Reginald Hildebrand

"And that was another way that the church related to the community. Providing a place, a home to affirm, and to the degree we could, assist people who were members of the community whatever their particular situation might be, economically or educationally."

- Dr. Reginald Hildebrand

Dr. Reginald Hildebrand discusses his experiences at St. Paul where he first visited in the 1980s while researching for his doctoral program. He explains the warm community he found at St. Paul, which replicated numerous churches he attended in his youth. He became a member in the 1990s and had an easy transition due to his family’s history within the AME church. After joining the church, he helped to start a campus ministry on UNC’s campus, making it the first African American campus ministry on UNC’s campus. He discusses the lack of official relationship between UNC and St. Paul, before explaining the different missions of the pastors who have led St. Paul throughout the years. He attended during the years of Reverend Horton, Rev. Burton, Rev. Nixon, and currently Rev. Cousins. He remembers people talking about past pastors, such as Rev. DuHart, whose presence remained in the church long after his departure. He continues by discussing St. Paul’s relationship to the Black community throughout Chapel Hill, specifically through leaders such as Rebecca Clark and Velma Perry who were pillars of the community. He explains the founding members' recurring ties to the church and the history that is shared by many members. He explains the differences between the AME church cultures in Durham compared to Chapel Hill, and how the culture of Chapel Hill allowed women such as Rebecca Clark and Velma Perry to become pillars. He goes on to share his thoughts on the potential move to Rogers Road, and the fulfillment of St. Paul's mission away from its historic location. He shares a letter that mentions St. Paul in 1868 and explains the importance of the church’s mention by the Bishop. He concludes the interview by sharing the lasting legacy St. Paul has to both the community, and himself.

Rachel Broun: I know you’ve been at St. Paul through several pastors, what are the transitions like and how has that defined your relationship with the church throughout so many different leaders?

Reginald Hildebrand: Again this is one of the strengths and weaknesses of the Methodist Tradition. Pastors are appointed one year at a time and every year their appointment is renewed or is not. Some stay for a long time, and others not so much. One of the things I found when I first came to St. Paul was how often I would hear the name of Reverend Thomas Duhart. He was long gone by the time I came, but people talked about him like he just left the day before. And so I get the impression that in terms of the lives of people who grew up in the church when he was pastor, which I think was in the late 50s or early 60s—something like that. The impact that he had and the atmosphere that he created affirmed the kind of atmosphere that had attracted me to St. Paul. There are ministers like that who stand out. John Burton: very energetic, very community oriented. He was well known throughout Chapel Hill and very active. We had a drug rehab program that met [at St. Paul]. It was during his time that a Spanish speaking congregation began to use the church. There was something going on at St. Paul all the time. Other pastors like Pastor Horton, who I also respected and admired grew up in this community. He was well known here. His major emphasis, I believe, was on strengthening the position of St. Paul within the denomination of which he was a leader and well known. Thomas Nixon, who I think came after Burton. It was Burton then Horton then Nixon, I think. Young man was just overflowing with energy [laughter]. Which was reflected in his style of sermons as well as other kinds of things. It would be interesting to see your take on that. But, also he had this vision of a new church that would have the facilities that would allow it to serve the community, serve elders, to provide preschool, to provide health care—those kinds of things. The mission of the church writ large, having a physical space to carry out that mission in a way that we cannot in the space that we have, as historic and strategic as it is. It is a small space. The church looks pretty much like it did in 1956.

Reginald Hildebrand: When moving around the community when Ms. Perry’s name came up and she was designated a Town Treasure at one point. Again, the kind of respect and accomplishment she had—I think she spent one year at Bennett and then she had to come back and take care of her mother who was ill. But to see her operate in this community, and again thinking about what she could have accomplished if she just had an equal chance. And again, someone I got to know pretty well and had great affection for. I spoke at her funeral and it was very striking for me. There was one time I was serving on a committee to organize a program for the church anniversary. In those days it was a big deal, doing lots of things like that. I was chair of the committee because I was a professor at UNC who did history and they thought I ought to be. Members of the committee, among others, were Rebecca Clark and Velma Perry. At the end when I was making my report I thanked both of them for allowing me to think that I was the head of that committee. [Laughter] When I knew, and everyone else on the committee knew, that all I was doing was what that they told me to do, and I was afraid to do anything else. But it’s an indication of the kind of stature and affection that you can have. One thing that is distinctive about St. Paul is that people like Rebecea Clark and Velma Perry could have achieved the prominence that they did as members of St. Paul and members of this community in ways that would have been much more difficult in the Black community in Durham. Where there is North Carolina Central, Black banks, Black insurance companies, and newspapers and all that. There's a pretty defined social structure about who the big wigs were and who they were not. So if you were going to have the kind of influence that they had in this community you would have to have to be from the right family, have the right pedigree, have the right degree all that kind of stuff for people to take you seriously to be able to have that kind of influence and command that kind of respect, you’d have to belong to the right church and all that sort of things, there are two churches that you’d have to be apart of if you want to be part of the movers and shakers. So their lives, their success is something that reflects an atmosphere of this community and of St. Paul that is distinctive within Black communities, not just the difficulties you run into with race and racism, but also other kinds of social strata that can impede people and impact them. In Chapel Hill and at St. Paul. I doubt their careers if they had belonged to big AME churches in Durham, not to criticize them because they do absolutely wonderful things, but I doubt their lives would have been the same in that atmosphere.

