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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1950s
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Vermont Royster wins the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing
Vermont C. Royster, a UNC graduate, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his regular editorials in The Wall Street Journal.
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The Church of the Holy Family breaks ground in Chapel Hill
The Episcopal Church of the Holy Family, organized in Chapel Hill the year before, broke ground for a building to seat 150.
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Five Forks Baptist Church is organized in a converted pack barn
Prayer meetings begun in 1951 by Gattis Brown of Glen Hope Baptist Church in Burlington moved in 1952 to an old pack barn at the Five Forks crossroads, and the church was organized there on July 2, 1953 with 27 members. Brown was pastor until 1964.
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Rock Hill Baptist, renamed First Baptist, holds its first services on North Roberson Street
The Black Baptist congregation organized in 1865 had worshipped for decades as Rock Hill Baptist Church on the south side of West Franklin Street. Under its pastor, the Rev. J. R. Manley, it raised $10,001 in the first months of 1952 and began a colonial-style brick church on North Roberson Street between Franklin and Rosemary streets. The first services in the $100,000 building were held on Sunday, September 27, 1953, opening three weeks of dedication services; with the move the congregation took the name First Baptist Church. By early 1954 the old Franklin Street lot stood vacant.
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Milton Julian wins the right to build his modernist house on Ledge Lane
When W. C. Coker's chosen architect, Walter D. Toy, refused to approve the plans for clothier Milton Julian's house on Ledge Lane, designed by George Matsumoto of the State College School of Design, Milton and Virginia Julian sued on September 30, 1953; Coker's executors, his widow and neighbors Cornelius and Beulah Cathey opposed them. The North Carolina Supreme Court held on June 4, 1954 that the approval clause was personal to Coker and ended at his death in June 1953, and the International Style house was finished by November 1956.
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Masons lay the cornerstone of the new Orange County courthouse at the county bicentennial
On the opening day of the county's bicentennial week, Grand Master Edwin T. Howard and Eagle Lodge No. 19 laid the cornerstone in the half-finished courthouse. Chief Justice William A. Devin gave the address.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough celebrates its centennial
The congregation marked its hundredth year in November 1953 under Charles E. Maddry, with its new educational building finished for the occasion.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough completes its educational building
First Baptist Church finished a brick educational building at the rear of its sanctuary at West King and South Wake streets, about a year after work began, in time for the church's centennial in November 1953.
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The Planning Board approves Muirhead's street layout around Glen Lennox
The Chapel Hill Planning Board approved new streets on the fringes of Glen Lennox, including Ayr Street, which Muirhead named, extending the colony's central road across the highway so children could reach the new Glenwood School more safely.
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A Modernist split-level with a butterfly roof is built on Fern Lane for Thomas H. Darden
The post-and-beam house has clerestory windows, vertical wood siding and a flat-roofed carport. Oral tradition credits the design to Jim Webb.
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A weatherboarded Cape Cod house is built on the new Fern Lane for Eleanor R. Rowe and Philip P. Green Jr.
The five-bay house has a center chimney and a side wing joined by a hyphen, possibly a converted garage. It was one of the first houses on the newly platted street.
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Carrboro adds a fire station to its town hall on Lloyd Street
With a new Ford fire truck delivered in February 1954, Carrboro finished a fire house addition to the Town Hall on Lloyd Street. In April the firemen posed in front of the new annex with all four trucks the department had owned.
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Carrboro's last general store closes
Cliff Partin bought the Carrboro Cash Store on Lloyd Street in 1945 and ran it with his son Wilbur until competition from newer stores closed it in 1954. The store building, which dated from 1888, was torn down about 1960.
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Chapel Hill's aldermen adopt an ordinance setting separate sections for Black burials in the new town cemetery
The ordinance for the new Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery on the Durham road reserved some sections for Black burials and others for other races, as the old cemetery had done. The Rev. Charles Jones of the Community Church called it illiberal in a September sermon, and the citizens' committee had urged the town to rid itself of the new Black cemetery north of town.
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First four-year class graduates from the UNC School of Medicine
In 1954 the UNC School of Medicine graduated its first class of students to complete all four years of medical training. The university's new dental and nursing schools graduated their first classes the same year.
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Franc Sidler meets Troy and Robin Andrews on their farm and sketches a house for it
In the summer of 1954 the Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a guest of anthropologists renting a small house on the Andrews farm, met Troy and Robin Andrews there and drew a floor plan for a house they might build later. The sketch grew into the house finished on the farm in 1967.
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George Watts Carr designs a Cape Cod house on Country Club Road for religion professor Bernard Boyd
The large story-and-a-half house for Bernard and Thelma Boyd has shake siding and three gabled dormers. Carr, a lifelong advocate of the Colonial Revival, had designed Laurel Hill houses since the late 1920s.
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Iris Lane and Fern Lane are platted, extending Laurel Hill onto the Coker estate
After William C. Coker died in 1953, Laurel Hill spread into adjoining land of his estate. The new plat laid out two streets at the south end of the neighborhood, and most of their houses went up before 1960.
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Louis Graves sells the Chapel Hill Weekly
After 31 years as its editor and owner, Louis Graves sold the Chapel Hill Weekly in 1954 to the Chapel Hill Publishing Company. He stayed on as contributing editor through 1960.
