Black kids' routes to avoid white harassment
In this excerpt, Davis remembers the convoluted route he and friends took to avoid walking behind Chapel Hill Junior High School. They wanted to avoid "frat boys" from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who would take a break from studying to harass black junior high schoolers.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Nate Davis, February 6, 2001. Interview K-0538. 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
RG: Are there any other memories that you have of the junior high school or Phillips that you’d like to share?
ND: Junior high school…I remember we, ’cause you had the junior high school here, then you had the high school, and it was separated by an auditorium, and then you had, in the back was the arts and crafts building, and then you had the gymnasium and the P.E. department was kind of in the back. We came out the door from the junior high school, myself and David Briggs and Pernell Jackson, we would walk across the street to the Exxon service station which is now McFarling’s Exxon, we would walk down the street past where BW3 is now, used to be the old Belk’s and feed store, and cross over to go to the gymnasium and to go to the arts and crafts building because we didn’t want to walk behind the school. There was a big field between the school and there was a fraternity house, and sometimes the students from the fraternity house would come over there and bother us, not just us but all the students. So we would walk across the street and go down and come back across to get to class so we wouldn’t have to go through the back where everybody would be. There was a snack bar back there so all the students would be back there, you know.
