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Oral History

Hilliard Caldwell - Learning Black history, Brown v. Board of Education (clip)

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

Hilliard Caldwell - Learning Black history, Brown v. Board of Education (clip)

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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 - Learning Black history, Brown v. Board of Education (clip),” From the Rock Wall, accessed April 19, 2025, https://fromtherockwall.org/oral-histories/hilliard-caldwell-learning-black-history-brown-v-board-of-education-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

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

“It was hard times, but it was good times. It was hard times, but it was fair times. It was hard times, but we appreciated what was there. We appreciated our parents, we appreciated the school structure, the community structure, the church structure. All of these were important components of growing…

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John Kenyon “Yonni” Chapman (YC): Did your family have a television? Hilliard Caldwell (HC): Mmm, later on in life, I think we bought—there was one about fifty-two, fifty-three I can’t remember ( )- YC: Do you remember hearing about or seeing on television the situation in Little Rock [Arkansas]…

 Hilliard Caldwell - Grandma Flacks on the way to Northside School (clip)

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Interviewer: Tell me when did you first get to know Harold Foster? Hilliard Caldwell: I was a senior, and he was a freshman, I think. If I’m not mistaken, if I look at my high school newspaper for some reason it was either Harold or Mary Mason always had superlatives. Interviewer: You always had…

 Hilliard Caldwell - Liberal white citizens in Chapel Hill (clip)

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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…

 Hilliard Caldwell - Students who were involved with the Campus Y meeting (clip)

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 Hilliard Caldwell - The extent to which ministers addressed segregation (clip)

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Interviewer: How would your teachers teach you to deal with the society? Hilliard Caldwell: They said it’s wrong. We know it’s wrong, but this is the way the South is. This is the way society is here. That there would be two separate schools. That we have two separate churches and there will be…

 Hilliard Caldwell - Contradictions between civics education and segregation (clip)

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Interviewer: Tell me more about the Black schools that you grew up in, not just when you were in high school but even before that. What were they like? What did that mean for you? Hilliard Caldwell: It meant that… I have to admit that we had darn good teachers. They cared. They were genuine. They…

 Hilliard Caldwell - Teachers in the community, integration (clip)

Hilliard Caldwell: Teachers lived in the community. Teachers attended churches of their choice within the Black community. Parents had a chance to see teachers, not necessarily at school. Teachers also attended the churches in their community. That is not the case today. A large contingency of our…

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Hilliard Caldwell: Child abuse was never mentioned. It was not even a word. Abuse was not even mentioned back in those days. We got many a [unclear.] And as Eddie Murphy used to say in one of his jokes, that his mom used to whup him and said, the louder he cried the louder she whupped. And he said,…

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Interviewer: Do you remember after your father died, which was during the war, and your mother having to raise the four of you on her own, that meant that she must have been working a lot, do you have any memory of what her hours of work would be? Hilliard Caldwell: She would be gone all day. She’d…

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Interviewer: I’m going to try to get straight on a few of the things that he’s already mentioned. Could you tell me your birth date? Hilliard Caldwell: February 26, 1937 Interviewer: Were you born at home? Hospital? Hilliard Caldwell: Yes, I was one of those home babies attended to by a midwife back…

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Hilliard Caldwell: My brothers’ backgrounds are varied. The leading career in my family was law enforcement. I have two brothers who have many years of law enforcement experience. One of the older brothers was the first full-time Black policeman in Chapel Hill. Interviewer: Who was that? Hilliard…

 Hilliard Caldwell - Introductions (clip)
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