The Warren Ashby Papers date from 1906 to 1990 and contain correspondence; research materials; speeches; photographs; typescripts; interview transcripts and tape recordings; and sound recordings of political announcements used during Frank Porter Graham's (FPG) 1950 Senate campaign.

Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972) was president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1930 until 1949. He resigned this position when Governor Kerr appointed him to the US Senate to complete the unexpired term of the deceased Sen. Joseph Melville Broughton. Graham lost his bid for election to his own seat in the Senate in 1950 and spent the next nineteen years as a United Nations mediator. He died in 1972 in Chapel Hill.