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Object Description
Interview no. | X-0035 |
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 | 5 August 2015 |
Interviewee | Connally, Evon, 1958- |
Interviewee occupation |
Clerks Health Care workers |
Interviewee DOB | 1958 |
Interviewee ethnicity | African Americans |
Interviewer | Scott, Darius. |
Abstract | Evon Connally, resident of White Level, North Carolina, discusses the transitioning landscape of the White Level community of Mebane, NC. She recounts her family move from sharecropping in Caswell County to owning property in Alamance County where her father took up work as a brick mason. She details the differences between transitory life on various farms and moving to Mebane early in her childhood. She remembers starting at an all-black school and moving into an integrated one, referencing traditions like May Day. She discusses leaving Mebane to live with her husband in Graham, North Carolina and then seizing an opportunity to move back and be closer to family. The interview covers the present challenges of living outside of Mebane’s city limits and in an extraterritorial jurisdiction, which include unpaved streets. She also touches on neighbors’ reluctance to be annexed into the city due to the costs of city taxes. The interview covers the changing demographics of White Level and waning church membership. Connally discusses joining the executive board of the West End Revitalization Association (WERA) and working to inform area residents of their rights to demand inclusion in the 119 bypass project planning along with fair treatment and compensation broadly speaking. She discusses a particular campaign to have White Level residents agree to city water and sewage access, given a series of ongoing septic tank issues in the community. Difficulty engaging neighboring homeowners and negotiating with local government are discussed in some detail. |
Citation | Interview with Evon Connally by Darius Scott, 5 August 2015, X-0035, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | X0035_Audio |