NORTH CAROLINA AND ITS UNIVERSITY PRESS

North Carolina Office of Archives and History

NORTH CAROLINA AND ITS UNIVERSITY PRESSAuthor(s): Lambert DavisSource: The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (April, 1966), pp. 149-156Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23517721 .

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NORTH CAROLINA AND ITS UNIVERSITY PRESS

By Lambert Davis*

Every educated North Carolinian knows that the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the oldest state university in the United States. Very few realize that the University of North Carolina Press is one of the oldest American university presses sponsored by a

state university. University presses in this country date back to the

Cornell University Press, founded in 1869, and the Johns Hopkins University Press, founded in 1878. For the next five decades nearly all of the university presses in this country were established at the great

private universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and

Chicago. When the University of North Carolina Press was established in 1922, there appear to have been only four other state university

presses in existence, at the universities of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wash

ington, and California; and of these only the University of California Press had advanced beyond the stage of being an occasional imprint.

North Carolinians can be proud that their university press was a

pioneer among state university presses. It was indeed the creation of

one of that pioneer group of educators who, in the 1920's, transformed

the University of North Carolina from a college with a few attached

professional schools into a true university. Dr. Louis Round Wilson

was the founder and first director of the press, and among the members

of the original board of governors were such educational giants of that

day as Harry W. Chase, Howard W. Odum, and Frank P. Graham.

Dr. Wilson knew that the advancement of knowledge involved a

responsibility for the publication of the results of research. Hence, the

original charter of the press, after listing several specific purposes, stated that the over-all aim of the press was "to promote generally,

by publishing deserving works, the advancement of the arts and sci ences and the development of literature."

Nothing in its charter or in the circumstances of the founding of the press indicated that it was expected to develop any special state

* Mr. Davis is director of the University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill.



150 The North Carolina Historical Review

or regional interest. This was not the pattern set by the private univer

sity presses that dominated the scene. They published in the interest of the scholarly community as a whole, without any geographical em

phasis whatever; and the general development of university presses in

this country—both the presses of private universities and the presses of most publicly-owned universities—has followed this pattern. It is a pattern shaped by the cultural needs of the nation. The advancement

of knowledge requires communication between scholars in the form

of books and journals; commercial publishers cannot assume all of

the responsibility for such publications; and the universities, through their presses, have undertaken to assume some of the responsibility

by setting up and supporting instruments for nonprofit publication. The University of North Carolina Press assumed its share of that

responsibility from the beginning, and it is still true that most of the

publishing effort of the press goes into the publication of books and

journals that have no special relation to the state or to the region. The recent publication of A Russian-English Dictionary of Statistical Terms by the press, for example, is a service to scholarship on an in

ternational level. Its volume Nematology, edited by J. N. Sasser and

W. R. Jenkins and based on an international symposium held in

Raleigh, is a study of the greatest usefulness to biological scientists wherever the nematode makes inroads on field crops, orchards, or rose

gardens. Also, the press has just issued a contract for a new interpre tation of the plays of Aeschylus that will, we hope, be read by the serious students of all those literatures that have felt the impact of

Greek drama.

From its earliest days, the University of North Carolina Press, while

devoting its major effort to publication for the scholarly community at large, has shown a special interest in the state and region in which it is located, so that today a higher percentage of its total number of titles published has been devoted to its locale than is probably the case with any other university press in the United States. How did this come to be? What is the record? And what does it signify?

In this essay I am primarily concerned with books about North Caro

lina, but something should be said about books dealing with the region as a whole. The regionalism in book publishing by the press is, of course, partly a product of regionalism itself. We all know that the South is much more than a geographical expression. It is a history, a racial composition, a set of religious beliefs, social ideals, and poli tical prejudices. It would be difficult for any cultural instrument such



North Carolina and Its University Press 151

as a university press to escape from the kind of self-scrutiny that goes with the region.

This conscious analysis of the region took its special form in its pub lications, I believe, because almost simultaneously with the organiza tion of the press, the university established the Institute for Research in Social Science, under the leadership and inspiration of the late Howard W. Odum. He brought the disciplines of the social sciences to the analysis of regionalism, which resulted in a spate of studies of the South produced by scholars under Odum's influence. His energy and ability to charm the birds out of the trees brought foundation

money to the institute, and to the press as the publishing arm of the

university. In fact, it became the conscious effort of several of the na

tional foundations to assist in setting up in the South a strong univer

sity press with a special concern for the contemporary problems of the

region. Among the important results, during the 1930's, were such

volumes as Odum's own Southern Regions of the United States; Cul

ture in the South, edited by the director of the press, W. T. Couch; and What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan. The regional emphasis carried over into the natural sciences in such works as Char

lotte Hilton Green's Birds of the South and Trees of the South; and Trees of the Southeastern States, by W. C. Coker and H. R. Totten.

