James T. McCain Papers, 1957-1972
South Caroliniana Library
Born in Sumter, South Carolina in 1905, James T. McCain graduated from Morris College, a historically black college in Sumter, and earned his Masters of Education from Temple University in 1940. He returned to South Carolina and served as a teacher and principal at schools around the state, before being barred from teaching in the state of South Carolina in 1955 for refusing to disavow his affiliation with the NAACP. Two years later he would begin his work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Founded in Chicago in 1942, CORE had become one of the leading national organizations dedicated to the struggle for civil rights for African Americans by the late 1950s. Key to its expanded activities in the south and subsequent continued national prominence was the hire of James T. McCain as Field Organizer in 1957 (the position would be renamed Field Secretary to the National Office the following year), and McCain’s assignment as Director of the Department of Organization in 1962. Between 1957 and 1971, while working directly for CORE, and after 1966, with the CORE-affiliated Scholarship, Education, and Defense Fund for Racial Equality (SEDFRE), McCain recorded his daily activities in eighteen calendars and associated notebooks, which are now housed at the South Caroliniana Library.
In addition to these calendars, this digital collection includes letters, publications, essays, speeches and other papers documenting McCain’s involvement with local and national civil rights organizations. The bulk of the items evidence his interest in local issues such as illiteracy, integration of public schools, and voter turnout in South Carolina’s African American community.