Excerpt Description: Donelle Boose explains how CHAT tied together movements for justice, working for racial justice, economic justice, and historical justice simultaneously.
Excerpt Transcript: “Okay, so they were about—okay. So they were about workers’ rights, but they were never untied from racial justice, because it was obvious that the folks who were working in the kitchen were black. I’m trying to think, like, yeah, yeah, that part was obvious. And so it wasn’t like—and even, you know, housekeeping for the dorms, you know, black women. So those things weren’t united ever, and the reason I keep talking about SAW [Student Action With Workers] and CHAT together is because we were tying our work, because what we wanted folks to understand with CHAT is that this is not just like, oh, we just want a plaque. Like, the plaque is irrelevant, you know, like, not irrelevant but, like, not the point, you know. The point is the remembering so that you can understand in this particular moment the power that you have.”
Excerpt Description: Donelle Boose explains how CHAT tied together movements for justice, working for racial justice, economic justice, and historical justice simultaneously.
Interviewee Name: Donelle Boose
Interviewer: Charlotte Fryar
Excerpt Transcript: “Okay, so they were about—okay. So they were about workers’ rights, but they were never untied from racial justice, because it was obvious that the folks who were working in the kitchen were black. I’m trying to think, like, yeah, yeah, that part was obvious. And so it wasn’t like—and even, you know, housekeeping for the dorms, you know, black women. So those things weren’t united ever, and the reason I keep talking about SAW [Student Action With Workers] and CHAT together is because we were tying our work, because what we wanted folks to understand with CHAT is that this is not just like, oh, we just want a plaque. Like, the plaque is irrelevant, you know, like, not irrelevant but, like, not the point, you know. The point is the remembering so that you can understand in this particular moment the power that you have.”
Organization: Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth, Student Action With Workers
Excerpt Length: 1:06
Interview Date: 11/17/2017
Interview Location: Washington, D.C.
Campus Space: Saunders Hall
Citation: Interview with Donelle Boose by Charlotte Fryar, 17 November 2017, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.