(Describer) Sunlight beams through forest trees.

[bright thoughtful music]

[Speaker] "So, this is Oberlin, or was Oberlin,

for it is gone, merged into a growing metropolis at a loss of its distinctive character, caught in the whirlpool of progress. A Negro town formed not of necessity or a compulsion but possessed of vitality and charm. It produced artisans and artists, doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, preachers, at a rate above the average of the city as a whole and above the average of the state that contained it. I was born there in the dear, dear days of long ago." Lemuel Graves, 1950. [bright thoughtful music continues]

(Describer) Title: Oberlin. A Village Rooted in Freedom.

[Narrator] Lemuel Graves' parents

were both born into slavery shortly before the Civil War. Around 1885, newlyweds Willis and Eleanor Graves built the impressive Victorian home that was Lemuel's birthplace. By 2015, the 130-year-old home seemed destined for demolition. Purchased for development, the property was only protected by a one-year's demolition delay and by the goodwill of its new owner. The house was a rare reminder of Oberlin, the proud Black community founded after the Civil War two miles west of the North Carolina state capitol in Raleigh. In 2002, only five Oberlin structures were listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Not many, considering that Oberlin was once the home of 1,200 people. Even that designation wouldn't save the Graves' home from the fate that had befallen much of Oberlin. A few doors away, the home of Reverend Plummer T. Hall and his wife, Delia, was in similar straits. The Halls were also born into slavery, and they built their new home in the 1880s. The house had suffered many indignities in recent years, from foreclosure to massive termite damage. The long-vacant house sat on the public right of way and encroached on the neighboring lot lines. Fortunately, the house had been acquired by the Raleigh Historic Development Commission, but what does one do with a very modest and seriously dilapidated house sitting on real estate worth more than $1/2 million? With two of the five national registered properties in Oberlin in trouble, something had to give.

(Describer) Myrick Howard.

I am persuaded that these houses are going to be telling a story a century from now that's a really important story. And that's one of the things about preservation, once you have buildings like these and they get lost, the stories get lost, the history gets lost, and in the case of Oberlin, unless you have the visual, tangible reminders of places like these houses, the whole story will be gone.

(Describer) A photograph shows Black school children. Title: Oberlin: The Beginning.

[thoughtful piano music]

[Narrator] At the end of the Civil War,

four million slaves across the South suddenly faced a new reality, freedom. Where would they go? What would they eat? And how would they survive? Many slaves were ill-equipped to face the new free world they were entering. Some stayed on at their former plantations, working as sharecroppers for their former owners. But others wanted to get as far away as possible from the memories of the past and build a new life and communities where Black people could gather together, practice their trades, and live their lives without interference.

(Describer) Title: Duncan Cameron. Planter.

Duncan Cameron was a wealthy plantation owner, politician, and banker. Cameron owned more slaves than anyone else in North Carolina. He was a complicated man, both owning slaves and helping them achieve more. In defiance of the law, Cameron allowed some of the slaves on his plantation to learn to read and write while others learned skilled trades. It was on his land that much of Oberlin Village grew. After the Civil War, white merchant and entrepreneur Luis Peck was one of the first to sell lots to newly freed slaves. He sold lots for $50, and for a short while, the community was known as Peck's Place. W.H. Morgan, a free Black prior to the Civil War, also sold land to former slaves, creating an area called Morgantown. And another portion of the area was sold and named San Domingo. James Henry Harris purchased land along Old Hillsboro Road. Through his business, the Raleigh Cooperative Land and Building Association, he developed the land into individual plots and loaned money to residents to purchase land and build houses. The community was named Oberlin for Harris's alma mater, Oberlin College, a school in Ohio well known for its abolitionist stance and open enrollment to both African Americans and women. After the war, Harris returned to North Carolina and quickly became one of the most prominent Black politicians in the state, doing what he could to help newly freed slaves. The newly freed slaves were eager to buy their own land because it meant an escape from paying rent to a white landlord and another step towards freedom. This prompted many whites to disparagingly call the community "Save-Rent." Local newspapers referred to the growing community by a variety of names, causing the citizens of the new community to write a letter to the Raleigh Daily News in March 1872.

[Speaker] "Dear sir, you will please do us the kindness

to correct the many errors you have unknowingly made in the name of our flourishing little village. It is neither Morgantown, San Domingo, or 'Save Rent,' but 'Oberlin.' With a due compliance, you will greatly oblige."

[Narrator] The paper responded the same day,

but not so kindly.

[Speaker] "Call it what you please.

We are sorry we ever called it anything, but should necessity hereafter require it, we shall call it Morgantown-San Domingo-Save Rent-Oberlin."

