Sourced from: Chatham Historical Museum

Education was very important in her family. Her brothers all went to school, and because there was no high school for Black children in Chatham, had to go away for high school. Gatha herself completed the seventh grade early and repeated that grade because there was no eighth grade. She got a high school equivalency degree when in her 40s.

Gatha’s activism began when she was still in Chatham County—first in church and community activities. She didn’t become involved in politics until 1952 when she registered to vote in Pittsboro at age 42. The registrar in New Hope Township had announced that he wasn’t going to register any Black people. Gatha encouraged a Black teacher from New Hope to go to register to vote.

The woman was turned down. Gatha let her brother, Rev. Rufus Vassie Horton, know and he called a representative of the NC NAACP. The next week there were headlines in the newspapers saying “Former School Teacher of Chatham County Refused Registration.” Gatha was informed by the registrar in Pittsboro that it would not happen again. She was asked to have her friend go to New Hope and to try again to register. Things went smoothly after that.

When Gatha was in her 40s, she moved to Chapel Hill where her activism blossomed. She found many ways to advocate for the poor and elderly—often speaking at public meetings. She heard Chapel Hill described as “the southern part of heaven” after moving there from Chatham.

At a public meeting she said, “Now those of you all that know where the southern part of heaven’s line stops, I live a block on the other side. I have to tell you my view of the southern part of heaven, what I can see. I don’t live in it.” She advocated for sidewalks for Black children to get to their segregated schools, for families in low-rent housing, and the elderly.

In the 1970s she supported picketing (though her arthritis prevented taking part directly) to encourage integration of places like the Carolina Theater and Chapel Hill drug store. She volunteered at Memorial Hospital and noted that Black people were not offered jobs. She joined the League of Women Voters, noting that she was going to get in whatever she could get in because you couldn’t know what was going on on the inside if you were outside.

She later said that picketing worked in its time, but that the ballot box had become more important. She believed that Howard Lee’s election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and 1971 helped open up traditional avenues of power for the Black community. She continued to attend public meetings and to counsel those in need until her death in 1988.

Gatha is buried in Holland Chapel AME Zion cemetery in Chatham County.

Our thanks to Mary Nettles for pointing us to this information.

Sourced from: Chatham Historical Museum