Francesina Jackson - On integrating Chapel Hill High School and challenges faced by Black students
Interviewed by Bob Gilgor on January 16, 2001
“I think today, nationwide, particularly when you look at the education system, there is a growing interest in separate but equal, with an emphasis on equal.”
- Francesina Jackson
Francesina Jackson, Chapel Hill resident and retired teacher, discusses her experience integrating to Chapel Hill High School from Lincoln High School in the 1960’s. She reflects on the discrimination she and other students, as well as African-American teachers, faced. Francesina also discusses various protests centering around the lack of Black history taught in schools, as well as racially insensitive teachers and unfair demotions. Considering the present day, Francesina notes that African-American students still face many of the same issues. She hopes that moving forward educators will be more sensitive to the needs of their students, regardless of ethnicity or gender.
This interview is part of an oral history project called Southern Communities: Listening for a Change: Mighty Tigers--Oral HIstories of Chapel Hill's Lincoln High School. The interviewes were conducted from 2000-2001, by Bob Gilgor, with former teachers, staff, and students from Chapel Hill, N.C.'s Lincoln High School, the historically black secondary school that closed in 1962 when a school desegregation plan was implemented. Interviewees discuss African American life and race relations in Chapel Hill, as well as education, discipline, extracurricular activities, and high school social life before and after integration.
