Excerpt Description: Ashley Davis explains that foodworkers and their supporters created the soul food cafeteria in Manning Hall to provide a living wage for the strikers.
Excerpt Transcript: “By the way, running that cafeteria we ran, I think they said that they were able to pay about $35 a week to every striker that was out. And that was paid every week. See, we were able to pay. The reason that we ran a cafeteria was that people had to live during the strike. We started a cafeteria with the workers so that the workers could make a living and by running the cafeteria, they made enough money that we were able to pay every worker $35 a week. See, that was the whole idea behind the cafeteria. To pay them so that they could stay out on strike. That’s why I say that we were supportive in terms of bank accounts and getting them, these funds, to the workers and to pay people off.”
Excerpt Description: Ashley Davis explains that foodworkers and their supporters created the soul food cafeteria in Manning Hall to provide a living wage for the strikers.
Interviewee Name: Ashley Davis
Interviewer: Russ Rymer
Excerpt Transcript: “By the way, running that cafeteria we ran, I think they said that they were able to pay about $35 a week to every striker that was out. And that was paid every week. See, we were able to pay. The reason that we ran a cafeteria was that people had to live during the strike. We started a cafeteria with the workers so that the workers could make a living and by running the cafeteria, they made enough money that we were able to pay every worker $35 a week. See, that was the whole idea behind the cafeteria. To pay them so that they could stay out on strike. That’s why I say that we were supportive in terms of bank accounts and getting them, these funds, to the workers and to pay people off.”
Organization: Black Student Movement
Excerpt Length: 0:51
Interview Date: 4/12/1974
Interview Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Campus Space: Lenoir Hall and Manning Hall
Citation: Interview with Ashley Davis by Russ Rymer, 12 April 1974, E-0062 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.