Oral Histories

"Thirteen years old and I gave my hand over to God. I've been in church ever since. Of course when you go off to college, you kind of drift away, but you always come back. I loved it. It was a good experience for me. It has always been a good experience for me." - Betty Baldwin Geer This interview…

“Well, I feel like it’s a big issue of whether or not businesses should have a social component in their mission. And I think that ideally, it’s best for business to have that element. And so, I feel like it’s responsible for businesses to take community input into consideration.” - Paige In this…

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…

At the time of the interview, Alicia Gomez was a Jackson Scholar who attended city council and town meetings and worked on a video project. Gomez is originally from New York and moved to Chapel Hill in 2009. Gomez attended Pace charter school after getting off-track academically. She speaks about…

This interview is part of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center’s A Place at the Table Series. Roberto Gonzalez, a resident of the Northside neighborhood and tenant of St. Josephs CME church, immigrated from Mexico to Chapel Hill when he was about 26 years old. After arriving in 2007, he was introduced to…

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…

BG: Were there any other things about the football team that you remember that you want to share?  BH: Mainly Coach Peerman the team-. Actually Coach Bradshaw was there and went on to great success. He's also a member of the Hall of Fame. He was there before I got there and before Coach Peerman, but…

BG: You had mentioned that you learned either late in the school term or during the summer that you were going to go to Chapel Hill High and you had some feelings about that that were just expressed to me while we were changing the tapes. BH: Right. My personal preference of course being a senior…

BG: Did you feel that you were treated the same as a student as the white teachers as the whites were treated when you went Chapel Hill High in '66? BH: I don't have a recollection of being treated differently, it's just maybe a sense of identifying with their teacher or the teacher identifying with…

“For me, high school was a good experience because I had my friends. We were in this big environment, and we had to stick together. We learned to love each other and care about each other. We didn’t know it, but we were nurturing each other.” - Sylvester Hackney Sylvester Hackney, a native of rural…

Annie Burnett Hargett is a Northside “legacy seller.” She was born in Chatham County, where the family owned a large piece of land but moved to Chapel Hill to find work at the university. She remembers growing up poor, but lacking nothing. She talks about black businesses, Northside school and…

This interview is part of a group of interviews conducted by Susan Simone exploring the lives and struggle of various members of the Northside community: a historically black and primarily residential neighborhood located immediately northwest of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and…

"I remember my mother always told me, 'Whatever job you must do, be sure you give it your best.' She said if it’s sweeping the floor, washing dishes, anything, do it your best. And as I grew, that was her philosophy - always give it your best. And I still carry that philosophy." - Frances…

This interview is part of a group of interviews conducted by Susan Simone exploring the lives and struggle of various members of the Northside community: a historically black and primarily residential neighborhood located immediately northwest of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and…

FH: I guess I was just like any other youngster. I was more concerned about the neighborhood and being accepted by my peers and also my relatives. Just being a part of what was going on, and playing games, and going to school like any child would at that period. You must remember I was born in 1914.…

FH: at that time it was hard to find qualified teachers. That's why they sent me. I was the first teacher in Orange County to be certified to teach special education. So I ran a lot of workshops. And when I came back, UNC, this university up here sent students to me to train. BG: In teaching…

BG: What was the feeling about Lincoln High School when it was moved to Merritt Mill Road in 1951? How did the community relate to the school? FH: Wonderful, wonderful! Good heavens, you had everything: space, better school, more equipment. All of it was just wonderful. Very accepting of moving to a…

BG: I think this is interesting, and a lot of it is theoretical. So I want to go back to Lincoln High School and more of your memories of Lincoln High School. What the teachers were like, what the students were like. The sports, and the band, the chorus. Anything else you remember from Lincoln…

Keely Hargraves recalls learning to swim at Hargraves when she was nine years old.

Kelven Hargraves remembers attending nursery school and playing sports at Hargraves and the changes he has seen at the Center since the days when it had an orange dirt path instead of a sidewalk. He talks about the Center giving young people in the Black community a safe place to go to play and…

Ms. Hargraves explains that she didn’t know her father Billy, for whom Hargraves Center was named. She describes the legacy for her family and her pride in knowing how the Hargraves Center and the pool have impacted the community.

Curtis Harper is a member of the Church of Reconciliation, which he joined in the 1970s when he moved to Chapel Hill. Harper speaks about his upbringing in a community where the only secure place African Americans could meet was in church. He describes his work teaching at the University of North…

In her oral history, Andrea Harris discusses her parents and growing up in Henderson, NC. She attended segregated schools and went to Bennett College, where she began her community organizing career by experiencing first-hand the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. King and the became aware of the…