Oral Histories

"They were devout Christians...and so, we survived. We survived by faith. They had a lot of faith." - Dolores Clark This interview is part of a series on Black builders in Orange County. Dolores Clark, a long-term resident of Chapel Hill, explains how her family has a history of building several…

Dolores Clark: Well I’ll start first with the Strayhorn family because I was raised in the home that my great grandparents Toney and Nellie Strayhorn built in 1879. And I was born in 1933 and lived in that home for about maybe 20 years or 18 years, I would say, until I left and went to college and…

Dolores Clark: Tony was separated from his mother. His mother was taken from him to Hillsborough and put on the block in Hillsborough when he was only 7 years old. And after that, he stayed on the plantation until he was about 16 or 17, and left the plantation, did some work around. He learned how…

Dolores Clark: My grandfather was very active, like I said, in the masons. He was a mason, very active. He has built so many things around in the community, the First Baptist Church in Carrboro, he was a part of building that. And I understand from recent information that he and one of my uncles…

Dolores Clark: So my great grandmother and great grandfather had two children, Sally and William. Okay, the two children. And that’s when they added on to their house after they built the log house, because they started a family. Sally married a Barbee. She married Fred Barbee and he was down there…

Doug Clark: Friday and Saturday all Black kids on Friday and Saturday- you couldn’t go to the movies when you were young in the middle of the week- Friday and Saturday, Friday mainly, you could go to the movies. You didn’t want to get a punishment because a punishment meant you can’t go to the…

Describes her gratitude for the pool, which is named after her great uncle, Uncle Dot.

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…

Audio recordings of interviews conducted by Yonni Chapman with participants in the African American freedom struggle and the civil rights movement in and around Chapel Hill, N.C.

Doug Clark, Sr., a musician, was born in Chapel Hill in 1936, where he lived in a close-knit Black neighborhood and attended Orange County Training School, which became Lincoln High School. He reflects on his family life and experiences growing up, such as seeing lines of Black children walk to…

Doug Clark describes attending a holiday party at a UNC fraternity where he got the idea to start his band, which eventually became Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts.To hear more from Doug Clark, listen to his full oral history "Doug Clark, Sr. - On growing up in Chapel Hill and high school."

This interview was done as part of the Facing Our Neighbors project. It begins with Costen discussing his respect for Southern women, noting that they can be stronger than men. Costen was originally from Washington, D.C. and moved to North Carolina with his grandmother. He notes the social…

Audio recordings of interviews conducted by Yonni Chapman with participants in the African American freedom struggle and the civil rights movement in and around Chapel Hill, N.C.

"Because we can change these things, and that’s why we were marching..." - Edric Cotton This interview is primarily concerned with political figures (Dr. MLK, Jr, Dr. Benjamin Mays, Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Washington Carver) and personal spheres of influence such as his mother,…

Freedom fighters Euyvonne Cotton, James Foushee, William Carter, Linda Brown, Keith Edwards, and Marion Phillips gathered upstairs at St. Joseph C.M.E. to talk about their experiences as young people in the freedom movement in Chapel Hill 1960-1964. Spurred by the recent publication of Courage in…

This interview with Thurman Couch covers growing up in Chapel Hill during high school in the 1950-60s. He attended Lincoln High School before it was shut down in 1962, and then he attended Chapel Hill High School. Couch reflects on his lifestyle, neighborhood, family, religion, school, football…

"Yeah our friends would be going to the ball games and going here and then we had to go to work. But then when it came down to going to McDonald’s or whatever we had the money to buy it and they didn’t, so that was the good part about it." - Annette "Neecy" Council Anita Spring Council and Annette…

Spring Council describes getting up on the diving board at A.D. Clark pool, but not being able to jump.