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Alvin T. Parnell was a commercial photographer based in Durham, N.C. Collection chiefly consists of 167 black-and-white photographs of the city and people of Durham, North Carolina. The majority, chiefly taken by Parnell from 1920 through the 1950s, are views of downtown streets, commercial and industrial buildings, churches, and infrastructure, especially transportation. Many sites are related to the tobacco manufacturing businesses based in Durham. A few are of African American tobacco workers posed in the field and female factory workers ending their shift. Other images range widely and include a Trinity College (later Duke University) reunion, war veterans at gatherings, a minstrel band, a cart advertising Bull Durham tobacco, and tobacco fields with posed workers, white and African American. In addition, there are portraits of prominent Durham individuals and families. Formats include 85 vintage and modern gelatin silver prints, chiefly 8x10 inches, 82 contact prints, and 12 safety negatives. Includes an information folder with 1986 obituary and collection information.

Collection consists of two series, Civil War Papers and Lee Family Papers, acquired and assembled by collectors Alfred and Elizabeth Brand. Materials relate to the Lee family, including Francis Lightfoot Lee, Henry Light Horse Harry Lee, Richard Henry Lee, and Robert E. Lee, as well as Civil War history, including battle reports, correspondence between Confederate and Union leaders and officers (such as Braxton Bragg, Jefferson Davis, William T. Sherman, and Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson), presidential pardons and oaths of allegiance, and some printed materials.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was an internationally known scholar, author, activist, and theologian. He was born in Warsaw, Poland into a distinguished family of Hasidic rebbes, and studied philosophy in Berlin, Germany. In 1938 he was deported from Frankfurt to Warsaw where he escaped to London just before the Nazi invasion. After a brief time in London he immigrated to the United States, first teaching at the Hebrew Union College and then at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he taught as Professor of Ethics and Mysticism until his death in 1972. In addition to his active participation in social justice issues and his interfaith work, Heschel was also a scholar and religious thinker who made significant contributions to Jewish studies. As a philosopher of religion, his goal was to make the spiritual insights of Judaism understandable and over the course of his lifetime influenced generations of Jews and non-Jews. The Abraham Joshua Heschel Papers span the years 1880 to 1998 and document Abraham Joshua Heschel's personal, academic, and public life. Items in this collection include correspondence, writings by and about Heschel, typescripts, clippings, printed material, and a small amount of photographs and artifacts. The materials in the collection provide insight to Heschel's identity as a spiritual leader and how this role was inextricably connected to his personal and professional life. The collection is organized into the following series: Audio, Correspondence, Personal and Family Materials, Public Activity, Restricted, and Writings.