- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Howard Kester, July 22, 1974
- Creator:
- Kester, Howard, 1904-1977
- Contributor to Resource:
- Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd
Finger, William R.
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 1974-07-22
- Subject:
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Southern States--Race relations
Southern Tenant Farmers' Union
African Americans--North Carolina--Chapel Hill
African Americans--North Carolina--Chapel Hill--Attitudes
African Americans--North Carolina--Chapel Hill--Social life and customs--20th century
African American students--Education (Secondary)--North Carolina--Chapel Hill
Segregation in education--North Carolina--Chapel Hill
Civil rights demonstrations--North Carolina--Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill High School (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Social reformers--Southern States
Pacifists--Southern States
Social justice--Religious aspects--Christianity--Southern States
Social justice--Southern States--Societies, etc.
Social movements--Southern States
Labor movement--Southern States
African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States
Lynching--Southern States - People:
- Kester, Howard, 1904-1977
Kester, Alice Harris - Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Orange County, 36.0613, -79.1206
United States, North Carolina, Orange County, Chapel Hill, 35.9132, -79.05584
United States, Southern States, 33.346678, -84.119434 - Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- Howard Kester was born in Virginia in 1904. Raised by his father, a merchant tailor and Klansman, and his religious mother, Kester left home to attend Lynchburg College during the early 1920s. During his time in college, Kester had the opportunity to tour war-torn Europe in 1923. After witnessing the devastation that World War I had wrought on Europe, Kester became a pacifist and abided by that philosophy for the rest of his life. Upon his return to Lynchburg, he became increasingly interested in race problems in the South. Likening the plight of Jews in Eastern Europe to that of African Americans in the South, Kester helped to organize the first interracial student group in the South. He describes in this interview how his efforts to find locales for interracial student meetings were often met with fierce opposition in the community. After graduating from Lynchburg, Kester continued to work for causes of social justice. In addition to his hope of eliminating racial hatred, Kester became an advocate of the labor movement and began to seek ways of uniting African American and white workers in the South. During the 1920s and 1930s, Kester worked with such groups as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen. In the early 1930s, he worked closely with the NAACP in order to investigate incidents of lynching throughout the South. Around the same time, he began to work closely with the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, helping to establish the Delta and Providence Farms. Throughout the interview, Kester emphasizes the importance of his Christian faith and his adherence to the Social Gospel to his thoughts on social justice. In the early 1930s, Kester joined the Socialist Party, but remained fiercely opposed to Communism and its infiltration into the labor movement because he believed it was not in tune with Christian values. Kester's recollections throughout the interview are revealing of the problems of race and labor in the South during these years. Moreover, he offers illuminating anecdotes and insightful assessments of other social justice leaders such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Will Alexander, Jessie Daniel Ames, Will Campbell, and Kester's wife, Alice Harris Kester.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/B-0007-1/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on Oct. 24, 2008).
Interview participants: Howard Kester, interviewee; Jacquelyn Hall, interviewer; William Finger, interviewer.
Duration: 02:58:02.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Mike Millner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