Reginald Hildebrand (RH): In the 4th grade, go to my parents, there was a Quaker school in Atlantic City. They had a good experience, thought it was worth the investment sending me to a Quaker School in Philadelphia, they wanted to do the same there.

I went there, took exams, and the head mistress said, “You know this is great, good you know, the school you came from is great, and it’s reflected in the scores on these exams, and we would love to have you as a student here, but …..if we were to admit you…,” she told my parents it would have an impact on the white parents of students attending the school now. And they might withdraw, and it was a small private school in Atlantic City. They couldn’t really risk that. And so that’s…it was, “nice we wish we could, but this isn’t going to be a good situation.”

Well, what I had imagined, I don’t know. Purely speculating on this, because I, you know, I had taken a tour of the school, played on the gym stuff, the rest of that. But, what I imagined happened was that she thought it was going to be okay, but probably began to hear from people after this became a real possibility.

Reginald Hildebrand (RH): And so, I was very much aware of her, and her as a force in that church, and in that community, and was very much aware of her supportive involvement and engagement with any young – at that time, I was relatively young – person who appeared to be trying to make something of themselves.

So the students at the university, or people starting businesses, or somebody running for office, or somebody doing something in the community. She wanted to know who you were and what you’re doing and offer her [thoughts], ‘cause she had a critique of it, and she was going to be as supportive as she could possibly be.

What I found…

Rob Stephens (RS): Sounds about right.

RH: Yeah. What I found striking about that and very impressive about that, was that she had had limited opportunities for education herself. And it would’ve been very… would not have been unusual for her to feel embittered or resentful, or you know, [like] your generation has it so easy and all this and all the things you’re getting that I could never have, but never any inkling at all, [all] you can do is just, you know, do it. And you know, and so she had a real sense of herself, being quite anchored in, confident in, grounded, no insecurities about who she was, no particular embitterments about what had been denied or, I mean she had to be aware… in her relationships with people and with politicians, with business leaders, knowing her – having a sense of her own… capabilities as a leader, as a thinker, as an organizer, as someone with energy and purpose.

[She] had to be constantly aware that some of the people that she was helping, were not nearly as qualified for the opportunities they had that she had that she was denied. And so that went, yeah I would think, you know, probably [would have] caused me to have mixed feelings about helping people along those lines, but that was never, never had any inkling of that.

When I think about that kind of skill set that she had and think about what she could have accomplished, had she not had all those silly race and class obstacles put in her way. It’s something I used to think about a good deal. But that had no, that – but there was never any indication that she was thinking about that.

Reginald Hildebrand (RH): My grandmother’s parents, my great grandparents, on my father’s side, were slaves. Often heard stories of him coming out of slavery and his master providing some land that was actually in the family until like the 1980s. It was not common, but it happened enough that it was not an aberration. Yeah.

Rob Stephens (RS): And, so I bet the civ–kind of, it seems like that was a step at that point in Emancipation, for many people I guess [who] went straight into farming and sharecropping.

RH: Absolutely. Absolutely.

RS: Where did the Hildebrand family, or your family, have that land.

RH: You know, Rob, that’s an interesting connection that I hadn’t made until you're mentioning it just now. But there is probably a connection of some sort between that act of my grandmother’s father getting that land, and getting an education, and becoming a preacher.

RH: All of which, in terms of class, is giving him a distinction of some sort, as probably some sort of connection, more or less direct between that in my being a professor at UNC Chapel Hill.

Rob Stephens (RS): And you say you did talk to elders about it?

Reginald Hildebrand (RH): Yeah. Elders, I mean older people, not officials of the church.

RS: Yeah.

RH: Yeah. But these are the same people you’re talking to. Velma Perry and Rebecca Clark and others like that and they had, well it became an issue for them because of the video. And their perception of what was going on, I think they’re conscious about what was going on. Which, thinking back on it, is surprising to me. It was raised by sort of community activities consciousness raising activities of UNC-NOW and people in this church. That I think when they, well I know, when they participated in the video, they had no idea what the ultimate intent of that was, in fact they were pretty clear that the intent was quite, very just the opposite of what it was.

