Author: Virginia L. Summey
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820368725
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Author: Virginia L. Summey
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820361941
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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This book explores the life and contributions of groundbreaking attorney, Elreta Melton Alexander Ralston (1919–98). In 1945 Alexander became the first African American woman to graduate from Columbia Law School. In 1947 she was the first African American woman to practice law in the state of North Carolina, and in 1968 she became the first African American woman to become an elected district court judge. Despite her accomplishments, Alexander is little known to scholars outside of her hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. Her life and career deserve recognition, however, not just because of her impressive lists of “firsts,” but also owing to her accomplishments during the civil rights movement in the U.S. South. While Alexander did not actively participate in civil rights marches and demonstrations, she used her professional achievements and middle-class status to advocate for individuals who lacked a voice in the southern legal system. Virginia L. Summey argues that Alexander was integral to the civil rights movement in North Carolina as she, and women like her, worked to change discriminatory laws while opening professional doors for other minority women. Using her professional status, Alexander combatted segregation by demonstrating that Black women were worthy and capable of achieving careers alongside white men, thereby creating environments in which other African Americans could succeed. Her legal expertise and ability to reach across racial boundaries made her an important figure in Greensboro history.

Author: Melissa Estes Blair
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820365122
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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In Bringing Home the White House, Melissa Estes Blair introduces us to five fascinating yet largely unheralded women who were at the heart of campaigns to elect and reelect some of our most beloved presidents. By examining the roles of these political strategists in affecting the outcome of presidential elections, Blair sheds light on their historical importance and the relevance of their individual influence. In the middle decades of the twentieth century both major political parties had Women’s Divisions. The leaders of these divisions—five women who held the job from 1932 until 1958—organized tens of thousands of women all over the country, turning them into the “saleswomen for the party” by providing them with talking points, fliers, and other material they needed to strike up political conversations with their friends and neighbors. The leaders of the Women’s Divisions also produced a huge portion of the media used by the campaigns—over 90 percent of all print material in the 1930s—and were close advisors of the presidents of both parties. In spite of their importance, these women and their work have been left out of the narratives of midcentury America. In telling the story of these five West Wing women, Blair reveals the ways that women were central to American politics from the depths of the Great Depression to the height of the Cold War.

Author: K. Todd Johnson
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780752408170
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Author: Hettie V. Williams
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496847539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Contributions by Omar H. Ali, Simone R. Barrett, Tejai Beulah, Sandra Bolzenius, Carol Fowler, Lacey P. Hunter, Tiera C. Moore, Tedi A. Pascarella, John Portlock, Lauren T. Rorie, Tanya L. Roth, Marissa Jackson Sow, Virginia L. Summey, Hettie V. Williams, and Melissa Ziobro While Black women’s intellectual history continues to grow as an important subfield in historical studies, there remains a gap in scholarship devoted to the topic. To date, major volumes on American intellectual history tend to exclude the words, ideas, and contributions of these influential individuals. A Seat at the Table: Black Women Public Intellectuals in US History and Culture seeks to fill this void, presenting essays on African American women within the larger context of American intellectual history. Divided into four parts, the volume considers women in politics, art, government, journalism, media, education, and the military. Essays feature prominent figures such as Shirley Chisholm, Oprah Winfrey, journalist Charlotta Bass, and anti-abortion activist Mildred Fay Jefferson, as well as lesser-known individuals. The anthology begins with a discussion of the founders in Black women’s public intellectualism, providing a framework for understanding the elements, structure, and concerns central to their lives and work in the nineteenth century. The second section focuses on leaders in the Black Christian intellectual tradition, the civil rights era, and modern politics. Part three examines Black women in society and culture in the twentieth century, with essays on such topics as artists in the New Negro era; Joycelyn Elders, a public servant and former surgeon general; and America’s foremost Black woman influencer, Oprah. Lastly, part four concerns Black women and their ideas about public service—particularly military service—with essays on service members during World War II and the post-WWII military. Taken as a whole, A Seat at the Table is an important anthology that helps to establish the validity and existence of heretofore neglected intellectual traditions in the public square.

