The collection contains correspondence, speeches, articles, statements, reports, brochures, and newspaper clippings related to the 1929 and 1930 meetings of the Durham Fact-Finding Conference and to two subsequent conferences that grew out of the Fact-Finding Conference: the 1942 Southern Conference on Race Relations and the 1944 Durham Race Relations Conference. Correspondents in letters addressed to the conferences' chair and college president, James E. Shepard, represent a wide array of African American colleges and universities, businesses, press, and organizations such as the NAACP, the Associated Negro Press, and the Federal Council of Churches. Notable correspondents include W.E.B. DuBois, Hugo L. Black, Frank Porter Graham, Charles S. Johnson, Walter White, William Hastie, Langston Hughes, A. Phillip Randolph, E. Franklin Frazier, Alain Locke, P.B. Young, Gordon B. Hancock, Claude A. Barnett, and George E. Haynes. The collection also contains excerpts from speeches given at the 1929 Durham Fact-Finding Conference and the 1944 Durham Race Relations Conference, meeting agendas, public statements resulting from conferences, articles, and newspaper clippings.