William Gattis and Patricia "Pat" Jackson - On neighborhoods (clip)
Interviewed on March 26, 2025
Alexandra Odom (AD): And so how far back would you go? I think, Mr. Gattis, you said something about 1850. What is the earliest that… and I know we are talking about reconstruction and we’re talking about 1855 and post-emancipation, so when we talk about Potters Field, where exactly should that story begin and where should the origins of that neighborhood begin? What should the starting point be?
Pat Jackson (PJ): Well, I guess we’ll have to do some research for the beginning because for us, what we know is the Orange County Training School because that’s where our parents went to school.
Kathy Atwater (KA): I want to ask this question. Maybe Pat and Mr. Gattis may know. When was the time that Blacks were on Franklin Street, because I was told that we were on Franklin Street but we were pushed off.
PJ: We were. That was during the 1920’s as well. Well, I guess 1932 because 1925 is when they were all, when we knew that they were all born and all of them were born over in just this area right here. Right here at the Church. Sunset. Windy Hill. All of them branched and that’s when all the businesses were on Rosemary and those businesses extended down Franklin Street. That’s when the apartments were down Franklin Street, half of us was living on Franklin Street.
William Gattis (WG): But notice it came from Columbia Street this way, so if you look at the birth of Miss Frances Neal Hargraves, their family lived right where the McDonalds is and along that street coming all the way up here we had housing like where JiffyLube and …
PJ: All of that. We all had apartments and houses that we all lived at. So, I guess we’ll have to check the Chapel Hill Historical Society to see when that changed–when we got moved to Potters Field which is now Northside.
WG: Right. We were… it was an all-encompassing thing because not all of us… Some were in Northside and some were at these other places, you see. So, it’s almost like it’s happening simultaneously and it’s almost like Potters Field/Northside become a name overlay for an area that you are already in, you see. And while it may look like where Sunset came later, Sunset was there just, for a thought process, all along. The streets were named: Nash/Sunset/Sykes. You see McDade/Lindsey/Mitchell. Now Mitchell Lane was there when Professor Mitchell was at the University because it’s named after him.
