Governor Terry Sanford appointed Stanford Brookshire as chair of the North Carolina Mayors Cooperating Committee in 1963 to help resolve racial problems in North Carolina. In 1964, the committee published The Negro in North Carolina, which furnished guidelines for dealing with racial problems at the local level. Brookshire served as a member of the North Carolina Good Neighbor Council, initiated by Sanford in 1963, with the twofold mission of "encouraging employment of qualified people without regard to race and urging youth to become better trained and qualified for employment".
