“…you saw those people being in your community, and then as you continued to get a little older, you would see these people as entrepreneurs —how fascinating, you know, to just be able to see the same common people that you would see all of the time as business people too.” 1 Pat Jackson
Just flip through Jim Wallace’s photos of the civil rights movement in Chapel Hill and you’ll get a sense of what it took to get many white merchants in downtown Chapel Hill to desegregate their stores. Pictures show students and residents picketing popular restaurants like the Pines, Brady’s, Carolina Café, and the Dairy Bar on Franklin; sitting at lunch counters where they were taunted and refused service; carrying signs, marching and pointing their fingers at businesses like Colonial Drug and Joe’s, enduring verbal and physical attacks, and being arrested by the local cops.2 Other white-owned businesses served black customers but generally did not make them feel welcome. Northsiders tell story after story about having to enter businesses from back entrances and waiting for service after all of the white customers were served first.
But even more remarkable is how few people know about the many Black-owned businesses that used to make up the Black business district on the west side of town. Today, few traces of them remain.
Northside resident Chelsea Alston remembers how things used to be: “I’ve heard stories from people that were around when there were Black owned businesses and most people that owned those businesses were family members or they knew the kid’s parents. It was really easy for them to come in and just hang around and don’t have to worry about safety or anything. Or parents being worried about where they were at because they knew the person that owned the place so they knew they would be fine, their children would be fine. So if there were more Black owned businesses there would be more places for African Americans to go and hang out.”3
Many black-owned businesses were “microenterprises”; they emerged from very few resources since Chapel Hill banks did not lend to blacks. They emerged out of the need for goods and services, including ambulance and basic medical services, since black residents were underserved and in many cases not served at all. And businesses arose out of the need for income, since many of the jobs available to black residents — including those at the university– were very poorly paid. Most families needed multiple sources of income to make ends meet.
The area bordering the Northside neighborhood comprising a few blocks on West Rosemary and North Graham Streets was known as Chapel Hill’s black business district. Northsiders could shop for groceries there, get a haircut, buy some barbeque, listen to music. Black travelers who were refused a room at Watt’s Motel in Chapel Hill could check in to Mason’s or one of the boarding houses in Northside and get a good night’s sleep. While they couldn’t get a table at the Pines, Northsiders could get front-row seats at Charlie Mason’s Starlite Supper Club and listen to world-renowned musicians including Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown, and Ella Fitzgerald. You called community icon Bynum Weaver if you needed an ambulance or had to arrange a funeral; or you could go to Weaver’s market and get some candy while your mama had her hair done by Ms. Susie Weaver in her beauty shop. Nobody minded—in fact, it seems it was expected– that you lingered a bit and caught up on local gossip or asked about family members.
Today, only 3.6 percent of local businesses in Chapel Hill are black-owned,4 and towering over the center of what once was known as the Midway District is Greenbridge, a six-story building of luxury condominiums, a fitness studio and a start-up company that cater to a more affluent set. In the words of Willis Farrington, who grew up a few blocks away: “This thing has taken up probably about six or seven either homes or … Black owned businesses where this mass of building now stands.” 5
Next door, in the shadow of the new development, is Knotts Funeral Home, once Bynum Weaver’s funeral home. It looks pretty much like it did during segregation. It’s still black-run and black-owned, and there’s still enough local demand for a family-run place that knows its customers. And there’s Mama Dip’s, run by the Council family since 1976, a time when many other black-owned businesses were closing. Many locals today point to Mama Dip’s as an example of a thriving black-owned business, but old-time Northsiders will tell you about the place Mama Dip first learned how to cook for customers, a place called Bill’s Barbeque. As Mr. Farrington tells it: “Before they even thought of this Greenbridge, used to be Bill’s Barbeque. And Bill’s Barbeque was where Mama Dip pretty much, from what we – those that know her and know him—got her start, from their little restaurant [that] used to sit right here [points to a hair salon on the ground floor in the Greenbridge building on Graham Street]. And they had the best chicken sandwiches and chuck wagon sandwiches and hot dogs in town.”
