[Introductory piano and oboe music plays]
Molly: Hey everyone, it's Molly Luby here at Chapel Hill Public Library, and here's something you probably already know. On August 20th 2018, student activists at UNC tore down Silent Sam.
[Cheering group of students, shouting 'Tear it down', with cheering that gets louder and more celebratory as time goes on]
[piano introspective music]
Molly: Just a few months later, in February, some of those same activists actually installed two of their on historical markers; one in downtown Chapel Hill, right on Franklin Street, and one on campus.
Female Student: We install these monuments, one as an act of transfiguration. It is not too late to do what those before us would not, or could not, do. It is not too late for a moral awakening and a true reckoning of the past. The future we want will not come about unless we fight for it. We commemorate...
[voice fades out]
Molly: Within days both markers were gone.
[Piano and oboe music plays]
Molly: But then a couple of weeks later, Dr. Reginald Hilderbrand spoke at a site dedication for yet another historical marker.
Dr. Hilderbrand: In the future, when your children ask what these stones mean to you, 
Man in audience: C'mon here, Yeah!
Dr. Hilderbrand: you will tell them these stones 
Man in background: these stones!
Dr. Hilderbrand: will always remind the people of Israel of what happened here.
[happy shouting voices of crowd]
Dr. Hilderbrand: In reference to the historical marker that we will place at the site of the old colonial drugstore. What will we tell our children?
[Piano music]
Molly: And that's where our podcast begins. In this, our first season, we want to uncover untold community stories around the monuments and markers of Chapel Hill. To do this, I've enlisted my dear friend Danita Mason Hogans to co-host this season. She also happens to be a brilliant community historian. Hey Danita!
Danita: Hey Molly!
Molly: So, I know you've got a long family history in Chapel Hill. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Danita: Well, sure! I'm from Chapel Hill, of course, from 7 generations of both sides of my family. And I'm so proud to be from Chapel Hill. I love Chapel Hill. I love being a daughter of the South, and I love being part of the family and families who with their labor built UNC. Local families like mine have been here throughout the University's history, and we were part of that history, and we are still here. 
Molly: And that is why I am so grateful to have you here in this studio, helping guide us as we dive into the stories of Chapel Hill's community history. And so, are you ready to get started?
Danita: Let's have that talk! I'm ready!
[Title Music]
Molly: This is Re/Collecting Chapel Hill
Danita: History from the inside out, and bottom up.
1st Man: My Chapel Hill looks very different from what I saw in the Mansion or in publications that supposedly represented my town.
2nd Man: One person's interpretation of the past might differ from another person's interpretation of the past.
Woman: And we do fight for this memory all the time.
3rd Man: If a bridge chooses sides, it is no longer a bridge.
[Music fades]
Molly: The Old Post Office on Franklin Street faces McCorkle Place. That vast green lawn at the heart of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Where for generations, students and the community who served them were watched over by a silent sentinel. The space once occupied by Silent Sam is just visible from the concrete plaza square in front of the Post Office Building. And it's here where our story begins; in this plaza square. Regular hang of the so-called Post Office kids in the 1990s. Site of public protests and rallies since the 1960s; community gathering spot for peace vigils, press conferences, and parties.
[Women, calling themselves 'The Raging Grannies' singing 'We rage to end all wars' to the tune of 'The Union makes us strong']
[Audience applauds]
Male: Hello, this is a wonderful day to talk about, freedom! This is a perfect place, to say what is this about? This is not about people who want to make a vote, but people who like to live in peace and justice and out of oppression.
[Man singing 'The way down the River']
Woman: Occupy has the values and the message and the system of governing, and we have changed the terms of debate.
[Police Siren and lots of indistinguishable shouting of Police and Protestors, including a beep of a rude word]
Crowd of people: Hey hey!
[air horn beeps twice]
Crowd of people: Ho ho!
[air horn beeps twice]
Crowd of people: This racist scum has got to go! Hey Hey! Ho Ho!
Shouting Man: We want Justice!
[the noise of the Crowd of people fades out]
Molly: So, how did this place become the place for the people of Chapel Hill to test the limits of our right to free speech and our right to assemble? That's what we are going to explore in our first episode: Peace in Justice Plaza
[Noise of crowd]
Jerry: The hair stood up on the back of my neck, when I read the article of the people fasting during Holy Week. And I said 'You know what? I was there!' I'm Jerry Neville. I grew up in Chapel Hill. I am 64 years old, and I work for the town of Chapel Hill. I didn't have, at that time, at that age, I did not have very much contact with white people. I didn't start out walking down town until a few years after that.
Molly: Chapel Hill in 1964 was like most southern communities: Segregated.
