On Tuesday, July 2, 2024, in partnership with the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition, we hosted a full day of conversation and fellowship about the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and other public places and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The act prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Along with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act in 1968, the Civil Rights Act helped establish the legal foundation of equality among all Americans.
Symposium recordings
Symposium opening + first panel: James Williams moderated a conversation that focused on the history of the Civil Rights Act and the strategies that led to its signing in 1964.
Panelists: Christopher Clark, H Timothy Lovelace, Angela Mason, Jerry Gershenhorn, and Allison Riggs
Panel: Moderator Danita Mason-Hogans talked with the Women of the Movement and Braxton Foushee about the local experience of Jim Crow and the struggle to pass a local ordinance to outlaw segregation.
Panelists: Anne Hargett, Betty Geer, Jerdene Alston, Lillie Atwater, Gwen Atwater, and Braxton Foushee
Keynote address by Judge Jim Wynn
Panel: Dr. Freddie Parker moderated a conversation about the Civil Rights Act in 2024 and what the future may hold. This panel began with Dr. Parker's a capella rendition of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." The video includes some archival video of Civil Rights protests in Chapel Hill from 1963-1964.
Panelists: Jack Boger, Reginald Hildebrand, Reggie Shuford, and Elizabeth Haddix
Panel: Rich Rosen in conversation with James Ferguson, Adam Stein, and Mel Watt
Closing remarks with Gene Nichol
Speakers and Panelists
Jerdene Alston became a change-maker in the local civil rights movement when she was still just a teenager. At civil rights organizing meetings, she trained in nonviolence and learned how to act during the demonstrations. Over the following years, she was arrested several times for her courage to speak out against racism. Ms. Alston remains an advocate for her community.
Gwen Atwater began teaching at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School in 1973. She became an FPG Elementary institution over the more than 30 years she was there and is still talked about with love and reverence by her former colleagues and students
Lillie Perry Atwater started a lifetime of service when she was just in the ninth grade. After finishing her school day at Lincoln High School, the young Chapel Hillian would start her part-time job at Memorial Hospital. She graduated in 1958 and worked to put herself through nursing school, continuing a passion for community health that has lasted up to today.
John Charles Boger joined the UNC Law faculty in 1990 and served for 27 years, until his retirement in 2017 as Wade Edwards Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests included constitutional law, education law, and racial discrimination/poverty law. From 2001 until 2006, Boger served under Julius L. Chambers as the first deputy director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights.
Christopher J. Clark is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at UNC Chapel Hill. In 2005, he earned a BA in Political Science from Saint Louis University, and in 2010, he earned a PhD in Political Science from the University of Iowa. His research examines minority representation in the United States, and while he continues to study state politics, he is increasingly doing work on the US Congress.
James E. Ferguson, II is a founding partner of the firm Ferguson, Stein, Chambers, Gresham and Sumter, P.A. and has served as President of the firm since 1984. He currently heads the firm's catastrophic injury and wrongful death team, concentrating in medical malpractice, personal injury and products liability. In the civil arena, James has served as the Chair of the Charlotte Community Building Initiative and as a member of the North Carolina Commission on Alternatives to Incarceration. He served for more than 15 years as General Counsel and member of the National Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Braxton Foushee helped lay the foundation for equality in Orange County beginning in 1960 when he sat down at Colonial Drug Store and requested to be served. Foushee was the first elected African-American Alderman in Carrboro in a 6-1 victory. His passion for his community helped save Carr Mill Mall when it threatened to close, and he played a vital role in getting Hank Anderson Park built. Foushee’s community service includes being a lifelong member of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, serving on the OWASA Board of Directors from 1986-88, and a volunteer for the National Kidney Foundation for North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama for over 30 years. He has been instrumental in the redevelopment of the Rogers Road neighborhood by advocating to bring water and sewer services to that community.
When the Civil Rights Movement came to North Carolina, Betty Baldwin Geer was ready for it. She was raised in Chapel Hill with a strong sense of responsibility to her community, pride in herself, and dedication to do what's right. These values were instilled by her parents and reinforced by her church, St. Joseph Christian Methodist Church, where Ms. Geer attended meetings to organize marches on segregated businesses in Chapel Hill. After graduating from Lincoln High School in 1962, Ms. Geer attended A&T, where she became an active participant in the Movement in Greensboro. She was jailed repeatedly for marching on segregated businesses there, and participated in demonstrations in Chapel Hill when she returned home during the summer. After a demonstration in Greensboro, Ms. Geer was jailed overnight in the heat of the countryside, but throughout it all recalls singing 'We Shall Overcome.'
Jerry Gershenhorn retired from North Carolina Central University (NCCU), where he was the Julius L. Chambers Professor of History. He specializes in 20th century United States history, African American history, North Carolina history, and Media history.
Elizabeth Haddix is Senior Counsel at American Oversight, a democracy watchdog non-profit in Washington, DC specializing in public records investigations to hold government officials accountable and expose corruption and attacks on civil rights. Before joining American Oversight in 2023, Haddix served as Managing Attorney of the former Regional Office of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
When Annie B. Hargett began working at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in 1961, the facility was almost completely segregated. She recalls floors of the hospital segregated by race and Black nurses being required to go to the basement to eat. Ms. Hargett was one of the few Black nurses with a Bachelor's Degree in nursing at the time. She graduated from Lincoln High School in 1957 and became the first in her family to graduate college when she earned her degree from Winston Salem Teacher's College (now Winston Salem State University). She graduated with a Master's Degree in Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing from University of Maryland in 1969, and returned to North Carolina as an assistant professor at NCCU. In 1981, Ms. Hargett was hired to work at Duke Hospital, where she stayed for twenty-two years before retiring.