It has continued as a conscious part of the publishing program of the

press, numbering in recent years dozens of studies of the region's

economy, sociology, and demography. Not to be overlooked are two

press books about the region that, while not products of academic

scholarship, are nevertheless important contributions to an under

standing of the region—and very successful publications as well. One

of them is Stella Gentry Sharpe's Tohe, a juvenile picture book first

published in 1937 that as recently as 1963 was characterized in the

Saturday Review as "the only complete and attractive picture of a

rural Negro family." The other is Marion Rrown's The Southern Cook

Book, which in its original hard-back and subsequent paper-back edi tions has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

It is, however, the role of the press as the publisher of books about North Carolina with which I am chiefly concerned. As I have already indicated, this kind of localism was not in the pattern of university press publishing as it existed when the University of North Carolina Press was founded. Since the press was a pioneer among state univer

sity presses, there were no examples to follow. The University of

North Carolina Press had to determine for itself whether its sponsor




ship hy the state involved any obligation to publish books for the state.

Over the years a policy did develop. Was it an unconscious response to something in the nature of the state and its people? Was it a con

scious policy of those who directed the press? The answer is complex, and I can't pretend to know it all. I am a newcomer to North Carolina—

I am quite aware that seventeen happy and active years of working in the state don't make me a genuine Tar Heel. But I think that there

is a kind of half-truth in the hoary saying that North Carolina is a

valley of humility between two mountains of conceit—it is the notion

that North Carolinians in their humility have an abiding thirst for more knowledge of their country and its ways. It is not an interest in

the minutiae of genealogy or a complacent basking in former grandeur, but a desire for guidance by the lamp of experience. North Carolina's localism is a creative and forward-looking thing. It has been a driving force rather than a brake on the publishing development of the press.

Other factors have played a part in the development of the press' North Carolina program. When the press was founded, it incorporated within its structure a fine monographic series, the James Sprunt Studies in History and Political Science, dating back to 1900 and consisting primarily of studies in North Carolina history and politics. Under the splendid editorial direction of such scholars as W. W. Pierson and Fletcher Green, this series of scholarly studies undoubtedly provided both example and impetus for further scholarly research and publica tion dealing with North Carolina.

Another factor was the crying need for more North Carolina ma terial for primary and secondary education in the state. The commer cial publishers were not then supplying even all of the basic texts needed, much less the supplementary books without which the texts were but bare bones. The press was thus presented with both a respon sibility and an opportunity. By the 1930's it had developed the edi torial skills required to create books for specific needs, choosing the authors to write them, and seeing them through from the initial idea to the book in use.

Thus it was in response to the North Carolina spirit, to the example of what had been done, and to the needs of the state's educational system that the press developed a policy with respect to the publica tion of books about the state. Before discussing that policy and its future possibilities, however, let me touch briefly on some of the highlights of the North Carolina program of the press.




It began slowly. In the first nine years of the existence of the press, out of 104 titles published, only six dealt with North Carolina exclu

sively. After 1931, the year in which Dr. M. C. S. Noble's A History of the Public Schools of North Carolina won the first Mayflower Award, the number increased rapidly. In the three following years, six more North Carolina books were published, including B. W. Wells' The Natural Gardens of North Carolina, the first edition of Hugh T. Lefler's North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries (the fourth revised and enlarged edition has just been published), and the first of three books designed for the schools of the state: A. M. Arnett's

The Story of Noi-th Carolina, Nellie Rowe's Discovering North Caro lina, and the first volume of Annie Cameron's Find Out Book, a na

ture reader for children that didn't need to tell them that the cardinals

migrated to North Carolina in the winter because it was written for North Carolina.

In 1937 The Lost Colony had its first performance on Roanoke Is land, and the press issued the first of four editions of that pioneer outdoor drama. In the same year appeared Guion Johnson's monu

mental Ante-Bellum North Carolina. In 1939, among seven North

Carolina titles, was the first volume of the five-volume autobiography of Josephus Daniels, Tar Heel Editor; Bernice Kelly Harris' Purslane

( another Mayflower Award winner) ; The North Carolina Guide in the American Guide Seiies; N. C. Newbold's Five North Carolina Negro Educators; and Old Homes and Gardens of North Carolina, with

photographs by Bayard Wootten and text by Archibald Henderson, a volume published with the sponsorship of the Garden Clubs of

North Carolina.

By the 1940's North Carolina books had become a well-established

part of the publishing program of the press. The largest undertaking of that decade was the seventeen-volume series of the University of North

Carolina Sesquicentennial Publications. One volume of that series,

Archibald Henderson's The Campus of the First State University, has a continuing interest as the best available account of the development of the Chapel Hill campus. Other notable books of the period were The Early Architecture of North Carolina, published with the colla boration of the North Carolina Society of Colonial Dames, and con

taining the magnificent pictures of Frances Benjamin Johnston; Au

brey Lee Brooks' Walter Clark: Fighting Judge, followed by The

Papers of Walter Clark, edited by Brooks and Lefler; two Mayflower Award winners, Adelaide Fries' The Road to Salem and Phillips Rus




sell's The Woman Who Rang the Bell; and a textbook for North Caro lina schools, North Carolina Today, by S. H. Hobbs and Marjory Bond. In the 1940's the first of Richard Walser's anthologies of North Carolina material, North Carolina, in the Short Story, appeared under the imprint of the press. With the appearance next year of North

Carolina Parade, coedited with Julia Montgomery Street, Richard Walser will have had five North Carolina titles on the press list.

