Oral history interview with Cornelia Spencer Love, January 26, 1975

Cornelia Spencer Love, granddaughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (the "woman who rang the bell" to signal the re-opening of the University of North Carolina after Reconstruction) talks about her family, life at the University in the "old days," and her relations with Chapel Hill's black community. Born in 1892, raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Radcliffe, Love came to Chapel Hill as a young woman in 1917 to work in the UNC library, where she remained for the rest of her years. She talks in this interview about attending dances at UNC as a teenager, recollects early encounters with UNC's Kemp Battle and Frank Porter Graham, and speaks about her grandmother's attitudes towards women and education. She also talks extensively about her brother, J. Spencer Love, founder of Burlington Industries. Her relationship with African American educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown and her philanthropy toward Chapel Hill's African American community are also discussed.