Virginia Carson, Pat Jackson, and William Gattis - On Reconstruction (clip)
Interviewed on March 26, 2025
Virginia Carson (VC): Some piece of this also goes back to Reconstruction. The church archives at Chapel of the Cross, there were free people of color in Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill was a really small place and the University, but there were free people of color who were skilled workers of one kind or another and they lived along Franklin Street and Rosemary Street. The rigorous segregation came in after emancipation when all of sudden it was very important that people be separated, so there’s an interesting wrinkle, sort of, in the time progression from the early 1840’s until it gets really rigid after the war.
William Gattis (WG): Well, it became rigid because of the push back of the Klan and those of that same mind.
VC: Absolutely.
WG: Initially…
Pat Jackson: Which [the Klan] was alive and well in Carrboro.
