- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Leroy Campbell, January 4, 1991
- Creator:
- Campbell, Leroy
- Contributor to Resource:
- Wells, Goldie F. (Goldie Frinks)
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 1991-01-04
- Subject:
- African American school principals--North Carolina--Iredell County
School principals--North Carolina
African American schools--North Carolina--Iredell County
High schools--North Carolina--Iredell County--Administration
African Americans--Education (Secondary)--North Carolina--Iredell County
Race relations in school management--North Carolina--Iredell County - People:
- Campbell, Leroy
- Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Iredell County, 35.80708, -80.87344
United States, North Carolina, Iredell County, Statesville, 35.78264, -80.8873 - Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- After traveling the world, Leroy Campbell entered the education field motivated to share his experiences. He became a high school principal at the all-black Unity School in Iredell County, North Carolina, in the mid-1960s. In this interview, he responds to the interviewers' checklist of questions and offers his thoughts on the effects of desegregation on Iredell schools. Understaffed and underfunded, Campbell found support in a cohesive black community and a relationship with a county official who provided him with new school buses to drive the convoluted routes necessary to maintain segregation. The core of this interview may be Campbell's description of the black community's anxieties about desegregation, including the fear that the process would splinter the community and affect the quality of education. Their fears were well-founded, and Campbell ends the interview by recalling the closing of Unity School, the dispersal of its students, and his departure from the profession.
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/M-0007/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 2, 2008).
Interview participants: Leroy Campbell, interviewee; Goldie F. Wells, interviewer.
Duration: 01:10:40.
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 Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
