From Chapel Hill’s 18th century beginnings, Black female voices and ambitions have shaped its contemporary spirit and structures, and yet their ongoing sacrifices have largely been obscured from the public light—until now.
“I Was Still Singing,” a digital exhibit by Chapel Hill Community History that coincides with Women’s History Month celebrations, aims to illuminate the accomplishments of Black women throughout our town’s history. The exhibit both honors their enduring legacies, while also inspiring future leagues of community advocates. Combining dozens of interviews and primary sources, “I Was Still Singing” documents local Black women’s achievements in the categories of “body,” “mind” and “soul,” representing healthcare, education and community organizing, respectively.
Central to the exhibit are 27 bold and innovative Black women, each with their own narrative to tell and hopeful visions to elucidate. In light of the success of the Historic Civil Rights Commemoration Task Force, community organizers realized the need to highlight female contributions to the town’s strides in racial justice.
A Steering Committee, composed of eight of the women featured in the exhibit, alongside four young local Black women, worked under the mentorship of community historian Danita Mason-Hogans to create three minidocumentaries regarding the women’s roles. In addition, staff members from the Chapel Hill Public Library helped collect primary sources and pursue in-depth research.
“Black women—the nurturers, the mothers, the keepers of wisdom, bold, courageous, magical, because we know how to make something out of nothing; forgiving, stern, but in that sternness coming from a deep place of love,” said Stephanie Terry, one of the women featured in the exhibit, on video. “I am blessed to have been surrounded by incredible Black women that have raised kings and queens and princesses and I just want to express and pour the love that has been sown into me. So Black girl magic, Black women magic, is a hundred percent real, all day, every day.”
The exhibit tells the story of many graduates of Lincoln High School, Chapel Hill’s formerly all-Black school, who pioneered local desegregation. Among the women featured are Alice Battle, one of the first teachers in an integrated classroom, Annie B. Hargett, who worked as a nurse in the era of Jim Crow at Duke University Hospital, and Betty Geer, who organized marches on segregated businesses in Chapel Hill and Greensboro in spite of facing imprisonment, among many others.
Patricia Mason, another alumna of Lincoln High School who played a key role in the local civil rights movement, continues to uphold the legacy of fighting for racial justice as a member of the Social Interest Civic Group, which was founded in 1962 by fifteen local Black women. Dedicated to promoting civic engagement, the organization currently helps assist young Black women afford college.
In alignment with her goal of energizing more members of her community to participate in politics, Mason has personally worked to amplify the local Black vote.
“When I retired, [working with] a group of ladies and one student, we decided that there was low Black participation, and we decided that it was really because they were not reminded of how to vote, where and when to vote, [and] so we gathered together and called ourselves the ‘Underground Railroad’…,” said Mason in a 2019 interview with Danita Mason-Hogans. “At the voting, we understood that it was a big surge, and they didn’t know where it came from. And we all sat back and laughed at the idea that we had done something, but most people didn’t know who we were.”
Numerous other advocates and community organizers among those spotlighted in the exhibit have led the fight for racial equality into the present, including Anna Richards, Bonita Joyce, Corretta Sharpless, Karen Reid and Stephanie Terry. Several of the women noted that they were inspired by their own mothers, like the Foster sisters, Colleen R. Rogers and Juanita Alston, as well as Marjorie Land, providing continuity in their generational effort to affirm equal rights. Woven throughout all of the women’s stories are enduring lessons in the power of resilience, hard work and sheer determination.
One of the women, Theresa Watson, has dedicated herself to helping young Black people in the community attend college. In addition to providing mentorship, she has worked to give meals to youth, as well as tours of HBCUs, which offer a “really important” outlet for students to see Black representation in higher education, according to Watson. Herself a graduate of an HBCU, she is committed to raising the next generation of Black changemakers.
“[If] you set forth expectations for a kid, they meet those expectations… And so often, you would [say] why are we not having this [outcome]? Because there’s no expectation for the African-American kids to succeed. People talk about their weaknesses. And that’s why I just feel it necessary to go take care of some of the things [affecting children]…,” said Watson in her 2019 oral interview with Danita Mason-Hogans. “I have worked with some kids who didn’t have food. Why did I need to tell anybody?… I just take pans of food over there so the kids can eat; they know that if they got hungry they had no shame in calling me.”
Photos courtesy of Chapel Hill Community History