[Narrator] Eventually, the citizens had their way,

and the community was officially called Oberlin. Oberlin's 149 acres primarily consisted of farmland and a few dirt roads. In 1870, there were only 20 Black families living in the new community. But by 1872, a reporter wrote that Oberlin was Raleigh's principal suburb and was "composed almost exclusively of colored families, who were represented as very industrious and thriving. It has increased so rapidly within the past few months that it will soon require a municipal corporation of its own." One of the early land buyers was Lemuel Battle Hinton, a harness maker whose daughter, Eleanor, would marry Willis Graves, builder of the Graves-Fields House. In 1869, Hinton bought what came to be identified as lot number two in Oberlin. Lemuel had to make 10 annual payments before the property was his. In 1879, a few months before his last payment was due, Hinton must have run short on funds. He borrowed $75 from a white cotton merchant. The collateral for the loan was two oxen, one milk cow named Barnhill, a wagon, and farm implements. Hinton made his last payment to Lee, and his family owned the property until the Great Depression of the 1930s.

(Describer) Title: Oberlin. Growth.

[gentle contemplative music]

During this era of growth, the citizens of Oberlin turned their energy to establishing the new institutions needed to have a successful community, churches, and schools. In 1869, a new Methodist church was founded, and by 1874, its new building was completed. It was named Wilson Chapel Methodist Church in honor of Wilson Morgan, the minister who had donated the land for the church. Morgan, a former slave, and his son, a brick mason, both served in the North Carolina House of Representatives. Lemuel Hinton was one of the church's founders, as was Nelson Ferris, Willis Graves' stepfather. Religion and education went hand in hand. The first Oberlin school started at Wilson Chapel as soon as the new building was completed. Sunday school was just that, school on Sunday to teach reading and writing to children and adults alike. The community also needed a cemetery since former slaves could not be buried in white cemeteries. In 1873, Nicholas Pettiford sold a one-acre tract to the people of Oberlin to be used as a cemetery. Through the decades, some of Oberlin's most prominent citizens were buried there. It is a sacred place full of stories. Two Baptist churches were also founded, Hall's Chapel and Mount Moriah. The founder and first pastor of Hall's Chapel, Reverend Plummer T. Hall, grew up enslaved in Warrenton. For the first decade after the Civil War, freedom and equality were at least the law of the land. The election of 1876 changed all that for nearly a century. Reconstruction was finished. No longer would the federal government protect the civil and political rights of African Americans. The party of Lincoln would now refrain from interfering in the South's local affairs. Southern Democrats pledged they would recognize the civil and political equality of Blacks, but it was a false promise. Almost immediately, Southern legislators passed Jim Crow laws, requiring the separation of whites from persons of color on public transportation, in schools, parks, restaurants, theaters, and other public facilities. These laws also sought to keep Black men from voting. It was the beginning of a dark and dangerous time for former slaves and their offspring. Despite these setbacks, the citizens of Oberlin kept building their new town.

[Speaker] "Quite a town,

composed almost entirely of colored people, has grown up a mile northwest of the city. The length is more than a mile and it has some 750 inhabitants. It has been given the name Oberlin." Raleigh City Directory, 1880.

[Narrator] In 1880, more Oberlin residents

owned their own land than anywhere else in Raleigh. 90 African American landowners each owned from 200 to $500 worth of property. Not only was home ownership burgeoning, Oberlin school outgrew its space in the church and now had 100 pupils, so a new schoolhouse was built. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, boys learned trades and girls learned domestic services. It was in this environment that the young, ambitious brick mason Willis Graves married Eleanor Hinton, and they built their impressive new home.

(Describer) Howard.

It's interesting to us that the Graves named the house Oakcrest. We have no idea why, but we can guess that maybe they were proud of their house, and they were gonna name their house the same way that the plantation owners named their plantations.

