Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
882 dated events and 12 storylines match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 601–800 of 894, 200 to a page.Back to highlights
Entries
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1950s
-
Roland Giduz and Adelaide Walters are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
In a heavy turnout that also re-elected Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell and approved a $500,000 bond issue, voters re-elected aldermen Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager and chose two new members, Adelaide Walters and Roland Giduz. As low man among the winners, Giduz drew a two-year term.
-
Hubert Robinson is named Man of the Year
After Robinson was re-elected alderman with the highest vote on the ticket, a group of Black citizens representing churches, fraternal organizations and civic clubs named him Man of the Year and gave a reception in his honor at the Lincoln High School gymtorium on June 11.
-
Institute of Government staff draft a new state law on municipal annexation
Assistant directors Philip Green Jr., George Esser and Jake Wicker wrote a new North Carolina annexation law for a state study commission. The law, which stayed unchanged for more than forty years and became a model elsewhere, let the state's cities grow without being ringed by small incorporated suburbs.
-
Robert Seymour becomes the first pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church
Robert Seymour came to Chapel Hill in 1959 as the first minister of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, organized the year before. He led it until 1988.
-
The Institute's dormitory lodges sixteen thousand overnight guests in a year
Sixteen thousand people stayed overnight in the Knapp Building's dormitory during the 1959-60 academic year, and attendance at Institute events and instruction had grown about tenfold since the building opened in 1956.
-
A state audit reports irregularities in the Institute of Government's accounts
State Auditor Henry Bridges reported a gap of $5,064.32 in the Institute's books, caused by careless record keeping and slow deposit of room fees and book sales, not by missing money. Coates took the blame and paid $5,100 at once; he was repaid once he documented the spending, but staff who had not been warned in advance were angry.
-
Sandy McClamroch is elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
McClamroch, one of five candidates for three seats, was elected on May 5, 1959 with F. E. Strowd and Roland Giduz, and was sworn in with Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell the following Monday night. Campaigning, he had called for coordinating town and university planning and for bringing the university's payments for town services above the table.
-
Mayor Cornwell presses the state to widen the highways into Chapel Hill
Sworn in for a new term with aldermen F. E. Strowd and Sandy McClamroch, Mayor Cornwell wrote to the state's director of highways urging four-lane roads toward Durham and Raleigh and calling U.S. 15-501 and N.C. 54 major entrances to the university.
- 1960s
-
W. C. George and Lucius Cheshire are named Orange County managers of I. Beverly Lake's campaign
I. Beverly Lake named W. C. George of Chapel Hill and Lucius M. Cheshire of Hillsborough, both directors of the pro-segregation North Carolina Defenders of States Rights, co-managers of his campaign for governor in Orange County.
-
Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Chapel Hill
Invited by campus religious groups and the Carolina Forum, King spoke at University Baptist Church on May 8, 1960, visited two UNC sociology classes, and addressed an overflow crowd in Hill Hall on May 9 on the struggle for racial justice.
-
Church and student groups picket Chapel Hill's Varsity Theatre
Local church groups and student organizations picketed the Varsity Theatre after Black patrons were refused entry. Later that year the management agreed to admit Black UNC students with ID, and the town's theaters were fully desegregated by early 1962.
-
L. J. Phipps and Stanley Peele form a law partnership in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill attorney L. J. Phipps took Stanley Peele, associated with him since he was admitted to the bar in 1959, into partnership.
-
McClamroch is sworn in as mayor and Joe Page is named to his aldermen seat
McClamroch and three re-elected aldermen, Adelaide Walters, Paul Wager and Hubert Robinson, were sworn in at the Monday night meeting of the Board of Aldermen by Recorder's Court Judge William Stewart. The board named businessman Joe Page to the unexpired two year aldermen's term McClamroch left on becoming mayor, and elected Mrs. Walters mayor pro tem.
-
Sandy McClamroch is elected mayor of Chapel Hill without opposition
McClamroch ran unopposed for mayor in the May 1961 town election. Before the vote he took questions from residents at a public meeting at the Negro Community Center sponsored by the Chapel Hill Fellowship for School Integration and the Civic Club, and on a WUNC radio panel, saying he wanted to improve the town's public relations and would discuss merging Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
-
President John F. Kennedy speaks at UNC
President John F. Kennedy received an honorary degree at UNC's University Day ceremony, held on the University's 168th birthday, and spoke to an estimated 32,000 people in Kenan Stadium. He pledged that Americans would be neither Red nor dead, and announced a $1 million federal materials research contract for UNC.
-
Albert Coates gives Chancellor Aycock a 158-page account of the Institute's past and needs
Using staff tallies of thirty years of Institute publications, training and finances, Coates wrote Chancellor William B. Aycock a long report on how the Institute began and grew and what it would need. It also argued for waiving the retirement rule in his case, and it became the core of his later published history of the Institute.
-
Binkley Baptist Church takes James Forbes as a student intern
Under Robert Seymour, Binkley Memorial Baptist Church accepted James A. Forbes Jr., a Black divinity student, as its intern in 1962.
-
Carl Smith leads the Democratic primary for Orange County commissioner
Carl Smith of Chapel Hill topped the six-man Democratic primary for three county commissioner seats with 3,783 votes, ahead of Gordon Cleveland and Donald McDade; nomination usually amounted to election in the county.
-
Chancellor Aycock chooses John Sanders to succeed Albert Coates as director of the Institute
After Coates would not name a successor through months of talks, Chancellor William B. Aycock picked assistant director John Sanders, then thirty-five, who accepted in a short meeting with Aycock and Dean of Faculty James Godfrey. Sanders, on the staff since October 1956, took over when Coates left the post on August 31, 1962.
-
Albert Coates retires as director of the Institute of Government
Coates retired as director of the Institute he founded on August 31, 1962, but stayed on the law faculty, teaching full time until about 1967 and a reduced load until a stroke in early 1968.
-
James Brittian is expelled from Lincoln High School after a civil rights march
Brittian, a student at the segregated Lincoln High School, was expelled for taking part in a civil rights protest march. He then became chairman of the Student Commission, a branch of the Chapel Hill Freedom Commission.
-
The Colonial Dames erect a marble monument to the hanged Regulators beside the Hughes Academy schoolhouse
In 1963 the North Carolina Society of the Colonial Dames of America erected a marble slab monument to the six Regulators hanged at Hillsborough in June 1771, placing it next to the historic Hughes Academy schoolhouse in Hillsborough. The men's grave, thought to lie near the Eno, has never been found.
-
Roosevelt Warner is elected the first Black member of the Hillsboro Board of Commissioners
Roosevelt Warner, a masonry contractor and business owner, led the field of eleven candidates with 281 votes for the five-member Board of Town Commissioners on his second try, unseating incumbent Herman H. Strayhorn. Two years earlier he had been the town's first Black candidate, finishing last with 180 votes.
-
The Committee for Open Business presses Chapel Hill merchants to desegregate
The Committee for Open Business grew out of a Student Peace Union boycott of 13 segregated Chapel Hill restaurants and first met in early May 1963 to coordinate students and townspeople. On July 19 its sit-in at the Merchants Association office on West Franklin Street ended with 34 arrests.
