Black Oral HIstories of Beaufort County

83-year-old Jerome Seldon was born and raised in Washington, North Carolina. Growing up in a loving family, she credits that upbringing for preparing her for her life journey as a Black woman. As a school teacher for over 30 years, she became known by many of her peers and fellow workers as Miss Sunshine. It was a job she loved dearly, and she feels she touched many lives along the way.

Cornelius Dudley was born at his home on March 4, 1941 in Aurora, North Carolina. He was the seventh of eleven siblings. He grew up on a farm where the cash crop was tobacco. He and most of the Black children were known as rainy-day students because, when the weather was nice, you could find them working out in the fields. When the family home caught fire, all but three rooms were destroyed. But they made do with the remaining three rooms, where 14 members of his family lived for the next four y

Born in 1950, Delores Slade grew up in the small community of Maple Grove, near Washington, NC. A place, she says, where everyone seemed to get along and would take care of each other. On the days when there was a church service, it was like old-time religion. “The windows were up, and you could hear singing and clapping all over the neighborhood. It was all very spiritual.”

Ira Harris was born and raised in rural Franklin County, NC, on his family’s farm. As a child, he learned firsthand the realities of racism. He and his friend Henry were forced to attend an all-white school by a Jim Crow School Board in an attempt to show Blacks were inferior to whites during desegregation, and to stop the effort. Harris shares in painful detail the daily verbal abuse and beatings from white students, which included an attempted drowning in the school’s bathroom. In a system des

Lillian Boyd was born in Washington, North Carolina, in 1919. At 106, her life experiences have been many. She and her four siblings grew up in a loving family where their parents always made sure there was food on the table, and they never went wanting. As a child, she worked in the tobacco fields, where you might find her sitting under a big tobacco leaf to get out of the sun. Racism was not a stranger. As Boyd said, “They didn’t like us and sometimes treated us like animals, so we didn’t like

84-year-old Helma Witchet was born and raised in the small rural community of Blounts Creek, NC. The daughter of sharecroppers, she learned firsthand the rigors of growing and harvesting tobacco. Witchet attended the Ware Creek Rosenwald School, one of six Rosenwald Schools in Beaufort County, through the 5th grade. She attended NC A&T in the 60’s, marched with protestors, and can proudly say that the Reverend Jessie Jackson was one of her classmates. Witchet went on to become a teacher and then