NC Humanities Council; Cultural Reports Part 1

join us on a journey to the local property damage with disease county courthouse shell the documents maybe dusty but they're hardly dull together they create a powerful and authentic portrayal of slaves effect on life throughout the south and they come without the personal bias usually found in other accounts of his virtual character or these are real people that's lauren schweiger professor of history at the university of north carolina in greensboro the languages as it was spoken and by the people that spoke at these are actual court cases we have the results of the court cases and that's what i think really swimming theyre spent six hundred days researching more than seventeen thousand county court cases and state legislative petitions that related to slavery fourteen of those cases are dramatized in let my people go they were staged by brenda swan is founder and artistic director of the torrent good ensemble of north

carolina based in greensboro i took out the story and use the words that were in that the document to tell the story that's when i pulled out and let my people go we hear from all kinds of people free blacks overseers planters wife slave traders brenda salinas slavery affected every bit of society every bit of it it turned neighbor against neighbor husband against my friend against friend because it rerouted tumbling head in all kinds of places there is the story of an overseer who shot a slave mistaking him for a dog and the story of an old woman who was sold for just the most brutal tale is of a slave in tennessee who was beaten for being late to a job his master had hired him out to do online you could lay your hands and i was buying

properties hit them to israel's of products is by it this master was compensated thousand dollars not because they were so badly hurt that because somehow he managed to run away after the wedding the stories like dave's were all too common there are others that offer different perspectives of the peculiar institution one is from an overseer in louisiana who says his former employer after he was attacked by a slave about thursday june house in an online video called plato on without lala lala close ok oh struck the bangers oh my left hand and you said among the thing for me the news the global hit by i have to say over the most cruel another surprising tale comes from a planters wife in texas in petitions for divorce she complains that her husband regularly has sex with several of his slaves and shows her disrespect

good morning when asked about it don't talk to perhaps the most poignant story in let my people go belongs to lucy andrew is the daughter of a white woman and a black slave she has an unusual request for the legislature in south carolina and the mother in the presence of three women of color i am excluded from the society of the wide class and gravitas that their slaves and we asked him to come slowly on any

wrong will teach now on a beach well actor stephen gq portrays several different white men in the play says there was a foul taste in his mouth the first few times he spoke some of his lines but he says he learned to consider otherwise detestable characters in context of their times the moral pattern was a different thing and you can approach it from a nineteen ninety eight point of view you can approach evil people and i think if you play it that way they're evil comes out a lot stronger than evil of the institution of slavery for all the violence in anguish it portrays the play tells some stories that have relatively happy endings dr jack it's given permission to practice medicine amelia green a free black woman from new bern north carolina is able to buy her own daughter and goes to court to free her and another

free black says the local sheriff after incarcerate her former husband's debts morning again all right at first slyness and schwerner were worried that people would want to see a piece that lives a dark period in the nation's history but since let my people go debuted in the piedmont area several months ago the response says once has been overwhelming and discussion sessions after each performance people have asked endless questions how often do people ask to return to slavery how good slaves

go about buying their freedom how common was it for planters to sleep at their slaves and what about black slave owners at a recent performance at the shiloh baptist church in greensboro which took a leading role during the civil rights movement of the sixties reverend otis carsten says it's important to learn about the past in order to understand the present like that is really interesting it says the places have patients have come and how far they still have to go to state wide to one of the my people go begins this week and continues through the spring they're also tentative plans for performances outside north carolina for w and c news i'm leda hartman most of the one thousand and

five north carolina voters surveyed in the poll give race relations in their community fair to middling grades forty five percent say relations are good while thirty four percent say they're fair the differing viewpoints of people in the chapel hill area reflecting it's recess at elmer carlos and town in car broke a food store geared mainly toward the triangles pointing out population one from on pettis says on the whole race relations in this area are good pettis who's mexican says life is easier in these parts for hispanic people who speak english or find others to speak spanish but he says he hasn't had any racial problems living here are failing meanwhile downtown on franklin street rachel green who's from durham says she thinks there's a lot of separation between people of different ethnic backgrounds personal experience is a clear majority of the poll's respondents sixty three percent say

making race relations there should be one of the top priorities in the state the results differ slightly by region concern about race relations is higher in the triad and on the coast and lower in the western piedmont and the mountains were fewer minorities live still says jack clark director of kbc research the firm that conducted the poll most people throughout north carolina have a similar view their perspective on the situation very very they may not know how a variety of opinions on how to approach it and i think really the interest of primitive race relations there one person who strongly agrees with that was elizabeth alston who's shopping at the key food mart in chapel hill a candidate has in its counted as a corpse or else university of north carolina student katherine barron also sees the need for positive change she says that part of the problem is the change that has occurred has been mostly cosmetic she says of people have

racist attitudes they tend to keep it to themselves so they purchase more sexist i think probably on the whole it has gotten a little bit better but not as much as it may seem in fact says ptc director clark the tendency of people to want to say the right thing may have influenced some of the results in the your voice or vote poll that's especially true for a question regarding equal opportunity eighty nine percent of the respondents say they support programs that ensure equal opportunity for minorities in schools and the workplace an even higher number ninety two percent support such efforts for lower income people regardless of race jack clark that very well they actually played know it's like i don't believe in equal opportunity in alabama colorado cleveland fair enough though support for the concept of leveling the playing field for minorities may be strong it get substantially weaker when the question relate specifically to affirmative action only seventy four percent of those polled say affirmative action programs should

be used in education and the workplace and of all the responses regarding race in the pole this one is the most widely divided along racial lines well ninety two percent of african americans say they favor affirmative action only sixty nine percent of whites do the sampling of people of other ethnic backgrounds as too small to be broken down separately again it's not hard to find people who reflect these differences of opinion at chapel hill's key food mart when elizabeth alston has asked for her opinion about affirmative action she answers yet like they say that the policy on a prada bags and i think at least he did in the workplace and as well as that unc students caught her now has this view for about this group for immigration to its current issue for steve jobs and schooling their qualifications not the girls there are certain race or a certain

qualifications and receive a job or assume school educators agree with you student katherine baron meanwhile reflects the ambivalence many people have about such a hot button issue i guess i feel two ways it's a bill that i am it's really important because an ideal society and things would it be equal but because we don't have an ideal society it's our listener say first i'd be able to end when something like an amoeba he closer together boys it was not by our survey just be judged on the actual like factual with who's better than somebody else but i think just doesn't work that way and that's probably the safest out from jackson like many others barron says she hopes and expects race relations to improve in the years ahead but not everyone will necessarily look to the political process to make that happen only slightly more than half of the people surveyed say they can rely on government to do the right

thing for w and c news i'm leda hartman the southern baptist tradition stretches all the way back to the early seventeenth century when a small group of protestant reformers in great britain parted ways with the anglican church and came to the new world in search of religious freedom rule tyson is a religious studies professor at the university of north carolina he says the early baptists had some revolutionary notions radical separation of church and state the liberty of the individual conscience got about a whisper of course end of freedom of expression from the star tyson says the baptists have taken a grassroots approach to their practice of christianity they believe that people should be baptized only after they choose to join the church they also believe that each local church has the power to make its own decisions and that each individual has a direct connection to god so far anyway suspicious oh groups like the roman catholics or the

methodist they were the high quality with the orthodox a this is forced by strong bureaucracy southern baptist didn't exist until the civil war when that nomination split along sectional lines and the southern group never rejoined its northern counterpart today there are sixteen million southern baptists in every state in the union with more than one million in north carolina of all the mainline christians baptist in the south have tended to be the most conservative of the past quarter century has brought change and tension to religious life in southern states like north carolina bilbo right public relations director for the north carolina baptist convention explains the south remained a relatively isolated section of the countries that are the rules now and so southern members are north of that this week we're much more homogeneous in time to catch our heterogeneity and people moving around people of being from one state and moving to another and so forth are really created some strange on this image and it probably in the fifties and sixties the

