David Caldwell Jr. - On Generational History (clip)
Interviewed by Blanche Brown on April 24, 2012
Blanche Brown (BB): Now, when you were younger, did you ever participate in the marches?
David Caldwell Jr. (DC): No we didn’t. He kept us away from all of that. We knew. In the book, as a matter of fact, there’s a picture of one of my mom’s youngest sisters that's in the march that we ran across, and they were all a part of it. I was telling the kids about it here and everybody else, is that what amazes me is just the ages. So many of my, I was in the sixth grade, and so many of my classmates I was pointing out in the marches. And the kids now just don’t understand what was going on there. And the things that they went through, ammonia being thrown on them in doorways, and being peed or urinated on, being little kids and drug, and all the things that were done to them, so that they could do the things that they wanted to do. But now, what do they want to do? Steal, gangbang, you know a large majority of them. Man, we’re losing that entire dream that everybody sacrificed so much for [sucks teeth]. Really. My thing is— we were in the book about Rogers Road. And I said, “Well, why did you guys do that?” It’s that we don’t wanna lose it, you know. Twenty years from now, if I’m around, I can tell my great great grandkids. But if I’m not around, they can look at it and say, “Oh, this is where my great great grandpa grew up at. This is what he did. Oh my great great great grandpa was this guy! And look at great great great great great granddaddy Wilson who’s at the library and was a business man and was one of the first Black politicians elected to county government in Chapel Hill! Who’s a man of wealth and property! He moved to Durham, and because Durham was so rough, he said, ‘I came back to Chapel Hill because Durham is no place for an educated man.’ It was just too…and Durham was the wild wild west [laughs]. It’s no place for an educated man. He said, ‘I didn't have to come back, I own land, I have a business. I didn’t have to come back, I came back to Chapel Hill because I wanted to.’” So it goes way back, with a long line of ministers, ending in everything. That’s what I didn’t want to lose on my family’s side.
BB: Yeah, this sense of history.
DC.: Mhm. Cause you know, if you don’t know where you been–
DC/BB (in unison): You don’t know where you’re going [laughs].
DC: Absolutely [laughs]. Absolutely.
BB: Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you.
