Oral history interview with Bonnie E. Cone, January 7, 1986
Subtitle: interview C-0048, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Haessly, Lynn, 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: 2006
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; Women teachers; Women college administrators; Secondary Education; Higher Education; Charlotte College
Other titles: Interview C-0048, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Bonnie E. Cone, January 7, 1986; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Bonnie Cone offers a candid portrait of what it was like to be a single career woman in the South during the first half of the twentieth century. Cone describes her educational experiences as a child and as a student at Coker College, a women's school. Among the experiences she discusses are her early days as a math teacher in South Carolina and North Carolina and her role as an instructor to Navy officer candidates at Duke University during World War II. Following the war, Cone returned to Charlotte, North Carolina, to continue her career as a teacher but soon became involved in the effort to establish a college in Charlotte. Cone worked at the forefront of this movement, helping to push through tax legislation for that purpose. She served as the director of Charlotte College in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1964, when Charlotte College became the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, she was made temporary acting chancellor. Her colleagues later believed that, despite her pivotal role in the establishment of the university, the position was not made permanent because she was a woman. Cone, however, did not hold this view.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on November 28, 2007).

Interview participants: Bonnie E. Cone, interviewee; Lynn Haessly, interviewer.

Duration: 01:51:40.

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 Mike Millner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 110 kilobytes, 204 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series C, notable North Carolinians, interview C-0048, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Ron Bedard. Original transcript: 55 p.

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

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements:  Web browser with Javascript enabled and multimedia player.