The Life of Senator Robert Morgan
Source: Robert Morgan Papers #268
Staff Person: Sherry Cortes
Description: Senator Robert Morgan was a North Carolina native, born and raised in Lillington, N.C. This collection contains personal papers, Senatorial documents, newspapers, photographs and correspondence spanning Morgan’s life.
Senator Robert Morgan was born in Lillington, North Carolina in 1925. Following his public school education, he went on to attend the Wake Forest Law School, became a skilled trial lawyer and quickly rose from Clerk of Court to the position of President Pro Tempore of the North Carolina State Senate. He began donating his papers to East Carolina University in the mid-1970s and continuously donated his personal and professional works until he passed away in 2016. I started working on the Senator Robert Morgan Papers Processing Project in April, 2017 for East Carolina University’s Joyner Library. As the project archivist for this collection, it has been an exciting opportunity to chronicle the life and accomplishments of such a prominent figure in North Carolina history. Senator Morgan served as a North Carolina State Senator from 1955-1969, and as a one-term US Senator from North Carolina from 1975-1981, but his prolific career beyond the political arena put a mark on so much of the State’s history.
The Robert Morgan Papers is the largest collection of personal and professional documents amassed by East Carolina University and is currently housed in the Special Collections Division of Joyner Library at East Carolina University (ECU). The collection holds information regarding the Senator’s professional and personal life. The Morgan archives chronicle his service in the Vietnam and Korean Wars, his rise to North Carolina Attorney General and his role in creating landmark consumer protection measures, his tenure as an ECU University Trustee and his fight to establish a medical school at East Carolina University, his controversial stance on the Panama Canal, his leading role in the Energy Crisis, and his repositioning of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). These documents also shed light on his ideological metamorphosis from a “traditional Southern Democrat” to the national Democratic mainstream particularly in the area of desegregation.
Senator Morgan’s Papers include personal and family documents, legislative and campaign files, correspondence, North Carolina Attorney General and U.S. Senator files, ECU Board of Trustees and State Bureau of Investigations files. Photographs, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, speeches, books, films, audiotapes, diaries, microfilms and oversized materials are in our archives as well. We hired two graduate assistants in May, 2017, Daniel Hemme and Martha Mihich who have been invaluable in completing the description and arrangement of the collection. In addition to the graduate assistants, Special Collection Curator, Dr. Jonathan Dembo and volunteer Dick Wolfe have been helping to move the process along quickly. Between the four of us we have currently completed describing 1012 boxes of the 1075 total in the collection. I am also collaborating with Justin Borer to help in the digitization of audio tapes, manuscripts and photographs of interest. Conservator Lawrence Houston has been providing conservation advice and assistance in handling damaged or fragile documents. We are all working as quickly as possible to digitize the chosen objects so they can be fully accessible in the online Digital Repository.
Once we have fully completed the processing of the paper and digital elements of the collection we will work on the exhibit which will be available for viewing on the 3rd floor of Joyner Library in
early 2018. As work continues, we will be sharing updates about our progress on an ongoing basis and what we are finding. There will be future posts to provide more information about Senator Morgan and some of the interesting items we find during processing. Researchers will be able to locate the collection’s finding aid online if they are interested in accessing Senator Morgan’s Papers.
For more information on Senator Morgan’s Papers and the continuing progress of the project, please contact Sherry Cortes, Project Archivist at cortess17@ecu.edu or (252) 328 – 0276