Edwin Caldwell, Jr. - On his family history, activism, and career
Interviewed by Susan Simone on October 14, 1997
"So Chapel Hill, whatever you want to believe, wasn’t as progressive as some people may think."
- Edwin Caldwell, Jr.
This interview is part of a group of interviews conducted by Susan Simone exploring the lives of various members of the Northside community. In this 2-part interview, Edwin Caldwell, Jr. begins by diving deep into his family’s long history in Chapel Hill and their generational involvement within the Northside community. Growing up during segregation, Mr. Caldwell provides a first-hand look at how schools were treated inequitably by the town, which leads him to delve into the history and the importance of education for Black children in Northside. In part two of the interview, he touches on his life after attending the Hampton Institute and working at Columbia University. After attending the March on Washington in 1963, Mr. Caldwell was inspired to move back home to Northside to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement within his own community. As a community leader, Mr. Caldwell became heavily involved with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board, several coalitions, a community church, and voting registration campaigns in Chapel Hill. The interview ends with a discussion on the importance of diversity, culture, and sense of community within the Northside neighborhood as well as within Chapel Hill as a whole.
This interview is part of a group of interviews conducted by Susan Simone exploring the lives and struggle of various members of the Northside community: a historically black and primarily residential neighborhood located immediately northwest of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and downtown Chapel Hill, NC. The community has long been involved in a struggle to prevent developers from buying up property to build new and expensive housing developments that would break up the black community and drive low-income residents out of Chapel Hill, as Northside contains the majority of the remaining low-income housing in the city.
