Re/Collecting Chapel Hill

The James Cates Scholars is a youth-led, elder informed program dedicated to centering, exploring and sharing marginalized Black history in Chapel Hill. The Scholars range in age from middle school, high school, college and beyond.

Find out more and support the program at Bridging the Gap with Danita Mason-Hogans.

CJ Suitt (he/him/they/them) is a performance poet, arts educator, and community organizer from Chapel Hill, N.C., whose work is rooted in storytelling and social justice.

CJ most recently was appointed as the first Poet Laureate of Chapel Hill. He is committed to speaking truth to power and aims to be a bridge for communities who can’t always see themselves in each other.

This episode was produced by Klaus Mayr and edited by Klaus and Molly.

Links:

• Chapel Hill Poet Laureate | CJ Suitt | Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture — In November of 2019, the Town of Chapel Hill appointed artist, educator, and activist CJ Suitt as the first Poet Laureate of the community.
• In The Aftermath | Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture — In The Aftermath is a poem written and performed by Chapel Hill Poet Laureate CJ Suitt. This work was prompted by the current times and hopes to recognize community, nostalgia, and hope for the future.
• Tracks Music Library | Sonny Miles
• Tracks Music Library | Rowdy
• YOUTH COUNCIL | chcnaacp — On June 6th, 2020, the Chapel Hill Carrboro NAACP Youth Council hosted a Social Justice Rally to honor our slain brothers and sisters.

Join Chapel Hill Public Library staff and community members as we uncover the untold histories of Chapel Hill, from the inside out and bottom up.

In this episode we dive into Chapel Hill's musical history, starting with one of its most beloved artists, Elizabeth Cotten. We search for signs of Chapel Hill in Cotten's music and learn about life for a young Black girl growing up in the turn of the century South.

Producer, Mandella Younge, joins Molly as co-host for this episode. Special thanks to Glenn Hinson, Brent Glass, and the Chapel Hill Historical Society.

This episode was written, produced and edited by Mandella Younge and Molly Luby.

Links:

• Mike Seeger Collection at UNC Wilson Library — the collection includes dozens of recordings Seeger made of Elizabeth Cotten, playing, speaking and in concert.
• This black female musician you may not know has written songs you probably do | GMA
• The Carolina times. (Durham, N.C.) 1919-current, July 03, 1976, Second Section, Page 23, Image 23 · North Carolina Newspapers — Ms. Cotten shows up on the lineup several times
• The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism - Google Books — The chapter "Black as Folk: The Southern Civil Rights Movement and the Folk Music Revival" by Grace Elizabeth Hale paints rural Black southerners as "the folk" in a bid for Northern white sympathies during the Civil Rights Movement. The advantages, limitations, and who it left behind.
• Cotten, Elizabeth (c. 1893–1987) | Encyclopedia.com — We recommend the great list of sources at the bottom.
• John Ullman's liner notes — Extensive notes from Cotten's posthumously released album, Shake Sugaree
• Liner notes from When I'm Gone — Extensive liner notes on When I'm Gone were compiled from taped conversations with Elizabeth Cotten, Alice Gerrard, and Mike Seeger between 1966 and 1979
• Elizabeth Cotten playlist on Spotify
• Public Art | Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture — As part of the North Carolina Musicians Mural Project, the Elizabeth Cotten mural honors the local blues legend and her lasting impact on the community.

The mission of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill is to share stories of our community’s history from the inside out and bottom up. Usually, that means sharing stories from the past, in the voices of the people who lived that history. We’re not totally sure how to document and share history of the present moment.

Real talk. It’s feeling like a lot right now. Kids are home. Grownups are home. We’re all trying to figure out how to do this thing, settling in for the long haul. At the podcast, we’re thinking about how we can best serve our community and history. We don’t know, not yet. But we’d love to keep hearing your voices. The messages we’ve received over the past week were sometimes scared, sometimes funny. We’re going to share those messages with you today.

And you out there, listening. You are the living history we want to hear. Head to chapelhillhistory.org or call us at (919) 960-1736.‬ Tell us what’s changed in your world. Tell us about the quiet.

Links:

• (11) John Howie Jr.
• John Howie Jr (@johnhowiejr) • Instagram photos and videos — Solo/Rosewood Bluff/Two Dollar Pistols. NC Honky Tonk singer/songwriter + drums on occasion. Not Tonight is out on Suah Sounds.

This is a confusing and difficult time in Chapel Hill and in the world. To slow the spread of COVID-19, we must isolate ourselves in our homes and distance ourselves from the places and activities that usually make up our days. Our strange shared mission is solitude.

As a result, we’re starting to live our lives in totally unfamiliar ways—working from home, diving deeper and longer into dinner conversations, home-schooling our kids, and taking up new activities that we otherwise wouldn’t have found the time or space for.

As audio storytellers, we at Re/Collecting Chapel Hill want to explore creative ways to connect our community by collecting stories and sounds of the way lives are changing and people are feeling in and around Chapel Hill.

So tell us your news. Share something that’s bringing you joy. We want to hear it all. This may turn into a short podcast series, or it may simply end up being an audio record of this challenging and curious time.

Record your own message-in-a-bottle at chapelhillhistory.org. We can't wait to hear from you.

In August, 2018 student activists toppled UNC's confederate monument, Silent Sam. In our final part of our 3-part series exploring the history of the statue, we dig into the question: what comes after Silent Sam?

