Clementine Self was among the first Black students to attend Chapel Hill High School in the 1960s when schools in Chapel Hill began to desegregate. As a teenager, she was active in the local civil rights movement, and remembers sitting in at segregated establishments and participating in marches. As an adult, Ms. Self continued to push for the betterment of …
Rashii Purefoy turned her passion for nurturing children into a lifelong career that has impacted generations of Black children in Chapel Hill. She first started teaching the Ebone Soul Strutters class in the 1970s as a recreational youth dance group for kids of color. At the time, she recalls, very few Black children attended the main dance studio in town, …
Vernelle Jones was part of the last graduating class of Lincoln High School in 1966, and remembers when token integration opened the option for her and her classmates to attend Chapel Hill High School. Although some of her classmates opted to transfer, Ms. Jones was encouraged to stay at Lincoln by her mother, who worried about her safety at the …
Virginia Davis has fond memories of her time at OCTS and Lincoln High School. She was a very active student, and participated in the softball team as well as the majorettes. One of her clearest memories of OCTS was when the dentist would visit the school. “When the dentist would come over, and you had teeth that had to be …
Vivian Foushee was part of the last graduating class of Orange County Training School. She still has fond memories of her teachers there, who all seemed to care about her success. Her parents also pushed her academically, and insisted that she attend college. In 1951 Ms. Foushee began attending North Carolina Central in Durham, North Carolina. From a young age, …
Lillie Perry Atwater started a lifetime of service when she was just in the ninth grade. After finishing her school day at Lincoln High School, the young Chapel Hillian would start her part-time job at Memorial Hospital. She graduated in 1958 and worked to put herself through nursing school, continuing a passion for community health that has lasted up to …
When Annie B. Hargett began working at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in 1961, the facility was almost completely segregated. She recalls floors of the hospital segregated by race and Black nurses being required to go to the basement to eat. Ms. Hargett was one of the few Black nurses with a Bachelor’s Degree in nursing at the time. She graduated …