route began to develop and so what occurred in the southern baptist convention without so much as flip a splintering will tyson meanwhile says there was another force at work the rise of conservatism in the nineteen eighties in reaction to the counterculture of the nineteen sixties no words evangelicals want political what fate that well i won't even use the word disgust with what they understood to be happening on college campus and elsewhere in the sixties the tug of war between conservative and moderate baptists first surfaced in nineteen seventy nine when conservatives gained control of the southern baptist convention the group's national organization unlike moderate baptists conservatives frown on the ordination of women as ministers or deacons and they support a literal interpretation of the bible until recently north carolina stood as a stronghold of moderates that's why few people were expecting conservative greg knapp is to be elected president of the state baptist convention in nineteen ninety six

mathis pastor of the mud creek baptist church in hendersonville a small town south of ashville won by fewer than eight hundred votes but he says his election had a large ripple effect here we go during his two year stint as president mathis says he tried to be fair by appointing both conservatives and moderates to state committees and encouraging dialogue between both groups he says the north carolina baptist convention today might serve as a role model for other states struggling with division there's been still not every baptist pastor in the state is comfortable with recent developments

one who was wary is becky albright an associate minister at the mill brick baptist church in north raleigh where her husband bob all britain serves as senior minister number was one of the first southern baptist churches in north carolina to accept the ordination of women and to welcome minorities now says all britain the church's found itself at odds with some of the resolutions put forth by the national convention like the way call of duty or a crisis unlike that comes down to my husband to kill you makes called the visitors his church and they would say why are you discover that his church was like no we're really not all britain says even though the state and national conventions have no explicit authority over local churches they still wield influence the commission is a hard and say you can't use on somebody there's a very strong messages that come from the convention about ways he is acceptable practice hands preferences eu would comply with those features about two years ago after extended discussion no bricks members quietly voted to

leave the national convention a move some other moderate churches in the state have also made all britain says milberg that still affiliated with the state convention so far but i think we had in the years we've been here which for years no sane how the state convention is also can make an associate of the national group has made and that is a cause of concern watching the changes of the last generation religious studies professor will tyson says he finds a contradiction between the baptist a regional skepticism of a powerful church hierarchy and the national conventions current strategy where's the baptist classically have had a major stake in the pluralism of our society because they saw themselves as a monarchy and that was a critic of the majority's majority of the taxes and now with upward mobility extended education the rebel positions about all of these things play and do well mr tyson warns that too

much exclusion could prove self defeating for southern baptists especially as the nation continues to broaden ethnically politically and spiritually but spokesman bill but wright says the upheaval of recent years may actually help the baptists survive he says much of the friction between moderates and conservatives has died down as local churches have gone back to tending their own affairs he adds that and learn to coexist both groups have made the southern baptist church a more diverse place than it used to be we may have been like yugoslavia may never really had been a country ages was posing as one and the many different factions that were always there it became more obvious in the eighties i think in the nineties as betty we get near the year two thousand people have decided that they're more important things to do other and argue over some of these issues my church they believe one thing your church they believe another but i've got more pressing problems than to try to get you to be like me on the eve of the millennium the key to the future salvation of the southern baptist church may very well lie in its

past in a tradition of religious freedom and local autonomy that's now four hundred years old if there is unity to be found it maybe in accepting some individual differences of faith for wunc's i'm leda hartman it's business banks united methodist churches and welcoming believers to its faults and seventeen sixty two setting the tiny community in southern granville county banks has a remarkable history of the old graves and the grassy tree lined churchyard city they tell about the early days of the american revolution when the congregation

readily through their anglican minister out or manmade stay for the king of england can tell about church members building a new sanction their own hands or the century until about selling wood from the original chaplain to build a barn which still stands today just a generation or two ago the overwhelming majority of north carolinians who attended church when to small country chapels like banks jackson carol professor of religion in society at the duke divinity school says almost two thirds of the state's eleven thousand churches are still considered small membership churches with an average sunday attendance of about seventy five people carol says most small membership churches are in rural areas where they still play a vital role and for ebola the maybe the primaries socialist titian of the community will be the place where funerals ohio where family reunions are hell where homecoming events are held for the congregation and for the community but the last fifty or

seventy five years have brought a watershed change to the state as people left their farms and small mill towns with the city in the suburbs these days many of the state's rural churches are struggling to stay open they face the loss of younger members and the passing of older one not to mention diminishing resources in recent years many a small church has been forced to shut its doors or merge with the larger church or sell its building to a different a nomination some a limp along with just a handful of members holding services sporadically jackson carol says many world congregations find it difficult to adapt to change and seek out new members even when their area is growing because they're so rooted in their own traditions for example if you have a community of people have been there for years and they have banned farmers only work in an industry and you get a group of folks who come in and who are either retirees or who are highly educated or whatever the fins unfortunately the homogeneity of many congregations says those are not our kind of

people small churches are in poorer communities of memory they've got a story in history that will preserve that so their heritages and of awareness or grow but not all country churches decide to stick with the old ways at any price many says carol had made a deliberate decision to courtney members they had spruced up their facilities develop special programs for children and hosted potluck some home comings all things aim to form connections with the rest of the local community that's what happens at bank united methodist church where about seventy five people come to worship each sunday during the service church members shared community news the birth of the baby girl a good prognosis for a neighbor getting treated for cancer pastor diane blanchard announce a number that's the church is sponsoring blanchard also paying attention to the

handful of children who come to worship she sits on the statues in front of the pulpit as the kids circle around her the names of the world well you know you can tell people how much after the service was seventy eight year old eveline moore says she's glad to see the young faces a church the way to do it the

roots here go back even further collins says making a year mr steele and that's precisely the draw for younger newcomers like bill every last forty minutes from the only to worship here diane blanchard believes that the presence of god can be felt in the church of any size she wants plastered in a church in carroll county that had just two members and no piano player so she had to play blanchard says god always spoke of those tiny services still she adds rural churches with an aging and shrinking membership had extra struggles that can be overwhelming there are certain things that need to be done in a

church worship service needs to be attended the building needs to take care of their newly made plans for children if you have children in the church and he's going to teach a sunday school class and when you have very few people and each person has to take a tremendous amount of glee the work of the church and that can be very tiring bank says blanchard is thriving partly because it's so good at welcoming newcomers nevertheless banks does have a chair of challenges it shares its pastor with another church and struggles to balance its budget at the end of each year the blanchard says there will always be a place for a small country church like this one because it offers people something priceless the thing that these churches have going for them that is not possible in a large city church is that everybody is important everybody's noticed if you are not there on a sunday morning your place is they

can't and it makes a difference to everybody else was worshiping because they know you and you know ironically the way for a country church to preserve its tradition of being a community center may lie in accepting change and learning to adapt to it after all north carolina's rural communities still the places where people can come together and build vital ties the same as they did when banks united methodist church first opened in seventeen sixty four wunc's i'm leda hartman reporting every sunday later single missionary baptist church

spillover with worshippers come to pray to hear the gospel to sing and sway to use it even the most burst with energy paintings of african american life size photographs of malcolm x enter civil rights march and a bulletin board crowded with pictures of the smiling face of churchgoers from infancy sunday mornings churches and my spirit and the reason why has a lot to do with what happens here the other guys we're trying to be told about the mission that's greater st paul's pastor william hite we want to be in the community we want the community to be involved in the church throughout its ninety eight year history this church has played a vital role here in the albright section of northeast central durham but since passed her had arrived four years ago greater st paul's has made a deliberate effort to reach out to everyone in the neighborhood whether or not their church members we want to have a spiritual component but the sense that it's not good enough just to door sunday

