Henry E. Frye came of age just as the South was beginning a transformational change. When he graduated from college in 1953, African Americans like him could only hope that the future would be different from the past. At the close of his public career in 2001, he was chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court - the head of the state's third branch of government. Throughout their lives, Frye and his wife, Shirley, were in the vanguard of the advances that shaped the lives of African Americans. His election to the state legislature in 1968 was the beginning of steady, determined efforts to expand opportunities for African Americans in politics, business and society at large. This book traces, along with his, their careers as well and explores the growing participation of African Americans in the civic, political and social life of North Carolina.

Established by Martin Eakes and Bonnie Wright in North Carolina in 1980, the nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help has grown from an innovative financial institution dedicated to civil rights into the nation's largest home lender to low- and moderate-income borrowers. Self-Help's first capital campaign-a bake sale that raised a meager seventy-seven dollars for a credit union-may not have done much to fulfill the organization's early goals of promoting worker-owned businesses, but it was a crucial first step toward wielding inclusive lending as a weapon for economic justice. In Lending Power journalist and historian Howard E. Covington Jr. narrates the compelling story of Self-Help's founders and coworkers as they built a progressive and community-oriented financial institution. First established to assist workers displaced by closed furniture and textile mills, Self-Help created a credit union that expanded into providing home loans for those on the margins of the financial market, especially people of color and single mothers. Using its own lending record, Self-Help convinced commercial banks to follow suit, extending its influence well beyond North Carolina. In 1999 its efforts led to the first state law against predatory lending. A decade later, as the Great Recession ravaged the nation's economy, its legislative victories helped influence the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Self-Help also created a federally chartered credit union to expand to California and later to Illinois and Florida, where it assisted ailing community-based credit unions and financial institutions. Throughout its history, Self-Help has never wavered from its mission to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of justice to extend economic opportunity to the nation's unbanked and underserved citizens. With nearly two billion dollars in assets, Self-Help also shows that such a model for nonprofits can be financially successful while serving the greater good. At a time when calls for economic justice are growing ever louder, Lending Power shows how hard-working and dedicated people can help improve their communities.

In this collective biography spanning four generations, Howard Covington explores how one prestigious family shaped the development of Piedmont North Carolina, particularly the city of Durham. Covington examines the lives and legacies of George Washington Watts; his son-in-law, John Sprunt Hill; and Hill's son, George Watts Hill, and grandson, George Watts Hill Jr., analyzing the personalities, beliefs, relationships, and life forces that propelled these four men to become leading figures of their generations.
Perhaps best known for such family businesses as Central Carolina Bank, the Carolina Inn, and Watts Hospital, and for their partnership in the American Tobacco Company, Watts and the Hills were also advocates for education, fair banking, credit unions, and health insurance. Active in both local and statewide politics, they worked for major infrastructure changes, including a better highway system and the development of Research Triangle Park, and all left lasting legacies.

The Good Government Man captures the life of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the founder and first director of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, and an exciting, transformative era in the history of UNC. Inspired by visionary President Edward Kidder Graham--whose death during the influenza pandemic of 1918 devastated the campus--Coates adopted as his life mission his hero's dream of the university in service to the state. With raw determination, stubborn independence, and sheer audacity, Coates created the Institute of Government, now School of Government, to prepare elected officials, government employees, and private citizens for public service. Covington's clear-eyed account presents Coates in all his guises. Passionate and persuasive on the stump, he tirelessly recruited anyone who would listen to his cause including state and university leaders who would prove essential to the ultimate success of the Institute. To admirers, he was a genius of striking originality. Like many with a strong sense of mission, he could also be exasperatingly insistent on getting his way in all matters, great or small. His story, however, is unarguably an important one, and the value of the institute he founded, the first program of its type in the nation, is inestimable. | The Good Government Man captures the life of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the founder and first director of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, and an exciting, transformative era in the history of UNC.