Mae McLendon - On motherhood and attending UNC
Interviewed by MCJC Staff on November 18, 2021
“I was a member of the Black Student Movement. It was like a year old when I got there so I was very active in that. I was the off-campus minister. We would go to the football games and not stand for the national anthem…as a form of protest.”
- Mae McLendonr
In this interview, Mae McLendon sits down with several members of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center staff to talk about various aspects of her life and the community she found in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Born in the country in Red Springs, North Carolina, Mae McLendon then moved to the Pine Knolls neighborhood in Chapel Hill in 1964. After getting pregnant while in high school, McLendon discusses the support she received from her community and how it varied from what pregnant white teenagers would typically experience. After graduating from high school, she attended UNC where she was extremely active in the Black Student Movement. Being one of only twenty Black students from her graduating class, Ms. McLendon describes what it was like being Black at a predominantly white institution during that time. She then discusses the different neighborhoods that she has lived in and the close-knit community that exists within them.