albright has a rich heritage and a lot of pride but like many urban neighborhoods it also has a lot of leads says reverend michael page the church administrator this is considered a whole economic blighted community in terms of his true social problems such as drug use of teenage characters the crime is a real issue here i'll but picture sitting right here the bank headquartered in this area i think it's significant that we asked of the mission to reach out and help it whichever way we care the church puts on a halloween festival for kids some are dances for young adults and thanksgiving dinner for seniors it ministers to aids patients and to young man in prison there are robots classes at church as well as martial arts and after school tutoring programs for single parents and sickle cell anemia patients are in the works almost all of this is the vision of pastor height and energetic man who has a powerful presence and not just because he's built like a linebacker

a former history teacher i grew up on the streets of baltimore during the unrest of the sixties he says although he was exposed to a lot of negative influences the church held his community together you know you go from place to place to place to place and you find a little low but the church has always been constant you know in particular african american history only thing that we have the church is really the only thing that we actually have ownership in regards to what you are out there where you are economically where you are in the market place socially politically if you come to the church defining quality if the church is being true to the gospel you find equality tight following the example of jesus to serve means more than staying at the pulpit you can mess damn him think that you could preach to a person and his or her

physical hungers gone away you got to teach them you know how what do you want this i want to do this sort of become dependent upon any system be a church or secular but rather they become independent and end their independent they begin to go it changes what happens in the basement of greater st paul's for a week when several dozen middle and high school students come to work on their academics kids are part of the durham scholars program sponsored by the kenya institute for private enterprise at the university of north carolina students have a wide range of academic ability but they've all been labeled at risk because of the neighborhood's michele who's in eighth grade says he appreciates the extra help students here because they can't always get you seventh grader

with his social skills oh yeah i have someone like pulled me aside to me and where he's wrong and that you know so i think it really gave a cannon person writers cinco has offered its case to the term scholars program for free when another church union baptist could no longer accommodate all the students manager beverly mr stevens says not all churches would be willing to open their doors down there if we didn't have that he is on sunday the second coming home where he

says while people at miracles here in this line i don't think about it in two years the church will be a century old looking toward the future of the church and of albright has to hide has a lot of dreams left to realize housing for senior citizens hospice for people with aids long term care for the elderly health for fledgling business is a credit union he says when he arrives at the heavenly gates he'd rather be told he did too much not enough and he says he can do without later seen three thousand members working with him and of course

he adds there's the help of god for wu and see news i'm leda hartman the city de day when spanish colonizers came to the new world five hundred years ago they were determined to convert the indigenous people there to catholicism using both persuasion and force eventually the christian faith super imposed itself on the native born and today the overwhelming majority of people from mexico central

america and south america are catholic many legends to come to north carolina in search of work and a better life ring little with them from home except their culture and their faith i knew that if delgado arrived in chapel hill almost a year and a half ago and he works in construction and sends money home to his family in mexico like others in the similar situation that isis found his way to st thomas more catholic church was a mortal which holds a spanish mass every sunday afternoon they followed both of our the second best says people from many different countries come to the surface a church they share their experiences about living in the united states and as

his friend and this is not an egg rather says that for many hispanics especially those without family here and the church was a home away from home he says people in this church are like family to him that it was five thousand and eighty moore started reaching out to the triangles growing hispanic population about eight years ago when its young newly ordained priest began visiting local hispanic workplaces and holding services there after that priest left the church made a special effort to invite those people to sunday service these days says father michael play the church's senior pastor the spanish master tracks between two hundred and two hundred fifty people each week my sense is that we're at a point as a key knew that they trust us and that we are here to be their friends knew to be supportive to them i've occasionally been called out to help people in some kind of distress and they know they can trust the church to come and help him and to

be present to them father mike says st thomas moore isn't the only catholic church reaching out a recent directive from the church diocese which covers the eastern half of north carolina says that no pastor can be ordained unless you can celebrate the mass in spanish there's a national plan by the catholic bishops to be more welcome and to be more sensitive to this growing community in our country who speaks this language as their first language of this culture is not american accord and all the statistics as we look at the re shaping of this country to the next wave of emigration twenty five to thirty years now are going to see a significant lead browner face in our country and in some ways for us as a catholic church not to provide ministry for a constituency that is largely kept they would be a dereliction of our responsibility is to provide a tone for people

who have deep face their faith is unbelievable st thomas morris sponsors community activities for its latino parishioners including monthly potluck spent feasts on special holidays it also helps with the practical details of assimilate into wife here from navigating the legal system and getting medical help in defining furniture and clothes and jobs every sunday after church there's also a class in english as a second language students learn the words they need to know in order to buy a car find the nearest telephone call a doctor it is not a peruvian who is a lay leader at st thomas moore says some people are

afraid to ask help of an american first because of a language barrier and second because they fear of being discovered by immigration authorities if they're here illegally the philippines is one of the few typical mobile app to hear this indigo morsel got a wonderful book a political figure that's a deal of book publishing with a powerful powerful says hispanics feel protected a church because god's house is their house here she says and their brothers and sisters they can express their meals and they tried to help each other even people who are primarily spanish speakers say they feel welcome at this sunday afternoon mass one is stephen mclaughlin from chapel hill whose wife is from nicaragua bruning richmond's specialist was very small we went to a just assumed it was like there's a great sense of community and the specialist which really attracted to very closely so we really enjoyed the new exclusive window at

salo lot less experience is any indication there's a quiet lyrical happening in st thomas moore the blending of different communities in the spirit of loving kindness it is for a high penalty is six hundred thirty four square miles of oiled square a martian invasion on the farmland it's home to north carolina's largest natural light speed where seventy thousand swan and to winter and so steeped in its roots had many of the five thousand people live here still speaks with traces of the elizabethan accent their ancestors had and still carry the countless family names his spenser cradle of the abandoned houses

every road here tell another side of the story this is a place where one quarter of the people live in poverty and ten percent are unemployed according to the office of state planning and unlike the rest of the state hired county is actually losing people there's nothing for young person today twenty seven year old liz gibbs says she's frustrated with the menial jobs she's held since graduating from adam a speed high school if i didn't have the responsibility of taking care of my mom i would not be here with my brother left in nineteen eighty four was nothing here for and so in space you are doing on i really don't want to possess was born raised and i do it here except for the riskiest i can't is part of north carolina's other economy the one that struggling says mike mclaughlin of the north carolina center for public policy research in raleigh we're really seeing some strong growth for capita income in north carolina and doing quite well on the whole dr franks are more isolated rural parts of the state are not doing nearly so

well mclaughlin says the state's rural areas lag behind its cities in income population growth and new job creation they also tend to have a less educated workforce and a larger percentage of people living in substandard housing and and hide county the two economic mainstays working the sea and working the soil are becoming less lucrative every year thirty one year old reggie bishop wants met and will be on his boat he says it's much tougher to earn a living fishing nowadays than when we started seventeen years ago standing by his tractor to sixty four the main

road through high county rural o'neill tells a similar story o'neill tens of thousand acres of field crops that small by today's standards in the last generation most farms had to expand in order to stay in business even so only overseen farms large and small go bust he says he's glad he's been able to provide for his family but he wouldn't steer his children performing when i started on in that category has more than doubled prize in atlanta on the war for that matter had double more than double all and selling corn wheat and soybeans our lives smack them when i started on it's hard to attract new business to a place where the nearest movie dry cleaners hospital community college and supermarket of any size are all an hour away across the county line there's no natural gas supply here and no four lane highway most of all there's no county sewer system and the low lying land and high water table have made for many septic system failures county planner alice

