanying this exhibit
includes the following statement on its
acknowledgements page: “The inspiration for
the project was the eye-opening special section
of the March/April 2006 Carolina Alumni
Review, ‘Challenge to the Old Order,’ with
articles by Charles L. Thompson [’ 65] and
Carolyn Edy [’ 97 (MA)].” That coverage can
be read online in the Review’s archives at
alumni.unc.edu.
Branch’s Materials
Find a Home at UNC
The materials Taylor Branch ’ 68
used in writing his three-part history, America in the King Years, are
now in the Southern Historical Collection
in Wilson Library. The collection includes
Branch’s notes, drafts and recorded interviews — the latter preserving the voices
and views of civil
rights leaders.
“The oral histories that Taylor
Branch conducted
are truly a national
treasure,” says
William Ferris, Joel
R. Williamson Eminent Professor of
history, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of
the American South and adjunct professor
in the folklore curriculum. “This collection constitutes a legacy for future generations who will seek to understand the civil
rights movement and the courageous people who made it possible.”
The Taylor Branch Collection will significantly expand and deepen the resources
available to students and scholars who
study the civil rights movement and the
conditions that created it, Ferris said.
Branch won the Pulitzer Prize for history and a National Book Critics Circle
Award for Parting the Waters: America in the
King Years 1954-63, published in 1988. The
trilogy also includes Pillar of Fire: America in
the King Years (1998) and At Canaan’s Edge:
America in the King Years 1965-68 (2006).
The centerpiece of the collection is
more than 500 hours of interviews that
Branch recorded. Harry Belafonte, James
Farmer and Sargent Shriver are among
those on the tapes.
Tim West, curator of the manuscripts
department and director of the Southern
Historical Collection, sees the opening of
the collection as part of a UNC continuum. Branch, who grew up in Atlanta
before coming to UNC as a Morehead
Scholar, “had his consciousness raised
while he was here,” West said. “He
received a tremendous informal education
at UNC about the political and social
issues of the day.”
