Richard Bardolph was a professor of United States history at the Women’s College, and later at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), from 1944 to 1980. He served as head of the history department from 1960 to 1978. He was a writer of countless newspaper editorials, was widely published in his discipline, and was regarded as a pioneer in historical research in the field of race and civil rights. In 1959, he published The Negro Vanguard, his most well-known book, which explored the lives of early African American professionals in a variety of fields. Earlier, in 1947, Bardolph had joined with other Greensboro educators to persuade city merchants to remove Jim Crow signs from drinking fountains and restrooms. His social conscience affected his religion as well, when in 1964, during the campaign for the passage of the Civil Rights Act, he persuaded his conservative, white denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, to endorse civil disobedience as a Christian witness against racial segregation.
Bardolph also enjoyed some success as a poet, with many of his humorous poems being published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and, perhaps strangely enough, the New England Journal of Medicine (humorous poems with a medical theme). He might also be considered a pioneer in instructional technology, as in the early 1960s, he taught several courses for college credit via television, broadcast by WUNC-TV, and in 1974, participated as an instructor in a nationwide “Courses by Newspaper” program, in which the Greensboro Daily News was a participating publication. Bardolph was a popular teacher who was known as something of a showman. He was an in demand public speaker throughout the North Carolina, for many organizations, on a variety of topics, throughout his career, and even in retirement.
After his retirement from the University in 1980, Bardolph toured the state with a tape recorder, recording oral histories of Women’s College alumni. In 1986, he had a short-lived run as a Democratic candidate for the North Carolina House of Representatives, but was forced to withdraw from the race due to health reasons.
In 1979, Bardolph received the O. Max Gardner Award for Professional Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the UNC system. In the final lines of the 14 page nomination by the nominating committee, the anonymous writer penned these words: “Two last examples—unprofessional, personal, seemingly trivial…Richard Bardolph has given seven gallons of blood to the Red Cross, and once a week he is the unpaid janitor of the modest Lutheran Church where he worships—sweeping it out and cleaning it up by himself.” Richard Bardolph died in 2006 at the age of 90.