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Oral History

Curtis Harper - On church, teaching at UNC, desegregation, and faith-based activism

Interviewed by James Douglas on March 26, 2011

Curtis Harper is a member of the Church of Reconciliation, which he joined in the 1970s when he moved to Chapel Hill. Harper speaks about his upbringing in a community where the only secure place African Americans could meet was in church. He describes his work teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; desegregation of Chapel Hill institutions; the legacy of faith-based activism.

Oral history interview of Harper, Curtis conducted by Douglas, James on March 26, 2011. Processed by Pierce, Emily.

Citation: Southern Oral History Program, “Curtis Harper - On church, teaching at UNC, desegregation, and faith-based activism,” From the Rock Wall, accessed November 23, 2024, https://fromtherockwall.org/oral-histories/curtis-harper-2.

Rights: Open for research. The Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) welcomes non-commercial use and access that qualifies as fair use to all unrestricted interview materials in the collection. The researcher must cite and give proper credit to the SOHP. The SOHP requests that the researcher informs the SOHP as to how and where they are using the material.

View this interview on the Southern Oral History Program website

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In this Oral History

Curtis Harper

"[Churches] were the institutions that Black people owned. They didn’t own school buildings; they didn’t own anything where they could meet." - Curtis Harper
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