U0591_Transcript |
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Object Description
Interview no. | U-0591 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | U.18. Long Civil Rights Movement: Heirs to a Fighting Tradition |
Project description | The Heirs Project is a multi-phased oral history initiative that explores the stories and traditions of social justice activism in North Carolina through in-depth interviews with 14 highly respected activists and organizers. Selected for the integrity and high level of skill in their work dedicated to social justice, the interviewees represent a diversity of age, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. These narratives capture the richness of a set of activists with powerful perspectives on social justice, political activism, and similar visions of the common good. The stories shared by this cohort of activists represent personal moments of transition and transformation, tales of empowerment and exhaustion, and organizing successes and defeats. The Project seeks to highlight the history of progressive political action in North Carolina through the stories and experiences of those who pushed for change. |
Date | August 11 2005 |
Interviewee | Zelter, Barbara. |
Interviewee occupation |
Community organizers Directors, NGOs and institutes Social justice activists |
Interviewee DOB | 1950 |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Burge, Bridgette. |
Abstract | Childhood in Rochester, N.Y., as part of a white, middle-class, ethnically Jewish family; Experience growing up in the Catholic church and the gender roles there; her parents and their siblings; her move to Geneva, N.Y., to attend Hobart and Wiliam Smith College; Meeting her husband Tom in college; Move to Durham, N.C. in 1971; Work with Baldwins retail store, Snelling and Snelling Personnel, and Research Triangle Institute; Early interest in racial and class justice; giving up her faith when she went to college; Volunteer work in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s but lack of connectedness to other activists; the impact on her of Father Bill Coolidge of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Cary, N.C.; her participant in adult education through Management and Training Associates; Decision to go to graduate school in social work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Position as N.C. Fair Share's health care community organizer and the lessons she learned there about race, class, sexism, and the importance of experience apart from formal education; her participation in the health committee of the NC Council of Churches; Work with JUBILEE around welfare policy, living wage, job loss, and sustainable economic development; Peace work with the Council of Churches; her children, Charlie and Mollie, and their political views; Importance of relationships in her organizing work; the feeling as a privileged person that she hasn't done enough; Being a recipient of the Health of the Public award, the Mitch Snyder award, and the Defenders of Justice award; Writing and publications about social justice issues for pastors and the church; Publication of “Not Making It in North Carolina,”and the process of writing about people without exploiting them for their stories. |
Citation | Interview with Barbara Zelter by Bridgette Burge, August 11 2005 U-0591, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | U0591_Transcript |