On Friday, Hillsborough community members came together at Dickerson Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church to celebrate and learn about the “Telling the Full Story” project, which highlights 10 local sites that are important to the histories of Black and Indigenous people in Hillsborough.
The project was created by The Alliance for Historic Hillsborough to bring attention to aspects of the town’s history that have often been overlooked. The project has an interactive website where users can watch videos and learn about the 10 locations. During the event, the videos were played as attendees walked around and discussed Hillsborough’s history, visiting different posters set up to learn more about each of the sites.
The landmarks were selected by a committee of Hillsborough community members with connections to the town’s history. One committee member, Horace H. Johnson Jr., was the first Black student to attend what had been the all-white, Orange Junior High School in 1966.
“I just want to say that, in my lifetime, I've never thought something like this would take place, where we acknowledge the history of so many people now who are responsible for us as a group being here,” Johnson said to the gathered audience.
The event began with a performance by local musician Samuel Obie, who talked about growing up in Hillsborough and performed songs including an original song about his hometown as well as a duet of “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke with N.C. Central University professor Freddie Parker, who was also a member of the project committee.
Following the performance, members of the committee spoke and were presented with the 2024 Governor’s Volunteer Service Award — an N.C. award for community-focused volunteering — for their work on the project.
One site that the project highlights is the Coachman’s Quarters of Jesse Ruffin, who was enslaved by N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin. Jesse Ruffin’s descendants believe that a brick at the Quarters inscribed with the date, Dec. 5, 1865 — the day after the 13th Amendment was ratified in the state legislature — was engraved by Jesse Ruffin himself.
Thomas Ruffin Jr. Residence Hall at UNC, formerly named Ruffin Residence Hall, was originally named for Ruffin Sr. but was renamed for his son in 2020. Ruffin Sr. is known for writing a majority opinion arguing that slave owners had the right to abuse enslaved people.
“This project was a portal to get some of those stories out, as well as other unknown stories that families of color just kind of passed down in the family,” Beverly Scarlett, a committee member and retired district judge, said at the event. “But you would never read these stories in the newspaper anywhere.”
