Hilliard Caldwell - Greensboro Sit-Ins and first sit-ins in Chapel Hill (clip)

John Kenyon “Yonni” Chapman (YC): Do you remember when the Greensboro sit-ins first took place? I know the date was February 1, 1960.

Hilliard Caldwell (HC): Yeah, I remember that. Right.

YC: Do you remember anything about the first sit-ins that took place in Chapel Hill? Were you involved in that or talk to people at all?

HC: I was not. Was that the sit-in at the Merchants Association?

YC: No. My understanding was that the first one was at the Colonial Drug Store.

HC: There might be some confusion. For some reason, I want to think that the Merchants Association was the first sit-in here with Harold and a group of high school kids and I could be wrong on the events.

YC: I think that took place a little bit later.

HC: Okay, you could be right. You know as you get old and this stuff starts fading away.

YC: And that’s one of the reasons I’m trying to do this history. Trying to sort it out.

HC: I think it’s great. And, if it was Colonial Drug Store, it was a group of kids from school and Harold was a part of that group.

YC: Yeah, it was.

HC: I was an adult, married, in the community and I’ll never forget that once this happened, I had talked with some other adults, felt that these kids ought not to carry this thing by themselves. There ought to be some adults involved with them and that’s how we got involved from the community standpoint.

YC: Who is we? What other adults?

HC: Hmmm. Braxton Foushee, Floyd and Vivian Foushee I remember, myself, who else? Gloria Williams might have been an adult then too. Of course, ‘cause Braxton and I were both working at the Department of Medicine and our Department Chairman was very liberal, New Jersey, MD. He came down to chair the department and gave his blessings to be involved in community affairs. We were about the only university employees, so called, that participated in the open and didn’t have to worry about our jobs. I know Braxton was part of it. Vivian Foushee, maybe Gloria Williams. I can’t remember all of the names.

YC: How did you find out about that sit-in?

HC: It made the news media and the newspaper the next morning.

YC: Okay and when you all decided that the … were you invited or asked to be involved or did you just go about it?

HC: We went to a meeting.

YC: You went to a meeting?

HC: I remember there was a meeting called at First Baptist Church of the young people to talk about what should happen after that particular sit-in. And we were all there and convinced the high school students to let’s make it a community thing. And they agreed that they needed some adults and they felt that they needed some adult leadership also. Subsequently, the leadership was divided between the adults and the students, with Harold being the leader of the students. I don’t remember if I was the first person from the community to lead it because Harold and I co-chaired this thing for a couple of years together.

YC: What role did you all play from that point on?

HC: Well, it was … I was more the liaison with the Black community and Harold was more the liaison with the young people at the school. We felt we needed each other to make this thing work if we were going to attack the problem of segregation in our community and we worked very well together because the young people needed adults and we needed them for numbers. They could amass thirty to fifty young people to get together quickly and it was not as easy to get fifty adults. And, of course, we also cannot forget in this whole thing that liberal population from the University, and I shall always give them credit for being there to lend their support in finance, numbers, everything. The Joe Straleys, the Frank Williams, the Carter Williams, Wayne Bowers, Charlie Jones, the Ringwalts. There were others I can’t name now but once this thing got going, they became involved.