Patricia "Pat" Jackson - On the pride Lincoln High students felt (clip)
Interviewed by Kathryn Wall on November 3, 2022
Kathryn Wall (KW): So when you were growing up, you know, in younger grades, the older kids were all going to Lincoln from your community—
Patricia “Pat” Jackson (PJ): Mhm.
KW: So did you expect, you know, did you think you would be going to Lincoln when you were approaching high school?
PJ: Well yeah, that was the only place to go—
KW: Mhm.
PJ: And you know, the students, the high school students that were at Lincoln were fierce, proud, all excited, and a force in our community. So yes, the expectation was that I would be right there following in their footsteps, making sure that the, you know, legacy of that, great high school was felt even after I had laid my footsteps there—
KW: Mhm—
PJ: Go ahead.
KW: I was just gonna ask how you and your classmates, you know, people around your age who were almost high school age when the switch happened and Lincoln closed and you all were gonna go to Chapel Hill instead. How did you all—do you remember how you all felt at that time?
PJ: We—there had been a lot of ruckus and a lot of commotion, you know, going on during these changing times. But the feeling my class had was like, “Ok, we’re gonna go but we have everything we need to be successful.” That’s what had been instilled in us from grade school to where we were now. So, under no circumstances were we going to be pushed around by anyone. Under no circumstance was our voice not going to be heard. Under no circumstance were we not going to be treated equal. And the thing that was most comforting was we had had the opportunity to be in a full community with everything we needed. We had our church, we had our school, we had our grocery stores. We had all of the things that would make us feel safe and complete.
