Esphur Foster

Hudson Vaughan: All these stories, I feel like, speak to really what makes a neighborhood. But could you talk a little bit about what you feel like have been the most valuable aspects of the neighborhood you’ve grown up in? And if maybe it has changed then what that change has been like.

Esphur Foster: It has really been the respect of our elders. I mean, bottom line, the respect of the elders. During that time we could only go to school, to church, Sunday school. And if you did not go to Sunday school and church on Sunday there was no need to talk about going to the movie because if you didn’t feel good enough to go to church…

Hudson Vaughan: …you didn’t feel good enough to go to the movies!

Esphur Foster: We got the same lesson and our core values from those three and each one reinforced what you learned.

Hudson Vaughan: So from the three what…

Esphur Foster: Church, school, and home. And it was always home, Sunday school and church, and then school and they would just reinforce and you heard the same thing, the same thing was expected of you.

Hudson Vaughan: What were those things that were expected of you?

Esphur Foster: About respecting each other, doing your homework, doing work at home, your assignments that you had due. Help – like if old people, somebody, needed something from the store, you go to the store you better not charge by just for Bynum Weavers. You’d get killed. We would help each other like Granny Flacks, I know you’ve heard about Granny Flacks.

Hudson Vaughan: Mmm mmm [as if shaking head no]

Esphur Foster: You’ve never heard about Granny Flacks? Granny Flacks was a free slave. Her mother was white and her father was a slave and her husband was one of the ministers at Saint…

Hudson Vaughan: Oh really? At Saint Joseph’s?

Esphur Foster: Yeah. She was a petite lady, real real light skinned, blue eyes. She always had a garden and had corn. So in the fall we would all [emphasized], everybody in the neighborhood, would go help her. The corn would be stacked up to the ceiling and we would all go help her shuck corn. And I don’t know who took the corn to Durham for her to have it ground into meal. And then that was money for her plus she would have meal for the summer. She had a spinning wheel and we were just hypnotized by it. Because she was a free slave, she was allowed to stay home and she was taught to do things that ladies did like knit, crochet, embroider, spin. You know, she didn’t have to do meal or housework [in the garden], that kind of stuff. We were just really fascinated by that spinning wheel [trails off].

Hudson Vaughn (HV): Were you involved also in some of the marches, like Harold?

Esphur Foster (EF): No he was at the forefront. I did march, in one or two of them. We had to take an oath, not to be nonviolent and mother always taught us to support each other if we were doing right. So we thought Harold was doing right. Mother was very upset because she had built this house and we were the only Fosters in Chapel Hill, Black or white, and his name was all in the paper. So they knew that. But she was afraid she was gonna lose her job! But they never said anything to her and she never suffered any repercussions because the people in charge, well most of them were Jewish and they were from up the way. So she did not suffer any repercussions, and so Charley and I, we marched because we were supporting him but mother never did because we broke the law, to her that was breaking the law and you just did not do it. But when he got arrested and stuff she sure saw that he got food and clean clothes and stuff. We were in the background but he was the one that was upfront, he was the one that started it, he and all the guys from over here there’s a rock wall right down here.

HV: That’s where they planned the sit in.

EF: That’s it.

HV: So you were one of the key planners there?

EF: Yeah he was.

HV: I said you were on that rock wall planning the sit ins?

Harold Foster (HF): Oh yeah. [inaudble]

HV: Sorry? How we’ve been?

HF: Yeah

HV: Things are going well, you know it's a struggle.

HF: Oh alright. Well if it’s a struggle, I know you’re trying. Long as you’re struggling just keep at it, just keep at it.

HV: What helped you keep going?

HF: What? It was the, I had a lot of support…(audio trails off)

Esphur Foster (EF): So when we took her down to the hospital that next morning Charley sent word over to the dental school and she said, tell everybody if they want to see Hattie for the last time to say goodbye, to come over. So when we got ready to leave Hudson, the whole Emergency Room dock was filled with people from the dental school, and they all came because they wanted to say goodbye. And then when her funeral–it was the weirdest thing–the church was packed. And I remember when we were going to the cemetery, for some reason, I turned around and looked out of the back window of the hearse, and as far as my eye could see…

HV: Oh my gosh.

