Jerdene Alston

Jerdene Alston is a Chapel Hill native that was born in 1944. She grew up having no issues with others regarding race, but when she learned about racial injustices facing fellow Black Americans across the country, she joined the civil rights movement. This was after graduating second in her class in high school and her first semester of college, which she then dropped out of at the time to devote herself to the movement. In the interview, there are talks of the people who were a part of the civil rights movement in Chapel Hill, what actions they took to protest peacefully, and how decisions within the organization were made. After taking a step back from the civil rights movement to focus on her education, she went back to college for a bachelors in business administration and proceeded to work with Blue Cross and Blue Shield as their supervisor of national billing current as of the time of the interview.