-
George Esser proposes an ordinance barring discrimination by new Chapel Hill businesses
After the aldermen declined a public accommodations law in June, Esser suggested as a private citizen an ordinance that would bar racial discrimination by businesses opening in the future, applied like zoning rules. The Board of Aldermen began considering it in August while the Committee for Open Business kept up its marches.
-
Joe Straley chairs the Committee of Concerned Citizens
The UNC physics professor Joe Straley chaired the Committee of Concerned Citizens, a group of Chapel Hill residents dedicated to civil rights, in 1964 and 1965.
-
Watts Restaurant protests
Sit-ins at the segregated Watts Restaurant and Motel on South Columbia Street began on January 2, 1964. Over the next days demonstrators were urinated on, hosed and struck with a broom handle, and Duke and UNC faculty were among those arrested. The owners held out after the Civil Rights Act and desegregated on July 10, 1964.
-
Institute of Government delivers its report on Chapel Hill's power to pass a public accommodations law
A report prepared by George Esser at the aldermen's request, gathering cases from all fifty states on a town's power to pass a public accommodations law, was completed and handed to Town Manager Robert Peck for the aldermen days before their vote. Esser said it showed the probable attitude of North Carolina courts toward a town using its general welfare power for that purpose.
-
Gloria Williams asks the school board to readmit boycotting Lincoln High students
At the Chapel Hill school board meeting, Mrs. Gloria Williams, speaking for parents of students who had joined the Chapel Hill Freedom Committee's boycott of Lincoln High School, asked that all of them be readmitted. The board upheld the expulsion of two senior leaders, Henry Sanford and James Brittain, after Superintendent Howard Thompson said he would resign if they returned.
-
A Klan rally gathers at the post office fast and a UNC student is struck
On the fast's seventh day a Ku Klux Klan rally drew onlookers to the Franklin Street post office, where textile worker Milford Cordell Hill of Gold Hill struck UNC senior Louis S. Calhoun Jr. and knocked off his glasses; police officers who saw it swore out complaints.
-
The Holy Week fast ends on Easter Sunday and the Rev. LaVert Taylor is hospitalized
The five fasters finished their eight-day water-only fast in front of the post office on Easter Sunday. The Rev. LaVert Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was admitted to Memorial Hospital with an upset stomach afterward; James Foushee had been treated there during the fast and released.
-
The Committee of Concerned Citizens raises about $400 for injured demonstrators and the hospitalized faster
Committee members served bread and cheese for donations twice a day in the basement of the First Baptist Church, raising about $400 to cover the hospital bills of demonstrators hurt in sit-ins and of the Rev. LaVert Taylor after the fast.
-
Judge Mallard sentences fasters Pat Cusick and John Dunne to a year in jail
In Orange County Superior Court at Hillsborough, Judge Raymond B. Mallard gave Pat Cusick a year in jail on April 23 and John Dunne twelve months on April 24 for the February street-blocking demonstrations, among a dozen active sentences and about 100 suspended ones that stripped the Chapel Hill movement of its leaders four weeks after the fast.
-
Chapel Hill Recorder's Court fines the man who struck a student at the post office fast
Judge William S. Stewart fined Milford Cordell Hill $50 and costs for striking Louis S. Calhoun Jr. at the scene of the fast on March 28, on complaints sworn out by the police officers who saw it.
-
The Civil Rights Act changes the legal ground for local integration
The Civil Rights Act, signed on July 2, 1964, barred segregation in restaurants, hotels and theaters. Within a week, testers found eight of 13 previously segregated Chapel Hill-area businesses serving Black customers, while five, including a Franklin Street beer parlor, still refused.
-
Eric Van Loon chairs the Carolina Political Union
A Daily Tar Heel profile in May 1966 reported that Van Loon, a junior from Nashville, had spent the past year as chairman of the Carolina Political Union, vice president of the debating team, National Student Association campus coordinator, a Morrison resident adviser and treasurer of the Carolina Symposium.
-
Morrison Residence Hall opens, named for Cameron Morrison
The university completed Morrison Residence Hall, a men's dormitory, in 1965 and named it for former governor Cameron Morrison, an influential trustee who had backed the university's expansion program in the 1920s.
-
Bob Powell is named executive director of the Carolina Forum
The Daily Tar Heel's list of student government appointments made by Student Body President Paul Dickson gives Bob Powell as executive director of the Carolina Forum for the 1965-66 year.
-
Baptist Association rejects Binkley membership
The local association denied admission over Binkley’s open membership policy.
-
Eric Van Loon becomes assistant to the student body president
After Robert S. Powell Jr. was elected student body president in the spring of 1966, the Daily Tar Heel reported that Van Loon had newly taken on the roles of student legislator, National Student Association delegate and presidential assistant to Powell. He had run unsuccessfully for student body treasurer the previous spring.
-
Integrated Chapel Hill High opens on High School Road
A new Chapel Hill High School campus opened on High School Road in 1966 as the town's first racially integrated high school, taking in the white student body from the Franklin Street school together with Lincoln High's students. Under freedom of choice the board had planned for white students to occupy the building a year before Black students joined, but Black students applied together for 1966 so that the school would not first be seen as belonging to the white students.
-
John E. Greenbacker Jr. leads the Dialectic and Philanthropic literary society
The federal court's findings in Dickson v. Sitterson list Greenbacker as president of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Society, one of the recognized student organizations whose officers brought the Speaker Ban suit. The Daily Tar Heel likewise named him as Di-Phi president among the ten student leaders who wrote to Chancellor Sitterson on March 1, 1966.
-
John E. Greenbacker Jr. serves as associate editor of the Daily Tar Heel
The masthead of the December 7, 1966 Daily Tar Heel lists Greenbacker as associate editor under editor Fred Thomas. He wrote signed opinion pieces, and a letter in the same issue takes issue with his Sunday column profiling the SDS leader Gary Waller.
-
Saving the Eno
The Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley, formed in 1966 to stop Durham's reservoir plans, won Eno River State Park and has kept adding land to it.
-
Stuart Matthews serves on the steering committee of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society
The federal court's findings in Dickson v. Sitterson list Matthews as a member of the steering committee of Students for a Democratic Society, one of the recognized campus organizations whose officers brought the suit. The Daily Tar Heel adds that Matthews and Gary Waller invited Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak under SDS sponsorship on January 3, 1966.
-
Wall speeches at the campus line
In 1966 the trustees barred Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker from the campus under the Speaker Ban law, so each spoke to students across the stone wall at McCorkle Place from the Franklin Street sidewalk. Students and the two speakers sued in Dickson v. Sitterson, a federal court struck the law down in 1968, and a marker went up at the wall in 2011.
-
Carolina Forum chairman George Nicholson answers Professor W. C. George on the Forum's speakers
Nicholson told the Daily Tar Heel that the Forum invited both liberals and conservatives, naming Strom Thurmond and Ross Barnett among its recent guests, after the segregationist UNC professor W. C. George said it largely ignored conservative racial views.
