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Jeff Black oral history excerpt

About this recording

From oral history interview with Jeff Black, March 29, 1999. Interview K-0276. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Date created
March 29, 1999
Duration
1:15
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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In the classroom

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Jeff Black is a resident of Charlotte who attended its desegregated schools in the 1990s. Here, he talks about the school segregation that he sees outside the classroom.

Transcript

Jeff Black
Right now with my position in student council, we have little committees that we’ve divided up into. I’m head of the race relations committee. Right now we’re working on a project to end de facto segregation in the cafeteria, primarily, because no matter how well we get along in the classroom and in the hallways at lunch time it still seems like everyone sits by their specific race. You have your exceptions to it, but it’s still primarily when you look, that’s what you see. So we’re trying to organize a day now where everyone just tries to reach out and sit with somebody they normally wouldn’t, or sit with somebody of a different race, just somebody that they wouldn’t normally sit with so that they can meet different people.
Pamela Grundy (interviewer)
Why do you think that happens? Why do you think that shook out that way in the cafeteria?
Jeff Black
I think it’s just people are more comfortable with things that are similar. Even if they have the same people in their classroom, they just haven’t taken the time out to go out and venture out during lunch or during free time or hang out on the weekends or things like that. I think it’s gotten where it’s isolated in the classroom instead of everywhere else.