Oral history interview with Terry Graham, March 22, 1999
Subtitle: interview K-0434, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Covington, Amanda, interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2007
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; African American businesspeople; School integration; Race relations; Economic conditions
Other titles: Interview K-0434, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Terry Graham, March 22, 1999; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Mooresville, N.C., resident Terry Graham and taxi service operator describes his changing town in this interview. He worries that the town has "just outgrown itself" and is at risk of being swallowed up by nearby Charlotte; already, businesspeople from the racing industry are infiltrating the town, says Graham, and he worries about the effects of the closing of Burlington Mill on African Americans. The future for Mooresville as Graham sees it does not look bright for its lower-income residents. Perhaps the most significant change Graham describes is desegregation. He remembers a relatively uneventful process: though the white and black community disagreed about whether it was the white school or the black school that should undergo the conversion to an integrated facility, that and other questions were handled peacefully, even when Martin Luther King's assassination roiled the community. This interview offers a glimpse of a town in flux, sprawling toward an uncertain future.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on December 16, 2008).

Interview participants: Terry Graham, interviewee; Amanda Covington, interviewer.

Duration: 00:37:51.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 97.3 kilobytes, 69.3 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series K, Southern communities, interview K-0434, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original transcript: 33 p.

Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements:  Web browser with Javascript enabled and multimedia player.