keeney and chamber of commerce director steve brian say the lack of infrastructure has completely stopped development and swan quarter the county seat where people pick up the ferry to okra coke and swamp where we had a hundred seat restaurant a forty mattel and eight twenty lot trailer area that have now been checking because their sewer failed it was condemned by the state and they're out of business or we can even encourage people to come this one chord and spin them i engage that period because of nowhere for them to stop still teeny brian and other county leaders are meeting these tough obstacles with equally tough determination they've applied for grants to bring the sewer system to enable hard within two years they've collaborated with seven other northeastern counties to ask state officials to bring natural gas to the region they have plans to build an industrial park near an airstrip outside ankle hard with hopes

that businesses might take advantage of state tax credits for creating jobs in the depressed area and they actively courted the construction of medium custody prison that has brought about two hundred seventy five new jobs to hide since it opened in january nineteen ninety six having the prospect of a permanent fairly well painful time job with benefits has helped michel good season his twenties to stay here so please four years ago at an angle hard rs spencer is betting on high counties future spencer was the first in his family to go away to college but he came back to run the variety store his father opened in nineteen hundred because he doesn't like traffic crime or pollution and besides his family's been in the county since sixteen ad spencer has plans to put his variety store and his furniture store in one new building and his thirty year old son is coming home from raleigh to help them about the buildings are paid for merchandise by four numbers can all

at the vendors thousand dollars in debt on the belief that there is going to be business here that would give the socialist changes community that we i would do something that not that i want that previously grow or we're looking for quote a word choices perhaps twenty five years from now with the help of tax credits from the state and financing from the local east carolina bank the boat slips and cypress trees at the ngo hard arena will be accompanied by waterfront shops and restaurants maybe even condominiums no one can say for sure how development might affect the world character of this offbeat undiscovered place or whether it will staunch the flow of young people leaving home but most residents agree that if pike county is to have any shot at the future there's no choice but to accept change and even more to seek it out for w and c news i'm leda hartman reporting

in many ways hell if that score on the one street in downtown raleigh has troubles common to other inner city neighborhoods less than fifteen percent to eighteen households here are headed by two parents many parents haven't completed high school still higher here than in many neighborhoods how's that work clean and orderly leaders who looked after each other's children close near president heckman says things turned around dramatically when a police substation opened the project three and a half years ago what actors do you know you bet that we want to and we got a un vote by bob moon do take control of how abigail we're very confident they come up and they discussed it say students

neighbor geraldine herbert is the sense of belonging connection halifax court have you know losing the community seemed a very real possibility last year when the rally housing authority applied for a grant from the us department of housing and urban development the plan was to re use halifax court and replace it with only fifty subsidized homes on the same side the others to be scattered throughout the city if you look at the rally housing authority executive director steve beamer says public policy has changed since halifax court was built in nineteen forty one nowadays he says the goal is to mix and subsidized housing units with other types of homes in a variety of neighborhoods been says halifax court has all sorts of

drawbacks it's too dense it has no air conditioning heating system is antiquated the pipes need work parking is minimal and the police substation costs four hundred forty thousand dollars a year to operate it also says the site has devalued neighboring property if you look at how facts court the property itself out in the community the people there but the units themselves they pretty much are starting the growth in that area halifax court's twenty six acres are prime piece of real estate just blocks from the state government complex the project is bordered on one side by piece college which is seeking to expand on the other side are several acres of vacant land that used to house a textile mill which developers hope to build on for residents dolores perry all of that means the site is too valuable to be used for public housing they did this lady and use les anywhere learning the round and round me a word n word and what it invaded romania more i read you

something at the point last year when the rally housing authority's first grant proposal was turned down the situation could have deteriorated into a typically divisive urban renewal dilemma but instead all the parties with a stake in the halifax quarter neighborhood did something different they sat down and talk with each other dolores deal is the executive director of building together ministry's an ecumenical educational and service group thats right across the street from the project normally when you have this kind of situation and people have responded by kicking out the people who didn't have the power to stay i think it's been done because they thought this was the only way at what we have learned in this process says it's not the only one steele says trust didn't come easily or quickly but eventually the group reached an understanding the halifax court community was valuable and needed to be preserved even if the buildings themselves had to be torn down the community coalition made up of developers piece college representatives community activists and residents came up with a set of goals that submitted to the rally housing

authority the principals call for redevelopment plan that would allow halifax court residents who want to stay in the neighborhood to be relocated close by while the redevelopment work is done and to be given priority to come back to the new units once the work is finished the coalition also envisions a seamlessly integrated mixed income neighborhood that would bring people from different walks of life together steel beam says the rally housing authority's new plan for the site may not guarantee everything the coalition has asked for but it is responsive we have i think i'm a long way toward compromise and he and what they're interested in and what we think we can provide and bottom line is that it's a good idea as we incorporate those ideas the housing authority's new grant proposal calls for tearing down the existing how facts court apartments and replacing them with sixty elderly housing units sixties subsidized single family homes and townhomes and sixty market rate mental townhomes there will also be thirty other subsidized homes built on another former public housing site across town the elderly working families

and families making the transition off welfare would be given first priority for returning to the halifax site if there are any subsidized units left after that current how facts residents would have preference been describes the new project as incentive housing aimed at getting families to become self sufficient instead of living in public housing long term it gives us a stepping stone a way to move up your pathway in other words we consider talk about getting people off welfare a war that we don't provide some incentives to move them off of welfare especially in housing areas not be a successful venture a successful venture could be urban revitalization at its best standing at the gate of the old textile mill site developer carter worthy member of the coalition looks at the duquesne break shell of a factory just across the street from halifax court and invasions a neighborhood mixed homes and businesses are no one is isolated or stigmatized well the victory is that there's a huge opportunity there is a win

win situation that can be carved out here in the fact that this grant money could be brought to bear to help this whole community revitalized it's a great opportunity and thought we shouldn't we shouldn't sit on the sidelines and let that go by the collaborative process created by the halifax community could also serve as a blueprint for other cities neighborhoods in the throes of urban renewal the law are still attacking together ministry's hopes that will be the case in mali i just hope that this will be an isolated incident in which we get this thing right and this place this time i just hope that things will be calm in the law the standard for at least asked to be that we would say we don't think he had to have our people displaced that if they want to stay and that that will be the attitude and the commitment that they came when they redid our communities the rally housing authorities will present a draft of this year's grand proposal to its board on june fourth in conjunction with a public hearing the board will vote on the planned june

eighteen the housing authority should hear back on the grant from the us department of housing and urban development sometime between september and november for wu dancing is i'm leda hartman recording the north carolina department of public instruction first but competency tests in place three years ago but this is the first year that students have been required to pass the test in order to get a high school diploma according to test scores released by the state in january nearly half of the sixty two hundred students who failed the tests are black that disturbs greg now hoy executive director of the north carolina education and law project based in raleigh in reviewing these statistics have been recently released we saw that african american students were overrepresented in those students who are not passing the test in addition to that though we noticed that there were wide disparities between school districts in the state with some districts having

