Keith Edwards - On race in Chapel Hill compared to Carrboro

"The change comes when people are strong enough to stand up, and now you have to be very very strong, to stand up and say 'Hey, something is wrong here. This is not right.'"

- Keith Edwards

Keith Edwards was born in and grew up in Carrboro before moving to Chapel Hill around the age of eleven. She discusses race relations in Carrboro and Chapel Hill and how the environment in the two towns differed. Edwards recalls what the homes in her neighborhood were like, the kinds of jobs her parents had, and the closeness of families and the Black community growing up. She also touches on topics such as how education was considered mandatory within the Black community, attending high school as one of the first Black students to integrate Chapel Hill Junior High School, and what schools can do to help students learn and excel. Edwards also discusses school integration, highlighting the impact that the differences in rules and environment between Chapel Hill Junior High School and the historically Black high school, Lincoln High School, had on Black students and her community. She touches on the state of the Black community in Chapel Hill today, why it is getting smaller, and the effect the town’s decisions in handling the consolidating and integrating schools had, especially the decision to close Lincoln High School.

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.