-
Students for a Democratic Society invites Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak at UNC
The UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society invited Frank Wilkinson, who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment when questioned in California about Communist activities, and the Communist theoretician Herbert Aptheker to speak on campus. After the trustees barred both men, Student Government under Paul Dickson, the Daily Tar Heel, the Carolina Forum, the YMCA and YWCA, the Di-Phi and the Carolina Political Union joined SDS in renewing the invitations.
-
Dickson, Nicholson and McCrary invite Herbert Aptheker to speak on campus
Three of the students who later sued invited Aptheker to speak at Chapel Hill on March 9, 1966 under the sponsorship of Student Government, the Carolina Forum and the Daily Tar Heel. Aptheker accepted two days later.
-
Gary Waller joins a student panel on the Speaker Ban in Memorial Hall
The Daily Tar Heel reported that student body president Paul Dickson presided over a noon meeting of students and faculty in Memorial Hall, with a panel of four that included Waller, Carolina Conservative Club president Wilson Clark and the SDS faculty advisers Joseph Straley and Lewis Lipsitz. The meeting adopted a resolution about four and a half hours before the trustees' executive committee voted 8 to 3 to bar Herbert Aptheker from speaking.
-
Nicholson criticizes SDS over the Aptheker invitation while backing the principle
The Carolina Forum chairman called the Students for a Democratic Society invitation to Herbert Aptheker ill-timed and planned for sensationalism, and said the Forum had joined the invitation only in support of the principle of free speech.
-
Nicholson rebuts the Conservative Club chairman's charge about Forum speakers
Answering Carolina Conservative Club chairman Wilson Clark, Nicholson said the Forum's budget was 2,000 dollars rather than 6,000, that it had invited conservative speakers, and that John Birch Society founder Robert Welch was coming to campus later that month.
-
J. Carlyle Sitterson serves as chief administrator of UNC at Chapel Hill
Sitterson was the chief administrative officer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from February 16, 1966 to January 31, 1972. His records as chancellor cover desegregation and the federal HEW lawsuit, the Speaker Ban law, protest against the Vietnam War and campus unrest.
-
Stuart Matthews and Gary Waller write to Chancellor Sitterson inviting Herbert Aptheker
On the day the full board of trustees adopted new speaker regulations, Matthews and Waller wrote to Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson for the UNC Chapel Hill chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, asking that Herbert Aptheker be allowed to speak on campus about the war in Vietnam on March 9. The letter set out his publications, speaking engagements and his Supreme Court passport case.
-
The UNC Board of Trustees adopts visiting-speaker procedures under the amended Speaker Ban
Acting under G.S. 116-199 and 116-200, the full Board of Trustees adopted procedures requiring recognized student groups to clear invitations to covered speakers with the chancellor. The students complied with them when they renewed the Wilkinson and Aptheker invitations, and the court later found the procedures as vague as the statute.
-
Gary Waller becomes chairman of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society
A UNC Libraries exhibit states that Waller, a graduate student in the Department of Sociology, was vice chairman of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became chairman when Jim McCorkel resigned on February 2, 1966 to spend more time on his graduate studies.
-
Herbert Aptheker gives his evening talk at the Community Church
Kept off campus, Aptheker gave his evening talk to about 350 people at the interdenominational Community Church on Purefoy Road. Paul Dickson then announced a Free Speech Defense Fund to pay for a lawsuit.
-
Herbert Aptheker speaks to students across the McCorkle Place wall
At noon Paul Dickson led Aptheker, invited by SDS and the Committee for Free Inquiry, onto McCorkle Place near the Confederate monument, where campus police chief Arthur Beaumont halted Dickson's introduction and warned of arrest. Aptheker crossed the low stone wall to the Franklin Street sidewalk and spoke to a crowd estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 on the campus side.
-
Student leaders ask the chancellor to let Wilkinson and Aptheker speak on campus
Paul Dickson and the heads of Carolina Forum, the YMCA, the YWCA, Di-Phi, the Carolina Political Union and SDS wrote to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson asking that Wilkinson speak on March 23 and Aptheker on March 25, or on later dates.
-
Gary Waller debates Wilson Clark at the first Di-Phi Senate debate
The Daily Tar Heel announced that Waller and Carolina Conservative Club president Wilson Clark would be the principal speakers at the inaugural debate of the Di-Phi Senate that evening in New West, on whether human rights should supersede property rights in a modern society.
-
Bob Powell wins the runoff for UNC student body president
Powell, the Student Party candidate, beat University Party candidate Teddy O'Toole by 2,401 votes to 1,993 in the runoff, two days before the Speaker Ban suit was filed.
-
Students and the two speakers file Dickson v. Sitterson against the Speaker Ban
Minutes after Sitterson refused the students' request, Paul Dickson and eleven other student leaders, joined by Wilkinson and Aptheker as plaintiffs, sued Sitterson, President William C. Friday and the trustees in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Attorney McNeill Smith took the case without fee.
-
Chancellor Sitterson makes student leaders erase a taped meeting
The Daily Tar Heel reported that Paul Dickson, Eric Van Loon and George Nicholson met Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson in his office for about thirty minutes, and that Van Loon carried a tape recorder. When Sitterson found the conversation was being recorded he made them play the tape back and erase it, saying it upset him that they had not mentioned it.
-
Powell is named to the student-faculty committee on visiting speakers
The Daily Tar Heel listed Bob Powell first among the members of the student-faculty committee on visiting speakers, in the same story that printed the students' request to the chancellor.
-
Powell takes office as UNC student body president
The Daily Tar Heel said the new president's inauguration was set for April 14, 1966. Its April 15 issue describes Bob Powell acting as student body president with Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson at a campus clothing drive.
-
The Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley forms
Residents who had begun organizing in 1965 against plans to dam the Eno for a water-supply reservoir formed the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley on October 14, 1966. Led by Margaret and Holger Nygard, it began the campaign that preserved the river corridor in Durham and Orange counties.
-
Supreme Court hears Klopfer v. North Carolina
The Supreme Court heard arguments in Peter Klopfer’s speedy-trial case, arising from an Orange County trespass prosecution.
-
Wednesday vigils against the Vietnam War at the Chapel Hill post office
Every Wednesday from 1967 through 1973, Charlotte Adams and fellow protesters of the Chapel Hill branch of WILPF stood in silent vigil in front of the Chapel Hill post office against U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
-
A three-judge federal court hears arguments in Dickson v. Sitterson at Greensboro
Judges Clement F. Haynsworth, Edwin M. Stanley and Algernon L. Butler heard 45 minutes a side in the U.S. Middle District courtroom. McNeill Smith called the law vague, ambiguous, unconstitutional and void on its face; W. T. Joyner Sr. answered for the University that the 1965 amendment had abolished the original ban. The court then held the case under advisement for a year.
-
Central High students march and Orange County schools integrate
In 1968 Black students at Central High School in Hillsborough walked out and marched to protest a plan for phased desegregation. After Central's last class graduated that spring, its high school students moved to Orange High, ending the county's dual school system in 1968–69.
-
Gloria Williams directs the Chapel Hill Housing Authority
Gloria Williams was director of the Chapel Hill Housing Authority from 1968 until it merged with the town's Redevelopment Commission in September 1973, when she became assistant director. In 1969 she was the contact for placing families in the town's first public housing.