[Narrator] Nearby, Reverend Plummer Hall's home

served as the church parsonage. Hall preached one Sunday a month at the chapel. In 1896, things changed again. The U.S. Supreme Court made a landmark decision in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality. In reality, separate was rarely equal. Two years later, in the fall of 1888, Willis Graves ran for a seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives. In light of the steady loss of civil and voting rights for African Americans in North Carolina, it was a bold move. The local News and Observer railed against his effort, calling the attendees of a political rally a "mob" and describing Graves as "a very Black man with a voice like a foghorn." Willis lost. Just two days after that political rally, Wilmington erupted in violence as local Democrats burned down the local African American daily newspaper and forced duly elected Republican officials out of office. In Raleigh, as in some other Southern cities, the biggest political and social event of the year for Blacks was Emancipation Day, celebrated on January 1st. Hundreds attended all-day events that included speakers, choirs, political debates, and dinner. Key state and national officials and members of both races would often attend the ceremonies. Willis Graves was honored as the main speaker at Raleigh's Emancipation Day celebration. January 1st, 1899, must have been a gloomy day indeed for Raleigh's African Americans. Over the previous two decades, they had systematically been stripped of civil, economic, and voting rights and relegated to second-class citizenship. By 1901, there were no African American congressmen, North Carolina's George Henry White of Tarboro being the last. More than 90 years would pass before North Carolina elected African Americans to Congress. Despite this, the village of Oberlin continued to mature into a stable, prosperous, largely African American suburb of Raleigh. By this time, there were at least 200 Black towns and communities nationwide. Black towns provided a nurturing environment, shielding residents from the everyday racism of white society and offering them opportunities they did not otherwise have. In 1911, a new Wilson Temple Methodist Church was constructed on the foundation of the original fellowship hall. This beautiful building represented one of the spiritual centers of the village, where people gathered together to sing, pray, discuss the news, and socialize. In 1912, the leaders of Hall's Chapel and Mount Moriah Baptist Church agreed to merge their churches. The new church was called Oberlin Baptist Church. They constructed an ambitious new church next door to the Graves' house. In 1914, a New York newspaper article described Oberlin as "a unique village of 1,200 inhabitants. The neat-looking buildings are artistically painted and the front yards are planted with rose bushes and other shrubberies." In 1916, the old frame school was acquired by the Raleigh Township School Committee and replaced by a modern two-story brick segregated public school of eight classrooms, a library, and an auditorium. In the early 1920s, Oberlin was annexed by the city of Raleigh. Oberlin Road was paved, new fire hydrants were installed, as well as water and sewer lines. It was a big change. Oberlin residents now had to pay city taxes. In addition, new white suburbs now abutted Oberlin and kept it from growing. Several of these residential communities had racially restrictive deed covenants prohibiting African American ownership. Unable to grow, the community suffered, and many residents joined the Great Migration and moved north to seek better opportunities outside of the Jim Crow South. Four of Willis and Eleanor's children joined that migration.

(Describer) Newspaper headlines appear.

The Great Depression was tough for the people of Oberlin and proved to be the beginning of the end for this once-vibrant community. Residents lost their jobs and were unable to provide for their families. They sold their houses for pennies on the dollar to make enough to survive or to pay off their mortgages and taxes. In the 1930s, the Graves family left Oberlin. John Graham, a Black railroad employee, and his wife, Alice, bought the house out of foreclosure. The Grahams then sold it in 1945 to Spurgeon and Janette Fields, whose family lived there for the next 70 years. Despite its challenges, Oberlin was still a proud community.

[Speaker] "Oberlin is the premier

African American suburb of Raleigh. The village has a population of approximately 1,000, housed in about 100 residences along Oberlin Road and about 75 houses along the streets to the west. Its citizens are esteemed by both races for their industry, frugality, and high character. Oberlin has ever been free from disorder. Not a single recalled major crime stains its record." Willis Briggs, News and Observer, August 8th, 1948.

(Describer) Joseph H. Holt, Jr.

I think one of my fondest memories is walking down through these wooded areas. There was one behind my house. Particularly, in the summertime and in the spring. I can remember you would almost become euphoric when you walked down the woods, I did, anyway, from the fragrance of the honeysuckle and other flowers down in the wooded areas. It was like going into another world. There were a number of plum bushes or plum trees throughout the community. And that was just part of what we did. We went down there in the woods, we plucked plums. Sometimes, you would find wild peach trees or wild apple trees, great arbors in the woods. And it was just kind of a joyful kind of experience. I remember honeysuckle vines and pulling the flowers off and sucking the nectar out of the back of them. I remember picking blackberries. We had locust trees. Every day we had the big dinner during the middle of the day. And she would, "What do you want for dinner?" "Mama Turner, we want a blackberry cobbler." She said, "Well, go down there and pick the blackberries." Well, we go down in the bushes to get the blackberries, and we see a snake, and we run back. But whatever we wanted to eat, because they had a huge garden, she'd tell us, "Go pick what you want," and she would fix whatever we wanted.

[Narrator] In that same year,

the United States Supreme Court, in a landmark case, Shelley vs. Kraemer, held that racially restricted covenants are unenforceable. These agreements kept people of color from buying property or living in certain neighborhoods, guaranteeing that neighbors would all be white. Raleigh suburbs, Cameron Park, Hayes Barton, and Bloomsbury all had racially restrictive covenants excluding Black ownership and occupancy. This wasn't just a Southern thing. Neighborhoods from Boston to Seattle and Detroit to San Francisco were also racially restricted. These covenants were encouraged by the Federal Housing Administration. About the same time, construction started on Cameron Village, Raleigh's first mixed-use shopping, office, and residential development. Although most of the new buildings were east of Oberlin, the project had a big impact. Oberlin Road was the easiest route to get to Cameron Village, and property after property was rezoned and sold for commercial use. Adding insult to injury, some of the modern new stores in Cameron Village, such as Sears, had separate white and colored restrooms and water fountains. But the demise of Jim Crow was soon to begin. I remember going there, and I would see colored and white. And I said, "Hm, that's interesting." And I think my mother or somebody said, "Well, you're not supposed to drink out of that one." I said, "Oh, really?" So when my mother turned her head, what did I do? I decided I was going to do it anyway. And I said, "Oh, that's interesting, the one that has 'white' is cold, and the one that says 'colored' is not." I said, "So is this the way it's supposed to be?" I do remember that distinctly.

(Describer) Wilma Peebles-Wilkins.

