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Lillie Edwards

Lillie Edwards was born in Wake County and moved to Durham at a young age with her family. After graduating from high school in Durham, she moved to Gomains Street in Northside where she met her husband, Russell Edwards. She raised her three children in Northside and was a very active member of St.…

Keith Edwards

"You can only hold stuff in for so long." - Keith Edwards Keith Edwards is a native of Chapel Hill and has been a leader in the community for decades. Keith was one of the first black students to integrate Chapel Hill Junior High School in seventh grade. Ms. Keith later went on to work as a police…

Kathy Atwater

"There would not be a University if there had not been the Blacks in this community to help build the University." - Kathy Atwater Kathy Atwater is a native of Chapel Hill and has lived in the Northside Community all of her life. Having retired from the State of NC after 30 years of service, Kathy…

Katherine Council

"My name is Katherine Council and everybody calls me Mama Kat for the simple reason that when I had my first grandchild I didn’t want to be called grandma because I didn’t want men to stop looking at me!" - Katherine "Mama Kat" Council Born and raised in Northside, Katherine "Mama Kat" Council…

Juanita Washington

Joyce Long

Joseph Fearrington

"When I came out of the service in January 1946, I got a little work with my father over on Broad St. and another place, a couple more houses, and I decided I’d start mine. And so I had the timber cut to build this house, to frame it. .. . And that white house down there where them cars are parked?…

Jason Owens

Tommy Owens and Jason Owens are brothers who moved to Chapel Hill around 2008. Tommy is described to be someone who is “always looking out for others” and the brothers share a vision of the Chapel Hill community as a place that is safe, full of good neighbors, but changing with time. Their shared…

Janie Alston

"I was raised in the church. On Sundays we went to Sunday school, church, church at night, every Sunday." - Janie Alston Janie Alston, great-granddaughter of Jerry Hargraves, has devoted her life to caring for others. Having grown up on Mitchell Lane during the era of segregation and Jim Crow, she…

James Middleton Chang

James "Jim" Wallace

Jim Wallace was a journalism student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and a photographer for the Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper. In the early 1960s the newspaper decided to cover the emerging civil rights movement in Chapel Hill, and over the course of several years,…

Isabel Atwater

Born in 1925, Isabel Atwater has near a century of lived experience in Orange County. A self-described “country girl,” she grew up raising animals and building gardens. Atwater remembers growing up in the Jim Crow South and finding strength in the Black community and the Black-owned businesses that…

Isaac W. Lee II

Harold Foster

Gracie Webb

Freddie Mae Mitchell

Euzelle Smith

Esphur Foster

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

Emma Fowler

Emily Banks

Born and Raised in New York, Emily Banks moved south to Chapel Hill in 1970. Her faith is foundational for how she moves through the world, and she is an active member and leader of St. Joseph CME Church. Banks is proud of her family history and the many accomplishments of her children.

Elaine Norwood

Edric Cotton

Donny "Hollywood" Riggsbee

"We had some old regular houses with tin on them...They were in a row, lined up on Hargraves Street...everybody up there was some kin." - Donny "Hollywood" Riggsbee Donnie "Hollywood" Riggsbee was born and raised in the Tin Top neighborhood in Carrboro. He was the first black employee at Colonial…

Dennis Farrington

"They took a lot of the trophies and got rid of them--that Lincoln had. Threw them away. - Dennis Farrington