Oral Histories

Freda Andrews (FA): Folk like me, they don’t have to pay us full salary. They hire us to come in and do remediation for a grade level to help them because many of the students don’t do well on the End of Grade tests. We are like a faux tutor in the public schools. We remediate them. I work four days…

Freda Andrews: I realized that for my children to feel what I felt, I had a couple of poems that I remember the most. I would have them learn and recite. Poems like “Harriet Tubman”.Harriet TubmanDidn’t take no stuffAnd wasn’t afraid of anything either. Didn’t come into in this world to be no…

Freda Andrews: Everything was like, all the children wanted to do is to grow up and be farmers. They had no aspiration other than that. Drive a big tractor. They could describe that tractor and tell you what it was going to be like because they worked on the farm. That was all they knew. I felt so…

Freda Andrews (FA): It wasn’t Durham Public Schools, it was Durham City Schools. I had my first teaching job at Fayetteville Street School in Durham. The ironic thing is, about that, as a Black teacher, I had to learn the culture of my own people because of the difference. When I was in Person…

Freda Andrews: I grew up, I learned how to swim at Hargraves Center. Everything he has said I did too, because I could go there with my classmates. We were the last class to graduate from Lincoln High School, class of ’65. We just had our 60th class reunion back in September, this past September,…

Amanda Ashley describes her experiences with food in her childhood as the interviewer introduces the Food Ministry. Amanda shares how her mother’s occupation as a nutrition teacher influenced her food intake. Food in her household was less processed. Amanda describes her learning experiences in…

Gwen Atwater came to Chapel Hill, her husband’s hometown, after he got out of the military. Following a brief stint in customer service and time working in the school district’s administrative offices, she took a job teaching at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School in 1973. She became an FPG…

Gwen Atwater: I would give this spiel the last day of school and I would always tell my children, you know you’re not just mine for this year. Once you cross that door, you’re mine for the rest of your life. You are my family member. I’d say I care about you, and I want to know what you are doing. I…

"Chapel Hill and Carrboro have been fighting each other for a long time. Ever since I was born. About where the city limits are, what they do, and how they’re going to do this. That’s why you’ve got the mayor of Chapel Hill and the Mayor of Carrboro. Chapel Hill has been trying to take over Carrboro…

Ms. Atwater speaks about life growing up in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area during World War II. She shares her experiences with her husband, Roy Atwater and her education at the rural Merritt School and Orange County Training School. She was familiar with food rations throughout the time and had…

“I would preface that by saying that our school was again so small that practically everyone had to do, I could say, had to play multiple roles because we simply did not have enough people to go around and to have the kinds of programs that we wanted to have.” - James Atwater James Atwater grew up…

This interview is part of a project conducted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate and undergraduate students in a 2001 oral history course. Topics include Chapel Hill's efforts to end racial segregation in the public schools; the process of creating integrated institutions; and…

Ms. Atwater gives an overview of food access in the community when she was growing up and how her family’s attitudes toward food have developed over the course of her life. Starting with a discussion of her mother’s kitchen and garden, she describes the role of food in her family and in the…

"So there would not be a University if there had not been the Blacks in this community to help build the University." - Kathy Atwater In the beginning of the interview, Ms. Atwater describes the history of her home, growing up in her neighborhood, and the significance of keeping her home in the…

Kathy Atwater: Everybody was just family. I mean even in the neighborhood with the families that were in the neighborhood we all looked after one another- nobody was left to themselves. If I did something wrong, of course the neighbors would, you know, tell me “Kathy you shouldn’t do that,” and then…

Kathy Atwater (KA): My mom always made sure there was food, not just for me and my dad, but for anybody who came by. Monica Palmeira (MP): Really? KA: Anybody that wanted anything, you know hungry or just came to visit, [she] always offered, so I have the habit of if anybody come in can I offer you…

Kathy Atwater (KA): Right across the street, that’s my grandmother’s house. But the yard behind it. Monica Palmeira (MP): Oh, yeah. KA: People –neighbors would plant– MP: Really? KA: –Plant their vegetables and whatever, and then of course everybody would share. At my home, my daddy had a small…

"...informed me to take this letter home to your mama ‘Cause you are going to Chapel High School next year.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not’. And they said, ‘Yes you are.’ Cause they hand-picked the Blacks that they would send to Chapel Hill High School." - Mae McLendon In this oral history, Ms. Mae and…

"…People in this community knew the importance of faith especially during the times that they had to do for themselves, maintain their own, work for a little of nothing, but yet still be able to have their own home, be able to send their children to college. Those things. It was their faith." -…

Kathy Atwater (KA): Can I add too, and just hearing this, because growing up, I did not know that this was Pottersfield. The parents called it Pottage, Pottage Field which had a different connotation for me growing up because “pottage field,” and like Brother Williams said, “potter’s field”…

"You can’t have Hargraves without A.D. Clark Pool. And you can’t have A.D. Clark Pool without Hargraves. They’re just meshed together because it’s just a perfect match. - Kathy Atwater Kathy Atwater recounts her childhood visiting the Hargraves Community Center and the Adolphus D. Clark pool.…

Kathy Atwater: Well, I know, I grew up, like I said, over here on Lindsay Street and we went to Northside Elementary and I went there until the sixth grade. And the only reason why we left Northside is because that’s when it became mandatory integration. So, they closed down Northside and then we…