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Northside News Volume VII, Edition 7

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Citation: “Northside News Volume VII, Edition 7,” From the Rock Wall, accessed December 26, 2024, https://fromtherockwall.org/documents/northside-news-volume-vii-edition-7.

"We’re writing our own history, thank you!"

Ms. Esphur Foster

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In this Document

Albert Simms Williams

"If you can be patient and be kind, even a bull dog will stop barking and listen to you. If you take the time with it, you’ll back it down." - Albert Simms Williams

Esphur Foster

"We are nothing without our history." - Esphur Foster

Linda Carver

"So when you’re in your communities and you’re going through black neighborhoods, it was like you were in a whole different world. So it was like, racism didn’t affect you when you were going through your neighborhood." - Linda Carver

More to explore

Collection: The Northside News

The Northside News is our monthly "print link." Delivered hand-to-hand to more than 1000 households in Northside and Pine Knolls, 6 local churches, dozens of local businesses, Northside Elementary, and Hargraves each month, the Northside News connects neighbors around issues and opportunities of…

 Albert Simms Williams - On recognizing strength in community diversity (clip)

 Albert Williams - I had to be interviewed (clip)

In this short clip, Rev. Williams tells the story of his 1968 interview for a position with the Chapel Hill Fire Department. Albert Williams: I had to be interviewed by a panel of five personnel. They were five chiefs, and five officers from various departments around the state. One of the questions…

 Eloise and Albert Williams - On the Ku Klux Klan (clip)

Eloise Williams (EW): They dealt with the “rebbish” [white people in Carrboro] but we dealt with the Ku Klux. Rob Stephens (RS): Out where you were? Albert Williams (AW): Yeah, on 54. They’d have Klan rallies in that field, in that section. EW: Yes, sir. They would scare you half to death, peeking…

 Albert Williams – We Need the Human Touch (clip)

Rob Stephens: What’d you think would be most needed in, for the neighborhood – we talked about this a lot, especially in the sessions with you and Brother Revels and Pastor Harrison – but, for the community around Saint Joseph, to really, you know in the midst of all the changes that are going on,…

 Albert Williams – He Could Have Called Angels, But He Didn't (clip)

Albert Williams: You know, there's failure in us, but like everybody else, we’ll strive, and even though we should have a higher standard [pause], you know, and really strive to live according to that standard. Rob Stephens: Yes. Albert Williams: But many of us fail in so many ways. We are human,…

 Albert Williams – Rebbish Carrboro (clip)

Albert Williams: Things were segregated. That’s why I’m saying the people in Carrboro don’t know what was going on. When you cross that railroad track at night, that was the white side of town. You didn’t have no business in Carrboro. Rob Stephens: I’ve heard that. AW: Unless you lived out there.…

 Albert Williams - On No Black People in Cary (clip)

Rob Stephens: --people? Albert Williams: Yeah, we met them. RS: Is that the family that said they moved out here because there weren't any Black people in Cary? AW: Yeah. Eloise Williams: It’s not a family, it’s just a lady. AW: A lady. She had a grandson, her grandson came down. EW: He was…

 Rev. Albert Williams - On teachers at Northside Elementary (clip)

 Albert Williams, Troy Harrison, and Lavisha Williams at the Black Church Panel

 Reverend Albert Williams Speaks Emphatically

 Reverend Albert Speaks

 Rev. Albert and Mrs. Eloise Williams

High school sweethearts, gracious hosts, committed servant leaders, the Reverend and Mrs. Williams, lifetime residents of Chapel Hill, chose to photographed in front of their beautiful home.
Rev. Williams was the first African American firefighter in Chapel Hill. Listen to hear more of his…

 Albert Simms Williams - On his life, family, community, and faith

Rev. Albert Williams is the minister at Staunton Memorial CME Church in Pittsboro. He is a lifetime resident of the area and was the first African American firefighter in Chapel Hill. This interview was conducted as part of the Jackson Center’s local life history series. Topics include: childhood…

 Esphur and Harold Foster - On What Makes a Neighborhood a Real Community (clip)

