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Annie Hargett

Annie Hargett lived in Northside throughout her youth. She attended Northside Elementary and was part of one of the first classes to attend Lincoln High (class of 1957). Her parents moved from Chatham County to Northside in Chapel Hill, first to Craig Street, then to N. Graham. She left Northside when she went to Winston-Salem State, the first woman on her mother’s side to attend college. She had to choose one of two careers: teaching or nursing. She chose nursing. After graduating and marrying a man she met at WSSU, she moved to Baltimore, where she lived for about 10 years; she had a daughter in 1963 and a son in 1971. They returned to the area and moved to Durham. She has had a very successful career, including working a stint as an administrator in her field with the state of North Carolina; teaching in the nursing program at NCCU; leading a psychiatric nursing unit at Duke and co-authoring studies with some of the leading researchers in psychiatry. Her husband worked as an urban planner for the state of North Carolina. She is active in her church (and was active in St. Joseph CME when Rev. Harrison was pastor), and still keeps in touch with some of her friends from Northside.

Annie Hargett - On her career, father, and growing up in Chapel Hill

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 Lincoln High, the families in the neighborhood and says she was taught to know her place. For this reason she feels she did not experience racism until she went to Memphis as a nanny for a local family. She was the first girl in her family to get a college education—a bachelor’s in nursing from Winston-Salem State and later, a master’s degree from the University of Maryland. What followed was a successful career in nursing and teaching; after ten years in Baltimore, where she and her husband found work and her children were born, she returned to the area, taught at NCCU and later worked as a nursing supervisor at Duke. She discusses the central role her father played in her life and how she followed his wishes and cared for her ailing mother after his death for ten years. She also discusses her struggle with depression, especially after her father’s death. Finally, she discusses her decision to sell the houses she inherited from her father to EmPOWERment and gave away most everything she earned from this. “I’ve always been a giver.” Her interview gives abundant evidence that she truly is.

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