EF: …coming with us to say goodbye to momma. And and when I – I had just, I had just begun working at the law school – and when we got to the church that day of the funeral, and we pulled up, I hadn’t cried yet. I did, I did cry one time – a law student came when she heard that mother had died, and when I opened the door I remember standing there and I broke down. And then when I, we got to the church and the church stoop was full of law professors, I cried. I just couldn’t believe it. And we had the wake in Durham, and the Dean and all of the law professors came to Durham to the wake. I was just overwhelmed, I just could just not believe it. So, that’s the kind of lady she was.

HV: That’s remarkable.

EF: Yeah. And William Cureton flew in for mothers funeral. I said, oh William, I said Gritty Grit, we called him Gritty Grit. I said oh my goodness, I said mother would be so so so surprised. He said, “as many times as I put my feet under Ms. Hattie’s table, and you think I’m not coming home for her funeral.” And then another girl who I think, Ida, her first cousin just died, said to me…she said – cause her mother had severe mental illness – and so mother always valued education. And so Ida said to me, “your mother had given me so much helpful advice.” She said, “I just loved her so much.” So it was just a whole lot of people. And mother was, she was Superintendent of Sunday School.

HV: Mmm, what church?

EF: First Baptist.

HV: First Baptist.

HV: Mm-hm. She was Directress for the children’s choir. She loved music, she played by ear. She was the president of the PTA. They would not let, they, she was the president for about six or seven years. We had finished, we had finished high school. And they would not let, they said “please please don’t, please remain.”

HV: Did she sleep? [Laughter]

EF: She was something. Walked everywhere she went. And like I said, she had those three jobs.

HV: Incredible. And I mean, she also took care of y’all.

EF: Yeah. Absolutely. Made our clothes.

HV: Geez.

EF: We had a garden, she cared, and every August she….

Harold Vaughan: So how long have y’all lived in this, this neighborhood? Esphur Foster: Seventy years.

HV: Your whole life.

EF: Yeah. We have, we had a cookout one night and we brought all of our, a lot of old pictures out and were showing them to everyone at the cookout. We got and left them out, and it rained. And one of them was… this place was just a field, and it was a picture of mother and me on a blanket. It was my first birthday, she had baked me a cake and it had one little candle in the middle of it. And my sister we lived at 506 Cottage Street which is straight down but on the same side of the road. And she was born there. And I’m not sure if my brother was born there or whether he was born at Duke. I was born on Sunset Drive.

HV: You were on Sunset. So y’all just moved down the neighborhood.

EF: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah that’s right.

HV: So technically at that point those were different neighborhoods. One was Sunset and this was Potters Field, is that right?

EF: Yes, right, mm-hm, yes.

HV: And the separation point was, it starts with an “M” right here wasn’t it.

EF: Mitchell Lane.

HV: Mitchell! Is that the dividing?

EF: Yeah, yeah, yep, that’s right.

HV: And there were rivalries between them, is that?

EF: Mm-hm.

HV: Especially in baseball?

EF: Everything.

HV: Everything, mmm.

EF: Everything. Academic, sports, music, all that, everything.

HV: So there are three of y’all, three siblings.

EF: Mm-hm, yeah.

HV: And you’re the…are you the oldest?

EF: I’m the oldest.

HV: Oldest of three.

EF: My sisters next, and he’s the baby.

HV: So what was this neighborhood like growing up?

EF: Oh my goodness. There were children and dogs and cats everywhere. Always laughter and fun. Sneaking out the yard when your parents were going to work. Quarter to three slipping back in….

Esphur Foster: And then the boys used to go to the trestle and jump in that sewage water and learn to swim because there was no way- you know, for us- to learn to swim.

