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K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Fred Battle oral history excerpt

About this recording

From oral history interview with Fred Battle, January 3, 2001. Interview K-0525. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Date created
January 3, 2001
Duration
2:10
File
MP3
License
This recording copyright ©2004. All Rights Reserved
Source
Original audio housed by Documenting the American South / UNC Libraries

See this recording in context

  • De facto vs. de jure segregation: This lesson for grades 11 and 12 will help students understand the difference between de facto and de jure segregation. Students will listen to three oral history excerpts and discuss the experiences of segregation described in each. As a follow-up activity, students will brainstorm solutions to both de facto and de jure segregation.

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Fred Battle is a resident of Chapel Hill, North Carolina who experienced segregation as he came of age in the 1950s and 1960s. He participated in the sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C. in 1960 to desegregate the lunch counter at the local Woolworth’s store, and he also experienced segregation in his hometown of Chapel Hill.

Transcript

Fred Battle
The community set up, that’s where you had the Varsity Theater, Carolina Theater, in Chapel Hill. Then we had a Rialto Theater in Carrboro, on the main street. That was a black theater. But here again, if it left scars on me, the scars are there for me, it’s the fact that I would have to pass these theaters to go to the Rialto Theater. Or if I went to the Carolina Theater in Durham, I would have to sit up in the balcony, you know. The same thing with the bus, you know, most people that lived in Chapel Hill occasionally went to Durham to do their shopping, that big Sears and Roebuck was in Durham. And here again, you would sit on the back of the bus and go there. Same thing with the restaurants, water fountains, whatever. The theaters, I mean, you had to bypass the theaters and the school. I think it did more damage to me as to make me realize what this thing, this segregation is all about. Because I had to deal with that on a constant [unclear]. And occasionally what we did, we got a person, black person that was real light-skinned. And to fool the system, we got him to go in the theater. And they were unable to detect the difference.
Bob Gilgor (interviewer)
In a way that was a surrogate victory?
Fred Battle
In a way it was a surrogate victory, but not the type of victory we were lookin’ for, because we weren’t wanting it to be on the pigmentation of his skin, color. We wanted to have it so that everybody that wanted to go in and be able to observe a movie would have that freedom of choice.