It is fair to say that the publication of North Carolina books by the press in the 1950's was dominated by North Carolina: The History of a Southern State, by Hugh T. Lefler and A. R. Newsome, univer

sally praised as a model of state history, recipient of the Mayflower Award and the award of the Association for State and Local History. There were also a number of interesting pairs of books on the state:

John Harden's two books on North Carolina mystery and ghost stories; David Stick's two volumes on the Outer Banks; two excellent biblio

graphies of North Carolina documents by Mary L. Thornton; and

John G. Barrett's two outstanding studies of the Civil War in North Carolina. Norman Eliason's Tar Heel Talk brought expert linguistic analysis to the study of how Tar Heels of the past actually talked; LeGette Blythe did a biography of one of the state's mercantile pio neers, William Henry Belk; and S. H. Hobbs provided a broad picture of the state in North Carolina: An Economic and Social Profile.

We are now in the middle of the 1960's, and certainly in the field

of North Carolina history one publication of the press towers over

the rest: The American Drawings of John White, the product of ten

years' work by British and American scholars and ten years of col

laboration between the British Museum and the press. The North

Carolina program in the 1960's has included such important auto

biographical works as Clarence Poe's My First Eighty Years and Luther Hodges' Businessman in the Statehouse; such important his torical studies as Duane Meyer's The Highland Scots of North Caro lina, Robert Ramsey's Carolina Cradle, and The Lower Cape Fear, by E. Lawrence Lee. As for the rest of the decade, the press has just issued Paradise Preserved, William S. Powell's engaging account of the efforts over the past century to preserve Roanoke Island and tell its true story to the rest of the world, written under the sponsorship of the Roanoke Island Historical Association. And there are on my desk,

literally or figuratively, these projects for the future: an atlas of the state, to be prepared under the direction of the Department of Geog raphy of the university at Chapel Hill, with contributions from scholars




from several branches of the university; a dictionary of North Caro

lina place names, representing ten years' work by William S. Powell, librarian of the North Carolina Collection; a study of flora of the

Carolinas, prepared under the direction of the Department of Botany of the university at Chapel Hill; a guide in full color to the wild flowers of the state, based on the remarkable collection of color photographs taken over a number of years by Dr. William Justice of Asheville; and

perhaps a dozen scholarly studies, in various stages of completion, in the fields of history, political science, sociology, and economics.

What does it add up to? If we include the titles in the Sprunt series that were published before the press was founded but which the press took over, in its forty-three years of life the press has published close to two hundred books dealing with the history, or the economic, social, or cultural life of the state. I doubt that any other state university press has published as large a group of similar titles. There is no evidence that this development of the over-all program of the press was in

the beginning a deliberate policy. Rather it was a response to the North Carolina spirit, to examples set for the press, to the needs of

the state in the world of book publication. As the North Carolina

library of the press grew, the very accumulation of titles created a

policy—a situation in which the press not only accepted gladly the

good North Carolina studies that came its way, but began to investi

gate and to plan ahead in this field. The rationale that has developed is that the press of the state's uni

versity owes the state a program of its own, over and above the basic

program of publication for the national and international community of scholars. First, it owes the state the benefit of sound scholarly studies

of all the facets of the state's history and current life. Wherever book

publication and distribution of such studies would serve a useful end,

the press should be able to accomplish it. Second, the press should be ever alert to the needs of the state's educational system that are not

being taken care of by commercial textbook publishers and be ready to

attempt to fill the gap. The commercial publishers today are doing a quite adequate job on the supplying of basic texts, but a large num ber of supplementary books are needed, and the need will grow greater as public education is enriched in the years to come. The atlas,

the guides, the gazetteer that I mentioned a little earlier, are examples of such works. Third, the press should think of all kinds of books that

perhaps fall in neither of the categories described, but nevertheless add to the pleasures of living in North Carolina. May I cite one ex



156 The Noeth Cakolina Histokical Review

ample? If Burke Davis will complete the book he has promised us, which we have already entitled Tar Heel Laughter, its publication will be some repayment of our debt to North Carolina.

As I have shown, at first the press accepted the good North Caro

lina books that came its way. Then it began to plan individual books for special purposes. The next step, which I present hopefully, is to a stage in which the press can plan an entire program of North Caro

lina books. Such a step will require a special endowment that would

permit the press to commission books, pay advance royalties, and make

research grants, as well as subsidize outright the publication of books that could not be expected to recover costs through sales. Under such

a program there might well be a special imprint, within the press over

all imprint, for what I have called the North Carolina Library. The past record of the press in the publication of books about the state makes

me believe that such a library could make a major contribution to

the cultural fulfillment of many generations of North Carolinians.



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