RH: And that surprises me a bit, given how tuned in they were to what was going on and who is asking to do this at the…

RS: It’s very tricky.

RH: Yeah.

RS: And so did-did any of those conversations go beyond the video, or was that the primary.

RH: Oh, just a general anger, frustration, disappointment, with what was happening. The same reasons that you know we’ve been, that you’ve been talking about, but in terms of specific references to proposals, plans, or individuals, nothing beyond that.

RH: There were-there’d be times when she would reflect on the video, reflect on some of the people involved in it, and make clear her, and the project as a whole, the Greenbridge project as a whole, and make sure, make clear her, both her and Velma Perry, their concern and discuss about what was going on and how it was going on, and what it might mean, what it would mean for the community, but…

Rob Stephens (RS): And was there any so… what did you think when this, when this St. Joseph’s partnership with students, the UNC-NOW group, came up?

Reginald Hildebrand: I was amazed. I was ama– ‘cause there’s nothing in my experience since the 1960s to prepare me for that. There was no, there’s no model in my mind for that working. I still find it astounding, I’m not quite sure how it works, or how it’s sustained itself over the period it has and has the quality of engagement that it appears to have to me in ways, and I’ve been around it long enough to sniff out if something was not quite right, here. And I don’t sense that at all, quite just the opposite. So…

RS: What’s next, I wanna hear what would be those things that you could sniff out?

RH: Oh, yeah. Well, I would have heard, I would have heard. Ms. Clark would have told me about what these college kids are up to and not the– that’s how they communicate. [laughs] But so in ways that we’ll probably have to pick up the next time… the way this has developed is, to me, the typical model is idealistic, sometimes overly radical, usually unaware of their arrogance. College students come to save the community and work for the community in ways that almost inevitably creates tensions even though everybody’s intentions are good.

RS: Would you put whites in that description too?

RH: Yes. Yes, yes I should– I meant that almost went without saying that- white students, and the level of Black involvement is an issue, I’m not sure how to think through that. But definitely college students, but here most usually white students and the short period of time, tension and resentment develops and people can’t figure out why this is happening, while we are working on the same things.

What I see as a model here is where people have, over time, established themselves as parts of the community. And through lots of conversations, a lot of meetings, and a lot of sort of witnessing, a lot of willingness to experience the community on the community’s terms. Worship with the community, which is you know that’s where your in a sacred space there, and if you can, if you’re there, and enter it with the respect and the sense of worship, that’s–people have a pretty good read on, you know, and you aren’t doing that – the feeling.

RS: Yeah.

RH: And I’ve never seen that happen before and so, yeah I was actually almost stunned to see that take place.

RS: Hmm.

Reginald Hildebrand (RH): The other connection I have, I developed in Chapel Hill around that time the church. And how that developed, I was living in Durham and had really wanted to attend a church in Durham, to establish myself in that community. I visited the best known AME church in Durham, which was the only one I knew anything about.

And it’s said something about the distinction between, which we may come to later, distinction between the sense of the Black community in Durham and Chapel Hill. Which explains in part why I made the choice I did. But, the church that I visited was very old, very prominent church, attended by very prominent people and when you came in that church, you knew.

This was a prominent church, attended by prominent people. And, you know, I visited a few times and nobody paid much attention to me, not that they needed to pay any attention to me, but they could’ve said hello. [laughs]

And so I decided I need to shop around; this isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. And wound up, not sure how I heard about this church, but wound up in St. Paul AME Church in Chapel Hill, which is a much smaller church. I visited once and found it to be very warm and liked the people and liked the range of backgrounds of the people who went that I could pick up from that visiting.

People seemed welcoming and so I wound up joining that church, which was really my, sort of, the only real connection I – ongoing connection I have to the Chapel Hill community, but it’s a pretty good connection. Yeah.

Rob Stephens: Yeah, I think so.

Dr. Reginald Hildebrand is an Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is also a member of St. Paul CME Church and an advisory board member of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History. This interview was conducted as part of the Jackson Center’s Facing Our Neighbors Initiative, and is part of the Jackson Center’s life history series. Topics include: family history and genealogy, especially in South Carolina; stories of great-grandparents out of slavery; memories of his grandmothers and the schools where they each taught; origination of name “Hildebrand”; ancestral connections and significance of generations of history; arguments about reparations; family reunions; importance of education to his family; his childhood in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City; consciousness of race in school; segregation in Atlantic City; Civil Rights Movement; draw to Durham and Chapel Hill; becoming a professor; membership at St. Paul AME Church; Rebecca Clark; black community in Durham; encounters with Greenbridge and local development; significance of UNC-Now partnership.