Saunders Hall

Taylor Webber-Fields on the collective creation of language based on shared experience

Excerpt Description: Taylor Webber-Fields explains the importance of Black students needing to collectively create a shared language through which to validate the experiences they have on the campus that may not be supported by what the institution tells them exists.


Interviewee Name:  Taylor Webber-Fields

Interviewer: Charlotte Fryar

Excerpt Transcript: “This is my biggest thing. If you’re feeling it, someone else is feeling it too. And to not be afraid to vocalize what you’re feeling, because a lot of what happened in that time too was language production. We had to produce language to support the knowledge that we were feeling. But it was like this knowledge that is not substantiated by anything material, right? So we had to create language to support the immaterial that was happening within us, and so, you know, you want to talk about Unsung Founders, that intuitiveness that is lost in academia, that is something I would want people to—that was a lot of what was happening too, like the strategy was intuition. A strong intuitiveness that was leading a lot of what was happening.”

Organization: Real Silent Sam Coalition

Excerpt Length: 1:06

Interview Date: 11/29/2017

Interview Location: Durham, North Carolina

Campus Space: Saunders Hall

Citation: Interview with Taylor Webber-Fields by Charlotte Fryar, 29 November 2017, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.