Robert Lee Humber, Jr., Papers

Papers (1830 – 2010, undated) [Bulk: 1940-1970] documenting the life of Robert Lee Humber, Jr., who was born 30 May 1898 – and died 10 November 1970, in Greenville, North Carolina; after attending local schools he earned a BA from Wake Forest College, 1921; he then attended Oxford University in the United Kingdom as a Rhodes Scholar, 1921-1923; he then earned a MA from Harvard University in 1936; he moved to Paris, France, in 1926, where he married and served as an American Field Service fellow, 1926-1928, and subsequently earned a fortune as an international lawyer, art dealer, and businessman, 1930-1940, until the Fall of France, in 1940, when he, his wife, and their two sons, John and Marcel, fled the German invasion - his infant daughter Eileen died during their escape - and he returned to North Carolina, where he purchased a farm on Davis Island, established a legal career, and devoted himself to public service and to a wide range of philanthropic causes, as an educator, civic, cultural, political and religious leader; beginning in 1940, he became well-known nationally and internationally for establishing and leading the World Federation movement as a way to promote lasting world peace through international law; statewide for persuading the General Assembly and the Kress Foundation of New York to fund and establish the North Carolina Museum which opened in 1956; also as an art collector and patron of local and regional volunteer organizations; as a Democratic state senator from Pitt County, 1958-1964; as an educator who led the effort to create Pitt Technical Institute (later Pitt Community College); as a leader in the Southern Baptist denomination becoming a member of the Board of Trustees of Wake Forest College and other Baptist institutions; and as an attorney and business leader and developer; additionally, the collection includes historical files documenting the history of the World Federation in the United States, compiled by his son, John Leslie Humber.