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Robert Rhinehart sells the Hill Bakery to Thell Jernigan, who renames it Thell's Bakery
Rhinehart, who had bought the East Franklin bakery in 1943 from Mrs. William Brumfield Neal, sold it to Jernigan, and the new owner put his own name on it. Thell's Bakery stayed in business into the mid-1980s.
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St. Paul's A.M.E. adds an annex with a meeting hall and kitchen
The annex was built at the northwest corner of the church.
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Tenant farming drops sharply in Orange County
Tenant-operated farms in Orange County fell from 513 of 1,939 farms in 1954 to 295 of 1,405 in 1959, and croppers fell from 261 to 135. In 1959, 500 of the county's farms were classed as tobacco farms.
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The Belk-Leggett-Horton department store opens on West Franklin Street
The department store opened next to the Masonic Hall. A few years later the hall was razed for its parking lot, and the store had closed by the early 1980s, when Southern Bell moved into its space.
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The Pinetum at Rocky Ridge Farm is deeded to the university's botanical garden
A protected stand of Coker's remaining forest along Meeting of the Waters Creek on the west edge of the development, known as the Pinetum, was deeded in 1954 to the UNC botanical garden for its care.
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The University tears down the Crystal Palace on East Franklin Street for planetarium parking
The University had bought the old building known as the Crystal Palace in 1945. In 1954 it razed it and turned the lot into parking for Morehead Planetarium, with a large sundial in a rose garden at the center.
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The name Cedar Grove Negro School gives way to Cedar Grove School
The county board and local papers had called the school the Cedar Grove Negro School from the 1946 land purchase on. After 1954 they used Cedar Grove School or Cedar Grove Elementary School.
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The university awards William Picard Jacocks an honorary doctor of laws
The University of North Carolina, where Jacocks had graduated in 1904, gave him an honorary doctor of laws degree while he was living in Chapel Hill in retirement.
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William Sterling Roulhac dies and leaves the Ruffin house to his wife Charlotte
William Sterling Roulhac died and left the property to his wife, Charlotte Trant Roulhac, who owned it when the town of Hillsborough began negotiating to buy it for government offices.
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Rev. Joe B. Brooks, founding pastor of Jones Grove, dies
Joe Bethel Brooks, a farmer who helped found Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church in 1926, led it as pastor until his death.
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Chapel Hill American Legion post gives an iron lung to N.C. Memorial Hospital
The Chapel Hill post of the American Legion presented an iron lung, bought for about $1,600, to North Carolina Memorial Hospital, with Congressman Carl T. Durham making the presentation. Hospital director Robert R. Cadmus said the hospital had treated 90 polio patients, two from Orange County, in its first 18 months; it was the hospital's second iron lung.
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Sophie Livas is installed as Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star chapter in Chapel Hill
Sophie Livas was installed as Worthy Matron of University Chapter 264, Order of the Eastern Star, succeeding Elizabeth Montgomery.
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Brown v. Board places local school segregation under constitutional challenge
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated public schools unconstitutional, putting Orange County's separate schools for Black and white children under legal challenge. Four days later Chapel Hill Mayor Edwin Lanier urged gradual adjustment, and school board chairman Carl Smith predicted little trouble in complying but expected high schools to be affected most.
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The county school board decides to carry on as before after the Brown decision
Two days after Brown v. Board of Education, the Orange County Board of Education put on record that since the Court had not said when or how segregation would end, it would go on hiring teachers, preparing the budget and running the schools as in the past. Like other North Carolina boards, it took no step to comply.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro churches name a committee to help schools desegregate peacefully
Two weeks after the Brown decision, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Ministerial Association set up a steering committee to study how the churches could help bring a peaceful transition to non-segregated schools. Its members were the Rev. Charles Jones, Mrs. Harold Walters, George Esser Jr., the Rev. T. P. Duhart and Mrs. J. Snipes.
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The Pride of Orange Elks lodge clears ground for its hall on South Merritt Mill Road
The Black Elks lodge, Pride of Orange No. 276, cleared the lot and planned to start its $15,000 two-story hall in June, with members doing most of the work. The lodge hall was to be upstairs and the youth group's rooms below; until then the thirty-member lodge rented rooms over the West Franklin Street Grocery.
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Albert Coates and James C. N. Paul prepare the Institute's report on the Brown decision for Governor Umstead
At Governor William B. Umstead's request, Coates wrote a history of the state's separate schools and Paul, who had clerked for Chief Justice Fred Vinson, examined the ruling and the plans for getting around it, concluding that segregated schools could not be kept. When Umstead named Thomas J. Pearsall's advisory committee on August 11, 1954, the report was the first paper its members received, and Coates then ran a shortened version in Popular Government.
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Dr. Robert Murphy and his wife move into the Peter Taylor house on King Street
Dr. and Mrs. Robert Murphy moved from Chapel Hill into the Peter Taylor house on King Street in Hillsborough, and Mrs. M. B. Roberts gave a tea to welcome them. The Murphys went on to restore the house, later known as Seven Hearths.
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The Marathon Restaurant leaves its East Franklin Street building
The Marathon, a sandwich shop and restaurant in the building later numbered 115 East Franklin Street since the 1930s, gave up the building in the week before June 4, 1954. The College Cafe's owners had bought it from the J. T. Durham estate.
