Students Document Black Communities
Note: This is a follow-up to a previous story about Because We’re Still Here (and Moving).
By Justin Smith
Staff Writer
Commons Photos by Justin Smith
The three students set out on foot into Chapel Hill’s Northside community armed with a notebook, a digital audio recorder and a disposable 35mm camera. They have everything they need to conduct a field interview – almost everything.
“Do you know where Caldwell Street is,” asks UNC-Chapel Hill freshman Maura Baldiga.
UNC-CH sophomore Jessica Ra responds, “I have no idea.”
Navigating through sometimes unfamiliar neighborhoods is just part of the challenge for students participating in Because We’re Here Still (and Moving), a project in which area high school students team up with UNC-Chapel Hill sociology students to document Northside and Pine Knolls, two of Chapel Hill’s historically black communities.
Ra uses her cell phone to call the interviewee to ask for directions. The woman cancels the interview, saying she is too busy – and it turns out she doesn’t live on Caldwell Street anyway.
Situations like this have forced the project organizers to make adjustments to their original plan, said Hidden Voices Director Lynden Harris.
“It’s become very flexible, but I think that’s great,” Harris said.
During a period of four Saturdays, 10 teams, each with two UNC-CH students and one high school student, interviewed residents and business owners in the black communities.
Team members share the roles of photographer, oral historian and producer.
Thomas Moore, a senior at East Chapel Hill High School, lives in the Northside community and participates in Because We’re Still Here (and Moving).
“We’re trying to save the community,” Moore said.
The 18-year-old said he has seen Northside change in recent years with increased development and the rise in the number of college students living in the area.
Moore said some families have moved away from the area.
“It seems like they’re getting forced to move out,” he said.
Harris said one of the goals of the project is to document the stories of older residents before it is too late.
“Some of the older residents have been interviewed many times, so one of the things we wanted to do is ask them questions they have not been asked before,” Harris said.
On a Wednesday evening, Moore and three other students gathered in a conference room in the Midway Business Center in Chapel Hill as they prepared to interview Fred Battle, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“Who are your parents?” Battle asked Moore. “Most of the people around here, I know their parents.”
After the small-talk is done, UNC senior Leniqua Blue gets Battle to sign a release form while UNC junior Amelia O’Rourke-Owens places an audio recorder on the conference table.
O’Rourke-Owens did not have to ask many questions. Battle spoke freely about the changing face of Chapel Hill’s historically black communities.
“The taxes are at a point, they’re so high, a lot of our seniors can’t afford to live here,” Battle said.
He added that many of the houses are being sold or turned into rental property.
The local civil rights leader also complained about the public education that black students in the area receive.
“The biggest difference between the schools today and the schools in the past is back then we felt like a family,” Battle said.
The transcript of Battle’s interview along with the other oral histories will be used to create a live stage production to be performed in February in conjunction with Black History Month.
Harris said the performance, like the field work, is a work in progress.
“On stage, we’re going to have images projected, maps, students, maybe some seniors, and that’s as much as we know right now,” Harris said with a laugh.
