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Oral History Interview with Nancy Kester Neale, August 6, 1983. Interview F-0036. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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  • Abstract
    Nancy Kester Neale remembers her father, Howard "Buck" Kester, who founded the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and held leadership positions in the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen and the Committee on Economic and Racial Justice. According to Neale, Kester was a pioneer whose activism demonstrated the power that religious organizations could play in improving the lives of the southern underclass. This interview is at times light on specifics, but is a useful look at the role of religious organizations in the struggle for economic and racial justice in the South well before the modern civil rights movement gained strength.
    Excerpts
  • Disagreement within the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen
  • Women find leadership roles in some social justice organizations
  • Buck Kester's vigorous style outdoes his successor
  • Buck Kester helped create a social justice movement in the American South
  • Buck Kester believed the South could change for the better
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Subjects
  • Kester, Alice.
  • Fellowship of Southern Churchmen
  • Women civil rights workers
  • Kester, Howard, 1904-1977
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.