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A windstorm damages the Frozen Kustard drive-in across from Brady's on the Durham road
An evening thunderstorm with winds put at 80 miles an hour struck the Durham road east of Chapel Hill. It tore two signs off the Frozen Kustard drive-in, damaged its roof and knocked down its phone booth; the wind blew Brady McLennan back through his restaurant door.
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Dud's Tavern reopens after a July fire
Mr. and Mrs. Dud Walters thanked the Hillsborough and Mebane fire departments for helping save Dud's Tavern from a July fire and announced that business would resume on Sunday, August 1.
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The College Cafe moves across Franklin Street into the former Marathon building
Max Yarbrough and Jesse West moved their College Cafe from the Robbins building across Franklin Street into the former Marathon Restaurant, which they had bought and rebuilt. It reopened next door to Rose's store with new equipment and seats for 40.
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The University tears down Archer House to make room for the Ackland Art Museum
Demolition of the 47-year-old Archer House on South Columbia Street began in August 1954 and was still under way in late September. Its lot and the Roberson lot next door became the site of the Ackland museum.
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Two forgotten graves in a Noble Street backyard come to light
A neighbor noticed two weathered, unlettered tombstones under oak trees in the backyard of 108 Noble Street, and the News Leader could not learn whose graves they were. Alice Noble recalled the land as the old Castlebury place and a log cabin that once stood nearby.
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Rev. George W. Davis of Durham becomes pastor of Jones Grove
Rev. George W. Davis took charge of the Jones Grove congregation after Joe Brooks's death and served for twenty years, a period that saw the frame church replaced.
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Harold H. Webb becomes principal of Cedar Grove School
Harold Hudson Webb, a Greensboro-born veteran of the Tuskegee Airmen with two degrees from North Carolina A&T who had taught at Central High, was hired as Cedar Grove's principal. He led the school until 1962, when he joined the state education department; in 1977 he became North Carolina's first Black state personnel director.
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Harry Macklin comes back to Chapel Hill to reopen Harry's Grill in the old Campus Cafe
Harry Macklin, who had run Harry's Grill until 1944, bought the Campus Cafe two doors from the post office and reopened it as a new Harry's Grill and delicatessen. The town board granted him a beer and wine permit.
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Hillsboro leases the Exchange Club twelve acres for a community park
The town board gave the Hillsboro Exchange Club a fifteen-year lease at $1 a year on a twelve-acre tract bought for cemetery use, north of the town cemetery on Highway 70, so the club could develop a community park.
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Orange County formally opens its new courthouse in Hillsborough
About 500 people came to the opening ceremonies and open house, held on the first day of the first court term in the new building. County offices had finished moving in from the old courthouse the week before.
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Bayard Wootten sells her Chapel Hill studio and returns to New Bern
Bayard Wootten sold the Wootten-Moulton Studio to her longtime manager T. C. Moore, who kept it running, and left Chapel Hill for her old home town of New Bern.
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Howard W. Odum dies in Chapel Hill
Odum died in Chapel Hill on November 8, 1954, while still at work on several books, after 34 years on the UNC faculty.
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Chapel Hill aldermen elect Oliver K. Cornwell mayor
After Mayor Edwin S. Lanier won the Democratic nomination for county commissioner, the Board of Aldermen chose one of its own members, Oliver K. Cornwell, as mayor and elected Rogers Wade to his seat.
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The county school superintendent's office moves into the old courthouse
Superintendent G. P. Carr and his staff finished moving into the first floor of the 1845 courthouse, which had been renovated after the other county offices left for the new building in October.
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Community Church starts an integrated preschool
The congregation’s preschool admitted children across racial lines.
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Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard move the former Strowd dealership to 1710 East Franklin Street
The partners left the downtown building at 100 West Franklin Street in 1955 for a new site on East Franklin Street toward Durham. The old building was later remodeled for several businesses.
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Daniel Okun chairs UNC's Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Okun, who joined the UNC public health faculty in 1952, headed the department from 1955 to 1973, and it grew from three to 25 faculty members.
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Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar edit the Daily Tar Heel
UNC students Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar were listed together as editors of the Daily Tar Heel in the spring and fall of 1955.
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Edward O. Diggs becomes UNC's first Black medical graduate
Edward O. Diggs graduated from the UNC School of Medicine in 1955, the first African American to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree from the university. James Slade, the school's second Black student, had enrolled in 1953.
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Fumiko Seki lives in Chapel Hill and records the town's color line
Fumiko Seki came to Chapel Hill when her husband received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study at UNC. As a mother, wife and student she watched how residents kept the color line and met Black students, and she later described the town in her memoir Chaperu hiru monogatari.
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George Esser launches the Institute's course in municipal management
Assistant director George Esser started a ten-week course in municipal management, taught over a series of three-day weekends, that came to be expected of anyone hoping to run a North Carolina city. It was part of a shift at the Institute from teaching the letter of the law toward public administration and policy.
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J. Carlyle Sitterson becomes dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at UNC
Sitterson, who had begun teaching history at UNC in 1935 while completing his doctorate, became dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in 1955. He was appointed vice-chancellor in 1965.
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James A. Taylor builds a shingled Colonial Ranch on Fern Lane from magazine blueprints
The plans were American Home magazine's House No. 33, published in 1954, and the original blueprints still stay with the house. It has a small-paned bay window and an attached garage entered from the side.