We would sneak down in Cameron Village to Sears and drink out of those colored/white water fountains.

[laughs] I had a white playmate,

and we would take turns drinking out of the water fountains

[chuckles] till they ran us out.

[Narrator] In 1954, the US Supreme Court,

in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education, held that school segregation was unconstitutional, virtually overturning the doctrine of separate but equal. During the mid-1950s, residents of Oberlin, many of whom were second or third-generation, were living comfortable lives despite the rigid bounds of segregation. Oberlin was a true community, close-knit and neighborly. So it was just a place where we know everyone. You just look up and wave and say, "Hey, how are you?" So, it's very safe, and you feel a kinship to the people that worked so hard to try and get this land. I mean, it wasn't easy back then for Blacks to own any land. And I think this community really stands out because you had a lot of professionals. My mom used to always talk about that, how it was very professional, and how people looked at the people of Oberlin a little bit differently because the African Americans of Oberlin owned land and a lot of other places around the city they didn't. It felt like a very safe, a very loving neighborhood. Never as a child was there ever any fear about going out or doing anything. Everybody knew each other. If you walked up and down these streets

(Describer) Mable Elizabeth Scarver Patterson.

and people on the porch or whatever they were, "Hey, Miss Kate. How you doing, Miss Kate?" And if you didn't speak to them coming back, they'd call and tell your parents: "Mable and Corin passed by, and they didn't say a mumbling word to me." So that's just how the neighborhood was. Oberlin really was like a village unto itself. You know, it was, like, so bonded and so close-knit that, you know, it was like a woven piece of fabric, and everybody kept everybody else, you know, on the straight and narrow, so that even though there was segregation, and there was racism, et cetera, you didn't get any of that vibe. You didn't get any of that. There was a closeness, there was a bond that I felt in the community that existed there among all the people. Seems like everyone kind of knew everyone very well. And then I began to realize that there was a kinship network in Oberlin. I always felt that in the Oberlin community, we lived in a triangle: From home, church, school. Because the preacher knew you, and the principal knew the families, and the teachers knew everyone. And it was a wonderful village to grow up in. It was interesting to me that on Sunday morning, my grandmother would get up early in the morning, and she would do a full-on breakfast. I cannot believe that she could do that. I mean, it was the biscuits, the red-eye gravy. She'd do that in the morning, we'd all come together from parts of that little house, have breakfast together, and then we would go to church. We would go to Sunday school, and we would go to church. After church, I got to go to that corner grocery store where I got Kool-Aid in the sticks and the dill pickles. And that's the only time of the week we were allowed to have a soda, and my favorite was orange. Oberlin Village was all about one generation doing better than the next. It was building on what you had because we stood on the shoulders of a lot of giants. You know, education was stressed by all the teachers. And it was important to my parents and I'm sure all the other parents in the community. It was just a big deal, you know, to get education and to be able to take care of yourself. And, you know, people talk a lot about those books that we had. They were used books 'cause when we opened the books up, they would be stamped with the name of one of the white public schools in it. But we learned from them nonetheless.

[Narrator] It was particularly tragic

when Wade Avenue was built. The new road with a large interchange on Oberlin Road split the community in two. Numerous Oberlin homes were demolished for the project, but the fracturing of the community was the greatest toll.

(Describer) Sabrina Goode.

I've often used Oberlin Road as an analogy to a human being 'cause Oberlin Road was the main street for this village. And the head was cut off by Hillsborough Street, the feet by Glenwood, and then Wade Avenue was pretty much a gutting. It's just right in the middle there. And this is a story, unfortunately, as I go out more and attend more conferences or speak with different people, this was a norm for Black America. It's always seemed like the Black community was the best way to build a highway or a best road. And you can see that very visibly here in Raleigh. If you look just one street over, you can see these older homes, and you can say, "Well, why not that street?"

(Describer) Holt.

I was just a boy, but I had a sense of the people that lived up there in the 1100 block being very discomforted, to use a very mild word, about this because they were going to have to leave their homes and relocate to some other place because a decision had been made to widen Wade Avenue. Let me tell you, that was a huge project that really disrupted the community. And when so we got displaced and had to move in, I think it was around '55 or something like that, it was very hard on my mother 'cause she had been there most of her life and she grew up there, was a member of the Daughters of Oberlin. There was a lodge that was near the church. So, it was difficult. And I have a bittersweet memory, for me, when I think about it. I get nostalgic, but I also have a little bitterness. Well, we lost those relationships, but also we lost the honeysuckle vines and the blackberry bushes,

(Describer) A tree sways in the breeze.

the locust trees. And I think that sense of community, you know, we lost that.

[Narrator] New public houses

were also cited in the neighborhood. As happened all over the nation, new highways and public housing intentionally reinforced segregation, targeting Black communities and hastening their decline. Oberlin's identity was beginning to fade.

(Describer) Karen Goode Throckmorton.

Unfortunately, people started moving away, and it started to change the fabric of the neighborhood.