-
UNC names its new bookstore building for Josephus Daniels
In 1968 the university named its newly completed bookstore, which housed the Book Exchange and other student services, for Josephus Daniels, class of 1885 and a long-time trustee.
-
Governor Moore recommends that the state and the trustees not appeal the Speaker Ban ruling
Three days after the decision, Governor Dan K. Moore said the state should not appeal the federal court's finding that the law was unconstitutionally vague and recommended that the trustees not appeal either, voicing his hope that they and the administration would keep the campuses from being exploited as outlets of discord and strife.
-
The UNC trustees adopt six temporary speaker rules in place of the voided regulations
A week after the ruling the trustees approved, over Senator Tom White's plea to proceed calmly, six interim rules on the manner of a speaker's appearance (a senior faculty member presiding at the chancellor's request, public forums, balanced views, audience questions, sponsorship by recognized student groups), with the items the court had struck removed, pending further study by the executive committee on March 8.
-
The trustees' executive committee asks Governor Moore to name a subcommittee on a permanent speaker policy
Meeting in Charlotte, the Board of Trustees' Executive Committee voted to ask the governor to appoint a subcommittee to study speaker regulations and recommend a permanent policy to the full board in May. Senator Tom White, who agreed with the state's decision not to appeal, said the board had resolved nothing; President Friday hoped the matter would be settled by May.
-
Frank Wilkinson speaks on the UNC campus in Howell Hall
Three months after the ruling, Wilkinson gave his first permitted talk on the UNC campus, speaking on HUAC in Howell Hall at the invitation of the Carolina Political Union to about 35 people.
-
Braxton Foushee becomes Carrboro’s first Black alderman
Braxton Foushee was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1969, the first Black member of the town's governing board, and served until 1981. He pressed for paved roads and sidewalks in Black neighborhoods and counted bringing bus service to Carrboro as his proudest achievement.
-
Carrboro’s Black political firsts
Braxton Foushee became Carrboro’s first Black alderman in 1969 and Robert Drakeford its first Black mayor in 1977, followed by Richard Knight Jr. as town manager, Hilliard Caldwell and Joal Hall Broun on the board, and Walter Horton as police chief in 2013. Barbara Foushee was sworn in as the first Black woman mayor in 2023, and the town named the Drakeford Library Complex in 2024.
-
Hank Anderson directs the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Department
Henry "Hank" Anderson III, who took a master's degree in recreation administration at UNC in 1969, directed the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Department from 1969 to 1977.
-
Governor Scott orders Lenoir Hall reopened under Highway Patrol guard
After Chancellor Sitterson closed Lenoir Hall on March 5 during the foodworkers' strike, Governor Bob Scott ordered it reopened, sent at least 50 state patrolmen to Chapel Hill and mobilized a National Guard unit in Durham. The dining hall opened the next morning with more than 40 riot-equipped troopers and about 25 Chapel Hill police at its entrances while as many as 300 people picketed.
-
State troopers clear Manning Hall on Governor Scott's orders
About 75 state troopers ringed Manning Hall, the striking food workers' headquarters, on the afternoon of March 13 after Governor Bob Scott ordered it vacated. Students left before police arrived, and a crowd of up to 1,000 then rallied on the steps of South Building.
-
Howard Lee and Roland Giduz meet in an open forum at the Newman Center
About 100 people heard the two mayoral candidates differ on the Mitchell Lane open storm drain, a local option sales tax, the Inter-Church Council low-income housing project and developers' seats on the Planning Board. Lee called the drain the town's responsibility; Giduz, twelve years an alderman, was asked why it had not been covered.
-
Mayoral and aldermanic candidates answer questions at the Institute of Government
Lee, Giduz and all seven candidates for the Board of Aldermen took questions at an open forum. Sharp exchanges came over a police review board, which Lee said he had never favored, and over whether the town should pay to cover the Mitchell Lane drain, on which Giduz cited county health tests and Steve Bernholz answered that 'the ditch stinks'.
-
Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel Hill
Howard N. Lee defeated Roland Giduz by about 400 votes on May 6, 1969, in the largest turnout for a Chapel Hill election to that date, becoming the town's first Black mayor. He was the first African American elected mayor of a predominantly white Southern town since Reconstruction.
-
Rebecca Clark carries voters to the polls in Howard Lee's mayoral campaign
Clark worked on Howard Lee's campaign for mayor, sending her son's Greyhound bus street to street to take voters to the polls, and helped count ballots by hand on election night. Lee won the May 6, 1969 election.
-
Howard Lee takes the oath as mayor of Chapel Hill at Town Hall
More than 140 people packed the second-floor room of Town Hall for the 7:30 p.m. meeting at which town clerk Roberts swore in Lee after outgoing mayor Sandy McClamroch reviewed his ten years in office. New aldermen Joe Nassif, Mary Prothro, George Coxhead and Ross Scroggs were sworn in, and Lee's first board elected David Ethridge mayor pro tem.
-
County planning board recommends rezoning the Blackwood Station tract for Fiber Industries
The Orange County Planning Board unanimously recommended rezoning the 450-acre Blackwood Station tract from residential to industrial for a $100 million Fiber Industries plant promising 1,500 jobs. Board member Mark Burnham pressed for stricter performance standards, and commissioners Carl Smith, Ira Ward and Harvey Bennett had backed the Chamber of Commerce's pro-Fiber campaign.
-
Fiber Industries withdraws its New Hope Creek rezoning request; commissioners chairman Carl Smith blames opponents
Fiber Industries withdrew its request to rezone 450 acres near New Hope Creek for a plant after opposition from UNC, Duke and Mayor Howard Lee. County commissioners chairman Carl Smith blamed 'unintelligent intellectuals' and a town political 'machine', and said Lee, the town's Black mayor, was not serving Black residents by opposing the plant.
- 1970s
-
Cogswell/Hausler design a new sanctuary for the Community Church on Purefoy Road
In 1970 the firm added a two-story International Style sanctuary with stained siding and large south windows to the Community Church at 106 Purefoy Road, tied to the congregation's plain brick building of 1957 by George Matsumoto through a glass link. The integrated, nondenominational church had been founded in 1953 by the Rev. Charlie Jones and members who left Chapel Hill Presbyterian with him.
-
Fred Battle directs the Hargraves Center
Fred Battle, a Lincoln High graduate of 1962, directed Chapel Hill's Hargraves Center, the former Negro Community Center on Roberson Street, from 1970 to 1987.
-
The Hill family sells parts of Riverbend Farm for Eno River State Park
In the 1970s and 1980s the Hills sold portions of their acreage along the Eno to the new state park, leaving about 27 acres with the house.
-
Student Legislature passes a resolution calling a class boycott over the invasion of Cambodia
On the night of Nixon's Cambodia announcement the Student Legislature passed a resolution urging students to boycott classes on May 6. Student Body President Tom Bello called the strike and a student body meeting the next day, before the Kent State killings turned the one-day boycott into a general strike.
-
UNC student strike of
After the Kent State shootings and the invasion of Cambodia, UNC students began a class boycott on May 5, 1970, and more than 4,000 people marched through downtown Chapel Hill the next day. Classes were not cancelled; the faculty instead voted to let striking students take grades on work completed or finish courses later.
