Even before they came out with the slogan of the Army, “Be all that you can be” was something that we heard in our community.

Rev. Robert Peter Campbell, July 2017

Mr. Robert Peter Lee Campbell, known to many today as Reverend Campbell but known to those who grew up with him in his Northside neighborhood in Chapel Hill as Peter (or, to some in Northside, “Peter Rabbit”), has lived by these words. On a very hot and humid July day in the community center that resulted largely from his decades-long, unrelenting activism, he talked candidly about his life in Chapel Hill and far beyond:

RC: So I went on to the Job Corps [in 1967] and … I graduated from auto mechanics cluster division and from the food service—what do they call it?—the food service, food handling personnel.

AW: So you did both at the same time.

RC: I…