Author: Anna R. Hayes
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807887811
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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The first woman judge in the state of North Carolina and the first woman in the United States to be elected chief justice of a state supreme court, Susie Marshall Sharp (1907-1996) broke new ground for women in the legal profession. When she retired in 1979, she left a legacy burnished by her tireless pursuit of lucidity in the law, honesty in judges, and humane conditions in prisons. Anna Hayes presents Sharp's career as an attorney, distinguished judge, and politician within the context of the social mores, the legal profession, and the political battles of her day, illuminated by a careful and revealing examination of Sharp's family background, private life, and personality. Judge Sharp was viewed by contemporaries as the quintessential spinster, who had sacrificed marriage and family life for a successful career. The letters and journals she wrote throughout her life, however, reveal that Sharp led a rich private life in which her love affairs occupied a major place, unsuspected by the public or even her closest friends and family. With unrestricted access to Sharp's abundant journals, papers, and notes, Anna Hayes uncovers the story of a brilliant woman who transcended the limits of her times, who opened the way for women who followed her, and who improved the quality of justice for the citizens of her state. Without Precedent also tells the story of a complicated woman, at once deeply conservative and startlingly modern, whose intriguing self-contradictions reflect the complexity of human nature.

Author: Seth Kotch
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469649888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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For years, American states have tinkered with the machinery of death, seeking to align capital punishment with evolving social standards and public will. Against this backdrop, North Carolina had long stood out as a prolific executioner with harsh mandatory sentencing statutes. But as the state sought to remake its image as modern and business-progressive in the early twentieth century, the question of execution preoccupied lawmakers, reformers, and state boosters alike. In this book, Seth Kotch recounts the history of the death penalty in North Carolina from its colonial origins to the present. He tracks the attempts to reform and sanitize the administration of death in a state as dedicated to its image as it was to rigid racial hierarchies. Through this lens, Lethal State helps explain not only Americans' deep and growing uncertainty about the death penalty but also their commitment to it. Kotch argues that Jim Crow justice continued to reign in the guise of a modernizing, orderly state and offers essential insight into the relationship between race, violence, and power in North Carolina. The history of capital punishment in North Carolina, as in other states wrestling with similar issues, emerges as one of state-building through lethal punishment.

Author: Library of Congress. Copyright Office
Publisher: Copyright Office, Library of Congress
ISBN:
Category : Copyright
Languages : en
Pages : 1466

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Author: Tilda Kemplen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780820339931
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Hailed in her native Campbell County, Tennessee, as "the Mother Teresa of the coal country," Tilda Kemplen was a teacher, activist, and founder and executive director of Mountain Communities Child Care and Development Centers (MCCCDC). In recognition of her work on behalf of impoverished children and families in central Appalachia, Kemplen was presented in 1980 with the American Institute for Public Service's Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefi ting Local Communities. Kemplen movingly describes her struggles to educate herself, her years as a teacher in rural schools and mining camps, and the establishment of MCCCDC. The book is more, however, than a catalog of Kemplen's accomplishments; it is a testament to the personal qualities that fueled them. Kemplen's straightforward observations on her life and work offer unique insight into a range of issues related to Appalachian and Native American life and culture.

Author: Maurice C. Daniels
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820345962
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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"This is a biography of Donald Hollowell, one of Georgia's foremost civil rights attorneys. The bulk of the manuscript is focused on Hollowell's career as a lawyer and, in particular, his work on key cases in the 1950s and 1960s, but Daniels also includes a discussion of Hollowell's early years, education, military service, and employment as a regional director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In researching the book, Daniels relied on personal interviews as well as the personal papers of civil rights advocates and Southern opposition leaders, court records, newspaper accounts, and other archival sources that offered insight into Hollowell's activism and lawyering. In addition, Daniels conducted three extensive personal interviews with Hollowell that provide firsthand information about his childhood and early background, the influences on his desire to become an advocate for social justice, and his experiences as a civil rights activist and lawyer. Daniels also conducted several interviews with Hollowell's wife, Louise T. Hollowell, to whom he was married for 62 years. The narrative captures Hollowell's civil rights work in Atlanta as well as his work with grassroots leaders in other parts of Georgia. It covers well- known civil rights cases such as the desegregation of University of Georgia while also chronicling the lesser known, yet nonetheless significant, desegregation cases that provided the groundwork for that case. Daniels illuminates Hollowell's behind-the scenes work to help bring about social change in Georgia, his collaboration with proponents of direct action, and the intersection of his work with that of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's campaign for equal justice"--