(Describer) Patterson.

"We've been paved over and pushed out because developers have opted to erase Oberlin Village, a decision they have adopted. In 1870, the seed was sown by freed slaves who marked the territory as their own. With their blood, sweat, and tears, Oberlin has grown only to be demolished, leaving us with only memories as they take away our home."

[Narrator] Just two years later, Joe Holt Jr. of Oberlin

was the first to attempt to integrate Raleigh public schools. He was denied admission to the all-white Needham Broughton High School. The case moved slowly through the courts, and Joe graduated before the case was heard. Nevertheless, he won, and others from Oberlin were now able to attend white schools. There were three families that applied initially to a white school, Josephus Daniels Junior High School, which was almost new, which was located along the road. Our family, the Holt family, was the one family that continued to press forward. But let history record that the initiative to challenge segregation began in Oberlin community. So here you see the Raleigh Times on Saturday evening. And you see this picture, my mom, and dad, and me. And the headline read something like this: "Negro Dad May Sue." In 1956, a Black man is talking about suing the white power structure, and their picture is in the paper, okay? Now, that sent shockwaves throughout Raleigh, throughout the Black community, and right after that, we began to receive all kinds of hate calls, threats, and everything. And our lives became kind of like a living hell for the next 3 1/2 years. Harassment, threats, sinister phone calls all through the night, all hours of the night. My dad eventually was fired from his job. It was a very tense and stressed next 3 1/2 years.

(Describer) A headline: Threat Received by Negro Youth.

Yeah.

[Narrator] In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson

signed the Civil Rights Act into law, outlawing discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin. It was a landmark act which changed the course of American history. At last, Black students were able to choose to go to predominantly white schools, and many did just that. This drove down attendance at the former all-Black schools, some of which had to be closed due to low enrollment. Attendance plummeted at the Oberlin Graded School until it could no longer be sustained. It closed in 1968. The building sat empty for six years before being demolished and replaced by a new YWCA building, another commercial intrusion in the heart of Oberlin. The YWCA was built on the school site right in front of the Oberlin Cemetery. The cemetery was hidden away, not owned by anyone. It suffered neglect and was increasingly obscured by overgrown woods and high-rise apartment buildings. Oberlin still retained its name, but when the land was rezoned and developed for commercial use, many of the remaining families had little choice but to sell their homes. The area was becoming commercialized, and homeowners no longer felt it was their beloved Oberlin neighborhood. Oberlin Village and many of its early families were now gone. There is great irony that Oberlin Village was built by people who had endured slavery, were forbidden education, and owned nothing. They created a successful community of educated, influential Black families who obtained wealth and property. They not only survived but thrived. Despite their amazing success, the residents of Oberlin Village were subjected throughout the 20th century to governmental actions that were used to enforce racial segregation all across America. In the end, their homes were torn down to make way for progress. Progress, that is, to benefit whites.

(Describer) Holt.

[gentle contemplative music]

Well, what I knew as Oberlin as a community has virtually gone, it's lost. It hurts me to say that, but it's simply a fact. You know, there are some developers who are really special people, and they get it, you know, they understand that. They understand that the way a community presents, if you have small single-family cottage-style homes, maybe it doesn't make the best sense to put McMansions in there. Developers, you know, that's their profession. And they're to make money, they're not necessarily there to... But I think the good ones, the great ones, are those that are sensitive to where they're building, and how they're building, and work with communities to do that.

[Narrator] For many freedmen cities in America,

that marked the end of the story, but Oberlin is not just any freedmen's community. Tucked away behind the hustle and bustle of new stores and restaurants, Raleigh forgot about Oberlin. Ironically, the area is now best known as Cameron Village, named after the state's largest slave owner. But since the early 1990s, the story of Oberlin has received renewed interest. The first wave of Oberlin houses were awarded historic landmark designations. In 2011, a non-profit group named Friends of Oberlin Village was founded to help preserve the history of this place and its people. They have organized cleanup events and other gatherings to honor and celebrate the proud history of these resilient people. Oberlin Cemetery was designated a historic landmark in 2013. The cemetery is mostly without headstones or markers. Depressions in the earth represent the forgotten people

(Describer) Howard.

of a nearly forgotten place. New apartments and commercial development were springing up along Oberlin Road, and we knew that the last houses along Oberlin were gonna be in trouble. Two were in immediate danger, and we had to do something.

[Narrator] In 2016,

Preservation North Carolina had a crazy idea. Move the Hall House back from the right of way and move the Graves-Fields House a few 100 feet to sit next to the Hall House, join the houses together, and create a space that Preservation North Carolina could occupy as its new headquarters. Preservation North Carolina is a non-profit organization that works to save the endangered properties around North Carolina. We jokingly call ourselves the animal shelter for historic buildings, and that analogy works great.