african american grassroots hundred percent and others as low as thirty percent we believe that this raise questions about fundamental fairness to the students and that an official government body should investigate it the complaint filed with the office of civil rights in the us department of education targets twenty eight north carolina school districts that have african american pass rate of less than eighty percent the complaint also says the state department of public instruction has known about these low pass rates since it put the competency test in place three years ago stefan ballance a staff attorney for the education and law project and a member of the naacp says parents don't want to lower the bar they want their kids to be better prepared as william porter reiterate that african american parents are not saying lowered its neighbor saying educate our children equally and that is what the end up wasting pete's position is is that it's very important that we all have walked into being equal access to education and it starts in the primary

world no one at the state department of public instruction oregon state where the education seems to disagree about the need to improve the test results for minority students in certain school districts state superintendent mike ward acknowledges that while there's been some progress made since the competency test was instituted there hasn't been enough if you look at the statistics right now over nine percent of students made that complements extended biden jr that's both good news and the bad news it's been well over ninety percent and the proportion of student meaning the government instead should be violence research shows that state board of education member andy davis who teaches high school in durham see several reasons why an achievement gap for minority students sometimes occurs in some cases he says students may be steered away from taking advanced courses and others there may be peer pressure that discourages them from going after academic success also some kids might find it hard to relate to the dominant culture in their schools but davis stresses that none of those

reasons are excuses for failure and i chill children all the time we should not limit our sales of the things that we can do of course as we can take and the jobs and the unskilled that we can have in the future should not be limited by our own inhibitions when it comes to being involved with the highest level of instruction one school district that has taken no excuses mindset to heart is in more in northeastern part of the state who aren't currently has one of the highest poverty rates in north carolina and seventy four percent of the students here are african american twenty percent white and six percent are native american eighty one percent of them are on free or reduced lunch program and forty six percent of their parents don't have a high school diploma but warren county has achieved some remarkable results on its competency tests and ninety seven point seven percent pass rate for white students and ninety seven point nine percent for black students reading

teacher medina jones says success starts with the right attitude and you can get through yet behind the encouragement is a carefully thought out educational strategy jones is one of several teachers at warren county high school lou's job responsibilities explicitly include preparing students for the competency tests the high school offers competency labs during the day and small group prep sessions after school for students at every grade level those who still haven't passed their tests by the end of the school year must go to summer school for remedial work sophomore carmen chased passed to reading test earlier this year with help from indiana jones now she's determined to pass math too he knows that automation isn't napa do or graduating at the primary day or the nazis but i you know go home watching tv you know

anything like they have to think about where is it makes it will cost states this school system doesn't wait until high school to make sure students aren't falling behind all through elementary and middle school the kids are tested every six weeks and if they're below grade level they get extra help but the most important factor in warren county success may be its ability to get people to work together for a common goal this is a community where there's no big dividing line between haves and have nots so rather than having some parents or teachers resisting change because they're afraid of losing certain advantages there's an understanding here that helping the week a student makes every student stronger math teacher jack long noticed that a lot of cities and counties they have the school districts they think about their minority in their average students and i really feel like we're at an advantage to them because com those are kids that are here and we look at educating all of them and not trying to find ways to

close to gamble for us they're just they're all students some of the competency test results released in january may underscore long's point several of the counties with the highest pass rates and no significant disparity between black students and white students are relatively worrell with sizable minority populations and income levels below the state average examples include lenore nash pamela code jones green and person counties by contrast three of the state's most affluent an urban counties wake durham and mecklenburg are among the twenty eight target it in the can white filed with the us department of education according to the numbers those counties all have black pass rates of less than eighty percent tomorrow investigators from washington will come to rally beginning the first step in a long process of responding to the complaint they'll meet separately with the state department of public instruction and then with the naacp and the north carolina education and law

project the investigators will also examine the very latest test scores which may show dramatic improvement in some school districts if the us department education finds that civil rights laws have been violated it has several options it can negotiate a settlement to remedy the problem withhold funds from the state or even file suit in federal court for wu and see news i'm leda hartman reporting nacchio alston has wanted to dig up his family's history since he was five years old that's when his parents sent him to a predominantly black public school in durham and all around him were african american kids who have the same last name as he did we can talk about it both on the black side and on the white side there was this sense that this was something that was not to be touched even at five we had learned from our culture or

families or whatever that we weren't supposed to talk about the fact that we were connected by name alston never forgot the sense of danger and to boot that came with that connection and his curiosity turned to obsession after he found out that the alston said been one of the largest slave owning families in north carolina you don't know what it matters you don't know what kind of an impact it has on you but it's always there and it feels like a landmine just beneath the surface so better to excavate it tig zuma to look at it and try to do whatever it takes to keep it from exploding alston had other reasons for spending five years making family name as a gay man he understood the burden of keeping secrets on the sense of liberation that came from revealing them also he hoped that sharing his family story could be useful and encouraging other people to talk about race but as he found out when he started filming not everyone wanted to talk and all the best intentions in the world that i was very naive so i would roll into some buddies driveway and say hi you know my name's maggie austin my people i think

older people let's talk about it and you know how would you react most people reacted with characteristic southern politeness and told him nothing alston resist the temptation to leave those awkward scenes on the cutting room floor later the film reveals the reasons for silence on both sides of the alston family one of the black austin relatives any ellington says her people wanted to spare their kids from their own painful memories about about those days he says yes and the death of golf my there that they had found another where is enough now and austen's own family there's guilt discomfort denial neither his father nor his grandmother will tell him much about his great grandfather thomas alston who was a slave owner except to describe the old man's taste regret austen's

father wallace is a minister who has spent much of his life fighting for civil rights but he doesn't share his son's penchant for dredging up the family history in fact in a scene with his children he actually tries to disown it you don't know this week a pro life that's right and just to have your body finally mackey alston find someone who will speak fred alston an african american who had grown up in the rural northeastern part of north carolina go through the the uncomfortable questions you know

it was something i felt i should do to help us here to the table for the party near the small town of finance mackey alston found the grave of fred alston his great grandmother of the weasel born into slavery in the eighteen forties and he found that the man who had inherited the old alston plantation had turned it into a foundation for classical music nike invited fred a professional bassoon player to play their friend says the last thing he wanted to do was set foot on a plantation with the experienced turned out to be cleansing fred began his concert with the ringing of the old slave bell but for the time was you know here is an opportunity for me to say what i want to say and do what i want to do what i'm i going to do now i'm going to protests am i going to preach or what joy to

be entertained by law ah oh of miami's local gardeners regardless of what was done there it didn't matter what happened before no matter what i could bring to it some three hundred all stents black and white came together that day in may nineteen ninety five answering maggie's invitation to hear fred perform some were strangers from far off others were people who have lived side by side but had never really mapped still maggie austin wasn't finished until he had found a blood connection between both sides of the family it came in chatham county where the name alston is so common it takes the pages of the local phone book maggie alston believes that his cousin a man named nathaniel macon alston fathered several children by house servant named cornelia that discovery has made him reconsider the definition of family the fact that so many consider each other completely other does allow us to do great

pilots to each other in a way that perhaps was less likely if we consider each other family quote unquote that's a possibility how it plays itself out what activity family name will launch a three year series on public television called the television race initiative aimed at encouraging dialogues on race in local communities meanwhile for better or worse the film has lifted the shroud of silence for many alston family members maggie austen's sister charlotte says she resents the fact that her older relatives kept their history to themselves fred alston wonders how this country will ever pay his great grandmother the weezer four years of servitude and towards alston perry an african american minister from chatham county shakes her head at the slow pace of change in her backyard with the traveling of the un and from what i'm seeing you know this is the great thing with that but i'm not feeling it i mean why my much killing all the attention that is

