Oral history interview with Leslie W. Dunbar, December 18, 1978

Leslie Dunbar served as the executive director of the Southern Regional Council (SRC) from 1961 to 1965. Before that, he was a professor of political science at Emory University. In this interview, he describes an event at Emory in the late 1940s when he invited Bill Boyd, an African American political science professor from Atlanta University, to come speak. Dunbar describes this as an experience that piqued his awareness of racial issues and discrimination in the South. He subsequently became increasingly involved in the civil rights movement and eventually went to work for the SRC. Dunbar discusses leadership in the SRC, focusing particularly on Harold Fleming and Ralph McGill, before his tenure as director. According to Dunbar, the role of the SRC was to serve as an example and leader in changing racial attitudes in the South. As the director, he sought to herald "a great historic mind-changing." Dunbar describes how the SRC interacted with the federal government during these years and especially emphasizes what he saw as a lack of interest in civil rights on the part of the Kennedy administration. After the setbacks the movement faced in Albany, Georgia, in the early 1960s, Du