[Narrator] The project turned out

to be even more difficult than anyone could have imagined. The houses had been built with whatever labor and materials could be obtained by their ambitious builders. The framing didn't remotely meet modern code. Moving the houses would require additional reinforcement. Measurements had to be taken, walls stabilized, basements constructed, plans approved, and funds raised. Permits were slow to be issued because the project didn't match modern codes. After the grading permit was finally issued and work began in earnest, more than two feet of rain fell within a few weeks. The newly dug basement looked like a muddy swimming pool. Finally, the two houses were ready to be moved to their new sites. The relocation of the Hall House was relatively simple since it was just going over and back. But Graves House was more complex. One of the fascinating things about the work on the Graves House is we realized that Willis Graves was building this house with the materials he could come up with and wherever he came up with them. Nothing matches. The baseboards in one room don't match the baseboards in the next room. The doors in one room don't match the doors in another room. Even in some cases, the wainscot on one side of the room does not match the wainscot on the other side of the room. I have to admire the dickens out of this because they were making a grand house with whatever they could come up with. And it doesn't meet code in the modern sense, and that was one of our complications in working with this project.

[Narrator] On a cold and blustery night,

with snow in the forecast, the main body of the Graves House was finally moved nearly two years behind the original schedule. The route was tightly confined. There were only a few inches to spare between a large tree and the back corner of the Oberlin Baptist Church. Onlookers cheered when the house narrowly cleared the corner of the church, and soon the house was placed in position beside the Hall House. It was well worth the effort when the two homes were finally settled in their new locations side by side. They were fitting neighbors. Since then, the loving work of restoration had transformed these two homes built by former slaves into highly visible storytellers about Oberlin

(Describer) Families.

and the families that lived in them.

[light thoughtful music]

So I am just very happy that Preservation North Carolina has stepped in in an effort to save these homes. And It's just given us another sense of pride that they wanted to do that. We were so worried that the homes would be lost, but thanks to them, they stepped in and they've revived them again. I think it was destiny that PNC has the house, that they moved it. I think it's gonna be a great teaching tool for a lot of people. People can see it, and those who are inquisitive can inquire about it. And that's how you learn. You have to live history in order to figure it out. Then you say, "Oh, I remember that. I did that." And I think that that house, with the two names on that house, I mean, they'll be here long after we're gone. So, the fact that we did something to perpetuate it and let it continue,

(Describer) Howard.

I just think it's a beautiful thing. When we started working on this project, we looked to the National Register nomination, which said that the Graves children went north as brick masons and carpenters like their father. And that could not have been farther from the truth. We found these amazing people who had left North Carolina and done phenomenal things in other places.

(Describer) Susan Mask.

We had no idea that was the case. I was walking around on Friday afternoon, and I got a call from Myrick asking if I was the granddaughter of Lemuel Graves. And I said, "Okay. So, who is this?" And it was so amazing to find out that someone was involved in an effort to preserve the Graves House. To be honest with you, I knew... Julian Haywood had mentioned the Graves House to me years ago. I had no idea it was still standing. And suddenly, everything kind of clicked that this was the same house. And being able to connect through the family and to learn all of this wonderful history about the family and also the importance of oral history. The stories that were passed down orally to us are validated by a lot of what we've learned. The Graves House means it's that connectedness, that rootedness. So often in African American genealogy, it is so hard to find documentation, so we depend on the oral histories, we depend on, you know, the validation that we get through the similarity of oral histories. But it's rare, and it's difficult to get the documentation. So to have a physical space and to be able to step into it and feel what it must have been like to be in this space,

(Describer) Goode.

and to see Oberlin. And for a lot of people, they're descendants of slaves. Whereas a coworker can say, "Guess what? I traced myself back to Pocahontas," or whoever, that's a luxury. That's a true luxury. For many Blacks, Oberlin Village is the only home or the only root that they can establish their history with because while they were slaves, they were chattel, they were property. And that's what's so beautiful about the Plummer T. Hall House because he was a former slave. And, you know, I can look back in our records when we began in 2011, and one of the things that was my goal was I want to save the Plummer T. Hall House. As an interior designer and architect lover, thought that was the cutest house. And I'm so pleased that that goal has been done.

