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Oral History Interview with Kathryn Cheek, March 27, 2003. Interview K-0203. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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  • Abstract
    Kathryn Cheek, a white woman who was in elementary school when Chapel Hill schools desegregated, remembers desegregation and race relations during this stormy time. Her memories of desegregation are rather hazy—she says that as a child, she did not pay much attention to current events, and that as a white child, she had little stake in desegregation—but she recalls clearly her fear of a certain black girl who threatened her throughout junior high, and groups of black girls who attacked white girls in the bathrooms. Cheek's timeline is difficult to piece together, since she recalls desegregation during her very early years of school, but graduated in the early 1970s, just a few years after desegregation began.
    Excerpts
  • Race is not a big deal to children
  • Tensions at Chapel Hill High School
  • Black girls victimize white girls in desegregated school
  • Little mingling between white and black students
  • Post-segregation reemergence of tensions
  • Black teachers and administrators at CHHS
  • Sit-ins cause tension for white students
  • Racial barriers persist
  • Tensions at Chapel Hill High School
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Subjects
  • School integration--North Carolina--Chapel Hill
  • African Americans--North Carolina--Chapel Hill
  • Chapel Hill (N.C.)--Race relations--20th century
  • Cheek, Kathy, 1955-
  • Chapel Hill High School--Riot, 1969
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.