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Joe and Peggy Galloway build a Contemporary brick Ranch on Pine Lane
The house sits on a daylight basement with bands of casement windows. Joe Galloway ran placement for the UNC School of Business; Peggy Galloway taught in the public schools.
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Pacific Mills closes its Carrboro woolen mills
Pacific Mills, which had reopened Mill No. 4 as Carrboro Woolen Mills in 1945 and later bought the idle Mill No. 7, shut the woolen operation in the mid-1950s. By then the university and nearby businesses had taken industry's place as Carrboro's employers.
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The Bellevue company's stock is worth $219,600, well under half its 1926 value
Still listed under the Bellevue name in 1955, the company had stock valued at $219,600, with 14,712 spindles and 499 looms.
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The county board ends the supervisor post for its Black schools under a new state staffing rule
In 1955 the state began allotting a county one supervisor per hundred teachers. The schools Norma Snipes supervised had fewer teachers than that, so the board ended her post and made her a primary teacher at Efland-Cheeks School.
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WUNC-TV begins broadcasting
WUNC-TV began broadcasting from Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.
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First Salk polio vaccinations given to Orange County first and second graders
Local physicians working under the county health department gave the first round of Salk polio vaccine to more than 1,150 Orange County first and second graders. The work began on Monday, April 18, 1955 with about 500 Chapel Hill area children and finished on April 21 with the Hillsboro, Efland and Aycock schools.
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A. D. Yates's Yates Motor Company takes over the Caston Motor Company's Dodge-Plymouth business
The Caston Motor Company, Dodge and Plymouth dealer at 419 West Franklin Street since 1946, gave way to the Yates Motor Company at the same address and telephone number in late May 1955. By October A. D. Yates was named as owner of the firm.
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Arthur Wells is named to the Cedar Grove school advisory committee
The Orange County Board of Education named Wayne Compton, Oscar Beasley, Carter White, Lonnie Thompson and Arthur Wells to two-year terms as the advisory committee of the Cedar Grove school.
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Mrs. Marvin Ivey reopens Ivey's Cafe in Carrboro after her husband's death
Ivey's Cafe, run for 29 years by Marvin C. Ivey and his wife, closed for eight months after his death the spring before. Mrs. Ivey reopened it herself in May 1955.
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Roosevelt Warner is named to the advisory committee of Hillsboro's Central school
The Orange County Board of Education named Roosevelt Warner, Luther DeLon, Charlie Rainey, Sam English and Shepherd Burnett to two-year terms as the advisory committee for Central, Hillsboro's school for Black students.
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Hilliard Caldwell leads the Chapel Hill chapter of the New Farmers of America
The Lincoln High School paper reported a prosperous 1954 to 1955 year for the chapter under Caldwell, its president, and printed his own account of the chapter's work.
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The county board keeps every pupil in last year's school for 1955-56
The Orange County board ruled that students would attend the same schools in 1955-56 as in 1954-55. Pupils new to the county were to apply to a principal, who would admit them under board policies that kept the races apart.
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A quarter-mile track opens inside Orange Speedway
A new quarter-mile track built inside the Orange Speedway mile opened with a seven-event NASCAR sportsman and amateur racing program under the direction of Bill France and Enoch Staley.
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Orange County first and second graders get their second Salk shots
The district health department gave second Salk vaccine doses to children who had their first shot in the spring: in Chapel Hill on July 21 and 22 for pupils of the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Glenwood, Northside, White Cross and Little Red Schoolhouse schools, and in Hillsboro on July 27, with school buses sent to county schools. Turnout at Hillsboro was low, with only 65 children by 11 a.m.
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The Chapel Hill Memorial Fund has a bronze tablet made for the town's World War II dead
Trustees of the Chapel Hill Memorial Fund had a bronze tablet cast with the names of 26 men of the Chapel Hill community who died in the armed services in World War II, to stand on a stone base in front of Chapel Hill High School. The fund, raised by public gifts in 1946, also endowed a memorial book collection in the school library.
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Chapel Hill school board pledges to comply with Brown "to the best of our ability"
Under chairman Carl Smith, the Chapel Hill school board unanimously resolved to comply with the Supreme Court's integration ruling to the best of its ability while operating its schools under the state's school laws, keeping existing assignment practices for 1955-56.
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The county board names a committee to study school segregation after Brown
Answering a letter from the Governor's Advisory Commission on Education, chaired by Thomas Pearsall, the Orange County board appointed a local committee to study the problems the Supreme Court's segregation ruling raised for its schools. Ira Ward and Delmar Brown soon replaced two of the first members, Bonner D. Sawyer and W. T. (Buck) Murray.
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Hilliard Caldwell writes the Negro Community news column for the Chapel Hill News Leader
Caldwell was named as correspondent at the head of the column, which carried news of Black Chapel Hill and asked Lincoln High School graduates to send in their college addresses for the next week's issue.
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First Black undergraduates enter UNC
LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon, all of Durham, became UNC's first Black undergraduates when they began classes on September 19, 1955. A three-judge federal court in Greensboro had ordered the university on September 10 to process their applications, and they registered in the General College.
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Moses C. Burt Jr. is one of the first three Black students admitted to UNC law as first-year students
Moses C. Burt Jr., son of Orange County farm agent Moses Burt and Ridge Road principal Alethea Burt, entered the UNC School of Law in fall 1955 as one of the first three African American students admitted straight into its first-year class. Three other Black students who enrolled that fall transferred from other programs.
