Over at the newly opened Orange County Visitors Center on Franklin Street, a familiar face is offering a new walking tour, to out-of-towners and longtime residents and everybody in between.
But this isn’t your ordinary tour of Chapel Hill.
It’s a sunny Friday afternoon, and a small group of people, locals and visitors alike, is being shown around town by Missy Julian Fox.
And this time, she’s got something different in mind — focusing not just on the familiar landmarks and stories, but also on “some of the things that never get said.”
So while she makes sure to hit the highlights, from the Old Well to the Davie Poplar, Fox also makes sure to include some more troubling stories as well.
At Church Street, for instance, the walking tour stops to observe the spot where Bayard Rustin and three other civil rights activists were assaulted and arrested on the “Journey of Reconciliation,” their anti-segregation 1947 bus tour.
“This was a Jim Crow town, and [Church Street] was that dividing line,” Fox tells the group. “When the sun went down… ‘don’t come over, don’t cross that line.'”
“I want this one to be different,” Fox says about her goals for the tour. “It’s not just ‘come on down memory lane with me,’ it has a point to it and a purpose…and [I also want] people to be glad that they came to Chapel Hill and that they went home with something unexpected that they didn’t know they were going to have here.”
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At least they don’t have to experience the horrific Silent Sam statue. Does she issue self flagellation devices for white tourists to use on Church St. ???
At least they don’t have to experience the horrific Silent Sam statue. Does she issue self flagellation devices for white tourists to use on Church St. ???