Creator: Chapel Hill Historical Society.
Collection number: 4205
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Abstract: The Chapel Hill Historical Society was formed in 1966 in Chapel Hill, N.C. In 1974, the oral history committee was established to conduct interviews with local Chapel Hill and Carrboro, N.C., residents in an effort to preserve first-hand recollections about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, local African American communities, and local mill-worker communities. One of the first major projects conducted was a series of interviews with men and women who had worked in the Carrboro textile mills in the early and mid-20th century. The collection consists of 40 of the original 117 oral history interviews conducted by the Chapel Hill Historical Society between 1974 and 1978 in the “Generations of Carrboro Mill Families” project. Interviewees include mill workers, mill supervisors, and several doctors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who discuss health in the early 20th century. Interview topics include working in the Carrboro mills from the turn of the 20th century through the Great Depression and World War I; work conditions, social relations, and union organizing in the mills; everyday life in North Carolina and especially in Carrboro in the early 20th century, including displacement from farms into the town, housing conditions, health, education, family life, childbirth, and women in work; and the University of North Carolina.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: Several of the interviews discuss race in Chapel Hill and the local African American community. For example see the interview with Forrest Lacock (Audiocassette C-4205/51 :Lacock, Forrest, 6 February 1975: Audio; Folder 51 Lacock, Forrest, 6 February 1975: Transcript, 35 pages)