Author Archives: Darius Scott

Rogers Road maintains a central place in the memory of families gathered around it. For decades, they have grown and lived around the road just outside Chapel Hill’s bustling education and college sports-focused center. Perhaps, few communities in the city … Continue reading →

Black main streets, prior to urban renewal, were bustling centers of culture and business. Not unlike the rural roadways in rural African American communities, development, in the form of urban renewal, came unevenly on and around these sites. Below are two clips … Continue reading →

For an oral historian, one of the most exciting times is reviewing the transcript for the first time. Slightly apprehensive but mostly eager, you turn on the audio and read along to get a better sense of what you and … Continue reading →

One of the joys of doing work with communities local to the Southern Oral History Program is the number of connections that spring up. After attending a presentation on the progress of Back Ways via the UNC Institute for African … Continue reading →

Back Ways explores the rural South by following the paths southerners created to visit one another, to shop and trade, to reach homes and churches, and to avoid one another.  The project began with a provocative premise: did white-run municipalities … Continue reading →