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The county board deeds the old Gravelly Hill School ground to Mrs. George McAdams
While disposing of closed schools in September 1955, the county board deeded the old Gravelly Hill School ground to Mrs. George McAdams. Gravelly Hill had taught Black children until the Efland-area schools were merged into Efland-Cheeks in 1952-53.
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Health officer calls tuberculosis Orange County's number one health problem
Asked about tuberculosis, County Health Officer David Garvin said it was the county's number one public health problem. He said drugs, surgery and better treatment had cut the death rate sharply over ten years, but that as many cases were being found as when deaths were four times as great, and that finding unknown cases was the department's biggest problem.
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Aldermen rezone part of the Porthole lot so the restaurant can expand
Over the objections of University officials, the Chapel Hill aldermen rezoned 6,400 square feet of the Porthole restaurant's lot from residential to business use so that owner M. M. Timmons could enlarge the restaurant. It had been a nonconforming use on land zoned residential near the campus.
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Cameron Park School opens in Hillsborough with the lower grades from Hillsboro High
The new Cameron Park School took all of grades one through four from the Hillsboro High School building, leaving grades five through twelve there, with Fred Rogers, formerly of Efland, as principal. Transfer requests from other districts poured in and drew pupils away from West Hillsborough School.
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Charles Blake and his wife buy the Coach House and rename it Chatwood
Charles Blake, a retired MIT professor who banded birds as a hobby, and his wife bought the Faucett House tract in 1956 and named it Chatwood for their interest in birds. In the 1950s they began the rose and perennial garden that became a noted heritage rose garden.
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Curtis Turner wins both NASCAR convertible races at Orange Speedway
Curtis Turner of Roanoke won both NASCAR convertible circuit races held at Orange Speedway in 1956 and set the convertible qualifying record there.
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Don Stewart becomes James Webb's partner in City Planning and Architecture Associates
Don Stewart, an Ohio native, worked for James Webb while studying planning at UNC. Once licensed in 1956 he became Webb's partner, and the practice was renamed City Planning and Architecture Associates; Stewart brought Frank Lloyd Wright's organic ideas to its Chapel Hill houses.
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Don Stewart designs the Kai Jurgenson House on Whitehead Circle
Stewart's 1956 house for Kai Jurgenson at 410 Whitehead Circle, one of his early works, blends Bay area regional modernism with the restrained domestic style of Walter Gropius's Harvard circle. The book notes that it won an award.
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Eno Mill houses are relocated
Most company houses moved into nearby neighborhoods.
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Francis Vandeveer Kughler paints history murals for the Knapp Building auditorium
At Margaret Knapp's wish the Institute's new building received fourteen large murals by New York painter Francis Vandeveer Kughler, a commission put at $100,000, showing scenes from North Carolina history with living North Carolinians painted in period dress. Kughler began early in 1956, working part of the time in Person Hall on the campus, and all the panels were hung in the auditorium by the fall of 1960.
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Jim Tatum returns to Chapel Hill as head football coach
Tatum came back to UNC in 1956 at a substantial cut in salary and reorganized and expanded the university's Educational Foundation, the source of its athletic grants-in-aid. He had the only losing season of his career that year, 2-7-1, and followed it with 6-4 records in 1957 and 1958.
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McGuire's undefeated Tar Heels play their home games at Woollen Gym
McGuire's 1956-57 team won 32 straight games and the national championship, beating Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in triple overtime as 12-point underdogs. Only eight of those wins came at home in Woollen Gym, where a hole was drilled in the wall for a television camera lens.
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Milton Julian's Matsumoto-designed house on Ledge Lane is finished
The modernist house George Matsumoto designed for clothier Milton Julian and his family, which neighbors had gone to court to stop, stood finished by November 1956, when it was one of ten homes on the School Art Guild's tour of Chapel Hill homes.
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Morehead gives the sundial in front of the planetarium
In 1956 Morehead funded the sundial set in front of the planetarium building in Chapel Hill.
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Poe and Mangum move their DeSoto-Plymouth dealership out of a West Franklin Street filling station
After World War II A. H. Poe and Marvin Mangum sold DeSotos and Plymouths from a 1930s Pure Oil station at 110 West Franklin Street, built in the company's half-timbered cottage design. They added service bays and a showroom before vacating it in 1956.
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The Institute of Government's East Franklin building becomes Consolidated University offices
After William Friday moved into the President's House in 1956, the University moved the Institute of Government out of its Franklin Street building and used it for the Consolidated University's offices. Those offices went back to campus between 1969 and 1973, and the building passed to other University programs.
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The Joseph Palmer Knapp Building opens for the Institute of Government
The Institute of Government got a new building in Chapel Hill, paid for by the Knapp Foundation and a legislative appropriation and named for Joseph Palmer Knapp, who had died in 1951. His widow, Margaret Rutledge Knapp, saw that the family foundation funded it.
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The Susan Graham memorial fountain is moved from Franklin Street to the edge of Coker Arboretum
The 1922 memorial fountain was taken from the Franklin Street curb near the Methodist church and set up at the edge of Coker Arboretum near Morehead Planetarium.