Hudson Vaughan: All these stories, I feel like, speak to really what makes a neighborhood. But could you talk a little bit about what you feel like have been the most valuable aspects of the neighborhood you’ve grown up in? And if maybe it has changed then what that change has been like. Esphur…

 Esphur and Harold Foster - On supporting Harold Foster during the civil rights movement (clip)

Hudson Vaughn (HV): Were you involved also in some of the marches, like Harold? Esphur Foster (EF): No he was at the forefront. I did march, in one or two of them. We had to take an oath, not to be nonviolent and mother always taught us to support each other if we were doing right. So we thought…

 Esphur and Harold Foster - On their mother, Hattie Mae Foster's passing, and the community response to her death (clip)

Esphur Foster (EF): So when we took her down to the hospital that next morning Charley sent word over to the dental school and she said, tell everybody if they want to see Hattie for the last time to say goodbye, to come over. So when we got ready to leave Hudson, the whole Emergency Room dock was…

 Esphur and Harold Foster - On their family home (clip)

Harold Vaughan: So how long have y’all lived in this, this neighborhood? Esphur Foster: Seventy years. HV: Your whole life. EF: Yeah. We have, we had a cookout one night and we brought all of our, a lot of old pictures out and were showing them to everyone at the cookout. We got and left them out,…

 Esphur Foster - On May Day (clip)

 Esphur Foster - On swimming holes (clip)

Esphur Foster: And then the boys used to go to the trestle and jump in that sewage water and learn to swim because there was no way- you know, for us- to learn to swim. Hudson Vaughan: Mhm EP: So, they- the girls didn’t play that- so they would go over there and swim in the trestle.

 Esphur Foster and Friends - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill (Yonni Chapman Recording)

Audio recordings of interviews conducted by Yonni Chapman with participants in the African American freedom struggle and the civil rights movement in and around Chapel Hill, N.C.

There are two interviews with Esphur Foster and friends, with one recorded on Yonni Chapman's side of the room and the…

 Esphur Foster and Alberta Neely - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill

Audio recordings of interviews conducted by Yonni Chapman with participants in the African American freedom struggle and the civil rights movement in and around Chapel Hill, N.C.

 Esphur Foster

 Esphur and Harold Foster - Nothing Without Our History (clip)

Esphur Foster (EF): If you don’t know where you came from, you won’t know where you’re going. Harold Foster (HF): Mhm-mm [in agreement] EF: You gotta know where you came from. Hudson Vaughan (HV): And Mrs. Jackson’s quote is “If you don’t know --Without the past, we have no future.” EF: Future!…

 Esphur and Harold Foster - Children Create Community (clip)

Esphur Foster (EF): Cause children always… Hudson Vaughan (HV): Create EF: Yeah they do, yeah they do. Chante, had met a little girl and her father was wonderful. He taught science at Chapel Hill High. He was the most incredible man and they just fell in love with each other. So then, she wanted,…

 Esphur and Harold Foster - On her mother, education, and impact of the Civil Rights Movement

Esphur Foster has lived on Cotton Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for 70 years.  In this interview, Foster discusses the powerful life of her mother, Hattie Mae Foster, as well as growing up in Chapel Hill during a pivotal time in history. She also describes much about life before, during, and…

 Ms. Esphur Foster, Mr. Harold Foster, & Ms. Charley Mae Norwood

Still living in the house their mother had built 70 years ago, the Foster siblings have dedicated their lives to justice. Harold was a leader in the local civil rights movement; Esphur is a community historian known everywhere in North Carolina for her leadership at UNC’s law school; Charley is a…

 Linda Carver Response

 Linda Carver's Statement

 Mama Kat and Linda Carver

 Linda Carver

 Linda and Terry Carver - On integration, race in Chapel Hill, and medical access

The interview includes discussions about growing up in Chapel Hill during the Civil Rights era and highlights traits of early Chapel Hill life for African American families prior to integration. Both discuss the availability of medical facility access for blacks, how the community operated as a…

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