There was Earl and Ronny. Miss Frieda, Miss Lily and Miss Gwen. And the Reverend Williams. All sitting in the front room of the Marion Cheeks Jackson Center. Connected to each other through a shared experience: growing up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s surrounded by a network of unofficial mentors in Chapel Hill’s Northside neighborhood. They were gathered recently on a Tuesday night in August, next door to the church many of them grew up in, because they are mentors to a new generation of kids, growing up in very different times without the benefit of the tight-knit community they knew.

The kids they are mentoring live scattered throughout Chapel Hill, often far beyond the borders of the Northside neighborhood. Kids who know very little if anything at all about the history of Northside or about segregation, civil rights activism, and school desegregation in their own backyards. The mentors…