Posted October 21, 2024
The Granville County Library System was recently awarded a $15,000 grant from the Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to digitize and make publicly available interviews with twentieth-century Granville County African American educators. Recorded by local businessman and historian James Eddie McCoy between 1981 and 2016, the 240 hours of taped conversations explore the challenges and joys of teaching during the decades of school segregation and the coming of integrated public schools. Grant funds will enable the Library System to digitize and preserve McCoy’s interviews and circulate them to all users starting in 2025. Copies of these recordings will also be deposited at North Carolina Central University for the use of students and researchers there. This digitized content will be made visible and available nationally and globally through the Library’s partnership with DigitalNC and the Digital Public Library of America.
McCoy’s oral histories capture the story of Granville County’s African American educators, who like their counterparts in other areas, did much more than teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They worked hard to foster individual pride and self-esteem, share African American history, stimulate civic awareness, and encourage political engagement. They also invested their own resources in local African American businesses and organizations. Having spent years getting undergraduate and advanced degrees at universities open to African Americans outside of North Carolina, these professionals were able to introduce opportunities and perspectives from well beyond the local area. Some teachers and principals became as close as family. Discriminatory school board policies pursued during the years of integration deliberately shut African American educators out of their profession, undermining their intellectual, social, economic, and political influence and leaving African American students without their encouragement and support in the new, integrated classrooms.
The preservation project runs from September 2024 through August 2025. Completed digitized materials will be turned over to the Granville County Library System as part of the 2025 celebration of Juneteenth, scheduled for Saturday, June 21, 2025, at the Richard H. Thornton Library. The Library System will have the honor that day of hosting two important scholars of this period, Dr. Jarvis Givens of Harvard University, author of “Fugitive Pedagogy” (Harvard University Press, 2021) and Dr. Leslie Fenwick of Howard University, author of “Jim Crow’s Pink-Slip” (Harvard Education Press, 2022). Both books will be available in the Granville County Library System collection and for purchase and signing by the authors at that event.
The Granville County Library System has four branches serving all citizens of Granville County. For more information about services and programs offered at each location, visit the library website at www.granville.lib.nc.us or visit any of the four branches: Richard H. Thornton (210 Main Street, Oxford), South (1550 South Campus Drive, Creedmoor), Stovall (300 Main Street, Stovall), and Berea (1211 US Highway 158, Oxford).