Part 2, in our 3-part Silent Sam series.

In this episode, we share the story of James Cates. James was born and raised in Chapel Hill. In 1970, when he was just 22-years-old, he was murderd on UNC campus.

Journalist Mike Ogle has spent years researching the life and death of James Cates. We'll share his work and hear from community members who knew Cates, including those with him when he died.

Season one of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill was supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Links:

• James Cates — This research was compiled and published by Mike Ogle on October 26, 2018 on Twitter.

What was the meaning of the American Civil War? And why are we still arguing over this some 150 years later? In this, the first of our 3-part series on Silent Sam, we explore the purpose of confederate monuments and their impact on the African American community in Chapel Hill.

From the work of United Daughters of the Confederacy in the early 1900s to spread their version of history throughout the south, to the first stirrings of the Black Power Movement at the end of the 1960s, we will hear how the white south's lost cause mythology affected the lives of black people, and how young Chapel Hillians began to push back on that narrative.

We introduce one of our associate producers in this episode, Klaus Mayr. Klaus spent countless hours researching histories, collecting audio, and assisting in editing all three parts of our Silent Sam series.

This episode was written and produced by Klaus Mayr, Molly Luby, and Danita Mason-Hogans. Editing by Klaus and Molly. Mixing by Ryan Chamberlain. With thanks to Aaron Keane for audio recording, technical assitance, and production coaching.

Season one of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill was supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Links:

• The Ku Klux Klan: or Invisible empire - Laura Martin Rose - Google Books — Who were the Ku Klux? Where did the Klan originate? What was its object and mission?
• Silent Sam: The Confederate Monument at the University of North Carolina
• Silent Sam — We created this site to help people learn about UNC’s Confederate monument. It tells a story that is vitally important at this moment in the life of our university, state, and nation. We believe that knowing the past is a necessary first step toward creating a better future.
• The Silent Sam Syllabus: A Module for Teaching Confederate Monumentality — Monument Lab — Where did all these monuments come from? What were they meant to symbolize, and how has that symbolism changed over time? Who built them, and for whom were they intended? How does one differentiate between American history and American mythology? What should be done with these monuments?
• Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina | Confederate Monument, UNC (Chapel Hill) — Julian Carr spoke at the dedication of the monument in 1913. His speech recounted the heroic efforts of the men the monument honored as well as the women on the home front. The speech also spoke to the racialized nature of the commemoration as Carr tells this story: “100 yards from where we stand, less than 90 days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench, until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady.”
• [Easy Chair] | The Monument Wars, by Rebecca Solnit | Harper's Magazine — “Us,” of course, refers to white people. The history books insist that the North won the war, but in the South it’s hard to find the evidence. If the North had won the war, there would not be statues and street names honoring the defeated leaders. If the North had won the war, our monuments would be to the suffering of slaves and their struggle to be free. If the North had won the war, the Confederate flag would be a symbol of shameful beliefs and military defeat, seen only in museums. If the North had won the war, the war would be over.

Public memorials are embedded in our landscape. In this episode we learn the history behind two public memorial benches that bookend the Bolin Creek Trail in Chapel Hill.

Learn how two men devoted their lives to making our public spaces more open and accessbile for all of us...and how one man tried to stop such work from ever happening.

This episode was produced and edited by Molly Luby, with help from Mandella Younge, Omar Roque, David Felton, and Susan Brown. Audio mixing by Ryan Chamberlain. 

Season one of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill was supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Links:

• Remembering Joe Herzenberg: Lightning Brown recalled as fighter on local, gay issues: Chapel Hill activist dies at 48 — Brown was drafting an ordinance to clarify Chapel Hill's rules for people who run businesses in their homes. It was issues like this one, obscure yet crucial to people's lives, that fired Brown's blood during the past 20 years of being one of the most consistent and persuasive community activists in town. The only thing that finally could stop Brown from getting his way, it seems, was the AIDS virus that finally overwhelmed him Monday. He was 48.

We explore the ways that cemeteries act as memorials and markers. How do Chapel Hill’s cemeteries help us remember the people who came before us? How have they obscured the past? Join us and our special tour guide, local historian Ernest Dollar, as we walk through four Chapel Hill burial sites.

In this episode, you also meet associate producer, Mandella Younge. Mandella works behind the scenes on Re/Collecting Chapel Hill. In this episode, she joins Danita on the mic.

Podcast production team: Mandella Younge, Sam Bermas-Dawes, Klaus Mayr, and Ryan Chamberlain. With thanks to Aaron Keane for audio recording, technical assistance and production coaching.

Season one of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill was supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Links:

• Cemetery Census: Purefoy Family Cemetery — Condition is fair. Several large trees and quite a few young trees cover the area along with periwinkle. Report has it that the plot was originally surrounded by a stone wall several feet high, but except for the east wall and a part of the north wall, most of the stones have disappeared [1974].
• Cemetery Census: Purefoy and Related Families (Black) — This is possibly the burial place of African-Americans who were servants of the Purefoy family that owned and farmed this property, and later of their descendants.
• Old Chapel Hill Cemetery | Town of Chapel Hill, NC — The Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, originally called the College Graveyard, is located on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Caswell County Historical Association: Nelly Strowd Strayhorn (1850-1950) — Chapel Hill Cemetery