Oral Histories

William Gattis (WG): If you really want to know Black history, take the time to sometime read “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Around 1910 it was written for children to tell them about their history. And if you go line for line, you will read about the struggle and I’m often surprised that even now we……

William Gattis (WG): Unfortunately, Katherine, the whole premise on which it starts is wrong. For example, it gives a more modern-day version of what happened. If you can imagine the 1865 Emancipation Proclamation in the Chapel Hill Area. For example, this starts off as… Patricia “Pat” Jackson (PJ):…

Patricia “Pat” Jackson: …now where is this place? William Gattis: (Reading from the Wikipedia entry in italics) Pottersfield, also called Pottersville, was a large historically Black neighborhood located in downtown Chapel Hill–No way!–downtown Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was originally built…

William Gattis: If we historically want to find out, and this is my understanding: it was Northside with the adopted name Potter’s Field, because in the Bible, Potter’s Field was where we had the dead bodies. And the whole idea is we can’t have you all among us, so we’re going to put you on the…

William Gattis: And we talk about these people as though they were trained university workers. No, if the university is the big employer, it’s not only the biggest employer of Black people but white people as well. It is the emerald place, the invisible kingdom, and it is part of the structure, the…

William Gattis: White men thought it was their point of duty to cross over into Northside or Pottersfield to rape Black women and kill Black men and then go back to the other side of town and not have to pay a price for that balance. And that is why, as we move along, parents would tell us: “There…

William Gattis: And what we have to understand [is] that during this time we have embraced – we have embellished – we have been complicit – in relegating people to a certain area, [and] making sure that they didn’t have the right tools to live. Now, if you can call 25 dollars a week–maybe– as an…

William Gattis: And it did not stop in the ‘50s. We experienced–we are still experiencing part of the fallout, but this went on through the ‘60s. The students from Lincoln High School, this was beginning in 1962 through ‘64, we’re talking about teenagers. And it has also been said that…

William Gattis (WG): We call that urban renewal. You see, so when we look up and if we really want to be realistic, they are synonymous in terms of the outcome, you see. So what I’m suggesting, as a kid, even if I’m young in the late 40s and the 50s, I’m still relegated to a place, you see. As a…

William Gattis (WG): We talk about the land being deeded for the [Hargraves] Center but it actually began with people like, I think, someone named Mr. Cole and someone by the name of Hackney. I can find out the information from Burnis Hackney. But in the early part of the community, they were…

"Thirteen years old and I gave my hand over to God. I've been in church ever since. Of course when you go off to college, you kind of drift away, but you always come back. I loved it. It was a good experience for me. It has always been a good experience for me." - Betty Baldwin Geer This interview…

“Well, I feel like it’s a big issue of whether or not businesses should have a social component in their mission. And I think that ideally, it’s best for business to have that element. And so, I feel like it’s responsible for businesses to take community input into consideration.” - Paige In this…

This interview is part of an oral history project called Southern Communities: Listening for a Change: Mighty Tigers--Oral HIstories of Chapel Hill's Lincoln High School. The interviewes were conducted from 2000-2001, by Bob Gilgor, with former teachers, staff, and students from Chapel Hill, N.C.'s…

At the time of the interview, Alicia Gomez was a Jackson Scholar who attended city council and town meetings and worked on a video project. Gomez is originally from New York and moved to Chapel Hill in 2009. Gomez attended Pace charter school after getting off-track academically. She speaks about…

This interview is part of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center’s A Place at the Table Series. Roberto Gonzalez, a resident of the Northside neighborhood and tenant of St. Josephs CME church, immigrated from Mexico to Chapel Hill when he was about 26 years old. After arriving in 2007, he was introduced to…

This interview is part of an oral history project called Southern Communities: Listening for a Change: Mighty Tigers--Oral HIstories of Chapel Hill's Lincoln High School. The interviewes were conducted from 2000-2001, by Bob Gilgor, with former teachers, staff, and students from Chapel Hill, N.C.'s…

BG: Were there any other things about the football team that you remember that you want to share?  BH: Mainly Coach Peerman the team-. Actually Coach Bradshaw was there and went on to great success. He's also a member of the Hall of Fame. He was there before I got there and before Coach Peerman, but…