Beginning with his installation as chancellor on University Day, 2000, James Moeser started each academic year with a major address in which he outlined his envisioned agenda for the year ahead. In retrospect, these addresses can be read as guideposts to mark the history of Carolina's first decade of the twenty-first century, a period of great progress. A common thread running through all of these addresses is a call for excellence-that Carolina should be America's leading public university with a commitment to public engagement and social justice and that Carolina should be both great and good. Moeser did not shy away from controversy in these addresses, stoutly defending academic and First Amendment freedoms. The book concludes with two addresses given after his term in office, one that offers an overview of his administration, and a second, his brief remarks at the unveiling of his portrait, which is reproduced on the cover of this book.

Schooling the New South is a vivid account of the relationship between education and society during a time of sweeping social change. James Leloudis recreates North Carolina's classrooms as they existed at the turn of the century and explores the wide-ranging social and psychological implications of the transition from old-fashioned common schools to modern graded schools. He argues that this critical change in methods of instruction both reflected and guided the transformation of the American South. According to Leloudis, architects of the New South embraced the public school as an institution capable of remodeling their world according to the principles of free labor and market exchange. By altering habits of learning, they hoped to instill in students a vision of life that valued individual ambition and enterprise above the familiar relations of family, church, and community. Their efforts eventually created both a social and a pedagogical revolution, says Leloudis. Public schools became what they are today - the primary institution responsible for the socialization of children and therefore the principal battleground for society's conflicts over race, class, and gender. The book gives voice to the principal actors in this transformation - school administrators, teachers, reformers, parents, and students - whose characters and personal experiences shine through Leloudis's narrative. Based on the letters and reminiscences of parents, teachers, and students; on novels; and on more traditional documentary sources, Schooling the New South deftly combines social and political history, gender studies, and African American history into a story of educational reform.

When Governor Terry Sanford established the North Carolina Fund in 1963, he saw it as a way to provide a better life for the ""tens of thousands whose family income is so low that daily subsistence is always in doubt."" Illustrated with evocative photographs by Billy Barnes, To Right These Wrongs offers a lively account of this pioneering effort in America's War on Poverty. Robert Korstad and James Leloudis describe how the Fund's initial successes grew out of its reliance on private philanthropy and federal dollars and its commitment to the democratic mobilization of the poor. Both were calculated tactics designed to outflank conservative state lawmakers and entrenched local interests that nourished Jim Crow, perpetuated one-party politics, and protected an economy built on cheap labor. By late 1968, when the Fund closed its doors, a resurgent politics of race had gained the advantage, led by a Republican Party that had reorganized itself around opposition to civil rights and aid to the poor. The North Carolina Fund came up short in its battle against poverty, but its story continues to be a source of inspiration and instruction for new generations of Americans.