A full-time graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
An intern for the National Association for Black Culture Centers at N.C. State for two days per week, five hours a day.
Three lengthy research projects with information that dates back to 1953.
One person.
It all comes down to a process that requires “really good time management,” according to Devan Donaldson, graduate student at UNC and intern for ABCC housed under N.C. State’s African American Cultural Center.
The ABCC hired intern Devan Donaldson to research the history of the desegregation at N.C. State. Donaldson is the first intern to research the entire development of the desegregation of the University, and is working on three different projects revolving around the desegregation.
Donaldson, a graduate student in information and library science at UNC, found the internship opportunity in an ad that listed internships for master’s students in the library science discipline.
“It appealed to me because they wanted someone who had an understanding of library science, primary and secondary source materials,” Donaldson said. “They also wanted someone with a background in history and African-American studies and those were my disciplines as an undergrad at College of William and Mary, so I felt it was the best combination of history background and library science.”
Frederick Hord, director and president of the African American Cultural Center, brought the organization to N.C. State.
“I started this national organization. That’s why I’m here,” Hord said. “So Devan’s project is an outgrowth out of the charge of me to come in here and give this center some academic credibility.”
For the last couple months, Donaldson has spent a lot of his time in the Special Collections Research Center at D.H. Hill Library. He has been looking at University documents from the 1950s to 1960s to pull facts together for the project.
Donaldson said he likes the research he is doing because there are a lot of people who want to study desegregation at N.C. State, especially because this is the 50th anniversary of the first black students graduating from the University.
To help with his research, Donaldson contacted three of the first four black graduates of NCSU, along with one of the first graduate students to attend the University.
“It was a fascinating experience because I had been perusing through documents and seeing their names,” Donaldson said. “Being able to talk to them was an amazing experience. My hope is that something is printed out that explains some of the things they would want students today to know, and some of the things they really feel are important. Hopefully those thoughts of theirs can be compiled into some type of work.”
According to Donaldson, he’s been searching for documents that address University policy regarding black students and admission. He’s been gathering information from both before and after the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education. This decision dismantled racial segregation in public schools and public facilities.
“I have an interest in the history of black students and higher education,” he said. “So it’s really interesting to me to see what it was like for the first four, what it was like before a lot of the walls came tumbling down.”
Although the Supreme Court decision made it unconstitutional, N.C. State, according to Donaldson, did not desegregate.
“That was the first question I was trying to resolve,” he said. “I found out that administrations at N.C. State were still going by policies that were set by the UNC-System Board of Trustees and that they had an outline of how they were going to deal with admission for blacks.”
Donaldson said he found that N.C. State was not going to accept any black students into undergraduate programs, and was only going to take blacks into graduate programs that weren’t offered at any other university for that particular curriculum.
“Essentially they were breaking the law because [Brown v. Board] made it unconstitutional,” Donaldson said.
According to Donaldson, there are a only few other colleges hiring interns and doing intense research into desegregation, but he said it seems like every year more colleges are beginning to do so. Donaldson is the first to start this research at NCSU, and he started it from scratch in August.
He plans on spending the entire academic year working on the project, and will research by decades. Donaldson started his research with the 1950s, and when he finishes with the ’50s and ’60s, Donaldson will move onto the ’70s and ’80s.
“I won’t get too much further than that because it takes a long time to go through the primary sources at the Special Collections and to know all of the stories that can be derived from these materials,” Donaldson said. “Because of the nature of how the original archival research and how long it takes, I probably won’t get too much further than the [’70s and ’80s].”
Hord plans on hiring another intern to continue Donaldson’s research.
“There will be another [intern] after [Donaldson’s] two years are up,” Hord said. “It’s clearer now that we’ve done the right thing, so when [Donaldson’s] time is up, whether it is the end of this academic year or next year, this process will continue.”
Donaldson is also working in conjunction with librarian Cindy Levine on having more detailed online subject guides in the Special Collections Research Center in D.H. Hill. He said he is going through the guide, which is very general, and making the topics more specific with the information he has found through his research.
“There’s a subject guide that lists all materials that have to do with African-Americans, but it’s not described in detail so you would have to go through all the collections to see what was there,” Donaldson said. “But I am going through them … so in the future, when people come and want to study this information, they won’t have to rummage through this whole collection.”
Donaldson began using the University Archives, which, according to Levine, are rich in unique materials describing N.C. State’s integration experience.
“This topic has consistently been of interest to a number of students and faculty in the Department of History,” Levine said. “Devan and I hope to collaborate and capitalize on his work so that we can create lasting Web content and tools that help surface many of these resources.”
Levine said she is excited about the work Donaldson has started, and she is glad the African American Cultural Center hired him.
“Finding information in archival collections is always a special challenge, and I’ve long had an interest in facilitating better resource discovery in this area,” she said.
Donaldson and Hord are also working on an additional research project for historical works, where they will create an anthology of the best pieces of work that discuss the history of blacks in North Carolina.
All three research projects are set to be complete by the end of the academic year.
“If the work is not done by this academic year, my work will be set in place for the next person who comes along,” Donaldson said. “We don’t know exactly how long it’ll all take.”
Donaldson said he juggles school and work with good time management.
“I don’t really do too much else other than school and work,” he said. “I try to take some time out for myself, but you just really have to plan out your schedule for the week of exams so you know where all of your time is going.”
Donaldson also has high hopes that his research will be useful and beneficial for people at N.C. State.
“I hope that I will be able to share my findings,” Donaldson said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to write some type of paper or pamphlet and have copies of that available in the African-American reading room here at N.C. State and D.H. Hill Library for people who are interested in desegregation and studying the history of blacks in North Carolina.”
Hord said the project gives the University a better chance to be a model university in terms of racial relationships.
“I think for us to move forward, we have to have a clear understanding of what the past is,” Hord said. “I think that’s the only way you can take today and create a better tomorrow. You’ve got to connect it to the past, however ugly it was.”
