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Oral History

Jerdene Alston - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill

Interviewed by John Kenyon Chapman on April 25, 1996

Jerdene Alston is a Chapel Hill native that was born in 1944. She grew up having no issues with others regarding race, but when she learned about racial injustices facing fellow Black Americans across the country, she joined the civil rights movement. This was after graduating second in her class in high school and her first semester of college, which she then dropped out of at the time to devote herself to the movement. In the interview, there are talks of the people who were a part of the civil rights movement in Chapel Hill, what actions they took to protest peacefully, and how decisions within the organization were made. After taking a step back from the civil rights movement to focus on her education, she went back to college for a bachelors in business administration and proceeded to work with Blue Cross and Blue Shield as their supervisor of national billing current as of the time of the interview.

Oral history interview of Alston, Jerdene conducted by Chapman, John Kenyon on April 25, 1996. Processed by Winstead, Camden.

Citation: The Southern Historical Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, “Jerdene Alston - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill,” From the Rock Wall, accessed October 22, 2024, https://fromtherockwall.org/oral-histories/jerdene-alston-on-the-african-american-freedom-struggle-and-civil-rights-movement-in-chapel-hill.

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.