David Caldwell Jr. - The Chapel Hill Riot (clip)
Interviewed by Blanche Brown on April 24, 2012
Blanche Brown (BB): So, are there any further questions you have for me or things I didn’t ask you that you wanted me to ask or stories you want to share.
David Caldwell, Jr. (DC): No, I mean could go on for days and days. When you get a larger group of everybody from that time together and they start, “Do you remember when…?” But it’s just that what we’ve done can be done in all of the communities. Merritt Mill Road, Hatch Road, Johnson Street. They can do the same thing and I think we should be doing it. Putting something together to show this history that we have around here and the things that go on. A lot of people don’t even know about the Chapel Hill riot in the 1920s, or 1940s rather, where there were shoot outs and all the things going on.
BB: What happened? I might be one of those people.
DC: When you look in your book, you’ll see, I think it’s Coy Durham was the police officer approaching, and the map, there’s Chapel Hill Tire to the right and there’s the Esso station in the back. I think that’s the station where it took place and there was a White guy pumping gas. Somebody knocked out his window with a rock right across from Crooks Corner. Knocked out his window with a rock. Black guy walked by. He hit the Black guy. Black guy went to hit him. The guy who worked at the service station stopped him. The police were called. The Chief got there. It was only three [people]. I think it was Chief Sloan took the Black guy; was taking him to the doctor in Carrboro and everybody thought he was being arrested. A large group from both sides gathered. The riots started. They [the White crowd] went down to Tin Top and several other places shooting. Well, the Blacks got on top of the house tops and they were shooting back at them as the Whites came there and took a flat-bed truck and put railroad ties that I guess they had gotten from Carrboro down there along the track. I think two Black guys got wounded and had to go to Lincoln Hospital in Durham to get seen and they said they were in a vehicle accident. I think two White guys got hurt. One fell off the truck and got hit by a car. One fell and one of the railroad ties fell on him, but the thing is that the Town leaders got on the Chief and said he wasn’t doing his job and authorized him to buy machine guns and hand grenades and I think even a Gatling gun they bought from Chicago. And Chapel Hill/Carrboro/UNC’s share of all the things they bought was $67 bucks a piece. They were bought, they got here, they had highway patrol and deputies from Durham, everybody here, not Highway Patrol, I know they had deputies from Durham, standing by to help because they were looking. Joe Louis was fighting somebody, I think in Madison Square Garden or somewhere, and they were looking, they knew that if he won, they knew that all hell was going to break loose. They were getting ready for that, and the night of the fight it got rained out and everything got quiet. It just stopped. Dissolved. Nothing else was done or said about…