-
The student body meets in Polk Place and more than 4,000 march through downtown Chapel Hill behind four coffins
Tom Bello chaired an emergency meeting of the student body in Polk Place, then led a march half a mile long down Franklin Street behind four coffins for the Kent State dead; estimates ran from 4,000 to 6,000. That night 900 students planned the boycott, 2,500 held a candlelight memorial at McCorkle Place and marched again down Franklin Street, and strikers camped in Polk Place for an all-night vigil.
-
The general faculty votes to let striking students take their grades as they stand or finish coursework later
With more than 4,000 students rallying outside, the general faculty meeting in Hill Hall overwhelmingly approved a substitute motion by Marvin Silver and Gerhard Lenski calling the strike 'a reasonable, peaceful and responsible course of action' and allowing final grades on work completed so far or delayed completion of course requirements, with a right of appeal. Faculty chairman Daniel Okun's letter the next day explained the policy as no penalties for strike absences and make-up exams for those who could not in conscience sit the scheduled exam.
-
Student Government's 'The Strike Continues?' release turns the strike toward canvassing and calls a Memorial Hall teach-in
Tom Bello's Student Government press release declared that rallies alone would not end the war and redirected the strike, which it said now involved well over half the student body, toward canvassing, petitions and visits to Congress. It announced a faculty panel on the war for 3 p.m. Monday, May 11 in Memorial Hall with Samuel Wells, James Leutze, Andrew Scott, Daniel Pollitt and David Lapkin.
-
Students sit in at South Building and hand Chancellor Sitterson a petition of 800 names confessing to the disruption policy
Seventy-five to 100 students occupied the South Building lobby for over an hour to protest the trustees' disruption policy and its use against three students charged after the December cafeteria strike. Three were admitted to Chancellor Sitterson's office with a petition of 800 UNC students indicting themselves for violating the policy during the strike's first days; Sitterson said the matter lay with President Friday. Bello and the strike steering committee condemned the sit-in.
-
Joe Hackney serves as an assistant district attorney in Orange and Chatham counties
After clerking for Justice Frank Huskins of the state Supreme Court, Joe Hackney worked as an assistant district attorney in Orange and Chatham counties from 1971 to 1974.
-
Howard Lee is re-elected mayor over Jack Maultsby
Lee won a second term against three challengers, leading restaurant co-owner Jack Maultsby 1,999 to 1,352 with two-thirds of the vote counted on election night; NCpedia gives his final share as 64 percent. The same ballot narrowly approved a Chapel Hill-Carrboro bus system in Chapel Hill, which Carrboro voters rejected.
-
Rogers Road landfill opens
Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County opened a shared, unlined county landfill on Eubanks Road, built in late 1972 beside the historically Black Rogers-Eubanks community, whose residents were told it would close after about ten years. It was expanded repeatedly and ran for 41 years, closing in June 2013.
-
UNC names its new history building Hamilton Hall
The university named the new building occupied by its History Department for J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, founder of the Southern Historical Collection.
-
N. Ferebee Taylor serves as chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill
Nelson Ferebee Taylor was the chief administrative officer of the Chapel Hill campus for eight years. His office's records deal with desegregation, the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare lawsuit and consent decree, and campus development.
-
Chancellor Taylor spends a night in Winston Residence Hall
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor and other administrators stayed overnight in Winston Residence Hall to draw attention to overcrowded student housing. The same year Winston became UNC's first room-by-room coed residence hall.
-
Eno River State Park is created
After years of citizen opposition to damming the Eno for a reservoir, Governor James Holshouser accepted the first tracts for Eno River State Park in June 1973, including 90 acres donated by Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Bernheim. The first 1,000 acres opened to the public in 1975 along the river in Orange and Durham counties.
-
Henry W. Lewis serves as director of the Institute of Government
Lewis succeeded to the directorship of the Institute of Government in 1973 and held it until he retired from the faculty in 1979.
-
The Community Center is renamed for William M. Hargraves
Chapel Hill's Roberson Street Center, built in the 1940s as the town's segregated Negro Community Center, was renamed in 1973 the William M. Hargraves Recreation Center. Hargraves, a Black resident who had served on the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Commission, had died in an automobile accident.
-
Howard Lee wins a third term as mayor by a landslide
In Chapel Hill's first November municipal election Lee carried every reporting precinct, taking 5,001 votes to 1,109 for graduate student Douglas Holmes, whom he had also beaten in 1971. NCpedia puts his share at 89 percent.
-
Joe Hackney and Bob Epting begin practicing law together in Chapel Hill
Joe Hackney began practicing law in Chapel Hill with Bob Epting in 1974, handling family law and civil litigation in the courts of Orange and surrounding counties.
-
Residents campaign to save Carrboro's former textile mill from demolition
In 1974 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen decided the vacant former Alberta mill should be demolished to make way for a modern shopping center. Residents led by Frances Shetley petitioned against it, the owner agreed not to tear it down, and the complex was nominated for the National Register in June 1975.
-
Chapel Hill Transit begins service
Chapel Hill's municipal bus system began running on August 1, 1974, after Mayor Howard Lee and UNC Chancellor Ferebee Taylor cut the ribbon, with eight town, campus and park-and-ride routes. Carrboro was not yet served.
-
Lambeth presents the charter for the Order of the Tar Heel One Hundred
Thomas Lambeth, chairing a committee to study an adjunct to the Board of Trustees, presented its recommendation: a charter for the Order of the Tar Heel One Hundred, renamed the Board of Visitors after 1980.
-
The Carolina Gay Association forms
Students who had met weekly since February 1974 as the Gay Awareness Rap Group won recognition from UNC's Dean of Student Affairs in early September 1974 and took the name Carolina Gay Association. The group met in Craige dormitory and in 1976 sponsored the first Southeastern Gay Conference.
-
Protesters stop Klan leader David Duke from speaking in Memorial Hall
Black students filled the pit of Memorial Hall and kept Ku Klux Klan representative David Duke, invited by the Union Forum, from giving his speech. Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor called the disruption a transgression of one of the university's highest traditions.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
-
Hank Anderson starts a Saturday breakfast meeting of Black and social justice leaders
Anderson began hosting a Saturday morning breakfast at Dip's Restaurant where African American and social justice leaders discussed problems and political strategy. The group later made endorsements in Chapel Hill and Carrboro elections and carried his name.
-
Richard Knight Jr. becomes Carrboro's first Black town manager
Carrboro hired Richard Knight Jr. as its first Black town manager, and he served from 1976 to 1980. He left to become deputy city manager of Gainesville, Florida, and later became the first Black city manager of Dallas.
-
Hillsborough votes to buy the old Ray Motor Company building for a fire station
The town agreed to pay $60,000 for the former Ford dealership on Churton Street as a home for the fire department, and Orange Rural Fire bought the lot next door. The Hillsborough and Orange Rural departments moved there later in 1976.
-
Judge Stanley Peele wins the Democratic primary for his district court seat
Incumbent district judge Stanley Peele of Chapel Hill won the primary with 13,390 votes to 5,445 for Chapel Hill attorney Charles Hodson and 2,171 for Gerid Cumby of Alamance.
