Not for publication
UNC to host mayors of historically black Southern towns Feb. 25-26
(Chapel Hill, N.C. – Feb. 12, 2015) – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will host a symposium and planning session for the mayors and municipal staffs of six historically black Southern towns Feb. 25-26.
The symposium, held at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, will address current challenges in the areas of legal and government issues, oral history collection, entrepreneurship and cultural tourism, archive development and preservation, foodways and community health.
The mayors and staff are from towns that are members of the Historic Black Towns and Settlements Alliance (HBTSA), which includes Hobson City and Tuskegee, Ala.; Eatonville, Fla.; Grambling, La.; and Mound Bayou, Miss.
North Carolina mayors will also be represented at the conference. Princeville mayor Bobbie Jones will attend. Howard Lee, former mayor of Chapel Hill, who in 1969 became the first black mayor elected in a predominantly white Southern town since Reconstruction, will be honored at a special dinner.
This program is funded in part by an innovation grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, the Stone Center and the Center for the Study of the American South in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences.
For more information, to interview mayors from the HBTSA, or to cover the symposium, contact Patrick Horn at (919) 962-0553 or pathorn@unc.edu.
-Carolina-
College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Spurr, (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu