A Photographic Study of the Northside Community Now & Before
When I finished “we are all housekeepers”, Keith Edwards, a black woman and a campus police officer who had been at the center of a legal case at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, invited me over for coffee. She wanted to talk about her neighbors and her childhood and the current struggle to preserve this Black neighborhood and keep it affordable.
“Why don’t I introduce you to people?” Keith offered.
Could there be a more open door for a documentary project? With Keith as my guide, I began Portraits of Northside: A Photographic Study of the Northside Community Now & Before. I recorded interviews (now housed at the Southern Oral History archives at UNC-Chapel Hill) and took photos. I met the descendants of the Black folk who came to town and started farming on Windy Hill and Northside. I learned about the limited choices Black people had for jobs in town. I also learned about community shops, the Northside School and the people who knit the neighborhood together. I met people descended from slaves who had become leaders and spokespersons. I listened to them talk about their experiences as the first Black students in the Chapel Hill Schools. They talked about the threat to their community as speculative real estate groups bought up houses and moved in student renters.
Many of the compositions from Portraits of Northside are now housed in the offices of Empowerment, a community affordable housing program.
Many of these faces and places are now the ancestors of this community. I hope that I have held them in respect and shown the spirit that has kept this community alive.
