Orange County hosts Black History Month conversation series, ‘Telling the Full Story’

To commemorate Black History Month, Orange County and the Alliance for Historical Hillsborough are co-sponsoring a series of public discussions about historically important Black and Indigenous sites around Hillsborough. 

The public discussions, which will take place every Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in February at the Passmore Center, are called “Telling the Full Story.” 

Kelly Arnold, the Alliance for Historical Hillsborough program and events coordinator, said each of the four events are centered around one to three different historic locations. 

Arnold said each event will have an overarching theme, ranging from businesses to schools and religious institutions. 

The first discussion’s theme is entrepreneurship, focusing on formerly Black-owned businesses — Faribault's Bar-B-Q, Shanklin’s Press and the Warner Complex — all of which have closed. She said Alliance for Historical Hillsborough committee members will be present to discuss the sites with attendees. 

Arnold said the conversation series began with the Alliance for Historical Hillsborough’s map project during the pandemic, which used federal grant money to create an interactive online map showing the locations of the 10 sites alongside short, informative videos and text. 

The conversation series is for community members who wanted to learn more about the sites from the map project, Arnold said. She said part of the goal with these events is to bring older Hillsborough residents together to share and discuss their memories of the sites with younger generations.

Arnold said the hope is that the conversation series will help preserve the memory of sites and events that shaped the community. She also said having these conversations will expand the standard narrative of Orange County history, as there are always specific people and places who are featured.

"But it’s not the full story of what there is to Hillsborough, that’s not the only people who shaped our history," Arnold said.

N.C. Rep. Renée Price (D-Caswell, Orange)said she discovered the one-sided history of Hillsborough while working in the Orange County government.

“We hear about all of these people of European descent, Scottish, Irish and English, but there was so little about the people that actually helped to build this county, literally build this county,” Price said.

Paul Slack, Orange County chief officer of equity and inclusion, said it's especially challenging to teach Black and Indigenous history in the South because of the prevalence of conflicting racist narratives after the Civil War, like the Lost Cause myth, which perpetuates that the war was not about slavery. 

“We’re probably only a generation, maybe half a generation, removed from that being the predominant narrative in certain parts of the South,” Slack said.

Price, who helped research for the map project, said this divergence in narrative revealed itself in how older white and Black residents told their stories.

However, she said she also saw a willingness between the two communities to get along during her research, especially among younger generations.

“What we experienced is history to them,” Price said. “I think they’re a little more open to trying to understand these divides, and they want to come together.”

Slack said he sees the conversation series as part of an ongoing process of general education about Black and Indigenous history for people who are already interested in it.

“I look at them as tools, not like this is going to be the thing that sparks it for anybody,” Slack said.

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