-
Severe drought creates a local water crisis
A drought from August 1976 to January 1977 forced Chapel Hill and UNC to buy more water from Durham, ban unnecessary water use and cut campus services. By August 1977 University Lake was lower still, and the new Orange Water and Sewer Authority kept conservation rules and used federal drought aid to buy Durham water.
-
A new United States Post Office is completed on East King Street in Hillsborough
The post office at 144 East King Street, a one-story Colonial Revival building, was finished in 1977. It was the first of the new government buildings that went up on the blocks south and east of the courthouse in the late twentieth century.
-
Bill Thorpe leads the voting for the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
In his second run for office, Bill Thorpe led the field from the early returns and won one of four seats on the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen, with Bev Kawalec, Marilyn Boulton and Gerry Cohen.
-
Bob Drakeford is elected mayor of Carrboro
Robert "Bob" Drakeford, a Carrboro alderman since 1975 and a Carrboro Community Coalition candidate, won the mayor's race on November 8, 1977, with 57 percent of the vote over John Boone. He was the town's first Black mayor and served until 1983.
-
Chief District Judge Peele halts Carrboro fire-lane towing
In a class-action suit by four Carrboro residents, three of them UNC students, Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele issued a temporary restraining order barring the town from enforcing its ordinance allowing cars to be towed from marked fire lanes on private property.
-
Plans are announced for a Chapel Hill branch of the Orange County court clerk's office
Clerk of Superior Court Frank Frederick and Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele announced plans for a Chapel Hill branch of the clerk's office, to open in January and handle traffic tickets and other misdemeanors docketed for district court in Chapel Hill.
-
Paul Johnston endows an Albert Coates professorship at the Institute of Government
Paul Johnston, a former Institute assistant director who made a fortune in business after serving as Governor Luther Hodges's chief administrative officer, endowed a professorship at the Institute in Coates's name. A professorship honoring Gladys Coates followed three years later.
-
Sandy McClamroch helps found the Carol Woods retirement community
McClamroch, by then a former mayor and the founder of WCHL, was instrumental in founding the Carol Woods retirement community in Chapel Hill in 1979.
-
Joe Straley is elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council
In the municipal election, newcomer Joe Straley won one of four council seats with 2,796 votes, joining James C. Wallace, R. D. Smith and Jonathan Howes and edging out Joe Herzenberg. He was sworn in for a four-year term in December.
- 1980s
-
Albert Coates publishes The Story of the Institute of Government
Coates's history of the Institute, a book he had worked at for half a century, came out fifty years after the meeting that started it. Director Henry Lewis had read the manuscript in the late 1970s and sent page after page of corrections, some of which Coates took.
-
Hilliard Caldwell is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
Hilliard Caldwell, who had advised the students of the 1960 Colonial Drug sit-in in Chapel Hill, was first elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1981. He served four terms, through 1997.
-
Gloria Williams leads Joint Orange Chatham Community Action
As director of Joint Orange Chatham Community Action (JOCCA), the county anti-poverty agency, Gloria Williams gave poor families emergency food, spoke for tenants at the 1984 Orange County hearings on a minimum housing code and ran a summer youth work program.
-
Chapel Hill-Carrboro coalition organizes for the 20th anniversary March on Washington
Fred Battle chaired the Chapel Hill-Carrboro 20th Anniversary Coalition, which first met on May 29, 1983, and raised money to send buses from Chapel Hill to the August 27 march for jobs, peace and freedom in Washington. A UNC campus group worked as part of the local coalition.
-
Chapel Hill makes Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a town holiday
On Council member Bill Thorpe's initiative, Chapel Hill made the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. an official town holiday, the first town in North Carolina and one of the first municipalities in the nation to do so.
-
The Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association forms
Descendants of the Occaneechi, Saponi and related Siouan peoples living around the Little Texas settlement reorganized in 1984 as the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association, with the aim of winning state recognition. The group has since been governed by an elected nine-member tribal council headed by a chair.
-
The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation today
The Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association formed in 1984, took the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation name in 1994 and won state recognition in 2002 after a decade of petitions and a court ruling. The band bought land for its tribal grounds near Pleasant Grove in 2004, rebuilt the replica village at Hillsborough, and dedicated a state highway marker in 2024.
-
Habitat for Humanity of Orange County is incorporated
An ecumenical housing effort that began at Binkley Baptist Church in late 1982 became Habitat for Humanity of Orange County, incorporated in April 1984. Its first house was a donated building moved to what became the Chestnut Oaks neighborhood in Chapel Hill.
-
Fred Battle serves on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
Fred Battle served on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board of education from 1985 to 1989.
-
The Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association holds its first annual August powwow
A year after it formed, the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association held its first annual powwow in August 1985, bringing Indian people from many tribes to visit the community. The fifth, at Mebane on August 11 and 12, 1989, had a printed program.
-
I-40 through Orange County is named the Harriet Morehead Berry Freeway
The Board of Transportation named a section of Interstate 40 through Orange County for Berry, the Hillsborough-born Good Roads campaigner. A state highway marker to her was cast the same year for NC 86 at I-40 north of Chapel Hill.
-
Orange County Rural Buffer is established
Orange County adopted the Orange County-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Joint Planning Area Land Use Plan and map on August 19, 1986, designating a low-density Rural Buffer. The three governments signed the Joint Planning Agreement on November 2, 1987, and the county dates the buffer to 1988.
-
Valerie Foushee works as an administrative officer for the Chapel Hill Police Department
Foushee spent 21 years as an administrative officer with the Chapel Hill Police Department, from 1987 to 2008.
-
Frank Wilkinson returns to speak in Manning Hall
Wilkinson, then 74, spoke in Manning Hall on FBI surveillance and U.S. policy in Central America at an event sponsored by the Carolina Committee on Central America.
-
Sitterson Hall, the new computer science building, is dedicated on University Day
The Department of Computer Science moved into its new building over the summer of 1987, and the formal dedication of Sitterson Hall, named for former chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson, was held on University Day with Sitterson present and former governor Hunt giving the main address.
-
Joe Herzenberg wins election to the Chapel Hill Town Council
Joe Herzenberg placed third in the four-seat Town Council race at the municipal election of November 3, 1987, with 3,308 votes, behind Nancy Preston and Roosevelt Wilkerson, and said he was the first openly gay elected official in the history of North Carolina. He was sworn in at the Council's organizational meeting on December 7, 1987, with his neighbor Lightning Brown administering the oath.
-
Jonathan Howes is elected mayor of Chapel Hill
Jonathan Howes, director of UNC's Center for Urban and Regional Studies, won the mayoral race with 53 percent of the vote over Julie Andresen and David Lineberger, carrying the student precincts at Greenwood and Country Club. Outgoing mayor James Wallace said the office would be in very good hands.
-
Hilliard Caldwell tells a Chapel Hill forum that local schools still fail Black students
Speaking as home school coordinator for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools at a Human Rights Week forum, Caldwell said the community spent millions on education without adequate results and that few Black students reached the honor rolls. His cousin Ed Caldwell, a school board member, spoke as well.
