Thanks to our partners at Central Piedmont Community College, we now have five new scrapbooks from the school, spanning 1957-1992. This wide-ranging collection covers the practical nursing program, Phi Theta Kappa, the Student National Education Association, and the “Seminars on Asian Understanding” organized by Willimore “Cy” Hastings in 1971-1972. These scrapbooks include a diverse assortment of formats that give insight into the activities of CPCC students and faculty, and their interactions with the greater Charlotte community — and the world — over the course of nearly forty years.
The Seminars on Asian Understanding is a particularly interesting look at CPCC’s engagement with global politics and its efforts to foster cross-cultural communication. The series hosted American foreign policy experts and ambassadors from Vietnam, China, Thailand, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia. Newspaper clippings and correspondence reveal Hasting’s work to organize the talks and public interest in the program, which drew attendees from the CPCC community and beyond.
See the rest of our Central Piedmont Community College materials here and our North Carolina Community College digital exhibit here.
A new batch of materials from Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) is now available online. The documents, stored in vertical files at CPCC’s archives, consist of school administrative documents and yearbooks from the 1950s and 1960s. The materials document the operation and administration of the predominantly Black Carver College (later renamed Mecklenburg College) and the Central Industrial Education Center before their merger to form CPCC in 1963. The batch contains the entirety of both the Carver College Collection and the Central Industrial Education Center Collection from CPCC’s archives. For detailed finding aids on either collection, please follow the links.
The new materials are an addition to the CPCC memorabilia and yearbooks already hosted online at DigitalNC. Please visit their partner page or website for more information.
A new batch of several yearbooks are now available and online at DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, Central Piedmont Community College. Dating periodically from 1962 to 1978, a few of these yearbooks date back to when CPCC was actually two institutions – the white Central Industrial Education Center and the Black Mecklenburg College. Several of the yearbooks also specifically focus on CPCC’s Dental Hygiene Department.
Miss Mecklenburg and her attendants in the 1963 Homecoming Parade Float “Growing Flame in the Charlotte Community”
Dental hygiene students learning proper brushing techniques in class
The first yearbooks in the batch, The Echo, from when CPCC was still Mecklenburg College, show what it was like to be a student at the time. Featuring student portraits and class activities, the yearbooks illustrate the dedication they had to teaching their students. The above photo shows Miss Mecklenburg and her attendants celebrating the 1963 Homecoming Parade in their float, “Growing Flame in the Charlotte Community.”
In July 1964, Mecklenburg College became Central Piedmont Community College, which still stands today. The later CPCC yearbooks, editions of The Violet Ribbon and Ordontos, are published for the Hygiene Department, highlighting their instructors, the department head, and students. Focusing on one department, these yearbooks are a valuable resource into an important part of the CPCC community.
To see more from Central Piedmont Community College, check out their partner page or visit their website. Click here to view other digitized material from CPCC, including other yearbooks, course catalogs, and scrapbooks noting CPCC’s history.
A view of the CPCC Campus and Parking Lot, circa 1979.
CPCC brought in planetarium curator Ray Shubinski to teach an astronomy class in 1980.
A new batch of several scrapbooks containing news and goings on at Central Piedmont Community College from May 1978 to Dec 1980 are now online on DigitalNC. These scrapbooks join previously digitized ones dating back to the late 1940s that cover the founding and first few years of CPCC. Included in the new scrapbooks are newspaper clippings, newsletters, photos, and advertisements.
Looking through the scrapbooks shows us what sorts of interesting programs and events were hosted on campus at that time. For example, when PBS broadcasted Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in October 1980, CPCC brought in Ray Shubinski, the planetarium curator of the Charlotte Nature Museum (now Discovery Place), to teach an accompanying 13-week course. At the time, the course cost $10.75.
To read more about Central Piedmont Community College in the 1970s, you can browse the scrapbook collection here. To learn more about CPCC, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.
A student worker is shown operating DOLLY on page 6 of the Jan – June 1977 scrapbook.
Scrapbooks documenting goings on at Central Piedmont Community College from 1969-1978 are now on DigitalNC. These scrapbooks join previously digitized scrapbooks that cover the founding and first few years of CPCC. Included in these newest additions are newspaper clippings, newsletters, photographs, and other memorabilia that offer a glimpse into life at CPCC.
One project documented in several articles throughout the scrapbooks from the late ’70s is “DOLLY” which stands for Dial Our Listening Library Yourself. This listening library was started in 1975, and allowed students and local residents to call into a phone system where they could listen to different audio programs. The first programs to be added were old radio programs, but eventually callers could listen to course materials, such as a mini course in spelling. According to an article in the Jan – June 1977 scrapbook, almost 100,000 callers heard programs on DOLLY during its first year of operation.
