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Oral History

Hilliard Caldwell - Campus Y meeting between Lincoln and Chapel Hill High School students (clip)

Interviewed by John Kenyon "Yonni" Chapman on March 26, 1991

Interviewer: Tell me about these meetings at the Campus Y.

Hilliard Caldwell: They were heralded as human relations sessions between representatives of one high school and another. We talked about commonality among teenagers. We talked about how we could, if we were allowed to improve race relations, and we felt that was a start, us getting together, although nothing ever came out of that. It was just a good get together once a month or once every other month with a delegation from this high school and a delegation from Chapel Hill High and we met on common ground at the YMCA because Anne Queen was the director and she facilitated it. I remember vividly that Charlie Jones’ [Minister of First Presbyterian Church and later the Community Church] daughter, I want to think her name was Pooh.

Interviewer: Do you know if she is still around or still alive?

Hilliard Caldwell: I have no idea.

Interviewer: Was this something that was officially sanctioned by the schools?

Hilliard Caldwell: It was after school. It was always after school. I don’t think there was any sanction by the schools. This was something we did on our own.

Interviewer: Did you think that it was something that was known in the community that it was going on or did you have to be hush hush about it?

Hilliard Caldwell: No, no. It was not a known publicized thing. I think it was just a group of us got together. The YMCA was very liberal and [instinctive?].

Interviewer: Did the Black students who were participating in the YMCA just in general?

Hilliard Caldwell: No, no. It was an all-white Y. That’s the University …. [unclear]

Interviewer: But you would all go and meet at the Y and that never caused any problems?

Hilliard Caldwell: No, that was because of Anne Queen who was director for many years.

Interviewer: Is she still alive?

Hilliard Caldwell: Anne is retired up in the mountains or she did. Jimmy Wallace would know. She was a very close friend of Jimmy Wallace. I think Anne is still alive. This community would have known if she would have died. [Per Google, she passed away in 2005.]

Oral history interview of Caldwell, Hilliard conducted by Chapman, John Kenyon "Yonni" on March 26, 1991 at Chapel Hill, NC.

Citation: The Southern Historical Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, “Hilliard Caldwell - Campus Y meeting between Lincoln and Chapel Hill High School students (clip),” From the Rock Wall, accessed April 19, 2025, https://fromtherockwall.org/oral-histories/hilliard-caldwell-campus-y-meeting-between-lincoln-and-chapel-hill-high-school-students-clip.

Rights: Open for research. The Southern Historical Collection (SHC) welcomes non-commercial use and access that qualifies as fair use to all unrestricted interview materials in the collection. The researcher must cite and give proper credit to the SHC. The SHC requests that the researcher informs the SHC as to how and where they are using the material.

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In this Oral History

Back to Hilliard Caldwell - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill (Interview One)

Hilliard Caldwell - Campus Y meeting between Lincoln and Chapel Hill High School students (clip)

In this Oral History

Hilliard Caldwell - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill (Interview One)

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