Re/Collecting Chapel Hill

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In their own words

Join Chapel Hill Public Library staff and community members as we uncover the untold histories of Chapel Hill. We seek to reckon with our past to figure out where we came from and why it matters for our shared future.Season one of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill was supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Why you'd press play

Silent Sam's security bill meets Gere Cemetery's neglect; you decide what deserves remembering.

Press play if you want

  • to hear women recall the segregation they lived through in Chapel Hill
  • to weigh a Confederate monument against the graves a community wants protected
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Best episodes of Re/Collecting Chapel Hill

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

10: Voices - Zan Coleman, Cortland Gilliam, and CJ SuittAug 7, 2023

A CATE Scholar-produced conversation where poetry meets Chapel Hill's unfinished conversations.

Poetry gives this CATE Scholar edition of Recollecting Chapel Hill its shape, turning Chapel Hill's unfinished conversations into something felt as much as discussed. Zan Coleman, who conceived and produced the episode as a CATE scholar, guides Cortland Gilliam and C.J.

8: Elizabeth CottenOct 23, 2020

Elizabeth Cotton's Chapel Hill story traces West End roots, Freight Train, and the chance turns that carried her music outward.

Elizabeth Cotton's story moves through Chapel Hill's West End, a box of old cassette tapes, and the song that made her name last. Mandela Young and Molly Luby give real attention to Cotton's preference for Elizabeth over the childhood nicknames around her, then follow the forces…

7: What Comes Next. Silent Sam part 3Dec 19, 2019

A grounded closing chapter on Silent Sam's removal, its cost, and what Chapel Hill chooses to remember.

Silent Sam's fall is the starting point, not the finish. Recollecting Chapel Hill follows the statue from the taut rope and metallic snap of its removal into the more difficult question of what the university preserves, funds, or leaves unmarked.

6: James Cates. Silent Sam part 2Nov 18, 2019

A painful oral history of James Cates's death and the racial violence surrounding it.

James Cates's death anchors the episode, which moves from Patricia Mason's grief and disbelief into memories of violence outside a Chapel Hill dance.

5: An Old Argument. Silent Sam part 1Nov 4, 2019

A toppled Confederate monument opens into Chapel Hill's deeper history of segregation, memory, and community self-determination.

Recollecting Chapel Hill frames Silent Sam as a public question about which history a university chooses to keep in view. It opens with William Thorpe at the monument's former site in a Union soldier's uniform, a pointed image on a campus that displayed a Confederate statue for…

Podcasts like Re/Collecting Chapel Hill

Episodes

  1. 1

    10: Voices - Zan Coleman, Cortland Gilliam, and CJ Suitt

    Hidden gem

    Zan Coleman hosts Re/Collecting Chapel Hill's James CATE Scholars Edition with current poet laureate Cortland Gilliam and C.J.

    Aug 7, 2023·25m·1 clip
  2. 2

    9: Voices - CJ Suitt

    Nov 25, 2020·16m
  3. 3

    8: Elizabeth Cotten

    Hidden gem

    Re/Collecting Chapel Hill examines Elizabeth Cotton’s Chapel Hill childhood, her song “Freight Train,” and the 1976 oral-history tape found by the Chapel Hill Historical Society.

    Oct 23, 2020·29m·2 clips
  4. 4

    7: What Comes Next. Silent Sam part 3

    Hidden gem

    Re/Collecting Chapel Hill’s “What Comes Next” examines the aftermath of Silent Sam’s 2018 removal through eyewitness accounts, UNC officials, historians, activists, and Chapel Hill residents.

    Dec 19, 2019·23m·1 clip
  5. 5

    6: James Cates. Silent Sam part 2

    Hidden gem

    Re/Collecting Chapel Hill examines the 1970 murder of 22-year-old James Cates on the UNC campus and its connection to Chapel Hill’s Silent Sam history.

    Nov 18, 2019·38m·2 clips
  6. 6

    5: An Old Argument. Silent Sam part 1

    Re/Collecting Chapel Hill examines Silent Sam, the Confederate monument removed from UNC Chapel Hill after 105 years, through community memories rather than a conventional monument history.

    Nov 4, 2019·31m·2 clips
  7. 7

    4: Mayor of Franklin Street

    Hidden gem

    Joe Herzenberg’s memorial bench on Bolin Creek Trail turns his interests in travel and learning into bronze, concrete, creek imagery, and an owl.

    Oct 21, 2019·23m·1 clip
  8. 8

    3: Remembering Our Dead

    Hidden gem

    Re/Collecting Chapel Hill’s “Remembering Our Dead” examines how cemeteries record Chapel Hill history through headstones, family names, burial practices, and missing markers.

    Oct 7, 2019·31m·2 clips
  9. 9

    2: Young, Gifted and Black

    Hidden gem

    Mama Dip started her Chapel Hill restaurant with $64: $40 for food and $24 for change.

    Sep 23, 2019·20m·1 clip
  10. 10

    1: Holy Week Fast

    The episode discusses the toppling of Silent Sam and the installation of activist historical markers in Chapel Hill, exploring the fight for a moral reckoning with the past.

    Sep 9, 2019·21m