-
Eleanor Kinnaird is sworn in as mayor of Carrboro
Elizabeth R. Holland administered the oath of office to Mayor-elect Eleanor Kinnaird at the Board of Aldermen meeting of December 1, 1987. The board had approved the abstract of votes cast at the November 3, 1987 election earlier in the meeting, and outgoing mayor James V. Porto Jr. and departing aldermen Zona Norwood and John Boone made their parting remarks.
-
Judge Peele rules in the Hanes Hall CIA protest cases
Judge Stanley Peele found anti-CIA protesters Dale McKinley and Graham Entwistle guilty of disorderly conduct for chaining themselves at Hanes Hall during CIA recruiting interviews and entered a prayer for judgment continued; later in 1988 he jailed McKinley for 21 days and gave Entwistle a suspended sentence for violating its terms.
-
A state highway marker for Hamilton is cast for Churton Street in Hillsborough
The North Carolina highway historical marker G-103, which marks Hamilton's birthplace half a block west as historian, professor and founder of the Southern Historical Collection, was first cast in 1989 for US 70 Business (Churton Street) in Hillsborough.
-
Cane Creek Reservoir is filled
OWASA completed and filled the reservoir on Cane Creek west of Carrboro, adding roughly three billion gallons of storage drawn from a 32 square mile drainage area. Before it came online OWASA's estimated dependable yield was about two million gallons a day, and the 1980s had brought repeated mandatory restrictions and purchases of water from neighboring utilities.
-
Mike Nelson loses his first race for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen by 32 votes
Nelson first ran for elected office in 1989 and lost his bid for a seat on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen by 32 votes.
-
Eleanor Kinnaird is sworn in for a second term as mayor of Carrboro
Town clerk Sarah C. Williamson administered the oath to Mayor-elect Kinnaird and to aldermen-elect Hilliard Caldwell and Tom Gurganus after the board approved the abstract of votes from the November 7, 1989 election. Jacquelyn Gist was sworn in as an alderman at the same meeting.
-
Jacquelyn Gist is sworn in as a Carrboro alderman
Robin Lackey administered the oath of office to alderman-elect Jacquelyn Gist at the Board of Aldermen meeting of December 5, 1989. The board had approved the abstract of votes cast at the November 7, 1989 election earlier in the same meeting, at which Eleanor Kinnaird was also sworn in as mayor.
- 1990s
-
Carrboro's LGBTQ municipal firsts
From the 1990 equal employment policy and the 1994 domestic partnership ordinance, through Mike Nelson's mayoralty and Lydia Lavelle's, to the 2021 nondiscrimination ordinance: the town acts that made Carrboro a series of firsts.
-
Latino migration to Carrboro and Chapel Hill
Latin American families began arriving in Carrboro and Chapel Hill in the 1990s: the neighborhoods and workplaces that received them, and the institutions they built.
-
Randee Haven-O'Donnell is named Soil and Water Conservation Teacher of the Year
Haven-O'Donnell, who taught in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, was named Orange County and North Carolina Soil and Water Conservation Teacher of the Year.
-
Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association petitions the NC Commission of Indian Affairs for state recognition
After years of genealogical and historical research, the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association filed a petition for state recognition with the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs.
-
Carrboro adds sexual orientation to its equal employment opportunity policy
The Board of Aldermen unanimously amended the town's personnel ordinance to add sexual orientation to the characteristics protected in its merit principle and equal employment opportunity policy. On November 13, 1990 the Board had written a sexual orientation nondiscrimination clause into a planning grant agreement with the City of Durham and asked for the code amendment to be scheduled.
-
James Brittian leads the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP
Brittian was president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP from December 1990 until his death at his Carrboro home in November 1993. Fred Battle served as interim president until Gene Hatley took over in February 1994.
-
Mark Chilton is elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council at 21
Chilton, then a UNC undergraduate, won a seat on the Chapel Hill Town Council in 1991 at the age of 21 and served until 1997. He took a geography degree from UNC in 1993 and a law degree from North Carolina Central University in 1997.
-
Herbert Aptheker returns to speak at UNC in Greenlaw Hall
Twenty-five years after he was kept off campus, Aptheker spoke to students and faculty in Greenlaw Hall in a visit arranged by anthropology professor Don Nonini.
-
The William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education is dedicated
UNC dedicated its continuing education center, named for William and Ida Friday, on April 12, 1991. Friday described it as "the citizens' classroom."
-
Forest Hazel publishes his study of the Occaneechi-Saponi Texas community
Southern Indian Studies printed Forest Hazel's account of the Occaneechi from Occaneechi Town on the Eno in 1701 to the Texas community of his own day, tying the excavated village near Hillsborough to living Indian families. Hazel had begun the research in 1984 from land, court, marriage, census and military records and from family oral histories.
-
Baptist conventions disassociate from Binkley
State and Southern conventions acted after the church licensed an openly gay ministerial candidate.
-
Michael R. Smith becomes director of the Institute of Government
Smith, who had found the Institute by chance as a law student in 1978, was named director in 1992, the third after Coates to lead it, following John Sanders and Henry Lewis. He later headed it with the title of dean once it became the UNC School of Government.
-
Goetha C. Whitmore, one of the oldest Occaneechi elders, dies at 97
Goetha C. Whitmore of Alamance County died at 97. He remembered his grandfather Andrew Whitmore speaking a language other than English, which his father translated for him, and his memory underlay much of Forest Hazel's history of the Texas community, which Hazel dedicated to him.
-
Hank Anderson serves on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
Anderson was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1993 and re-elected in 1997, and the board chose him as mayor pro tem in 1994 and again in 1997. He served until his death in October 1998.
-
Mike Nelson is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
Nelson won a seat on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1993, and as an alderman he championed the domestic partners ordinance the town adopted in 1994.
-
NAACP task force begins a study of UNC's employee grievance procedure
A task force chaired by Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP president James Brittian held its first meeting to evaluate UNC's grievance and appeals procedure and employee relations counseling, aiming to change state law for workers across the UNC system. Former UNC personnel director Jack Gunnells was its operations director.
-
Chapel Hill Town Council funds the Midway Development Commission
The council unanimously approved a $6,000 grant to promote Black-owned businesses and housing in the Midway district between Chapel Hill and Carrboro. James Brittian, NAACP president and the commission's project development coordinator, said the money would bring in millions.
-
Jesse Jackson comes to Chapel Hill during the Black Cultural Center sit-in
Jesse Jackson came to Chapel Hill while students occupied South Building for a free-standing Black Cultural Center, met first with Chancellor Hardin and urged him to call a special trustees' meeting, which Hardin refused. Sixteen students and a Chapel Hill resident were arrested that day.
-
UNC Trustees approve a freestanding Black Cultural Center on the Coker site
On July 23, 1993, the UNC Board of Trustees approved building a freestanding Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center on the Coker Woods site between Coker Hall and the Bell Tower. Supporters had wanted the Wilson-Dey site on the main quad, and student leaders accepted the Coker site that November.
-
Joe and Lucy Straley receive the first Charles M. Jones award of the local ACLU
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union gave Joe and Lucy Straley, both 79, its Charles M. Jones award for their work for peace, social justice and racial integration. The award, begun that year, recognizes contributions to civil liberties and civil rights in Orange and Chatham counties.
