Oral history interview with Asa T. Spaulding, April 16, 1979
Subtitle: interview C-0013-3, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Weare, Walter B., 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: 2008
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; African American executives; Attitudes; Race relations; African Americans; Civil rights; Segregation; Politics and government; African American business enterprises; African American politicians; Durham Committee on Negro Affairs; North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company
Other titles: Interview C-0013-3. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Asa T. Spaulding, April 16, 1979; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Asa T. Spaulding was born in rural North Carolina in 1902, but his scholastic aptitude soon removed him from the farm where he spent his childhood. After a high school education in Durham, North Carolina, Spaulding earned a degree from New York University and received training as an actuary at the University of Michigan. He returned to Durham to take a position at the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, a historically African-American company. Spaulding eventually held its presidency, and before, during, and after attaining this leadership position, used his influence to advance the interests of the African-American community. Spaulding remembers some of those efforts in this interview, including an unsuccessful try for the mayoralty in Durham and his support for a community grocery store. At the heart of this interview, sharing space with Spaulding and his relatively conservative approach to civil rights agitation, are other African-American and white civil rights leaders Spaulding worked with, including the fiery but effective Dan Martin; the organizer Howard Fuller; educator Charles R. Moore; and John Wheeler, who helmed the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs. Spaulding's discussion of the committee, as well as North Carolina Mutual, highlights the importance that Durham's African-American organizations played in sustaining a vibrant black community, and their uncertain future in a changing state. Researchers and students interested in economic empowerment, community organizing, and African American business will find much of interest in this interview. Researchers and students might also consult the two other interviews with Spaulding in this collection, C-0013-1 and C-0013-2. Those interested in learning more about the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and black business in the South might turn to the interviewer's book, Black Business in the New South: A Social History of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on June 3, 2008).

Interview participants: Asa T. Spaulding, interviewee; Walter Weare, interviewer.

Duration: 04:24:17.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-CH digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Kristin Shaffer.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 234.1 kilobytes, 483 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series C, Notable North Carolinians, interview C-0013-3, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Dorothy M. Casey. Original transcript: 62 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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