Woman 1: So, what I remember hearing was that there was a line that you went on Franklin Street and you could only go a certain distance and after a certain time you had to be back home.
Woman 2: We were taught our limits and how far we could go and expectation of what age and what needed us to be. One, because of safety. I was safe there.
Molly: And Jerry grew up the youngest of 7 siblings, all of whom went to jail for1960s for acts of civil disobedience. He was a true child of the movement.
Danita: [Laughs] Everybody loves Jerry Neville. He is so cool! 
[Laughs] 
Danita: Jerry was a member of the Mayor's Civil Right's Task Force. He knows a lot about Chapel Hill History and I mean, he has been collecting history for decades. He has some amazing photographs too! His whole family is rooted in social justice in Chapel Hill and Jerry has some great stories. 
[Music]
Jerry: So my friend JoJo Webb we were partners in crime.
[Jerry laughs]
Jerry: And so, one of the things that we always did was go visit his Mother who cooked at the Kal Fi [?] Fraternity. Kal fi Fraternity is located on the corner of Columbia and McCauley street. I can never forget that building. I spent a lot of time there. That was always exciting to be able to go with him to visit his mother because she would feed us pretty well. JoJo's Mother, Miss Goldie, she always had a post office box, which we always had mail come to our house. Our parents never had a post office box but she always had a post office box. And I remember going with JoJo and his Mom going to get the mail from their box, which I thought was pretty cool. Y'know, we never had that.
Molly: I remember having the same feeling when I was a kid because the little key
Jerry: Yeah, yeah yeah
Molly: and you could look back there
Jerry: and you could lock up
Molly: and there was people back there
Jerry: Yeah
[Music]
Jerry: I had time out of school, Good Friday. Of course, you know, Jo had to go visit with his Mom. We got there, she said 'I want you guys to do me a favor: I want you to take this ice up to the post office. There are some people up there fasting'. I said 'Alright'. So, we didn't hesitate. To take the ice, we had baskets on our bicycles because we both had carried newspapers. Y'know, as a summer job. So we took the ice up to the Post Office. When we arrived on our bikes, there were laying on blankets.
[Music]
Molly: Jerry Neville on his bike. What was going on then?
Danita: [Laughs] Well, in March 1964 a small group of young people who were leading the active protest decided to take public action to support the more than 1500 people who were still in jail as a result of the Civil Rights Protests. 
Molly: And I wanted to show you this letter from 1964. It's titled 'Holy Week Fast' at the top of the page, and it talks about all of the reasons why the writers decided to fast in the week leading up to Easter that year. There's a call to the community to end the segregated Jim Crow business practices of many Chapel Hill Merchants, and the letter is signed... Well, here, can you read the names of the people who signed it?
Danita: Sure! That's John Dunn, LeVert Taylor, Patrick Cusack, and James T Foushee. [Laughs] We call him TT Foushee. And you can catch James TT Foushee at McDonald's just about any morning, cutting it up and laughing and talking and sharing things with his friends. But, for me TT Foushee, if there had to be one example of someone who went through a lot with the Civil Rights Movement, and his tenacity, it would be James TT Foushee. And his brother Braxton Foushee, who really helped to usher in a new dynamic of political power in Chapel Hill. So, the Foushee family is really, really rooted in Southern resistance of oppression. 
Molly: And here, I'm going to play a story that comes to us from our friends over at WUNC where James Foushee recounts his experience of the Holy Week Fast.
[jazzy harmonica and bass Music]
James Foushee: My name's James Foushee. When we sat and decided we were going to have a hunger strike in front of the Post Office on Franklin Street. It was public ground, so that's why we picked that spot because we knew they would have a hard time removing us, as it is owned by the Post Office, not by the town of Chapel Hill. We had sleeping blankets, and we would man it 24 hours, around the clock, everyday. After a couple of days, you couldn't eat nothing, no way, as your body got adjusted not eating.
[Bass and Spanish Guitar music with harmonica]
James: That last two or three days, I feel like I was burning up on the inside as I know that also it makes you weak. I'm talking about real weak. I just refused to leave. 
[laughs]
James: It took me a long time to go away. I was along the track with changing some of the minds of the Merchants, getting them to thinking that I play the fool when the colors don't make that much difference. Personally, I just could not understand it, and I still don't understand it. There were sometimes when I felt like I wanted to quit, but I said to myself I said no, nuh-uh, I can't, this just ain't right, and I am not going to quit. This is not an option. Someone, somebody had to keep the ball going.
[Bass and Spanish Guitar music with harmonica]
Molly: Thanks to WUNC and James Foushee for letting us share that story. So, James TT Foushee was the only native Chapel Hillian to participate in the hunger strike. He was there with other activists, some of whom were white.
