Braxton Foushee

Braxton Foushee: There were a lot of people who couldn’t do certain things in the movement so we had them do other things to be involved in the movement. There were a lot of people who couldn’t [] right back, and we knew it, and we asked them, you know, to be real truthful with us. And they were, and so they were assigned to do other tasks in the movement, but they were still part of the movement. And that’s the way it worked, and so…you know, front people couldn’t do everything, said they just couldn’t do it and we understood that…

Sarah Baker: What do you feel that you were mainly doing, your role?

BF: Well, I was [] at the time, and so I didn’t get arrested as many times as some of the other people did, but I did get arrested…at that point I saw my job mostly as being a strategist. You know, we’d plan stuff and we knew how we were gonna do it. Of course some people in the movement didn’t agree with some of the things we did, but they still wanna learn with us, you know…cause they hadn’t been used to that kind of climate.

SB: Mm-hm.

BF: And so, they wanted us to go a little softer and we were kinda direct, in-your-face, and we just did what we had to do.

SB: Yeah.

BF: I think as the movement went along they understood the reason why we were kinda like that. If you didn’t–for Chapel Hill we were a little drastic with some of the things we did–not [], no violence or nothing like that, but we were persistent about the way we wanted to carry it out. And that made some of the white people in the movement a little uncomfortable. Like the surgery, we blocked traffic–everybody wasn’t in agreement with that but that was something we saw as a way to really get Chapel Hill’s attention, the university’s attention at the same time, cause they kinda went hand-in-hand.

This interview provides a background of Braxton Foushee’s involvement in the Chapel Hill area. He shares his experiences as a committee member during the Civil Rights Movement where he was involved in demonstrations. He describes the various strategies the committee used during the movement as well as the differing views that people had on integration. Mr. Foushee specifically speaks about the university’s interactions with the town as well as student involvement in the movement. He talks about his triumphs within the movement such as integration of the cafeteria in the hospital, but he also notes that there is more work to be done. He talks about present day matters like students not knowing the town’s history.
He also discusses how he is still involved in the community where he elevates the voices of those who aren’t being heard. He concludes the interview by reminiscing on how he grew up and how much the area has changed. He delves into issues such as expansion of Northside, unaffordable housing, and building codes.

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.