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The Webb brothers design core-plan houses for the Highland Woods cooperative
Highland Woods, south of Memorial Hospital, was organized as a cooperative subdivision by a group of young faculty families, and in 1956 James and John Webb designed its houses around two cores, one for the living areas and kitchen and one for the bedrooms. The book likens it to Six Moon Hill, a Massachusetts cooperative laid out by Walter Gropius's Architects Collaborative in 1948.
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Fire guts Dr. Marion B. Roberts's house at King and Hassell streets
An early-morning fire gutted the two-story house of Dr. and Mrs. Marion B. Roberts on the corner lot at West King and Hassell streets. The News of Orange County called it the worst fire in the Hillsboro Fire Department's history; firemen fought it for more than four hours in sub-freezing weather.
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William Friday becomes acting president of the Consolidated University
Named acting president at 35 while the trustees searched for Gordon Gray's successor, Friday began his duties on March 1, 1956. The board approved him as president on October 26, 1956, and at his first news conference he named moving the administrative offices from South Building on the Chapel Hill campus to the old Institute of Government building on Franklin Street as a first goal.
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Orange County passes a $2 million school bond issue
A two-million-dollar county bond issue for schools passed in 1956. The next month Cedar Grove's Black parents went to the board to ask for a share of the building money.
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Patriots of North Carolina hold a mass meeting in Hillsborough and form an Orange County unit
An overflow crowd of about 300, observers said all white, filled the courtroom in Hillsborough for a Patriots of North Carolina meeting where I. Beverly Lake urged abandoning the public schools for a private system rather than integrate. W. C. George, the Patriots' state president, presided as members named an Orange County executive committee.
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A Cedar Grove committee asks for classrooms, a lunchroom and playground land
Wayne Compton, Arthur Wells, Lonnie Thompson, Carter White and Oscar Beasley asked the county board for four more classrooms at Cedar Grove School, a lunchroom large enough to grow, and two more acres for a playground. The board did not act.
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Hillsboro Presbyterian pastor preaches against local stock car racing
The Rev. C. H. Reckard, pastor of the Hillsboro Presbyterian Church, delivered a sermon criticizing local stock car racing and its effect on young people, one of the clergy protests against Sunday races at Orange Speedway.
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Orange County pastors form a ministerial association
Pastors of 18 churches in northern and central Orange County met at the Hillsboro Presbyterian Church and formed an Orange County Ministerial Association, electing the Rev. C. H. Reckard president and the Rev. Lawton Pettit of St. Matthew's Episcopal secretary.
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The Tempo Room, a basement beer and sandwich lounge, opens on East Franklin Street
The Tempo Room opened at noon in the basement space next to Town and Campus that had held the Baby Shop, selling beer and sandwiches in a room designed by Hank Gifford for about 75 people. J. D. Wright ran it.
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Buck Baker wins the spring 100-miler at Orange Speedway
Buck Baker, driving a 1956 Chrysler, beat Lee Petty, Fireball Roberts and 29 other drivers in the 100-mile Grand National race at Orange Speedway on Mother's Day.
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Dr. Sidney and Christine Chipman move into their new house on Dogwood Drive
Dr. Sidney S. Chipman, who headed UNC's Department of Maternal and Child Health, and his wife Christine moved into a new house at 515 Dogwood Drive in May 1956. Archie Davis of Durham drew the plan and Parker and Elliot of Chapel Hill built it.
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The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association becomes Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association
On a vote of its stockholders, the association changed its name to Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association, announced alongside the largest dividend in its history.
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Fireball Roberts wins the fall race at Orange Speedway
Fireball Roberts, driving a 1956 Ford, won the 110-lap fall race at Orange Speedway, setting the track record for that distance, with Buck Baker second.
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The county board approves a cafeteria for Cedar Grove School
After voting in September to study the need, the board approved a cafeteria for 150 pupils at Cedar Grove at no more than $40,000, while again putting off new classrooms. Archie Royal Davis's plans for it were approved and sent to the state in October 1957.
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Les Petites Musicales stages The Magic Flute in Hill Hall
An abridged English Magic Flute in Hill Hall used the University Glee Club under Joel Carter, who also sang Papageno, with the former Metropolitan Opera bass Norman Cordon as Sarastro.
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Gooch's Café serves its last meal and becomes Green's Cafe
Gooch's Café, a Chapel Hill fixture for more than half a century and owned since the 1940s by Clarence Simmons, served its last meal under that name. The next morning Charles T. Green of Durham took it over as Green's Cafe.
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A Webb-designed house is built for Bob and Josie Stipe in Highland Woods
The Stipe House at 1022 Highland Woods, built in 1957, sets a post-and-beam frame living floor over a masonry lower level on a lot that slopes sideways to the street, with the kitchen at the front open to the living room. The book uses it as its model modernist house and says it cost about $10 a square foot, against $12 to $15 for a traditional house.
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Daniel H. Pollitt joins the UNC law faculty
Pollitt came to the UNC School of Law in 1957 as an associate professor of constitutional and labor law, after resigning from the University of Arkansas rather than sign an oath disavowing membership in the NAACP.
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Dr. Ernest Wood, the first radiologist at UNC's hospital, builds a brick Ranch on Fern Lane
The five-bay Ranch has a recessed garage wing and a front cross-gable.
