Mrs. Coretta Sharpless was named the principal of Northside Elementary School in August of 2015 after serving as the assistant principal. Mrs. Sharpless is an experienced educational leader who truly celebrates both the past and the future of Northside – she grew up in the same neighborhood and now has a chance to return in a state of the art …

Carolyn Jefferson began working at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in 1959, when the hospital was still relatively new. She had recently graduated from North Carolina A&T State University, and although her baccalaureate degree in nursing made her an appealing candidate for hire, the hospital’s segregationist policies limited her advancement throughout much of her career there. Ms. Jefferson was recognized by …

Pearl Cole is a lifelong resident and caretaker of the Chapel Hill community. She was a student at Orange County Training School in the 1950s and graduated from Lincoln High School. She fondly remembers her teachers and mentors at both institutions. Ms. Cole was taught by her parents to help other people whenever possible, and has taken that lesson to …

As a graduate of Lincoln High School’s class of 1962 and an alumna of Chapel Hill’s local civil rights movement, Patricia Mason displayed a passion for equity from an early age. It is a passion that only strengthened during her retirement, especially with regards to voting rights and civic engagement. She is an active member of the Social Interest Civic …

Nettie P. Burnette graduated from Lincoln High School in 1953 and was one of the older participants in the local desegregation movement in Chapel Hill. She became involved in civil rights because she saw the unequal and unwelcome treatment Black people received in restaurants and on campus. Ms. Burnette made her voice heard by participating in marches, sit-ins and demonstrations …

Mrs. Marjorie Land began her lifetime of service in healthcare as a young girl, while accompanying her mother to the small rural hospital where she worked as a nursing assistant. This early training and encouragement was a great benefit to Mrs. Land when she enrolled as a nursing student at North Carolina A&T. She joined the staff at Memorial Hospital …

Jerdene Alston became a change-maker in the local civil rights movement when she was still just a teenager. She recalls getting involved after seeing a flyer at her church advertising a meeting for the movement. It was at that first meeting that she began to learn about discrimination in Chapel Hill and how she could begin to eradicate it. As …

Esphur Foster Esphur Foster and Charley Mae Foster Norwood credit their mother as a major influence to their community service work. “We saw our mother do it,” explained Ms. Foster, speaking of Hattie Mae Foster’s involvement in the PTA and coordination of voting registration drives. This passion was passed down to Ms. Foster and Mrs. Norwood, graduates of Lincoln High …

Edna Taylor estimates participating in around twenty civil rights demonstrations in and around Chapel Hill during the 1960s. She was raised in Chapel Hill and was a high school student during the height of the sit-in movement. She remembers Harold Foster serving as a main local organizer, and folks coming from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Congress of Racial …

Graduating in the first desegregated class at Chapel Hill High School was just the beginning of Carolyn Daniels’ lifetime of devotion to racial equity in education. After spending the beginning of her high school career at the all-Black Lincoln High School, Ms. Daniels and her classmates were transferred to Chapel Hill High School in the fall of 1966, her senior …