David Caldwell Jr. - On the Importance of Community History (clip)
Interviewed by Blanche Brown on April 24, 2012
David Caldwell, Jr. (DC): I’ve got that story somewhere.
Blanche Brown (BB): Where did you hear about that? How did you hear about that?
DC: I found it in writing. I’ve heard some of the old people talking about it and didn’t know it and I got with Reverend Campbell about it and he said, “Yeah” and he confirmed it and sent me a copy of it.
BB: Someone had written it down?
DC: Yeah, it’s a written history. There’s another lady that wrote a book. My brother now, just he piddles around with a cab and he picked up a lady and she’s the author of this book. Gosh, I started to bring all that stuff for you and she said, “Young man what’s your name?” and he said, “Caldwell” and she said, “There’s a lot of them around here.” He said, “Yeah.” She says, “Don’t you have one Wilson Caldwell that was at the University?” and he went on, “Yeah, yeah, yeah” and she mentioned about the riot. She gave him a copy of the book and signed it and he brought it and showed it to me and, of course, her version is dressed up a lot, a lot better than the actual, the other version that we have. There’s the other books, if you go to the store up there at New Hope Commons [in Durham]. You have the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Orange County, Jordan Lake, those kinds of books, they’re good also. They have a few stories. They’re like fifteen chapters and they devote one chapter to the Blacks in that period of time but you’ll see some of the Black leaders in there also.
BB: I mean I definitely feel like there needs to be some sort of like… I guess it’s part of what we are doing is trying to collect some of that history and put it in a place where it will be safe.
DC: That’s good. I hope it will work.
BB: Hopefully, hopefully and I would be more than happy to meet with you again and talk about more things especially like we can talk about the time you spent abroad because I’m sure you have plenty of stories from there that like it’s a whole other can of worms. So…
David Caldwell: Oh man, absolutely. Be glad to.
DC: Okay, Okay. Well, thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure. I’m gonna stop this.
