Anna Hayes Owens, 1936-1991

Series I. comprises materials related to Anna Hayes Owens and documents her family life, education, hobbies, and career. The series also contains materials related to Owens's involvement as a civil rights worker and secretary for the Newark branch of the NAACP. These materials include reports she created regarding integration in Delaware public schools and at the University of Delaware, NAACP pamphlets and publications, and Owens's correspondence on the local and national level for the Newark branch. The series also includes letters from educator, activist, author Kay Boyle (1902-1992). Owens and Boyle met sometime in the summer of 1957 while Boyle was in Newark to judge a writing contest for the University of Delaware English Department. The two women had a mutual interest in the integration movement, particularly in the Delaware desegregation case of Alonzo Shockley v. Board of Education , on which Boyle published an essay, "The Long Dead Fathers" in The Progressive in September 1958. A major event in Anna Hayes Owens experience as a history teacher throughout the 1960s was an accusation by the Evangelical Ministerial Fellowship of Greater Wilmington that Owens was undermining her students' faith in the bible. Her teaching correspondence includes letters of support from the New Castle school board and news clippings surrounding the event.