- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with William E. White Jr., October 29, 2000
- Creator:
- White, William E. (William Earl)
- Contributor to Resource:
- Otto, Kent
Crowe, Ashley
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 2000-10-29
- Subject:
- Christian gay men--North Carolina--Durham
Pentecostals--North Carolina--Durham
AIDS (Disease)--Patients--North Carolina--Durham
Gays--Identity
Christian gay men--Family relationships--North Carolina--Durham
Durham (N.C.)--Race relations - People:
- White, William E. (William Earl)
- Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Durham County, Durham, 35.99403, -78.89862
- Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - Description:
- In this interview, William E. White Jr. describes his encounters with religion, race, and sexuality. Bored by the routines of his Baptist church, White sought something more energetic. He found this energy in the Charismatic Renewal movement, a fellowship of dissatisfied Christians seeking an intimate, powerful religious experience. White confronted his racial identity as a white student at Southern High School, one of the first high schools to integrate in the Durham, North Carolina, area, and at North Carolina Central University, a historically black school where his last name symbolized his outsider status. He also confronted his sexual identity as he struggled with being gay, but he eventually came to terms with what he calls his internalized homophobia. White discusses additional challenges, including his parents' difficult divorce, a turbulent relationship with his father, and his struggle with AIDS, a disease that frightens him but which, he says, has enabled him to take risks he would not have taken before. This interview is an intimate portrait of a man standing at the intersection of spiritual fulfillment, race, and sexuality.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/R-0147/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- Title from menu page (viewed on Oct. 30, 2008).
Interview participants: William E. White, Jr., interviewee; Kent Otto, interviewee; Ashley Crowe, interviewer.
Duration: 01:04:32.
This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.
Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
