CURATOR FOR THE TOWN OF CARRBORO and MORE

I have been the curator for the Town of Carrboro since 2019. When I started the two spaces were Carrboro Town Hall and the Century Center. I find artist to exhibit on a quarterly bases for both spaces. Since the opening of the Drakeford Library Complex on March 21, 2025, it replaced Century Center. The first show at the Drakeford for it’s GRAND OPENING was Cornell Watson’s TARRED HEALING. The dates for the actual opening changed a couple of times due to final touches to the building and weather, therefore the event publicity was not as it has been for the shows that followed. Because of that, I decided to post this blog. All monies from sales 100% goes to the artist. If you are interested in showing with the town of Carrboro, contact me.

‶Tarred Healing″ by CORNELL WATSON

There is much to celebrate about the Black community's contributions to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and America's oldest public university, The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The Chapel Hill Nine and the Freedom Fighters helped shape America into a more idealized version of itself. Black leadership is embedded in our history through pioneers like Howard Lee, one of the first Black mayors in the South. We also remember the multitude of trailblazers that shattered ceilings at UNC such as Leroy Frasier, John Lewis Brandon, Ralph Frasier, and Karen Parker, the first Black students and first Black woman student enrolled in this prestigious university.

Through their work, we also acknowledge the physical contributions that, in stone and mortar, are the foundations of the institution which are inherently the result of chattel slavery. The blood, sweat, and tears of our enslaved and free ancestors have seeped into the soil, floors, walls, and stones of this community and university. It is only through their determination to survive and persist that we are here today. Their spirit of unbroken resilience continues within us because there is still so much healing and trailblazing work to be done.

James Cates, who white supremacists murdered on campus, still needs us to fight for justice. Nikole Hannah-Jones showed us that we still need to fight for equity and equality. The UNC board of trustees showed us that we still need to fight for diversity. Rogers-Eubanks still needs us to fight against environmental injustice. Our ancestors still need us to fight for our history to be remembered and honored. We still need to fight and dismantle institutions of white supremacy. We still need to fight for reparations. We need to recognize with intentionality the many forms in which our diverse community seeks healing.

This photo series, a combination of conceptual and documentary photography, is a reflection of our truth through places, people, and systems in Chapel Hill. It is an unapologetic archive of our feelings and emotions. It is a vessel for self-healing. Despite continued obstruction by whiteness, we will heal, even if it is tarred.

‶Tarred Healing″ was created during a fellowship at The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and was based on a previous photo essay titled ‶Behind the Mask”. The photo essay garnered national attention after the university attempted to censor aspects of the work and then canceled a scheduled exhibition of the work after the uncensored version was published by The Washington Post.

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These are the texts that accompanied the photos that I curated to be exhibited at the Drakeford Library Complex. Some of the images from the original “photo story” were censored due to limited space and their heavy content.

The Unsung Founders Memorial, a memorial to honor the free and enslaved Black people who built the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was surrounded by barricades several weeks after white supremacists gathered at the memorial and sat on it with Confederate flags.

Old Chapel Hill Cemetery is located on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is a segregated cemetery. The Black side of the cemetery is the burial site of free and enslaved people. A fieldstone often marked enslaved Black people's burials. According to the Town of Chapel Hill website, the Black side of the cemetery has been vandalized on several occasions. One incident described the Black side of the cemetery being used as parking for a football game in 1985 against Clemson. Resting in peace is a privilege some people do not get.

Julia Clark, vice president of the Black Student Movement at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, leads a demonstration on campus to protest the university decision not to give Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure. Their demands included tenure for Hannah-Jones, who was later offered tenure but declined, more diversity on the board of trustees, a memorial for James Cates Jr., protection for the Unsung Founders Memorial and safety for Black students on campus.

Clayton Somers, vice chancellor for public affairs and secretary of the university for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stares as Black students lead a demonstration during the Board of Trustees meeting to make a tenure decision for Nikole Hannah-Jones. In 1979, Black students led a similar demonstration when a qualified Black professor, Sonja Haynes Stone, was denied tenure.

The Rizzo Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kenan-Flagler Business School resort is located on a former plantation of enslaved people. Next to the hotel resort in a wooded area is Barbee Cemetery. The cemetery contains over 100 unmarked graves of enslaved Black people who helped build UNC-Chapel Hill. A Barbee Cemetery information marker is tucked behind a tree away from the center and out of sight. While it makes mention of the graves and plantation, it does not make any mention of slavery or Black people. Lorie Clark, a community activist and descendant of the enslaved Black people of the Barbee family, stands in front of the Rizzo Center with a reflection of the cemetery sign.

Toney and Nellie Strayhorn, both freed from slavery, purchased a small plot of land on the outskirts of Chapel Hill in Carrboro, N.C., named after white supremacist Julian Carr, in the mid-1870s. They built a one-room cabin that eventually expanded to a two-story home. The family survived and thrived through the racially violent times of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Dolores Clark (center) sits with her children and great-grandchildren in the home her great-grandparents, Toney and Nellie Strayhorn (pictured on the wall), built around 1879 in Carrboro.

The Rogers-Eubanks community is a historically Black community in Chapel Hill where Black families have lived and thrived since the mid-1800s. In 1972, Orange County built a landfill next to Rogers-Eubanks and the community suffered from the negative environmental impacts on the air, water and quality of life. One of the major concerns was toxins from the landfill leaching into the community's groundwater. Residents of Rogers-Eubanks described changes to the color and smell of their water. While county water ran through surrounding neighborhoods, it stopped at Rogers-Eubanks's edge. For over 40 years, this community fought against the environmental injustices ravaging their community. After community leaders successfully advocated to shut down part of the landfill operations and bring clean water to the community, Rogers-Eubanks began to flourish again. Pictured is community activist and minister Robert Campbell.

On a hot summer day near the edge of UNC campus on Franklin street, I noticed a man sitting on a stone wall. He looked relaxed, lightly pressing a small American flag between the bottom of his toes and the ground, one foot on the stars and the other on the stripes. It felt like a ritual, similar to how I take off my shoes and rest my feet whenever I'm home. Maybe America felt like home to him. It also felt like a protest. Maybe it was the flag that made me feel that way. America wasn't designed to make some of us feel at home. Or maybe he was just resting in protest.

Most of these stone walls were built by Thomas Booth. He was a Black stone mason who helped build the university and town pre and post civil war. His father, Thomas Sr., was an enslaved laborer who built many buildings around campus. He rests at an unmarked grave in the segregated Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.

TARRED HEALING by Cornell Watson / DRAKEFORD LIBRARY COMPLEX / 302 SOUTH GREENSBORO STREET / GRAND OPENING FEBRUARY 21, 2025 11AM / EXHIBIT DATES FROM FEBRUARY 14–APRIL 9