Geeta N. Kapur - To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nations Oldest Public University

What a tour de force! A deeply researched and brilliantly written examination of the central role played by racial ideology in the birth, growth, and changes in the oldest public university in America, the University of North Carolina. Kapur uses great narrative gifts in building a rich and disturbing story of UNCs early and unexamined commitment to white supremacy, an account peopled by a host of vividly drawn human characters whom she explores with passion, fairness, and nuance. Few histories I know offer so powerful a vision of the world behind the veil, peopled by generations of unnamed or too-rarely-celebrated African American men and women whose lives and fates were intertwined with a world largely controlled by whitesacademic leaders in Chapel Hill, UNCs rich and powerful trustees, North Carolinas governors, members of its General Assembly. Kapurs fair and balanced account of the gradual racial transformation of this world draws unexpected strength from its attention to the remarkable growth in the early twentieth century of a Black Wall Street in nearby Durham, where intrepid economic leaders first built Black economic and political power and then supported the rise of the precariously funded North Carolina College for Negroes. It was from there that brave young men and women would eventually sally forth to demand, through litigation, their rightful places as students at UNC, which had for two hundred years promised, but woefully failed, to deliver Lux/Libertas, light and liberty, to all the people of the Old North State.

John Charles Boger, former dean and Professor of Law, Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

By paying attention to the particular history of Americas oldest public university, Kapur illuminates how the struggle for white supremacy that sometimes erupts violently in our society has been maintained and reinforced by the stories we tell ourselves. To become the multiethnic democracy we have never yet been, we must embrace a better story.

Reverend William J. Barber, II; President and Senior Lecturer, Repairers of the Breach; Co-Chair, Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Truths about our shared history are as important to racial equity today as myth and omitted facts are to continuing a white supremacist past. Geeta Kapurs work is an awakening for truth seekers, and she gives voice to silent souls long forgotten who would speak to our conscience for fairness today.

Jerry W. Blackwell, Prosecutor, Death of George Floyd

To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nations Oldest Public University tracks the long, jagged edge of racism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from its founding in 1789 to the present. Geeta Kapurs eloquent, dramatic prose reads like a Faulkner novel as she describes how enslaved people made bricks for the walls of Old East Building in 1793. From its founding, enslaved people were cemented into the universitys very foundation, and Kapur connects the dots of racism as the central fabric that has defined the university at every moment of its 228-year history. Her meticulously researched book is a model that every American university should emulate to cast a bright light on how race defines higher education in our nation. An Indian, who grew up in Kenya and did her undergraduate and law degrees at UNC, Geeta Kapur brings a fresh, welcome voice to her subject. To Drink from the Well is a powerful, riveting book that every American should read.

William Ferris, Professor of History, Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

To Drink from the Well is a bold and much-needed examination of the racial history of UNC-Chapel Hill, an institution that perpetually lacks the courage to tell its own history. Kapur has given us an ode to truth and a love letter to the Black men and women who made UNC possible.

William Sturkey, Associate Professor History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; author of Hattiesburg:An American City in Black and White

Geeta Kapur is both hero and inspiration. And To Drink from the Well is both a story of horror, cruelty, and unrelenting injustice and a story of hope, determination, sacrifice, and steely resolve. The University of the People, Kapur shows, rises, if it does, from a bedrock of white supremacy, racial injustice, and iniquity. And a university must reckon with its past, especially one that so powerfully contradicts its preferred narrativea past that has been concealed and, often happily, ignored. A past that continually reappears in its present. Kapur gives voice to Carolinas unknown, untold foundations and pathbreakers. This book is a gift to the University of North Carolina. There is no light and liberty without first seeing the darkness.

Gene Nichol, Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; author of Indecent Assembly and The Faces of Poverty in North Carolina

The history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cannot be understood nor told accurately without recognition of its intimate and enduring relationship to slavery, Lost Cause ideology, and legal segregation. What is admirable about the universitys past cannot be separated from its role as an instrument for preserving southern rules of race. In this powerful study, Geeta Kapur, integrates the celebratory with the evil to provide a rich and truthful narrative of the history of the nations oldest public university.

William Darity Jr., son of Dr. William Darity Sr., first Black person to receive a PhD from UNC in 1964; author of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century

The truth about the University of North Carolina that Kapur knew as a student was not untrue, it was only partly true. What she has learned since those years adds to the fullness of the whole story. These additional truths we discover must be allowed to stand on their own without being subsumed by the previous borders of true, for it is only in respecting each truth that we gain the wisdom to live into a more honest future. Kapur is helping all of us become more honest.

Reverend Jennifer Copeland, Executive Director, North Carolina Council of Churches

THE STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY AT THE NATIONS OLDEST PUBLIC UNIVERSITY

Geeta N. Kapur

BLAIR

Copyright 2021 by Geeta N. Kapur

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Cover design by Zaire McPhearson

Interior design by April Leidig

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We gratefully acknowledge the ongoing support of general operations by the Durham Arts Councils United Arts Fund and the North Carolina Arts Council.

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