-
The organization adopts the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation name
While its recognition petition was under review, the Eno-Occaneechi Indian Association changed its name to the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation.
-
Carrboro Board of Aldermen adopts a domestic partnership registry
The Board voted unanimously to amend the Town Code so that statements of domestic partnership could be filed with the Town Clerk, set the effective date at October 11, 1994, added a $40 registration fee, and extended the financial disclosure required of elected officials to cover their domestic partners. The Board took no action on a third proposal to extend health insurance benefits to domestic partners of town employees.
-
Chapel Hill creates a domestic partner registry
The Town of Chapel Hill established a domestic partner registry in 1995, the year after Carrboro adopted its own. The Town added sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to its employment protections in 2004.
-
First annual Occaneechi powwow on the Eno planned for downtown Hillsborough
John Jeffries planned the first annual powwow on the Eno River in downtown Hillsborough. The band now holds its annual powwow and fall festival on its tribal land in Alamance County.
-
Hillsborough builds a new police station on North Churton Street
The Hillsborough Police Department moves into a new two-story brick building at 127 North Churton Street in 1995; it was going up during the 1994 survey.
-
Carrboro votes to pay for domestic partner coverage in its employee health plan
Setting town employee health insurance for fiscal 1995-96, the Board of Aldermen voted that the town would bear any expense of adding coverage for domestic partners to its Kaiser plan, after asking staff on May 23 to find out why the insurer Healthsource did not offer such coverage. The vote was six to one, with Michael Nelson opposed.
-
Commission of Indian Affairs recognition committee votes to deny the Occaneechi petition
The Recognition Committee of the NC Commission of Indian Affairs voted to deny state recognition, finding the petitioners had not met five of the eight required criteria. The band then sought a contested case hearing, filed January 3, 1996.
-
Mike Nelson is elected mayor of Carrboro
Michael R. Nelson, then a member of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, won the mayor's race at the municipal election held on November 7, 1995, becoming the first openly gay mayor elected in North Carolina. The Board approved the Orange County abstract of votes from that election at its meeting of December 5, 1995.
-
Mike Nelson is sworn in as mayor of Carrboro
At the Board of Aldermen meeting of December 5, 1995, outgoing mayor Eleanor Kinnaird gave closing remarks and Mayor-elect Michael R. Nelson took the oath of office, along with aldermen-elect Jay Bryan, Hilliard Caldwell and Alex Zaffron. The Board then appointed Diana McDuffee to the alderman seat Nelson vacated.
-
Ellie Kinnaird is elected to the North Carolina Senate
Kinnaird left the Carrboro mayor's office for the state Senate, where she sat from 1997 until 2013 representing a district that included Orange County. She had earned a law degree from North Carolina Central University while serving as mayor.
-
The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation becomes a tax-exempt nonprofit
IRS records list the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, based in Mebane, as a tax-exempt nonprofit since August 1996. The group had taken that name in 1994 and in January 1996 filed to contest the state Commission of Indian Affairs' denial of its petition for recognition.
-
Occaneechi Band members build a replica village on the Eno in Hillsborough
Tribal members led by John "Blackfeather" Jeffries built a replica of the palisaded Occaneechi village beside the Eno River in Hillsborough, modelled on the site excavated by UNC archaeologists. The village fell into disrepair and was dismantled in 2003.
-
Valerie Foushee is elected to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
Foushee was elected to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro city schools board in 1997 and served until 2004, pressing for equity in the schools. It was the first of the local offices she held over 25 years in local and state government.
-
Mayor Mike Nelson proclaims June Lesbian and Gay Pride Month in Carrboro
At the Board of Aldermen meeting of June 3, 1997, Mayor Michael Nelson issued a proclamation naming June Lesbian and Gay Pride Month in the Town of Carrboro.
-
William C. Friday receives the National Humanities Medal
President Clinton and Hillary Clinton presented Friday with one of the first National Humanities Medals. The NEH cited him as president emeritus of the University of North Carolina, which he led from 1956 to 1986, and executive director of the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trusts.
-
A bronze statue of James K. Polk is dedicated on University Day
A bronze statue by the Marshville sculptor Stephen H. Smith, showing Polk as a young man speaking to a crowd and standing on a carved outline of the United States, was dedicated on University Day 1997.
-
A Knapp Foundation gift funds an addition, renamed the Knapp-Sanders Building
The Knapp Foundation contributed to a large addition to the Institute of Government building, and the name was extended to honor John Lassiter Sanders, the Institute's second director.
-
Carrboro renames its community park for Hank Anderson
The Carrboro Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to rename Carrboro Community Park on N.C. 54 for Alderman Henry "Hank" Anderson III, on a motion by Alderman Jacquelyn Gist. The 55-acre park is one of the town's largest.
-
Administrative law judge recommends state recognition of the Occaneechi Band
After a contested case hearing that ran from February 1997 to July 1998, an administrative law judge recommended that the Commission of Indian Affairs grant the Occaneechi Band tribal recognition.
-
Joal Hall Broun joins the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
In early 1999 Joal Hall Broun, an assistant public defender, was appointed to fill out the term of the late Alderman Hank Anderson, and she won election to the board that fall. She served on the board until 2011.
-
Commission of Indian Affairs rejects the judge's recommendation and denies Occaneechi recognition
At a June 11, 1999 hearing the Commission of Indian Affairs voted against the administrative law judge's recommendation, and on July 11 it issued a Final Agency Decision denying the petition. The band appealed to Orange County Superior Court on August 16, 1999, which affirmed the denial.
-
Hilliard Caldwell announces he will not seek another term as a Carrboro alderman
Caldwell said he would not run again and named controlled growth as the board's major achievement. The Daily Tar Heel counted 16 years of service under four Carrboro mayors.
- 2000s
-
Jesse Jackson receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom
President Bill Clinton presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jesse Jackson at a White House ceremony.
-
Mark Kleinschmidt serves on the Chapel Hill Town Council
Kleinschmidt was elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 2001 and served until 2009. He was executive director of the Fair Trial Initiative and a former board president of the state ACLU affiliate.
-
Penny Rich is appointed to the OWASA board
Chapel Hill appointed Rich to the Orange Water and Sewer Authority board in 2001, and she served two three-year terms through 2007. She helped write water conservation policy during a severe drought.
-
NC Court of Appeals rules the Occaneechi recognition recommendation stands
The Court of Appeals reversed the Orange County Superior Court and held that because the Commission of Indian Affairs missed its statutory deadline, the administrative law judge's recommendation for recognition became the final agency decision by operation of law. It remanded the case for an order consistent with that holding.
-
Institute of Government names a Knapp Building courtyard for Gladys Coates
After Gladys Hall Coates died at 100 at her Chapel Hill home on September 25, 2002, the Institute of Government named a garden courtyard and veranda beside the former auditorium in the Knapp Building's east wing in her memory.
-
North Carolina recognizes the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation
Following the 2001 appeals ruling, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation became the eighth tribe officially recognized by the State of North Carolina through the Commission of Indian Affairs.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