To read more about happenings at Central Piedmont Community College in the ‘6os and ’70s, browse the scrapbook collection here. To learn more about CPCC visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.
In the Jan – April 1978 scrapbook, a page from a student newsletter shows that some aspects of college life never change.
The footer of a promotional flier on page 24 of the Jan-June 1969 scrapbook
The headline of an article describing support of the 1963 merger on page 18 of the 1963 scrapbook
A set of scrapbooks from our partner, Central Piedmont Community College, tells the story of CPCC starting with its origins in two different schools. CPCC, located in Charlotte, N.C., was created in 1963 from the merger of Mecklenburg College and the Central Industrial Education Center. Mecklenburg College, started in 1949 and originally called Carver College, was formed to serve Black veterans returning from WWII. The Central Industrial Education Center was started in 1959 and offered occupational training courses to adults in North Carolina. In 1963, the primarily Black Mecklenburg College and the primarily white Central Industrial Education Center merged to form the integrated Central Piedmont Community College. Documentation of both of the schools along with the merger can be seen in the first four scrapbooks of this collection, which span 1949-1963. Further scrapbooks cover 1963-1969 and cover the growth of CPCC as an institution.
A quote from an article about the introduction of computers into some cutting edge CPCC classes on page 28 of the Jan-June 1969 scrapbook
Included in these scrapbook are newspaper clippings from newspapers such as Charlotte Observer, and Charlotte News, event programs, faculty profiles, newsletters, promotional materials, and more. These scrapbooks are fully text searchable, and are a wonderful resource for tracking both the history of CPCC, and educational trends throughout North Carolina.
Click here to browse the scrapbooks. To view other materials from Central Piedmont Community College, including yearbooks and course catalogs, view their partner page. To learn more about CPCC, take a look at their website.
Cover of the 1986-1988 course catalog for Central Piedmont Community College
Thanks to this partner, we have just added to DigitalNCcourse catalogs from the college dating from it’s start in 1965 to 2002. Yearbooks dating from 1962-1964 from Mecklenburg College, an African American college in Charlotte that merged with the Central Industrial Education Center in Charlotte to form Central Piedmont Community College in 1964, are also now online.
Cover of the 1990-1992 course catalog for Central Piedmont Community College.
To view more materials from colleges and universities across North Carolina, visit here.
We have just added new catalogs and yearbooks from Central Piedmont Community College. CPCC is currently the East Coast’s largest community college and was founded in 1963 when two colleges — Mecklenburg College and the Central Industrial Education center — merged. These yearbooks are from the years preceding the formation of CPCC and feature the students, staff, programs, and happenings of Carver Junior College and Mecklenburg College.
Mecklenburg College’s class of 1963 from the 1964 Echo.
Carver College was a predominantly Black junior college in Charlotte, North Carolina from 1949 to 1961. Carver College’s name was changed to Mecklenburg College in 1961, which it remained known as until its inclusion in the formation of CPCC in 1963.
These yearbooks capture scenes of students enjoying the campus and participating in events, organizations, and programs at the college and in the community.
Carver College students on their red ribbon winning parade float from the 1957 Carveran.
To learn more about Central Community College, visit their website or partner page here on DigitalNC.
Several student yearbooks from Carver Junior College are now available on DigitalNC. Carver College was an African American junior college in Charlotte in the 1950s. The school offered college preparatory and vocational training as well as an accelerated high school. In the early 1960s Carver (briefly known as Mecklenburg College) combined with the Industrial Education Center to form Central Piedmont Community College.
The large collection of tapes from interviewees around the country offers a great opportunity for teaching with primary sources; here are three ideas for how these materials could be used.
1. Journalism: What makes a good interviewer?
Although the interviewers in these tapes are rarely identified by name, their interviewing styles vary. Having a team of researchers ask the same set of questions makes it easier to identify some of the strategies that each person uses to engage their subject. Here are a few examples:
According to the American Association for Women in Community Colleges, close to 30% of community college presidents in 2020 were women. At the time of the recorded study, the researchers note that the proportion of women was closer to 7% (according to Baker and Rouche on tape 2). The majority of these tapes features interviews with male-identifying subjects; only four of the 50 community college presidents recognized for their leadership were women (thought other women in leadership positions at Miami-Dade CC were interviewed as well).
How do women’s answers differ from men’s in these recordings (or do they)? How do they approach the topic of representation in this setting?
In each of these recordings, community college leaders reveal some of the strategies that they use to attract and retain students, serve their populations well, and prepare their institutions for the future. Since this study’s findings were published in 1992, community colleges have had to adapt and reflect even more. What has changed in community college leadership over the past 30 years? How have schools shifted their approaches to serving students?
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
![Five women seated on a float that says "A growing flame in the Charlotte Communi[ty]"](https://www.digitalnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/CPCCEcho1963-1024x917.png)
