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Elizabeth Brooks

Elizabeth Brooks worked in the Pine Room at UNC's Lenoir Dining Hall and, with her cousin Mary Smith, planned and led the campus foodworkers' strike that began on February 23, 1969. The two brought in Preston Dobbins of the Black Student Movement to help organize, and met Governor Robert W. Scott on March 20, the day before the settlement was announced.

Source: UNC Libraries, I Raised My Hand To Volunteer: Mary Smith and Elizabeth Brooks

2 indexed works are connected with this person, and the index includes one work by Elizabeth Brooks.

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By Elizabeth Brooks

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Brooks, October 2, 1974: interview E-0058, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Brooks, Elizabeth · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Elizabeth Brooks, a cafeteria worker at UNC and a leader of the 1969 food workers' strike, speaks in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded October 2, 1974, by Beverly Jones. Born in Caswell County, Brooks had made her home in Hillsborough since 1949 and raised nine children before her first paid job, at the university. She describes the strike, the Black Student Movement's support for the workers, and the response of Governor Robert W. Scott. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

About Elizabeth Brooks

Women behind the lines.

1990

Documentary running twenty-six minutes on the 1969 food service workers' strike at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told through the women who carried it, among them Elizabeth Brooks and Mary Smith. Wages, discrimination in employment and the Black Student Movement on campus are among its subjects. Released in 1990 in color with black and white segments.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Brooks, Elizabeth.

UNC

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 3 dated events in the chronology →

  1. UNC food workers' strike On February 23, 1969 food service workers at UNC's Lenoir Hall left their counters and sat down at the cafeteria tables, and by the next morning nearly 100 dining hall employees had refused to report for work. The strike ended on March 21 when the University agreed to raise the hourly minimum from $1.60 to $1.80, pay roughly $180,000 in back wages, and appoint a Black supervisor. People: Mary Smith, Elizabeth Brooks, J. Carlyle Sitterson, Robert W. Scott, Julius L. Chambers, Preston DobbinsUNC Libraries: Foodworkers' Strike, I Raised My Hand To Volunteer
  2. UNC foodworkers strike a second time About 250 of UNC's 275 cafeteria workers, organized as the UNC Non-Academic Employees Union, struck SAGA Food Services on November 7, 1969 over pay, job reclassification, and the firing of workers for union activity. They voted on November 21 to affiliate with AFSCME, and the strike was settled in December after Ralph Abernathy visited the strikers and Black students from across the state threatened to converge on the campus. People: J. Carlyle Sitterson, Mary Smith, Elizabeth BrooksUNC Libraries: Foodworkers' Strike, I Raised My Hand To Volunteer
  3. Striking SAGA cafeteria workers vote 94 to 26 to join AFSCME In the strike's third week the full-time SAGA food service workers marched from a noon rally at Wilson Library to the Student Union and voted 94 to 26 for representation by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. SAGA's regional director said mediation with the union would begin that weekend. People: Elizabeth BrooksDigitalNC: The Daily Tar Heel, November 22, 1969, page 1 (OCR text)

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Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.

  • Lenoir Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here

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Background

  • Lenoir Dining HallUNC-Chapel Hill A history of the dining hall with a section on the 1969 strike.

Records of the time

Collections and databases

  • Food Workers' Strike (1968-1969)UNC-Chapel Hill University histories, exhibits, and research guides
  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Elizabeth Brooks Library card An advanced search of the state’s shared databases already scoped to Orange County’s places and this subject; edit it freely, and sign in through your North Carolina library to read
  • Ancestry Library Edition In the libraryOrange County Public Library Census, birth, death and marriage records, and more, free on the public computers at OCPL libraries

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