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Charles Weaver

 Henry Atwater and Charles Weaver - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill

"Chapel Hill and Carrboro have been fighting each other for a long time. Ever since I was born. About where the city limits are, what they do, and how they’re going to do this. That’s why you’ve got the mayor of Chapel Hill and the Mayor of Carrboro. Chapel Hill has been trying to take over Carrboro…

 Jerdene Alston - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill

Jerdene Alston is a Chapel Hill native that was born in 1944. She grew up having no issues with others regarding race, but when she learned about racial injustices facing fellow Black Americans across the country, she joined the civil rights movement. This was after graduating second in her class in…

Jerdene Alston

"We would always be singing at the time we were marching. We would just march and sing and that was it." - Jerdene Alston

 Investor Owned Properties in Northside 2000-2011

 Northside in 2008

 Black Chapel Hill / Carrboro 1944

 2004 Northside Neighborhood Overlay

 Handy Campbell, Debra Coleman, and Paul Simmons - On his family, learning masonry, and building projects

This interview focuses on Handy Campbell’s work and family history and how grew up and learned how to be a mason from his father. His father learned from Handy’s grandfather (Judge Campbell). He described learning how to be a bricklayer as a 6 year old and building a stone house with his father when…

Handy Campbell

"My whole family was masons...that’s what we did that’s how I came up. - Handy Campbell Handy Campbell began working as a brick mason with his father at six years old. He started his own masonry business at fifteen years old, and had a long career mentoring other masons in Chapel Hill and working on…

Jacqueline Battle Pratt

Mae McLendon

Mae was born in the little town of Red Springs, NC. Her mother moved her “kicking and screaming” to Orange County in 1964. She now cannot imagine living anywhere else. She was educated in the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools. She earned a B.A. in Sociology and a Master of Social Work from UNC-…

Waters Films Showing Black Residents in Chapel Hill in 1939 (Reel 2)

Photographer H. Lee Waters traveled across North Carolina and parts of South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee from 1936-1942 to film small communities. These videos, which he named “Movies of Local People” aired in local movie theaters, often before feature films. Trying to film as many people as…

Map of Pritchard's Field

Waters Films Showing Black Residents in Chapel Hill in 1939 (Reel 1)

Photographer H. Lee Waters traveled across North Carolina and parts of South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee from 1936-1942 to film small communities. These videos, which he named “Movies of Local People” aired in local movie theaters, often before feature films. Trying to film as many people as…

H. Lee Waters Logbook, Volume 1, Pages 148-149

Jane Garrett

 Ezra Barbee - On masonry, his family, and creative endeavors

This interview is part of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center’s Builders Series. Ezra Barbee, a stonemason and builder, was born in 1957 in Chapel Hill, where his family has worked in the construction and masonry trades for generations. He reflects on his introduction into the trades, and takes pride…

 Collene Rogers - On the importance of working together as a community and her involvement with civil rights organizations

In this interview, Collene Rogers begins by explaining the importance of working together as a community, standing up for oneself, and always working to improve one's own life. She then tells her experiences working for New York City banks, in which every branch had its own environment and diverse…

Collene Rogers

Collene was born and grew up in her family’s home on Merritt Mill Road. Her mother, Mary Neville Riggsbee, grew up on the Neville Farm in Orange County and her father, Walter Riggsbee, grew up on the Riggsbee Farm in Chatham County. In the mid-1930s, they each left home to work for the University…

Celebrations

Make a joyful noise (Psalm 100).  Celebration is an act of faith, triumph, unity, and renewal.  Joyful rituals abound across the past, in the present, and into the future of Black Chapel Hill/Carrboro.  Whether after church at the Dairy Bar, during the May Day Festival that marked the end of the…

Hargraves Community Center

You may think of a community center as something like your local YMCA.  Hargraves is that and so much more.  Community-built and community-led, Hargraves is the heart of Northside.  In 1939, with fiscal support from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), resident brick masons and carpenters began…

Education

Knowledge is power.  Since Reconstruction and the establishment of the first Freedmen’s School on the western edge of Chapel Hill (where Crook’s Corner is now) in the mid-1800s, the Black community has invested in the education of its youth.  Parents, teachers, and church members locked arms to…

Business

Before the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 required white restaurants and businesses to open to Black patrons, Black residents served themselves, whether in Durham’s bustling Black business districts or in the Black-owned shops, restaurants, hotel, movie theatre, and pool hall on the west end of…