just throwing a steel feel struggle more trouble inside and where we go from here i mean after the scene where do we go from here perry's question will stand long after the screen dark ends for his part mackey alston says he knows the story of his family is just talk the talk he says is the building block of relating family name appears on north carolina public television september fifteenth at ten pm for wunc's news i'm leda hartman reporting oh yeah tammy

a dozen elderly men and women are gathered together wearing their sunday best and fanning themselves in the sultry heat these old head says they're affectionately called have come to share their memories of growing up in the rural mountains in southwestern corner of north carolina three bonnie sue thompson says one of the first thing she could remember was walking to

church with another handler domino man that sang intimate raise them to be for many african american communities throughout the south the baptist church has traditionally served as a bulwark of faith that's especially true here in cherokee county a hundred miles southwest of nashville this mountain country on the border of georgia and tennessee never could support large plantations sit there were never many slaves here and today less than two percent of the local population is black cherokee county planner and woodford a native of andrews who helped organize the gospel festival says that's why the church play such a vital role here this applies to get together just even to socialize is a place to talk to people they help build up just to encourage each other we don't have very many social activities here and so because

of that we talk about voting there we talk about a lot of things that are important to our people that may not be mentioned in who are in the schools or anywhere else the african american community and cherokee county has always been tight with neighbors treat each other like a family that like added special challenges in the days before the civil rights hero miller and emma cline save raise one nation but still segregation of its hardships no actually and as the low income meaning hit me and that was that we want and the white face and i couldn't understand as vincent david gets on but then i

realized that was just the time did it throughout the changes there was always the church people at the three local african american churches and even those from east tennessee and north georgia would come together to testify give praise hear the preacher and jackson i mean how are

you any land he says that's right you can't be angry at someone has them there and saying and saying from the spirit soul and you can't be holding grudges and you cannot hold prejudices and although the putin saying to gather at the moment you're singing your singing for the same reason and so it keeps its unified during the church service the

festival where the pastor the mount zion baptist church a stance and shouts in the old style that his message is contemporary yeah yeah today well the lab in the day that that will be a man webb says hell can come from g's is that those who follow jesus have to apply their faith to addressing the practical problems of the world he had to the problem that it were and he drives an amnio lets you get you know you know what to do with regular girl talk with me about you know what to do at the united bank already the people that you know what to do with now would build

one has gone out the new law will are now a lot about where they may not like that more than a hundred people come to hear the message there are the elders with some of their children and grandchildren as well as other members of the area's african american churches they're also richard and jesse powers who are here because they like gospel music i enjoyed it also at the services michel call me by the fourteen year old daughter they're mostly an adopted white daughters most of her she's also speaking mandarin snow

you know it's both it to pay it many north carolinians today don't think twice about consulting a doctor for help with a physical

ailment but up until the last generation or two that wasn't the case instead people tended to rely on home remedies available in their local communities folks that day and never hit head out of all those ailments to folks have now they were no doctors just you the roots and bought forties of all kinds these are the recollections of any more an elderly black woman interviewed in the nineteen thirties her words were we enacted for the exhibit more was talking about slavery times but she was describing the common experience of many north carolinians in the days before modern medicine sally peterson is a folk life curator at the museum of history people have always had strategies for healing themselves taking care of themselves and that kind of knowledge was passed down from generation to generation people throughout north carolina native american african american or european americans relied on the medicinal properties of the plant's roots and bark statue in abundance here

as the museum exhibit shows they also develop other home remedies pleased cobwebs for instance to staunch the flow of blood from a wound and made cough syrup from sugar egg yolks and pine tar these treatments might seem crude but they're downright and nine compared to some of the therapies administered by physicians in antebellum days back then many doctors believed in cleansing the body as a way to restore balance so they prescribe medicines to make people urinate deaf akkad sweat or throw up most unpleasant was the use of leeches to remove blood from a disease carrier as the mother of two year old bob pritchard recounted in eighteen fifty three dr howard applied to german bleachers to the upper part of his back and after they dropped off doctor pritchard applied cops over the pint of this time the little fella screamed and struggled for artfully not surprisingly many people preferred not to indulge in such therapeutic the

lights and andy dawson born a slave and eighteen thirty two recalled how one physician dealt with this attitude i remember that old doctor you live in greenville any get comedy team of an ability you would say if you know to get medicine like that daddy and i have come back is to you and will break your mayhem that picks them up a lot here the most unsettling presentation in the health and healing exhibit however maybe the replica of a civil war hospital and yet there are rickety wooden carts with stained and bloodied mattresses and dirty plates and worn out boots on the floor the sounds and smells of the place ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch

ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch last week his brother in law came after him yesterday and he started home with them yesterday afternoon i can also tell you that there was another man that in this hospital yesterday this makes four deaths in this house at this time the war also left some soldiers with a taste for pain killing drugs one was william anderson roberts november sixteenth nineteen sixty two i'm all alone some places on earth that has the evening and asked that all have taken an opium hill to counteract influence of depression and spirits opium that's sweet restored manage it was before the fall the king of all medicines the civil war also brought advances in modern medicine and by the turn of the century a state public health

campaign to stamp out book worm disease was in full swing hookworm probably had been a longstanding problem in the south for quite sometime caught when people walked barefoot through infected human or animal feces but it wasn't recognized until the early twentieth century at the time an estimated forty percent of southerners had hookworm and that says museum folklife curator lisa yorker contributed to the negative stereotypes other people had about southerners the physical symptoms that manifested were in children started development inability to focus to concentrate fatigue tremendous city inability to relate to work so you have indeed the physical symptoms did contribute to a stereotype in american culture of the southerners as stupid as lazy ants basically inadequate of all the healing approaches presented in the museum of history's exhibit modern western medicine stands out in one way it's the only one that separates physical well being from emotional and spiritual well

being university of north carolina anthropology professor glen hanson who did field work for parts of the exhibit says healing traditions the world over share the fundamental belief that good health depends on maintaining harmony between a person's body mind and spirit and the natural world one of the things that's happening in the rome the us called new age and a flurry of new alternatives being offered in describing the systems as holistic there's an attempt within them to re incorporate the spiritual as if to react to this boy which seems so artificial and yet while on one hand there's this attempt to reintegrate with the recognition that there's a variety of systems that have never lost that integration as examples the museum includes a native american sweat lodge and a christian chapel with accounts of miraculous healing experiences there's also an african american workers office where a practitioner uses the magical power based and herbs stones waters or oil's to channel energy and affect change the

exhibit does not brush aside these centuries old healing practices a superstition but accords them as much respect as modern medicine curator sally peterson many of the traditional health systems that we present in this exhibit have rarely had a voice in the public conversation scientific thinking logical positive tends to dismiss the explanations given for the efficacy of these systems out of hand because they don't have a valid scientific base they are based on testimony dr based on story are based merely on experience we're trying to recognize other systems that also are valid health and healing experiences in north carolina will be on display at the state museum of history in raleigh for three to five years the museum will hold a nineteenth century health care on june sixth for w yancey news

north chatham avenue is home to many of the latino workers who've come to siler city in droves over the last ten years some of the houses in this neighborhood are in good shape but many are not the worst half of rusting tin roofs sagging porches and places were rotting clapboard has been mended with why would still people live in places like these because there are many other rentals and small town in western chatham county especially if you don't make much money a handsome middle aged woman from guatemala will call harmon shares a small house on the chad matheny with seven other people commonly works and wants other cities to poultry plants washing chickens she make slightly more than minimum wage ok ok carmen says she works so that she and her

family can send money back home pay the monthly rent a four hundred seventy five dollars and buy food last year one of the local catholic church is st julius has helped cummins family fixed at their house and there's been a lot of fixing do the kitchen floor instead of plywood some of the wooden slats in the ceiling falling out and when the family first moved in the kitchen door had been lax security that's bill mcfadden a bilingual social worker weeks into his church and lawyers have that much material used to make up a rickety wooden ladder tucked into the corner of a semi finished attic is a narrow cot where one of the young men and carmen spouse leaves there's a makeshift bar for clothing a bare light bulb on a bare wooden floor last winter mcfadden says the window by the bed had no glass in it until church volunteers put in some plastic glazing was it was

an open market as well away over do you sleep in to carmen and her husband say they plan to return to guatemala someday they're just not sure when meanwhile they say they're grateful for the help from st julius but not everybody in north chatham avenue is comfortable with a visit from strangers especially a stranger with a microphone and tape recorder in hand they'll mcfadden sees that as soon as he walks out the door and looks across the street you know it's angel is church father dan quackenbush knows all about the caution and sometimes fear many latino workers carry with them as they negotiate their way in a foreign culture some of course may not have legal immigration status but even if they do says father dan they may be reluctant to complain to authorities about their living or working conditions and i think it's one of ways that the church can provide a voice to because we are citizens

and we can undo some of the powers that control in a way that is a call to respond to go to me we've we're able to provide in your face father dan says he has seen a mixed response from the management at the local poultry plants were many latinos work he says a plant nurse once called him because she was concerned about one workers living situation but another time he says a worker who complained about chemical splashing in her eyes told him she was required to take a drug test afterwards conditions are difficult it's one of the reasons why this is coming here because it's the job but for wholesale and maria a mexican couple in their early thirties steady work in a poultry plant has offered a ticket out of the migrant stream us a first came to the united states back in the early nineteen eighties as an undocumented migrant worker doing factory work picking oranges in florida an apples michigan today both jose and his wife are legal permanent residents living in sanford a couple dozen miles south of siler city in the county

also took advantage of the nineteen eighty six immigration law that gave amnesty to illegal aliens would work in the united states for a set number of years the law enabled him to get his green card and then apply for one for his wife he says now they no longer have to be on the lookout for immigration officers and they can move ahead with their lives rather than thinking about what they left behind the two both work at a poultry plant in nearby pittsboro he does maintenance and she works in the d boning department they both turn seven twenty five an hour as some people she knows have had problems with repetitive stress injuries to their hands sometimes to the point where they have an essential weeks work but she says so far that hasn't happened to either of them but a lot of government how st maria have plenty of company in sanford where many hispanics have settled in for keeps over the past decade and just one stretch of main street there's a latino food

store a spanish language video store a spanish language christian bookstore a new hispanic church and a hispanic service center that handles taxes car titles and insurance and although many latino immigrants have had trouble getting the credit they need to buy their own homes the santa maria have managed to do it just six months ago they and their two kids moved into their own three bedroom house these days maria goes to central carolina community college at night learning english so she can pass or citizenship test because in this garden of people that inglis i knew ending as our understand of people in other thing is my i bet they knew you now that she holds a piece of the american dream in her hands maria has a luxury many latino immigrants have yet to acquire that his hopes for herself and her family that go beyond just getting by from day to day for

debbie yancey news i'm leda hartman reporting if you stand outside the chatham county courthouse in downtown pittsburg you can see exactly where this county has been and where it's going on the front lawn of the courthouse there's a statue of a confederate soldier to the left is the pittsburgh general store which sells natural foods and a right a hardee's look north and a river of traffic signals are trying to fifteen five oh one look south and hills and trees meet the horizon by triangle standards chatham county is still a whirl with just forty four thousand people living on seven hundred square miles of land much of the economy is based on farming gary poultry organic produce and chatham county still as one commodity that some people say has all but vanished from the triangle a sense of connection and community you take this county that

character and its geography and so in somewhere was forced out and you can tell the difference chatham county manager charlie horn it's being close people live being there being available for the ages it's a treasure the first wave of newcomers came to chatham county in the nineteen seventies counterculture types attracted by cheap land and the absence of zoning one was rather homes large communities of artist and people who are looking for simpler life stuff not the michelin stars but back to the land lifestyles came here by cheap land bought and made houses so they were down homes and narrower pentagon's and towers and you know it pays and all kinds of things that were wonderful places for people to live cheaply and simply off the land holmes says there was little friction in those days because most everyone aspire to the same kind of lifestyle and the hippies were adopted by the old timers they were there children are expected to ever live

takes and people from other families other cultures other areas with a very broad mine in a very welcoming heart but in the last few years chatham county has found its live and let live attitude challenge by an influx of people from widely different backgrounds the newcomers are professionals from the northeast hispanics in search of better paying jobs and refugees from the increasingly congested triangle and major growth here is just a matter of time the governor is quote development has plans to build up to one hundred homes in northeast chatham county next year the town of perry just over the county line intends to expand and the state does it we're widening all the main highways in chatham county to four lanes dairy farmer norman jordan has already noticed the changes jordan is a tall strapping forty year old with hands weathered by hard work this land has been in the family for five generations of panorama of rolling fields and pastures trees winding country road and a herd of

brown swiss jordan says he always thought the landless country but he's not entirely pleased now that others have discovered it too i can count the number of people that have moved out here on to the uneven that looks very sparsely populated doubling tripling quadrupling of the people that are here to see that continue jordan worry is that as the area grows it will lose some of the neighborliness he grew up with where everyone knew each other and helped each other out and just beginning to reach the roy nailed it somewhat of it is to ensure that when a really big look just a couple of miles from jordan's farm in downtown siler city is that helping hand center frequented by chad and counties newest immigrants from mexico and latin america when young mexican man declined to give his name but he talks freely about his wife year more criminal

law or no the man work someone in siler city's poultry plants he says he sends one hundred fifty dollars a week back to his family in which they can live on for a whole month or two i get it it says it has been hard to adapt to life in siler city the only problem he says is that many latinos have been robbed at the cash in paychecks are often by african americans helping hand staffer rosa sudden herself an african american says she's concerned that competition for jobs and housing between the two ethnic groups could lead to friction even violence in the future i do see some changes be made but i don't get a hundred percent positive so those concerns are shared by the reverend jerry bolton pastor of the austin chapel united holy church in pittsboro bolton says that for all its tolerance chatham county may actually find it harder to accept change than

other places in north carolina because people here are determined to preserve their attractive way of life smaller is better cup again stand out there but sometimes indians smaller you will have to be very deliberate and god and the notion that will be small but be gained weight and heart so that you includes and so that the best of who you are really comes out and the best of two others are we are part of the world community can realistically county manager charlie mourners set on cultivating some common ground in chatham soil he says no matter where they come from most people here share some basic aspirations a lot of good work and pay no good neighbors as efficient which of the future all of that i don't think that a house corn and other county leaders are

considering starting a community relations commission to help turn to adam's grown diversity into a source of strength not conflict we and our past not to all the past seen the treasury and paying division poultry should not replicate itself you know the sperm from our history and the process we actually can do that but without a worker as they look ahead the people of chatham county could draw on their own past for help they're they might rediscover their tradition of tolerance and inclusion and use it to adapt to the challenges of the future for wu and see news i'm leda hartman thirteen year

old ishmael lives in the crab street community interim otherwise known sixteen sitting in an alternate routes living he takes the rapper often intake is that places it in his recorder and begins to ask about the community's slow global warming and a veil all my life ishmael is one of several dozen young people from three during communities were recording local history straight from the people who experienced it delia gamble coordinator of the community stories project for the center for documentary studies says the process of gathering the information is as important as the product i would say that for history is not an excuse but somewhat for two people sit down and have a conversation that would never have a conversation for two months this summer gamble and nine college in terms of talk

