A community discovers a black man passing as white
Graham tells a brief story about passing: a black man passing as white was denied access to a cafe in Mooresville, North Carolina, once the community found out that he was black.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Terry Graham, March 22, 1999. Interview K-0434. 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
- TERRY GRAHAM:
-
And I went in the service up there in 1943-came out and came to
Mooresville in '46 and started the taxi business and this
Dunbar school that you were wanting to talk about, I remember when it
was built, but I didn't go. I had some children that went
there. And our first principal, we had, at Dunbar, he was a black man
but he passed as a white man, and he ate in the cafés
'til they found out that he was principal of the
…
- AMANDA COVINGTON:
-
Really …
- TERRY GRAHAM:
-
Dunbar school.
- AMANDA COVINGTON:
-
Is this Mr. Woods?
- TERRY GRAHAM:
-
Woods, yeah, uh-huh.
- AMANDA COVINGTON:
-
Okay, okay. And then…
- TERRY GRAHAM:
-
So they stopped him from eating in the café.
- AMANDA COVINGTON:
-
Oh my goodness, that's an interesting story.