Hudson Vaughan: Mhm

EP: So, they- the girls didn’t play that- so they would go over there and swim in the trestle.

Esphur Foster (EF): If you don’t know where you came from, you won’t know where you’re going.

Harold Foster (HF): Mhm-mm [in agreement]

EF: You gotta know where you came from.

Hudson Vaughan (HV): And Mrs. Jackson’s quote is “If you don’t know --Without the past, we have no future.”

EF: Future! That’s right, that’s right. And Charlie, [laughs] Charlie, these young people come up here, she’ll say to them “And now who is your people?”

[laughter]

EF: And we see a lot of favor, you know we’ll see family favor. And so, we’ll start asking—we’ll ask them questions until they come up with a name, and then we’d say “Oh, okay. We know…” and then we’ll tell them about their family, you know so yeah.

HV: If you had a… If you had a message for youth who were coming through and listening to oral histories and trying to learn about the community in St. Joseph’s, and this Pottersfield and Sunset or just have advice from folks who…

EF: We’re nothing without our history, we’re nothing. That is so… What is so incredible to me, and I love Maya who says “And yet we rise, like cream to the top.”. Because we were stripped of everything. You know, babies were taken from their mothers’ chests, you know. And we don’t know what tribes we came from. We don’t know where our --some of our people were sent. I mean just basic stuff that a lot of people take for granted. And just, we are nothing without our history, so. And that’s [why] I have begun with children, and I started with Douglas and so they have a new grandson. But by the time Douglas was two, he knew all his alphabets and the phonetic sounds. Because reading is so important to me, and I always say “If you think reading is not important, why do you think that people were killed for teaching slaves to read?”. Because not only were they enslaving our bodies but they were trying to enslave our minds too. So, when you learn to read, that’s a shackle that you have discarded.

Esphur Foster (EF): Cause children always…

Hudson Vaughan (HV): Create

EF: Yeah they do, yeah they do. Chante, had met a little girl and her father was wonderful. He taught science at Chapel Hill High. He was the most incredible man and they just fell in love with each other. So then, she wanted, Chante, to come and spend the night so I got a chance to meet them and talk to them. So I let her, that’s the only family I would let Chante spend the night with. And they were Jewish, well he was Catholic and she was Jewish. Her mother was crazy about Chante and they took Chante to a lot of places that I wouldn’t have been able to take her, but I trust them. So they, them becoming friends at daycare caused us to become friends and trust. So if I was to take Chante somewhere and she wanted to take, why can’t I think of the child’s name, they had no problem with her coming with me because we formed that relationship of trust and that’s just the way it has to be.

Esphur Foster has lived on Cotton Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for 70 years.  In this interview, Foster discusses the powerful life of her mother, Hattie Mae Foster, as well as growing up in Chapel Hill during a pivotal time in history. She also describes much about life before, during, and after the Civil Rights movement within Chapel Hill as well. Specific topics in this interview include the following: The Fosters’ Family background; Esphur’s mother’s accomplishments as an African-American woman; attending Orange County Training School in the Northside community; memories of Lincoln High School; growing up in Chapel Hill as a African-American woman before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement, integrating Northside community with white college students and the unrest that it caused among the long-term African-American residents; the importance of having core values in your life; the different neighborhoods merging together to form the entire Northside community for voting precincts; the changes she has witnessed over the past 70 years on Cotton Street; her decision to go back to school at age 39; integration in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School District; the Wake County School District’s problems with having diverse schools; the importance of understanding and appreciating the history in your family; the impact that faith has on a culture; President Obama’s healthcare plan; her brother, Harold Foster leading the Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill; the power of music; the biggest problems that face Chapel Hill today.

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.

There are two interviews with Esphur Foster and friends, with one recorded on Yonni Chapman's side of the room and the other on Jean Chapman's side of the room. This is the recording from Yonni Chapman's side of the room.

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.