Northside neighborhood has fostered local Black community for over a hundred years

Located between the downtown areas of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Northside is one of the oldest historically Black neighborhoods in the area.

It has produced leaders and educators and is integral to the history of Chapel Hill’s Black community, George Barrett, executive director of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, said.

During the mid-19th century, enslaved Black people lived off of lease or loan from white residents on what was called the “west end” of Chapel Hill — the Northside neighborhood. 

CJ Suitt, Chapel Hill’s first poet laureate, said that while they were settled there to build the University, Northside residents gave the neighborhood new value.

“Black folks who built the University came and made this area of town their own — their home — as they brought culture and different aspects of togetherness and connectedness to the larger Chapel Hill community,” they said. 

In the early 20th century, Northside expanded during the Great Migration, wherein the growth of the railroad system, cost of living challenges during the wartime-Depression era and the stifling impacts of Jim Crow Laws led Black people to migrate further north, searching for work in growing urban centers.

While many went further north, job opportunities at the University or the Carr Mill textile factory took Black people to Chapel Hill, where many settled in Northside. 

“Northside, among other things, became one of the service enclaves for the University,” Barrett said. “So a lot of the folks worked in the dining hall, were cafeteria workers, janitors from the janitorial society. The service workforce of the University, and also a lot of Chapel Hill, were many folks from this neighborhood — this was one of the hubs.

The Hargraves Community Center was first established in the 1940s to give Black people a space to gather publicly, socialize and enjoy recreational facilities under Jim Crow Laws.

Since its initial completion in 1942, Hargraves has continued to grow, now offering a wide range of recreational activities and events. 

Derrick Davis, a community member, said Hargraves Community Center has always been a staple of the community. 

“Not only resistance, but just being welcoming and having a place in the community to show up,” he said.

In addition to being significant culturally, the Northside neighborhood has been a hub for social justice, Barrett said.

“This community has a history of organizing and community justice,” he said. “And so there were folks in this community — like the kids from Lincoln High School —who were inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and inspired by the citizens at Woolworth's counter in Greensboro to organize the first sit-ins in late February of 1960.”

Northside residents were leaders in the struggle against segregation in Chapel Hill. In addition to organizing the first sit-in in Chapel Hill at Colonial Drug Co. — which led to the arrests of nine Lincoln High School students — community members led and organized protests calling for workers' rights, and a Northside resident was the first Black woman to enter UNC.

Utilizing the same foundation laid years before, the Northside community has remained a pillar of social justice in Chapel Hill.

In 2009, the oral history-based Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History was established. It is based in Northside and works with the community to preserve the future of historically Black neighborhoods in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. 

“We partner with Hargraves, but we really are directed by the community to be a space of community organizing, education with our neighbors so that they can determine their own future through different strategies like housing, advocacy, justice, education and also celebration connection events,” Barrett said. 

Today, Pine Knolls and Rogers Road — two of the other historically Black neighborhoods in Chapel Hill and Carrboro — join Northside in being the most socioeconomically diverse places in south Orange County.

They are also threatened by displacement, predatory sales and high demands for student rentals.

However, residents did not give up in the face of challenges — they created a neighborhood watch system and collaborated with the Town to make the Northside Neighborhood Conservation District, which puts restrictions on development in the area.

Residents continue fighting for their homes and community, just as they have done for hundreds of years.  

Lola Oliverio contributed to reporting.

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