[Narrator] During the three long years it took

to accomplish this ambitious task, much has been learned about the families who lived in these houses. Both houses were built in the 1880s by freedmen after the Civil War, and both families were prominent in the development of Oberlin. But so much more has been learned about these remarkable people and Oberlin. The Plummer T. Hall House was built by Reverend Hall as a wedding present for his bride, Delia, in the late 1880s. Hall was the first pastor of Hall's Chapel, which later merged with Mount Moriah Baptist to become First Baptist Church of Oberlin, now simply Oberlin Baptist Church. His congregation built an office for Reverend Hall to the right side of his home. He could receive church members through the office door off the porch rather than through the house. At about the same time, the house was similarly expanded to the left side, and the porch gazebo added. Despite its impressive appearance, the house remained quite small. Willis Graves built this 2 1/2-story frame Queen Anne house around 1884. The house, with its wraparound porch and stained glass windows set in shingled gables, was considered one of the most stylish residences built in the Oberlin community. Willis Graves's mother, Viney, was an early investor in property in Oberlin, buying a large lot there in 1871. In 1881, this woman of color born into slavery won a real estate case in the North Carolina Supreme Court that served as legal precedent for years. Before Saint Augustine's became a college, all six of Willis Graves' children attended Saint Augustine's School for high school since Raleigh had no high school for Black students until 1924. All attended Shaw University. Founded in 1865, it is the South's oldest historically Black college. All but one of the surviving Graves children moved north during the Great Migration. Son Lemuel went to Cornell University, an Ivy League school in New York State. At Cornell, he was the first student to be inducted into Alpha Phi Alpha, a prominent African American fraternity. He then did graduate work at Columbia University in New York City. After several years of teaching at Florida A&M College for Negros, he returned to Raleigh to found his own business. He was a professor and businessman who was involved in "Who's Who in Colored America." Around 1933, Lemuel and Louise Graves moved to Harlem with their children and took their father, Willis, now a widower, with them. The Graves left 11 properties in tax foreclosure. Since they lived well in Harlem, it would seem that their Raleigh properties were so worthless that they just walked away and never turned back. Son Willis Jr., also known as Bill, went to Howard University School of Law and moved to Detroit, where he became a prominent civil rights attorney. He was one of the first African American members to be admitted to the Michigan Bar, and he argued several civil rights cases before the Michigan Supreme Court. Early in his career, Bill worked with Clarence Darrow, one of the nation's most famous defense attorneys, on the Sweet trials in Detroit in 1925 to 1926. It was a time when people resented you're moving into their neighborhoods. And they showed that. They would come out and protest, as you have a right to do in America. But that evening, Dr. Sweet's younger brother, who's Henry, he was an attorney, and another brother who was a dentist, they decided they would protect anyone that stepped on the premises. [laughs] That was a terrible incident. A young man was killed, but nobody knows who did it.

[Narrator] In one of the most celebrated trials

of the 20th Century, an all-white jury acquitted African American doctor Ossian Sweet of murder charges following one of the most eloquent defense summations in American judicial history. Most notably, Bill Graves worked with Thurgood Marshall on the 1948 landmark US Supreme Court Case Shelley vs. Kraemer, which made racially restrictive covenants unenforceable. Like his brother, Lem, Bill Graves was included in "Who's Who in Colored America." Willis Graves and Francis Dent, first of all, they were very active with the NAACP here. They were leaders in the Wolverine Bar Association, which is a predominantly Black bar association. But they really became famous in legal history around the restrictive covenant case. It was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court. It outlawed as unconstitutional the judicial enforcement of restrictive covenants. So they were knocked down. Dent and Graves worked hard, labored long, devoted a lot of their time and efforts to bring that about. And I think the community responded, and they've been revered in legal lore and legal history since. And they richly, richly deserve, richly deserve the honor.

[Narrator] Willis's grandson, Lem Jr.,

also known as Jean, grew up just down the street from his grandparents' home in Oberlin. He became one of the nation's most prominent African American journalists at the time. He and two others were the first journalists of color to accompany a president as part of the official entourage. For more than a decade, Jean worked in Paris at a high-level position for the US Department of State. While working on the Marshall Plan, Jean wrote extensively about life as a Black man in Paris, where discrimination was minimal compared to the States. He was selected by President Kennedy to head Voice of America for Latin America, a rare presidential appointment in the early 1960s. In 1945, Spurgeon and Janette Fields purchased the Graves-Fields House and brought new life to the home where they raised three daughters and a son. Like Willis and Eleanor Graves, Spurgeon and Janette placed the utmost value on faith, education, and hard work. They too were pillars of the Oberlin community, their home a gathering place for many church and neighborhood events. Spurgeon worked for Raleigh's News and Observer for three decades. The News and Observer, North Carolina's largest newspaper at the time, was owned and operated by Josephus Daniels. Daniels was secretary of the Navy during World War I and widely known as an outspoken segregationist. His political views and beliefs about race were often featured in cartoons and editorials in The News and Observer. And yet, contrary to his beliefs, Josephus Daniels's most trusted companion in his later years was his chauffeur, Spurgeon Fields. Grandfather Josephus had a really nice house up on Casual Street called White Stone, between Casual and Glenwood. They were able to hire Spurgeon to come and work with him up there. Then Spurgeon went to work full-time with him when they came back from Mexico. And he worked with them until grandfather died in '48. Actually, Spurgeon taught me how to drive when I was 14 years old. We would go up to White Stone... I'd go up to White Stone, he'd let me drive the car back and forth in the driveway. And he was just one of the nicest guys. And particularly after grandmother died in '43, she died in '43, grandfather died in '48, and Spurgeon slept at the old house I think almost every night except when some family was staying there. So he was heavily involved in working... And also Grandfather didn't know how to drive. And so Spurgeon drove him wherever he was going and did that for the whole time that he was here.

