Dream Matrix: the Popular Response to Civil Rights in North Carolina, 1954-1964 (2013)

Undergraduate: George Kuehnert

Faculty Advisor: James Leloudis
Department: History

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Focusing predominately on the popular white response to civil rights in the tumultuous decade between 1954 and 1964, this honors thesis argues that the response to civil rights reform in North Carolina was never uniform, politically consolidated, or easily categorized. At the local level, there was widespread disagreement about the extent and substance of the problem that civil rights legislation presented to white interests, the means of arriving at a solution to that problem, and the solutions themselves. The popular response to civil rights exhibits characteristics of what might be called a dream matrix: a web of interrelated but distinct visions about the future of society and social morals within the context of civil rights reform. Using constituent letters written to North Carolina Senator Sam J. Ervin, this paper probes this matrix and its evolution in order to reevaluate and humanize the effects of the civil rights movement on people in North Carolina in-time. The civil rights era has often been quantified in terms of political and institutional advances, but more fundamental reforms occurred deep within the popular dream matrix, that is, within the subtle and often complicated array of responses of everyday people in North Carolina as they encountered challenges to the racial status quo and began envisioning a different future. This research was funded by a Boyatt Award and Honors Thesis Research Grant.