their students how to prepare questions and conduct interviews with neighborhood elders and how to record their findings from older residents that street kids and families to keep the durham freeway from being built right through the middle of the neighborhood using political and legal means community leaders were able to get the city to agree to real rather than destroy it in the process the community also built new homes and apartments as well as a recreation center simply a junior at riverside high school says it hasn't been hard to find out about this because their neighborhood is pretty tight oh really so we people today were shot a

high school sophomore found out that different people in his town had different opinions about the highways in fact the issue is you know the better for the community a way to have their whole sense of the community's past some of the history is the importance of investing in its future here is a senior at new hanover high speed cameras he says he doesn't plan to live an external as life still he says he wants to keep the property in the community and out of the hands of other entities that might be lying despite that these words make robert taylor proud taylor's a history an education major at a and t university in greensboro and one of three college interns working with the crest reach youngsters he says when the community stories

project began two months ago he wasn't sure he was reaching the students but now after hearing their interviews he knows he has and they really i mean they did so well back in her living room reading about patiently explains to ishmael that there were no paved streets and stand before the highway clean and people's houses weren't as nice as they are now still she says people were happy that their community is that you know our color the wealthy baltimore would disagree all right now wait you have to well this to help with his recorder

away unfolded newspapers no means is the island maine but the thing you know the la daily news in early august the young people working on the community stories project will present each of their neighborhoods with tapes of interviews and a booklet of photographs and transcriptions next year the center for documentary studies hopes to put together a video on kresse st so other communities can learn how to preserve themselves in the face of urban renewal in addition to crest treat the project includes oral histories from two other durham neighborhoods the west end and five points coordinator delia gambles says the documentation is valuable but even more important she says are the values students have learned in the process like taking ownership of the place where they live so partisan this

early for me happy now that they can change something community will change even the future a young person and then that product for w and c news hartman the road leading to the tiny rural community when dale teeny stern johnston county is lined with fields of corn in herds of cattle but what you notice more than the hyatt plants with a broad green leaves in row after endless well this is the heart of tobacco control people around here like to say that this is sandy soil of eastover north carolina rose the best flue cured golden leaf in the world i started handing the baccarat know five years old girl nicole auerbach of too much downhill stansell was born here he's been farming tobacco

for almost sixty years and then when i got a little better for political track and about the cabin and you feel an oven rack to the steel and run away with the annual several times but that dream came true of whom we got a tractor one thousand teens stem cells grandfather started growing tobacco on this land in the late nineteenth century when mass production of cigarettes transformed the golden leaf into one of the world's most sought after crops the way of life that grew up around tobacco farming stayed the same for generations well into the nineteen sixties more than anything says lillian jones a history professor at eastern carolina university it was hard work tobacco farmers use a call to back that the thirty month your crop because there was something to do all the time and it was just very calm hike nasty dirty work but it was also word that require a lot of skilled labor in the fall farmers would be busy cutting wood for next season's fluke hearing in the winter they prepare their plant that's where they broadcast tiny black specks of tobacco seeds into the ground

in early spring it was time to ready the cropland for the little tobacco plants then says jones the work got even tougher transplanting i mean that was really backbreaking labor in the debt ceiling debt ceiling and the hill by hill that you would be out there planting year tobacco plants again you would have to top the tobacco the tobacco plant would grow the flour c you to get that flower off the top of us thought so it wouldn't pull out nutrients from leave and also sprouted suckers secondary leagues he had to suffer it by hand so that the nutrients we get to the best ladies about that time the horn words would come along had to get back in the horn more softer than than i said there was always something to do when it came time to harvest the tobacco in the heat of summer the work got to be too much for one family so neighbors says daniel stansell had to help each other out it was swampy work my family said for five or six or seven children

and mother and eighteen and they'd have three or four five a group of bikers and three or four families with swap work and each family have like older born day monday or tuesday or wednesday and on that day they bonded about because one might now i remember one time all those new man his father died and now we born that debacle that day it was just the thing that was accepted you know you had to do it and then we win with the thriller next day and not many things got some water from going about his day build a shared labor didn't erase differences of class or race it did foster a sense of interdependence with in a rural community what's more says folklorist bill mansfield growing tobacco gave a farm family not just a livelihood but a sense of accomplishment this family's living depended on getting this to back up the market and get a good price for work on that food grocery said they couldn't provide for themselves

clothing shoes screw everything was riding on this to back so they would put a tremendous amount of work on it and they wanted it to look good cause it represented day now if you take pride in your sail your take pride in your work in these people will file the golden leaf was so lucrative that for much of this century it allowed north carolina tobacco farms to stay small and surrounding rural communities to stay viable all at a time when the rest of the country was growing increasingly urbanize as tobacco culture hasn't been immune from change these days there are chemicals farmers can use to eliminate bugs needs of secondary leaves in the flour on top of the plant there are increasingly sophisticated mechanical planters and harvesters all of this has made it much easier but it has also transformed the character that tobacco community since one farmer can now handle more acres of land there are fewer farmers and bigger farms and demand for farm labor shrank people took

jobs elsewhere donnell standstill now rents the land that used to be farmed by his neighbors about eight years ago he started playing mexican migrant workers during the height of the season they live just across the road in the house where he was born stansell jokes that he's on the endangered species list you know when i was a teenager everybody around here for everybody instantly the school principal the bridge and now in our church and the only will come from add it to the changes that have taken place within the tobacco culture our development outside the farmers control the tobacco quota system set in place by the federal government during the new deal has kept tobacco prices high and stable for half a century but it has also made it harder for domestic tobacco to compete with the less expensive we've grown overseas then in the last generation came an awareness of the dangers of smoking and widespread anti tobacco sentiment stansell says he realizes most of the publics iyer has been directed at cigarette makers but he too feels the sting i

haven't heard lesson about former know what we've heard so far has been the big about happiness but we are part of that we're launching play to see and grow them and so overall product manufacturers like many tobacco farmers who were considered stout members of the community just a generation ago stansell is sensitive about having his livelihood criticized which probably citizens we the church were christian the repo man and we probably good neighbors and conclusions shortcuts koreans in their addiction whatever and sometime it's unfair competition for as for the ethics of raising a product that causes cancer something a cigarette industry itself has admitted stansell says we don't want a bunch more and that's why we never have one but often people choose to smoke than we think we have the best calling for his assets though the effects of the recent tobacco settlement are still unclear north carolina's farmers may well be hard hit if cigarette productions cut already for the last several

decades tobacco farming has been declining in the state in terms of acreage production and share of the world market one thing that is certain is that traditional tobacco farming in communities like glendale won't ever be the same and the tobacco farmers who survived will have to find ways to adjust to watershed changes betty bailey is executive director of the rural advancement foundation in pittsboro an international advocacy group for family farmers because we're having this public debate on a national level about the whole future of industry it's a great opportunity for us to re invest in those farm families and their communities not abandon them the foundation has developed an outreach program for tobacco farmers were interested in diversifying that is supplementing their tobacco income by processing or marketing other farm products bailly says the idea is especially appealing to younger farmers or farmers whose children wanna be able to work the land in the future but breaking into a new market isn't necessarily in the cards for farmers like

sixty four year old donnell stansell though he is always grown other crops stansell says nothing has ever brought in the money tobacco has these days his fourteen hour days have slowed to ten or twelve his only child a son has decided to go into fishery science instead of farming and when he's asked about what the future holds for his farm stands us answer is bittersweet the good lord and mother nature will determine when he quit looking ahead he realizes nothing is certain but then in farming he says it never has for wu and seniors hartman