Campus to counter: civil rights activism in Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, 1960-1963
(Book)

Macon, Georgia : Mercer University Press, [2023].

Book

248 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm.

English

9780881468779, 0881468770

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-236) and index.

This book analyzes civil rights activism in North Carolina in the early 1960s, especially among students at Shaw University, Saint Augustine's College, and North Carolina College at Durham. Their significance in challenging segregation has been underrepresented in scholarly works. These students played a crucial role in bringing the end of legal segregation and in reducing hiring discrimination. While activists proceeded from campus to lunch counters for sit-ins, their actions also represented a counter to businesspersons and politicians seeking to preserve a segregationist view of Tar Heel hospitality. The book demonstrates how academic freedom ideas gave additional ideological force to the civil rights movement and garnered support from "Research Triangle" schools North Carolina State College, Duke University, and The University of North Carolina. Many students from the "Protest Triangle" (the author's term for activists at the three HBCUs) and the "Research Triangle" viewed efforts by politicians to thwart protest participation as restrictions of their academic freedom. Despite the rich historiography on the civil rights movement and scholarly works addressing academic freedom, their connections have gone mostly unexplored. Suttell utilized extensive archival research and conducted thirty-one interviews with activists and Raleigh and Durham community members, in addition to nationally recognized civil rights leaders like Andrew Young and Wyatt Tee Walker. --Back cover.

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