[Narrator] Spurgeon's close relationship

with the Daniels family is fascinating for us to consider, having come a long way from Willis Graves' despair on Emancipation Day 1899. It is incredible that these former slaves when given their freedom and opportunity, soared in their community. They worked against all odds to provide for their families and help them take advantage of their newfound freedom. Their children and grandchildren became doctors, nurses, lawyers, pharmacists, business owners, law enforcement officers, teachers, college professors, among other professionals. What they achieved is nothing short of miraculous

(Describer) Title: Oberlin. Future. Holt.

given the roadblocks they started with.

[gentle contemplative music]

One of the very good things that has happened, and we fought [laughs] a long hard battle for this to happen, is that Oberlin, or parts of Oberlin, have been designated as a historic district. There's a Historic Oberlin. The future of Oberlin, a part of it, at least, bodes well in that sense. I just hope its story will be entrenched in posterity. And that's one of the reasons I appreciate what Preservation North Carolina is doing, you know, to preserve the history of this very important community.

(Describer) Throckmorton.

And it creates a nice walking path, I think, between those homes and the cemetery and the Latta House and the Community Deli and Wilson Temple and Oberlin Baptist. It's all just a very nice piece of patchwork, I'll put it that way, to have people go by. And really, there is a difference

(Describer) Mask.

when you walk it versus when you drive it. It's so important, I think, to capture and to preserve the rich history that Oberlin was. We're very ahistorical as a society, as a country, but the more we learn, the more we understand what resilience there has been in the African American community and how important it is to preserve that legacy. I mean, we're bad across all groups, so [laughs] we're just not very good with reaching back and knowing where we came from. But you feel so rooted when you understand where you come from and all the sacrifices that were made to allow you to advance to the point where you are. I feel deeply blessed and fortunate to know about Oberlin and to know the role that my ancestors played in it and the fact that it's going to be preserved and other people will know of it.

[Narrator] While work was ongoing to save the houses

and the stories of its proud inhabitants, a new public art installation was in the making right across the street. Former Raleigh mayor Smedes York commissioned artist Thomas Sayer to create "Oberlin Rising," to pay tribute and memorialize the founding freedmen and the generations that followed. "Oberlin Rising" consists of five tall earth-cast markers that bend gently towards ancestral grave sites. York's father had been on the school board when Joe Holt's application to attend Needham Broughton High School was rejected. Poetry written by African American poet Howard L. Craft captures forever the warm memories of life in Oberlin.

[Howard] "Oh, Oberlin.

Where churches rose built by the God-fearing. Where those who once played with marbles and dolls stood against segregation. Where faith feeds souls as only belief in home can. Your progeny's branches strong with green leaves, the seeds from their fruit carried by the wind. You grow evermore in heart, mind, and body, taking root in tomorrow, nourished by yesterday. This is a story that needs to get out.

(Describer) Title: Oberlin. Truth, crushed to the ground, will rise again.

"Truth, crushed to the ground, will rise again."

[gentle contemplative music]

(Describer) Titles: This project has been funded by Empire Properties and a grant from the Richard and Julia Moe Family Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Logos: Empire Properties. National Trust for Historic Preservation. Save the past. Enrich the future.

[bright thoughtful music]

[bright thoughtful music continues]

[Howard] "Ode to Oberlin.

Here, along what was once Old Hillsboro Road, Black makers fired the flame that fashioned this place. $50 for a parcel of dream measured out by the acre. Hear the hammer, boards banged into place, bricks slapped with mortar, the drayman's horse clop-clopping pulling the cart with supplies for 750 pioneers of the possible. Masons, carpenters, seamstresses, schoolteachers, transformed Peck's Place and Save Rent into a mighty village rising. Oberlin. For founder James H. Harris's alma mater, Ohio Home to abolitionists. Oberlin. For freedom and tomorrows made from longings, slaves dared not long for but longed for anyway. Oberlin. Testament to a people's will and the tomorrows born from it. Your craftsmen have gone forth into the capital city. Your educators have built schools, founded universities. Your people have stood on the frontlines in America's wars. Oh, Oberlin. Where churches rose built by the God-fearing. Where those who once played with marbles and dolls stood against segregation. Where faith feeds souls as only belief in home can. Your progeny's branches strong with green leaves, the seeds from their fruit carried by the wind. You grow evermore in heart, mind, and body, taking root in tomorrow, nourished by yesterday. Visitor's note. As you stand here or sit and gaze and breathe in the history of this place, know it was born of sacrifice and struggle and it was made and is made from the lives of people who loved and lived and do so still. Let their spirit, industriousness, and determination lend strength to your own, so when you walk away a piece of Oberlin travels with you.

(Describer) Titles: Ode to Oberlin. Written and Narrated by Howard Craft. Moonlight. Copyright 2020 Moonlight Communications. Accessibility provided by the US Department of Education.

[light thoughtful music continues]

[bright tinkling]

[Narrator] To learn more about Preservation North Carolina

and the effort to preserve the Hall and Graves-Field Houses in Oberlin, visit PreservationNC.org.