Oral History

Cynthia Edwards-Paschall - On hanging out at Hargraves (clip)

Interviewed on August 12, 2022

Cynthia Edwards-Paschall (CEP): I look at this pool and I’m just thinking about...most of us were probably this high when this place was our second home and it was a safe place and I had no idea at the time that it was the only place I could come to be safe but it was one of those places when your parents put you out of the house and said “Be back before the street lights come on” was where I hung out. And I hung out over here so much that I wouldn’t leave until my fingers and feet looked like raisins, just wrinkled from staying in this pool all day. When it was break time, you’d wait till it was back over and you got back in it. And I’ll never forget I used to walk home after the pool was closed through the little path going back down to Craig/Gomains which was where I lived and my mother would look up and see me coming down and she said “You look like a little ink spot.” Because I stayed out here so long, all day, every day, with my family where we had a place to be, but little did I know at that time that it was THE place that we could be. So, I’m here today, I’m looking at all y’all. It’s an unspoken thing where we just know what we know and we were here looking like little ink spots together and …

Kathy Atwater: Ashy!

CEP: Ashy! But this place raised us. That’s why I’m here to say thank you for this event. Okay.

Cynthia Edwards-Paschall - On hanging out at Hargraves (clip)

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Oral history interview of Edwards-Paschall, Cynthia on August 12, 2022 at Hargraves Center, Chapel Hill, NC.

Citation: Marian Cheek Jackson Center, “Cynthia Edwards-Paschall - On hanging out at Hargraves (clip),” From the Rock Wall, accessed September 13, 2026, https://fromtherockwall.org/oral-histories/cynthia-edwards-paschall-on-hanging-out-at-hargraves-clip.

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