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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Kojo Nantambu, May 15, 1978. Interview B-0059. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Reverend Vaughan is shot, and more young black men to take to the streets

Some of the older members of the African American community argued against the violence. When the Reverend Bond Vaughan urged a car full of young men to abandon their weapons, someone shot him with a pellet gun. Ironically, this caused Nantambu to send Bill Boykin out to find more young men to patrol the streets.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Kojo Nantambu, May 15, 1978. Interview B-0059. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

At that particular time, a green pick-up truck pulled up behind this yellow cab at the corner of Seventh and Nun. And at the time this Reverend Bond Vaughan, who was the pastor of Central Baptist Church, was talking to these brothers ... and the crackers blasted him ... shot him. And he was trying to talk them brothers into putting down their guns. And those crackers wore his ass out.
LARRY THOMAS:
Seriously?
KOJO NANTAMBU:
Yeah, they shot him, shot him in the leg. Evidently they used bird-seed because, from my understanding, some of the pellets are still inside, in his leg. At that time, I thought, because the yellow cab was there, that he got into the cab and went to the hospital, but I read in the newspaper--somebody was doing a back article--they say that he got in his own Volkswagen and drove himself to the hospital. When we saw this happen, Boykin and I fired on the vehicle because the brothers who he was talking to panicked; they started screaming and hollering and hiding behind the concrete because--they were fifteen years old, fourteen or fifteen, very young brothers. This is the type of people that we had up there guarding the church, young black men who still had a long future supposedly. I figured at that time that things were going to get a little bit heavier, so I told Boykin--at that time I used to call him--to try to go find some more people. I said, "Man, look, we got to have some more brothers up here. It's getting too hot." So he took his father's station wagon and then went to find some more brothers, but they never got back because--he picked up one brother, and they got stopped on Castle Street, Ninth and Castle somewhere, by the police, and they were arrested for going armed during a state of emergency, or something like that. The police took them to jail. They were coming up there to help support the church. After that I don't even know who took the Seventh and Nun post, but I went over on Sixth Street at the there, and Steve then was still behind the church, and I was up there with Bill. Now Bill changed posts with me--I don't know where Bill went at--I took his position at Sixth Street. Richard McCoy was using the binoculars to watch for cars. I stayed up there until 9:15 because ...