Oral history interview with Nelle Morton, June 29, 1983
Subtitle: interview F-0034, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Blanchard, Dallas A., interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2007
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; Women social reformers; Social movements; Christianity; Civil rights movements; Civil rights workers; African Americans; Segregation; Sex discrimination against women; Fellowship of Southern Churchmen
Other titles: Interview F-0034, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Nelle Morton, June 29, 1983; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Nelle Morton grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. In 1925, she graduated from Flora MacDonald College in North Carolina and became a teacher. A few years later, Morton completed graduate work at the General Assembly Training School in Virginia and at the Biblical Seminary in New York City. By 1944, she had become the General Secretary of the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen. Prior to assuming leadership within the Fellowship, Morton had worked closely with its founders. In this interview, she spends considerable time discussing her perception of various leaders within the Fellowship, including Howard "Buck" Kester, Thomas "Scotty" Cowan, Charles Johnson, and Reinhold Niebuhr. According to Morton, the Fellowship was founded in order to promote more radical ideas about race relations and integrations among Southern churches. In explaining the goals and strategies of the Fellowship, Morton focuses on aspects of religion in the South, the Fellowship's efforts to ensure integration within their own organization, and its stance on other issues related to labor and rural people. Throughout the interview, she emphasizes the communal spirit of the Fellowship and stresses their pioneering work in integration. Particularly interesting examples she offers include her description of an integrated summer camp for children at her family's farm in Kingsport and efforts of the Fellowship to integrate places like community pools. In addition to describing the strategies, successes, and limitations of the Fellowship, Morton describes how her work with the Fellowship made her cognizant of other inequalities related to gender. She describes the challenges of being a woman leader in the Fellowship; these included the discrimination she faced during her tenure as the General Secretary (1944-1950). Morton later became actively involved in the women's movement and suggests here that it was her work with issues of race and labor that enabled her to recognize discrimination against, and oppression of, women.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 5, 2008).

Interview participants: Nelle Morton, interviewee; Dallas A. Blanchard, interviewer.

Duration: 03:41:16.

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.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 248 kilobytes, 405 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series F, Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, interview F-0034, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original transcript: 78 p.

Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

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