Willie Mae Patterson
"My granddad and my grandma they always had a garden. We grew up with a garden and they canned our food. We had a lot and they would can the vegetables, had a lot of tomatoes so they canned the tomatoes, and string beans, so you didn’t have to go back to the store in the wintertime to buy them. Money was really tight back in those days for us and that's why everything we got from the garden my mother would can and we lived on that."
- Willie Mae Patterson
Willie Mae Patterson lived in her house for almost her entire life. The rock wall outside of her house was the location where the first sit-in, which took place at Colonial Drug, was planned. Willie Mae was a proud and faithful member of Second Baptist. You could frequently catch her sitting outside on her porch watching the birds. The big red bird was her favorite.
Willie Mae Patterson - On cooking and food
As a part of the Jackson Center’s food ways project, Willie Mae Patterson speaks to her experience with food and cooking. White Patterson grew up with a very small kitchen, her grandma taught her how to cook and always had lots of vegetables in her garden. Some of Patterson’s most popular dishes include cabbage, cheesecake, and black-eyed peas, and she speaks to her love of making homemade soups. While she loves frozen Chinese food and orange chicken from the local Chinese restaurant, she had little success making her own orange chicken, so she mainly makes soul food and sticks to what she learned from her grandma growing up. She urges young people to learn how to cook in order to save money and share meals with others, and she brags about her son (who claims he is a better chef than her) and his four grandkids.
Willie Mae Patterson - On the African American freedom struggle and Civil Rights Movement in Chapel Hill
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.
