Restrictions to Access

Box 20: Tax returns for agricultural employees, 1967-1969, has been CLOSED to researchers by the repository because of the presence of Social Security Numbers. Prior to 2044, researchers may gain access to redacted versions of the closed documents. The redaction process will remove personally identifying information, and the costs associated with redaction will be paid by the requesting researcher. Please be advised that the redaction process can be lengthy, and depending on the volume and complexity of the documents, redaction may take a few weeks or even a few months to complete. Should you require access to these documents, please contact Research and Instructional Services staff as early in your research process as possible.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Dockery Family of Sunflower County, Miss., Papers #5554, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from William Lester in March 2013 (Acc. 101751).

Custodial History

The core of the Dockery family collection was acquired by the Southern Historical Collection (SHC) in 2011 from the Dockery Farms Foundation. In September 2011, SHC staff conducted an on-site review of the collection in Cleveland, Mississippi, where it was being stored in a local climate-controlled storage facility. According to a member of the Foundation board, the collection had recently been moved to the in-town storage facility from the Dockery Farms site that is located on Highway 8 between Cleveland and Ruleville, Miss. Prior to being consolidated into boxes at the storage facility, the collection had been kept in an office at Dockery and was primarily arranged in file cabinets. SHC staff also learned that there had been a large fire at the farm in the 1960s that destroyed many of Dockery’s earlier papers. Therefore, the bulk of the surviving collection dates from the 1960s forward (although some scattered earlier records have survived). Also, while reviewing the collection in storage, SHC staff uncovered several groups of materials with severe condition issues, including: irreparable damage from insects and mice, brittle and crumbling paper due to large humidity and temperature swings in the harsh Mississippi Delta environment, and mold and mildew damage. These damaged materials were primarily routine financial records, such as daily cotton crop tickets and ledgers or receipt books. These fragile and damaged papers could not be salvaged and were not acquired by the SHC. A few moldy or damaged materials were salvaged and transferred to UNC Libraries for cleaning and mold abatement, but only if those papers contained mentions of individuals who worked on the farms, if they contained substantive information about business practices, or they were retained in some cases to act as representative sample of the larger body of routine financial materials. SHC staff also made note of the general absence of documentation relating to the lives of tenant farmers and others who lived and worked at Dockery.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Encoded by: Amanda Loeb, August 2015

Made available for onsite use by Jackie Dean, July 2016

Papers have not been fully arranged, described, or rehoused. However, they are available for onsite use.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Dockery Farms Foundation.
• Dockery Farms Historic District (Miss.)
• Dockery Plantation (Sunflower County, Miss.)--History.
• Dockery family.
• Farm life--Mississippi--History--20th century.
• Historic districts--Mississippi--Sunflower County.

• William Alfred Dockery Family Papers, Mississippi State University Special Collections