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Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife build a Webb and Stewart house on Morgan Creek Road
A split-level modern house designed by James Webb and Don Stewart was built for Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife in Morgan Creek Hills. It was on the School Art Guild tour of homes in the fall of 1958.
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Football coach Jim Tatum and his wife Edna build a house on Laurel Hill Road
The house pairs a two-story colonial block with a split-level stone living-room wing and a bowed window, probably from mail-order plans. Tatum had come back to coach UNC the year before.
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James L. Godfrey serves as dean of the faculty
Godfrey held the post of dean of the faculty from 1957 to 1965, one of the titles that preceded the office of provost at Chapel Hill.
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Jim Webb designs a Contemporary Ranch on Pine Lane as a retirement home for Fred and Josephine Weedon
Ellington & Sparrow built the open-plan house on a slope with an exposed basement at the back. The Weedons' daughter Josie and her husband, preservationist Bob Stipe, later lived there for many years.
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Mortgage Insurance Company opens the first section of Lake Forest
On former Coker land north of Coker Hills, the area along the south side of Eastwood Lake was developed in 1957 by the Mortgage Insurance Company. This first section later came to be called Old Lake Forest.
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Northern Heights is developed as a Black neighborhood north of US 70
The subdivision on Rainey, Harper, Homemont, Riddle and Dixie streets followed the usual post-war pattern of curving streets and even lots, but like neighboring Homemont it sat beside a dump and went without paved streets or town services until the 1970s.
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O. B. Hardison Jr. teaches in the English department
Hardison, a Renaissance specialist with UNC bachelor's and master's degrees, joined the English department in 1957 and edited Studies in Philology. He left in 1969 to direct the Folger Shakespeare Library.
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Pediatrician Judson Van Wyk builds a house in the Highland Woods cooperative
Dr. Judson J. Van Wyk, a pediatrician and a member of the faculty cooperative that bought the Highland Woods tract, planned in December 1956 to start building on his lot there. By September 1957 the town had issued permits for nine Highland Woods houses designed by architect James M. Webb.
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Shepperd Strudwick carves the cross for the Hillsborough Methodist sanctuary
Shepperd Strudwick, a Presbyterian elder who took up wood carving late in life, made the cross for the Methodist sanctuary as well as one for his own church.
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The trustees make the Institute's professional staff professors of public law and government
Chancellor William B. Aycock won trustee approval for the Institute's assistant directors to hold the rank of professor of public law and government. The rank carried academic tenure, which strengthened the Institute's place in the University and made recruiting easier.
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Thomas Philip Lloyd sells the Carolina Pharmacy to Helen Duguid
Duguid kept the East Franklin drugstore going only a short time before Campus Laundry and Cleaners replaced it.
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University Baptist Church acquires the McDade House lot next to its church
University Baptist Church voted to buy John Scott Trotter's properties beside its church at Franklin and Columbia streets for $250,000, among them the Cafe Mouza building, which was the old brick McDade House, and the Hill House. The church's later expansion plans on the lot led to the house's removal in 1997.
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Waverly Branch and his wife build a Williamsburg-style house on Laurel Hill Road
The story-and-a-half house has beaded siding, a slate roof, end chimneys and a pedimented entrance porch in imitation of colonial Williamsburg. Branch was active in UNC affairs, and his wife was for many years the chancellor's secretary.
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Howell's The Kenan Professorships is named one of the best Southern books of
The Kenan Professorships, written by UNC English professor A. C. Howell and published by the University Press with illustrations by William Meade Prince and Adrian Lamb, was chosen for design among 25 best Southern books of 1956.
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Sophie Livas sells the Carolina Coffee Shop to Donald Belton
Sophie Livas, who had run the Carolina Coffee Shop since her husband George's death in 1956, sold it to Donald Belton, who took over on February 1, 1957.
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UNC men’s basketball wins the 1957 NCAA national championship
UNC defeated Kansas, 54–53 in triple overtime, to win the national title.
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Frances Hargraves teaches Chapel Hill's new special education classes at Northside School
The Chapel Hill schools had begun special education classes, one at Chapel Hill Elementary School and one taught by Frances Hargraves at Northside School. The Junior Service League paid a $200 scholarship for her training.
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Workers at the Reverie Lingerie plant in Hillsborough go on strike for a union
Employees of Reverie Lingerie, a New York-owned undergarment plant opened in Hillsborough in 1955, walked out and set up a picket line to win recognition for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. The company asked for a labor board election, which the union opposed, and the strike lasted about six months.
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The General Assembly lets Hillsboro convey the library lot to the Hillsboro Library Association
A 1957 act authorized the Hillsboro town commissioners to convey the lot at Tryon and Churton streets holding the Hillsboro Library to the Hillsboro Library Association, and an adjoining lot to the Presbyterian church. Either lot would revert to the town if it stopped being used for the purpose named in the act.
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Fire destroys the old West Hillsboro School, then a mill-owned apartment house
About 11:30 on a Monday night the three-story frame building that had been the West Hillsboro School, later made into 13 apartments, burned to the ground. A taxi driver saw the flames and woke the five people inside, who escaped.
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Efland Home trustees sell the old reformatory farm to W. G. Fields Jr. and Nannette Fields
After nearly two decades of unknown use, the home's trustees sold the Efland property on April 29, 1957, to W. G. Fields Jr. and his wife Nannette, Chapel Hill investors, who cut the land west of the cottage into eight tracts between Redman Crossing and what is now I-40. The federation later gave about $12,000 from the sale toward a chapel at Dobbs School near Kinston.