Danita: Right, and in 1964 the white establishment wasn't too happy about a particular young white man, Pat Cusack. Pat was originally from Alabama, and he was the great-grandson of a slave owner and Klansmen. He was also one of the leaders of the Civil Right's Movement in Chapel Hill. And Pat died in 2004 after dedicating his whole life to social justice and community organizing. 
Molly: And Pat shared his experiences of the movement in Chapel Hill in a long fascinating oral history interview that you can find in the Southern Oral History Program archives at UNC. We'll also link to it in our show notes. Here he talks about the response from the Ku Klux Klan to the Holy Week Fast.
Pat Cusack: We were going to die right there on Franklin Street
Woman: In front of the Post Office
Pat: Yes, yes. And that was where all of the Klans gathered from around the south that Saturday night. And then Chief Blake told me the next day, he said 'Klavern number 9 saved your life'. That was the Orange Country Klavern. And he said that he had them infiltrated' and he said that 'they decided they were going to kill you all. They were going to come in with a drum of sulphuric acid'. And he said that the local Klavern saved your life y'know, all of you boys are go home and we are going to bear the brunt of it.' So self determination within the Klan.
[Woman laughs in background]
Pat: But, I told him, I said 'Chief, I'm so glad that you didn't tell us last night'. I would have been scared'
Man: I'm in this city tonight Ladies and Gentlemen at the Post Office down here. It's an open violation of the Postal Regulation for anyone to loiter on postal property, yet your Post Master here, in this city, allows this group of people to lay down, sit down all over the steps of your post office department here. Though there are people of this city should move them. 
[cheering]
Man: If they can't do it, Ladies and Gentlemen, they are not worthy being called White People.
Pat: The Klan drove by but that was it. And, as I said, I did not know about the acid, thank goodness, until the next day. 
Woman: Yes, Yes.
Pat: Basically, I am chicken-hearted throughout all of this and I didn't need any. 
[Woman laughs]
Pat: Still am! But still, it was interesting the first time I went back to walk past that patch of grass and to walk past the Colonial Drug Store. I still couldn't go in there, as I could still see the owner still in there. He was perhaps he the most [...]. We had a big picket line there. 
Woman: We had a perpetual picket line.
Pat: And Franklin Street? Lord, it looked almost the same. 
[Music]
Danita: So Pat Cusack made the comment that nothing changed as a result of this strike. And, when change finally came, it wasn't because Chapel Hill was ahead of the curve or more liberal than other places in the South.
Molly: Yes, that's right. It happened when the Federal Government finally passed the Civil Rights Act in the summer of 1964. Chapel Hill was definitely not ahead on this one. 
Danita: You know Molly, when I look at these old photographs of Pat Cusack and TT Foushee when they were doing the Hunger Strike, it's really remarkable to me to witness this dynamic of young white students bonding with young black local people with the hopes of a better future for Chapel Hill and whether people are protesting or whether people are talking on Franklin Street, a lot of times it's the ideals that they're holding up as a vision for what Chapel Hill should be, and could be, potentially. So, I think it's pretty iconic. 
[noise of crowd outside, with a lady singing]
Molly: And so this is where the Holy Week Fast happened, here in front of the Old Post Office. And, for years it was known as "The square in front of the downtown Post Office on Franklin Street where we always have rallies and community events". 
Danita: Yeah, and now it's called the Peace and Justice Plaza, and there is a granite marker there, with the names of people who worked for the principles of peace and justice in Chapel Hill. 
Molly: And that's where our story picks up next time on Re/Collecting Chapel Hill. We are going to fast forward fifty-five years from 1964's Hunger Strike at the Old Post Office to Peace and Justice Plaza in the summer of 2019.
Danita: Yes! Two new names are added to the granite marker, and we'll tell you why.
Molly: Yeah, and they're good ones!
[Song: Stagger Lee by Lloyd Price]
Molly: It truly takes a village to raise a podcast, but especially a history podcast produced a bunch of librarians with basically no experience. And so, we owe great heaps of gratitude of far too many names to list here. You'll find our full credits as well as more on all of the history work that we are doing at Chapel Hill Public Library online at chapelhillhistory.org/podcast. One special shout out this week though, to one of our favorite people, Jerry Neville, whose story of riding his bicycle to the Old Post Office on Franklin Street one Friday morning in 1964 inspired this episode. This week's outro song that is playing out this week, Stagger Lee, by Lloyd Price also comes from Jerry. Its one of many you can listen to on our first Spotify playlist, Jerry Neville's Essential Soundtrack of the 1960s. The story of Stag Lee is based on a real murder that occurred in July 1895 in St Louis, Missouri. Find more about that, as well as Jerry's full Spotify playlist in our show notes at chapelhillhistory.org/podcast.