Chapel Hill's role in civil rights movement revisted with Wilson Library lecture

A crowd of more than 40 people were reminded of Chapel Hill’s key role in the civil rights movement Wednesday.

Historian Derek Catsam spoke in Wilson Library about arrests that were made in Chapel Hill in 1947 in response to controversial desegregated buses.

The event, “The Long Road to Parchman: North Carolina and the Desegregation of Interstate Busing,” was sponsored by the North Carolina Collection, the Southern Historical Collection and the Friends of the Library.

Catsam said a bus traveled from Washington, D.C., to various locations in the South with black riders sitting in the front — an illegal action at the time.

He said Chapel Hill was one of the cities where men on the bus were arrested.

Catsam — an associate professor of history at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin — was introduced by playwright and UNC alumnus Mike Wiley, who directed a play about events related to Catsam’s lecture.

Wiley’s play “The Parchman Hour” will show in the Paul Green Theatre through Nov. 13.

The play details the lives of people who participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides movement, which was directly influenced by the 1947 bus rides through the South.

Catsam also wrote a book, “Freedom’s Main Line: the Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides,” about the movement.

Catsam said he decided to study the Freedom Rides after struggling to find information about the subject.

“There was a gap to be filled,” he said.

Roger Werner, an attendant of the event, said he remembered reading about the Freedom Rides in the news.

“I am a child of the sixties,” Werner said. “Those events took place while I was a young man — actually at UNC.”

Arthur Finn, an attendant of the event, said Catsam’s talk reminded him of his college years.

“It brings me back to the early civil rights days,” said Finn, a retired UNC medical school employee.

Finn said he was active in the civil rights movement at Yale University’s campus.

First year graduate student Amber Covington said she met people who participated in the Freedom Rides and went to the event in hopes of learning more.

“The topic means something special to me, as a student and as an African American,” Covington said.

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