In his book about Chatham, John T. Cunningham wrote “I doubt that any other community of Chatham’s size in this country has ever taken such a detailed look at its history.” I decided to make his statement into a reality by historically examining the persistent lack of diversity in Chatham. The results are pretty shocking.
The Chatham of today is 87.25% white. 1.77% of the residents in this town are black. There are proportionately less black people in this town today than there were during the Revolutionary War era, when a little less than 3 percent of Chatham residents were slaves.