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Object Description
Interview no. | X-0034 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | X.2. Rural South: Back Ways: Understanding Segregation in the Rural South |
Project description | Back Ways: Understanding Segregation in the Rural South is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research project designed to unearth, describe, and map the often hidden forces of structural and institutional discrimination that have outlasted the victories of the Civil Rights Movement. This project began in 2014 under the direction of Seth Kotch, professor in American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, and interviews have been conducted by Darius Scott, SOHP field scholar and PhD in Geography at UNC Chapel Hill. The geographic focus of this project is rural piedmont and eastern North Carolina, where poverty and crime rates remain high, academic performance is low, and residents - especially African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos - are routinely seen as threatening or incapable. This project is situated in a growing body of scholarship around space, place, and identity, central issues to research in the humanities. It seeks to engage a community in a conversation about how it shaped its own spaces in the face of formal discrimination and the effects of those acts of resistance. |
Date | 20 July 2015 |
Interviewee | Torain, Patricia. |
Interviewee occupation | Computer programmers |
Interviewee DOB | Undisclosed. |
Interviewee ethnicity | African Americans |
Interviewer | Scott, Darius. |
Abstract | Patricia Torain is a long-time resident of Mebane, NC. She discusses her youth first on sharecropping farms outside the area and later in Mebane’s small black communities. She discusses her father's work at Craftique Furniture. Patricia's family acquired her current residence in the transition away from farming. The interview covers how the Smith Road community, where her family first lived in Mebane, has changed significantly by way of modernization and home demolitions. She remembers the community being notably rural, close-knit, and all-black. She remembers there being no paved streets in the area and no indoor plumbing. She recounts the customs of segregation during her family's time on farms, such as not dining indoors with white families, but everyone drinking water from a single “dipper” regardless of race. She then covers the differences of living during Jim Crow in Alamance and post-farming, such as entering restaurants through the backdoor. She covers her work history from washing dishes and later working at the hosiery mill and Burlington Industries. She touches on transitioning out of mill work and eventually becoming a mainframe programmer. Patricia recounts being struck by the West End Revitalization Association's (WERA) impact prior to joining the board. She discusses WERA making her aware of environmental discrimination in the local black communities. Relatedly, she details her vision for improvement, which includes access to public sewage. |
Citation | Interview with Patricia Torain by Darius Scott, August 20, 2015, X-0034, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |
Description
Interview no. | X0034_Audio |