Reginald Hildebrand was a Professor of African American Studies and History at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After retiring from UNC, he served for three years as an adjunct instructor of history at Durham Technical Community College. He is a former co-chair of the North Carolina Freedom Monument Project, a former trustee of the North Carolina Humanities Council. In addition, he has served as a member of the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, and as a member of the Advisory Board for the North Carolina Historical Review. In 2018, he served as a member of the Historic Civil Rights Commemorations Task Force of the Town of Chapel Hill.
Timothy Lovelace, Jr., a noted legal historian of the civil rights movement, joined the Duke Law faculty in June 2020 from Indiana University where he was a professor of law at the Maurer School of Law and affiliated faculty in the Department of History. He previously taught at Duke Law as the John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History in the spring 2019 semester. During the 2019-2020 academic year he served as a visiting professor of law at the University of Virginia.
Angela M. Mason is a cultural heritage leader, public historian, and scholar based in Durham, North Carolina. For a decade, she has worked to share stories of the Black Southern Experience, and to amplify histories of marginalized communities, in archives, museums, and historic sites. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice.
Danita Mason-Hogans is a native of Chapel Hill NC. She was born into seven generations of “movement people” on both sides of her family. She is a curriculum specialist and has been an education activist for over thirty years. She serves as program manager at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies for the Critical Oral Histories component, working with civil rights veterans and today's activists to document movement history. Her recent projects include a TED talk on the importance of local history, work with the Chapel Hill Civil Rights Task Force, a podcast on Chapel Hill history with the Town of Chapel Hill, a book collaboration project on voting rights written with Tim Tyson, author of The Blood of Emmett Till, five documentaries on women and the local civil rights movement.
Gene Nichol is a professor of law teaching courses in the constitution and federal courts. He was president of the College of William & Mary (2005-2008), law dean at the University of Colorado (1988-1995) and dean at UNC from 1999-2005. He’s been a columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer for 20 years and for the Charlotte Observer and Durham Herald for many years. He’s also written for The Nation, the Washington Post, Southern Cultures and Slate Magazine.
Dr. Freddie Parker was born and reared in Hillsborough, North Carolina. He received the B.A. in History from North Carolina Central University in 1975, the M.A. in History from NCCU in 1977, and the Ph.D. in American History from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1987. He is currently Professor Emeritus, and former Julius L. Chambers Endowed Professor of History at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C. He taught American, African American, and African History at North Carolina Central University for thirty-nine (39) years.
Allison Riggs is an American state court judge. She was appointed by Governor Roy Cooper to the North Carolina Court of Appeals and later to the North Carolina Supreme Court. Riggs has served as co-leader of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina, and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Texas redistricting case in 2018 and a North Carolina redistricting case in 2019.
Rich Rosen is a Professor of Law Emeritus at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Reggie Shuford joined the NC Justice Center as Executive Director in February 2023 following an eleven-year tenure as Executive Director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. Before leading the ACLU of PA, he spent over fifteen years at the ACLU national office in New York City where he was Staff Attorney and Senior Staff Attorney.
Adam Stein was born on September 3, 1937 in New York and was raised in Washington, D.C. He attended NYU for college, studied law at George Washington Law School, and served in the U.S. Army for 3 years. He then moved to Charlotte, where he practiced civil rights law with Julius Chambers. He worked with the Legal Defense Fund on desegregation efforts, Title VII litigation, and on death penalty cases.
Melvin L. Watt (“Mel”) was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina in 1945. He graduated from York Road High School, one of the segregated public high schools in Mecklenburg County, in 1963. He was Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina in 1967 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and was the President of Beta Gamma Sigma honors society by virtue of having the highest academic average in the business school. He graduated from Yale University Law School in 1970 and was a published member of the Yale Law Journal. After interning at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York, Mel joined the law firm founded by Julius Chambers in Charlotte, where he practiced law from 1971to 1993. He served one term in the North Carolina State Senate from 1985 to 1987 and served as Manager of multiple Harvey Gantt political campaigns for Charlotte City Council, Mayor of Charlotte, and the United States Senate.
James E. Williams, Jr. received a B.A. in Political Science and J.D. from Duke University. He was Chief Public Defender for Orange and Chatham Counties from 1990-2017. He was previously the Felony Chief of the Mecklenburg County Public Defender’s Office. In 2010, while a member of the N.C. Advocates for Justice Board of Governors, Mr. Williams helped establish and served as Chair of the Task Force on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Criminal Justice System. In 2012, the work of the Task Force led to the establishment of the N.C. Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System, of which Mr. Williams served as a Board Member and later Commission Chair. Mr. Williams is also a founder and Board member of the N.C. Public Defender Committee on Racial Equity and serves on numerous boards, including the N.C. Fines and Fees Coalition, National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts, N.C. Association of Black Lawyers, and Orange Bias Free Policing Coalition.
Since 2010, Judge Jim Wynn has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. From 1990 to 2010, he was a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals and briefly was a justice on the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1998. He was a lawyer and military judge in the United States Navy JAG Corps reserves from 1979 to 2009 (Navy Captain with numerous personal awards). Before becoming a judge, he was in the law firm of Fitch, Butterfield, and Wynn, located in Wilson & Greenville, North Carolina.
Thank you to our event sponsors!