In addition to the official storefront businesses, Chapel Hill’s black neighborhoods were home to a vibrant and essential informal economy. The neighbors knew where to go if you needed a ride, hauling, medical services, a boarding house, a good meal, laundry services, child care, auto work, household repairs, sewing work, masonry, medical attention, a floral arrangement or some fresh produce. Joe Fearrington used to grow vegetables on his backyard plot; when the corn and the sweet potatoes were ripe, he recalls, neighbors were invited to come and get some. Like pretty much anywhere else in the world, an informal economy emerged in Chapel Hill because the entrance to the formal economy was blocked by segregation and the many manifestations of racism, from depressed wages to lack of financial services to the threat of violence. The cost of doing business with white people – even if not officially prohibited — was often much too high.
Clementine Fearrington Self grew up on Graham Street and participated in many of the civil rights demonstrations in the early sixties when she was in high school. She and her mother, Lucy Fearrington, describe the scene in downtown Chapel Hill to interviewer Hudson Vaughan:
Ms. Lucy Fearrington: “And I remember when the man at the drugstore wouldn’t let me have no sandwich.”
Ms. Clementine Self: “That was Colonial Drug.”
Hudson Vaughan: “They took the booths out too, didn’t they?”
CS: “Yeah, they took the booths out so that we couldn’t sit down. So they decided no one would sit. Everybody would have to stand or leave. And Brady’s, which is, what is it? 501 now, I think it’s called. It’s right in front of Trader Joe’s. … And then there was another one further down Franklin St. I just don’t remember what the name of that restaurant was. It was like, sort of remind you of a drive-in, in a way. With a thing over it, like a car shed over it. And you would drive up and get your milkshakes. You know how the kids, they didn’t do it here, but some cities they skate to the car and bring you your, it was that kind of atmosphere.”
HV: “Oh yeah. Gotcha.”
CS: “We couldn’t go in there either. But the thing about Chapel Hill, though, many of our community people, we had a lot of black business people in Chapel Hill, so we really didn’t have to go to those places if we didn’t want to. … So, there were businesses we could go to without having to venture out.” 6
Many Northsiders will tell stories about the humiliation of being denied entrance to white-owned businesses or being told to enter from back entrances; and then they’ll talk about the joy they felt when they got away with sneaking to Weaver’s store during school and getting a snack for themselves. The comfort of being recognized and welcomed in the “black world” contrasted sharply with the sense of fear and danger black kids felt when they crossed into the “white world.” Most people talk of those days in positive terms; black–owned stores were places, like the schools and churches, where community pride and cohesion flourished; merchants provided opportunities for young people to earn some change and for older folks to share local news. When you consider what downtown Chapel Hill looked like in the 1960s, you’ll undoubtedly ask yourself, “Where did all that opportunity go?” It’s a good question.
Notes
1 Marian Cheek Jackson Center, “Patricia ‘Pat’ Jackson,” interviewed by Hudson Vaughan, 5 June 2008, From the Rock Wall [website], accessed 16 February 2021, http://fromtherockwall.org/people/patricia-pat-jackson
2 See Paul Dickson and Jim Wallace, Courage in the Moment: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961-1964 (Dover Publications, 2012).
3 Marian Cheek Jackson Center, “Chelsea Alston,” interviewed by Alexander Stephens, 11 April 2012, From the Rock Wall [website], accessed on 16 February 2021, https://fromtherockwall.org/people/chelsea-alston
4 Janna Childers, “Black Entrepreneurship in Chapel Hill,” Daily Tar Heel, 24 November 2015, http://dailytarheel.com/article/2015/11/black-entrepreneurship-in-chapel-hill
5 Marian Cheek Jackson Center, “Willis Farrington,” interviewed by Alexander Stephens, 18 October 2011, From the Rock Wall [website], accessed 16 February 2021, https://fromtherockwall.org/people/willis-farrington
6 Marian Cheek Jackson Center, “Joseph Fearrington and Clementine Self–On home, community, World War II, and Civil Rights”, interviewed by Hudson Vaughan, 21 April 2011, From the Rock Wall [website], accessed 16 February 2021, https://fromtherockwall.org/oral-histories/joseph-fearrington-and-clementine-self
MIGHTY 