Keith Edwards
"You can only hold stuff in for so long."
- Keith Edwards
Keith Edwards is a native of Chapel Hill and has been a leader in the community for decades. Keith was one of the first black students to integrate Chapel Hill Junior High School in seventh grade. Ms. Keith later went on to work as a police officer for UNC Campus police. During her time as a police officer she fought and won a ten year anti-discrimination case against the University. Ms. Keith lives in her family home on McDade street and writes the monthly "Ask Keith" column in the community newsletter, the Northside News.Carol Brooks and Keith Edwards - On the Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill
Keith Edwards - On the importance of food
This interview includes Keith Edwards’s viewpoint on the importance of food in the home and in the community. She recalls specific recipes in the interview. Edwards was born and raised in Carrboro where Domino’s Pizza is now located. She was one of eleven children in her household, and she describes what meal planning looked like for her family with eleven children. Edwards describes her first kitchen. She recalls having to put wood or coal into a cook stove for cooking and warming the kitchen in the winter. She also recalls that Fridays were fish days for the community. The interview provides an account of food systems between black and white residents. White and black residents began buying farm grown food from each other to create an alternative food system. She describes making fried cornbread: water and cornmeal. Other recipes include tomato pudding and buttermilk biscuits. The interview concludes with a discussion of her family’s attachment to the animals they used for dinner.
Civil Rights Story Circle - On their experiences in Chapel Hill in the 1960s
Keith Edwards - On the future of Northside and the impact of the Jackson Center
Keith Edwards - On Carrboro, gentrification, and white students' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement
Keith Edwards - On housing and gentrification in Northside
Keith Edwards has lived at the same address on McDade St. in Northside since she was born but now resides in a different house, built with support from a development grant that Chapel Hill received in the early 1970s. She became the first black female police officer at UNC in 1974 and later won a discrimination suit against the University after a white male officer with less experience was promoted over her. This interview was done as part of the “Histories of Homes” initiative of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History. Topics include: procedure for condemned houses, real estate companies in Northside, and relationship with student neighbors. The interview focuses on property tax increases and the resulting gentrification that Carrboro and the Northside neighborhood in Chapel Hill are experiencing. She speaks on her childhood, home, building a new house, and the difference between a house and a home. Northside was seen as a safe space during integration with the solidarity that existed in the community. Race relations in Chapel Hill and Carrboro are a pressing topic considering the history of Civil Rights in the area. The interview concludes with a description of Bank of America’s discriminatory lending, current regressive trends, racial solidarity in economic crises, how Northside has changed, and white allyship.