Nell Battle Lewis (1893-1956) Papers, PC.255
Descriptive Summary
- Title
- Nell Battle Lewis (1893-1956) Papers
- Call Number
- PC.255
- Creator
- Lewis, Nell Battle, 1893-1956
- Date
- 1865, 1898, 1920-1956
- Extent
- 9.000 cubic feet
- Repository
- State Archives of North Carolina
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], PC.255, Nell Battle Lewis Papers, Private Collections, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC, U.S.A.
Collection Overview
Papers of Miss Lewis of Raleigh, lawyer, and columnist for the News and Observer (Raleigh). Her correspondence (1926-1956) and files reflect wide-ranging interests. One recurrent subject is the status of women (1922-1946) in industry, the professions, politics, education, and before the law. Subjects in the field of social welfare (1922-1938) include mental hygiene; public welfare, with a paper on sterilization by secretary of Eugenics Board (1935); and the North Carolina penal system, capital punishment, and crime and psychiatry. Material about the Samarcand Arson Case (1931) includes record of trial kept by Lewis as defense lawyer for accused inmates at the state institution for wayward girls, with correspondence and statements of former employees. Concerning labor and industry (1925-1946), particularly textile mills, there is information on child labor; a proposed survey of women in industry, opposed by textile mill owners (1926-1928); the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry (Burnsville, 1928-1929); mill strikes in Henderson, Gastonia, and Marion (1927-1929); and the Burlington dynamite plot (1935). Also included are minutes of a committee for shorter working hours in the South (n.d.) and issues of the "Federated Press" newsletter describing mill villages (1928).
There are letters and material for campaigns of Alfred E. Smith (1928) and Willis Smith for senator (1950); campaign for more libraries (1935-1937); controversy over N.C. history textbooks (1941); the peace movement (1927-1936); the United Nations; and the United World Federalists (1941-1953), with copy of Robert Lee Humber's "Declaration of the Federation of the World," adopted by the N.C. General Assembly in 1941. There is much material on Russia and communism, communism at UNC, and alleged communist leanings of UNC President Frank P. Graham, Prof. Junius Scales, and supporters of Henry A. Wallace, with publications of the Carolina District Communist Party, USA. On the issue of segregation there are letters, propaganda materials, denominational resolutions, typed speeches by I. Beverly Lake, Sr., and others, and clippings from other southern states, some on doctrine of interposition. Other subjects include religion, faith healing, and psychic phenomena, with Lewis's brief journal and reports on experiences of others; anti-Catholicism; British royalty and current history, especially WWII; the Negro (1931-1948), including radio speech by James E. Shepard (1934) and information on the Association of Women for the Prevention of Lynching (1931); Raleigh (1900-1937); and North Carolina (biographies, especially of women; organizations, including League of Women Voters, Federation of Women's Clubs, and Conference for Social Service; and history).
Personal letters and papers of Nell Battle Lewis concern family (1898), settlement (1926-1931) of estate of father, Dr. Richard H. Lewis; Raleigh real estate development Cloverdale, Inc. (later Budleigh); her campaign for the legislature (1928); and teaching at St. Mary's School and Junior College (1937-1953). Among her papers are invitations, speeches, book reviews, her columns in the News and Observer ("A Corner for the Kiddies," 1920-1921, and "Incidentally," 1921-1956), editorials in the Raleigh Times (1948), and manuscript of her book The Way: The Words and Works of Jesus of Nazareth (privately printed, 1942). Also a manuscript novel "Grim Hearts Are Young" by Charles Earl Johnson, Jr., and an N.C. State College thesis by Nina Holland Covington, "The History and Development of the Status of Women in North Carolina" (n.d.).
Correspondents include Kemp D. Battle, Zoe Kincaid Brockman, J. Melville Broughton, R. Eugene Brown, Hope Summerell Chamberlain, John W. Clark, Beatrice Cobb, Virginius Dabney, Josephus Daniels, Inglis Fletcher, Paul Green, Joe Harden, Bernice Kelly Harris, Luther H. Hodges, Clyde R. Hoey, J. Edgar Hoover, Kate Burr Johnson, Edgar W. Knight, I. Beverly Lake, Sr., John R. Larkins, Hugh T. Lefler, Margaret Mitchell, Nathan C. Newbold, An-nie L. O'Berry, Edwin A. Penick, Clarence Poe, Carl V. Reynolds, J. B. Rhine, Hubert A. Royster, Phillips Russell, Terry Sanford, Alfred E. Smith, Gertrude Weil, and Ellen Winston.