Growing up in Aurora, North Carolina

Cornelius Dudley was born at his home on March 4, 1941 in Aurora, North Carolina. He was the seventh of eleven siblings. He grew up on a farm where the cash crop was tobacco. He and most of the Black children were known as rainy-day students because, when the weather was nice, you could find them working out in the fields. When the family home caught fire, all but three rooms were destroyed. But they made do with the remaining three rooms, where 14 members of his family lived for the next four years. He saw racism at an early age when a cross was burned in their front yard.

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