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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.
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The General Assembly bans Sunday racing in Orange County
After protests by the Rev. C. H. Reckard and other Orange County clergy, the legislature passed a law on May 8, 1957 banning racing on Sundays, though Sunday races were being advertised again at Orange Speedway by 1961.
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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.
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Jerrold Orne is appointed University Librarian
Chancellor Robert B. House announced Orne's appointment as university librarian, effective August 1, with the approval of President William C. Friday and the trustees. Orne came from the Air University library at Maxwell Air Force Base and succeeded Andrew H. Horn.
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Work begins on a two-story gymnasium building for Hillsboro High School
T. W. Poe and Sons of Durham won the contract on June 10, 1957 and began a $180,000 physical education building with classrooms and locker rooms below and a gymnasium above, due for completion in December.
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William B. Aycock serves as chancellor of UNC at Chapel Hill
Aycock, on the law faculty at Chapel Hill since 1948, was chief administrator of the university there from July 1, 1957 until August 1964. His records cover desegregation, the state's speaker ban law and the Dixie Classic betting scandal.
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Roosevelt Warner coaches the Hillsboro Junior All-Stars
Warner coached the newly organized Hillsboro Junior All-Stars, boys aged 13 to 15 who played teams of Durham's Bull City Pony League and Chapel Hill under Little League rules. The paper called the team a civic project for summer recreation, and local firms gave money for uniforms and equipment.
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The county takes bids for a gymtorium and twelve classrooms at Central High School
H. F. Mitchell Construction Company was low bidder for two buildings at Central High, a twelve-classroom addition and a gymtorium seating about 1,200, designed by Archie Royal Davis. The whole project came to $266,094, and the gymtorium was nearly finished in February 1958.
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Lincoln High prepares to open with sixteen teachers and about four hundred pupils
In the Chapel Hill News Leader's back to school report, Principal C. A. McDougle said Lincoln High School would have sixteen teachers and that enrollment would probably reach 400, against 381 on the first day of the previous year. Two of the teachers were new that year.
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Watts Restaurant holds its grand opening on the Pittsboro highway south of Chapel Hill
The new Watts Restaurant, a concrete-block building a mile south of town on the Pittsboro highway with counter, booths and private dining rooms, advertised its gala opening in mid-August 1957 after first advertising as Chapel Hill's newest restaurant in early July.
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Wes and Nancy Thompson hold a grand opening of the South 501 Restaurant under their ownership
Under the new ownership and management of Wes and Nancy Thompson, the South 501 Restaurant on the Durham highway bypass, across from the Valley Drive-In, announced its grand opening, with steaks, curb service and a tap room.
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J. K. Ellis reopens his East Franklin Street grill as the Village Cafeteria
After a summer of renovation, J. K. Ellis reopened his Village Grill as the Village Cafeteria, the last step in turning the old four-lane bowling alley he had bought in the mid-1940s into a full restaurant.
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An explosion and fire destroy the strikebound Reverie Lingerie plant
On a Friday night an explosion and fire wrecked the Reverie Lingerie plant, ending the six-month strike and the jobs of about eighty workers. The paper counted a lost local payroll of about $173,000 a year.
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Bozo and Lillian Taylor open a second dining room at the Hillsboro Lunch
R. T. (Bozo) Taylor Jr. and Lillian Taylor, then running the Hillsboro Lunch, opened a newly renovated dining room next to their old quarters, giving them two dining rooms for daily meals and catering. The Hillsboro Merchants Association soon began holding its luncheon meetings there.
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La Pizza holds its grand opening on Carrboro's West Main Street
La Pizza opened on Friday, November 8, 1957, selling only pizza, in eight kinds and two sizes, under candlelight with checkered tablecloths. Chuck Gerke ran it as operator.
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The Orange County Historical Museum opens
The Hillsborough Garden Club, led by Mrs. Clarence Jones, founded the Orange County Historical Museum, which opened in November 1957 on the second floor of the 1845 Orange County Courthouse after the county commissioners approved the space and gave $250. The museum moved to its Churton Street home in 1983.
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The first televised ACC regular season game is played at Woollen Gym
Television producer C. D. Chesley brought his cameras into Woollen Gym for Carolina's fourteenth meeting with Clemson, the first regular season ACC game ever televised. McGuire's team won 79-55.
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Chapel Hill Elementary pupils play carols with professional musicians at the school Christmas program
At the Chapel Hill Elementary School Christmas programs on December 17, 1957, directed musically by Adeline McCall, supervisor of music in the Chapel Hill schools, children playing psalteries, violins and bells accompanied the carols with two harpists, violinist Dorothy Alden and flutist Dorothy Hickok. The programs also staged the play Alias Santa Claus.
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Charlie Mason's motor court on West Rosemary Street was lodging Black travelers
Charlie Mason's family ran Mason Grocery and the Mason Motel, which was advertising in Chapel Hill by December 1957. As Mason's Motor Court at 603 West Rosemary Street, with the Starlite Supper Club, it took Black guests, including well-known Black performers in town for concerts, when other Chapel Hill hotels would not.
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A kitchen and cafeteria are added to Cedar Grove School
A one-story brick kitchen and cafeteria, 78 by 49 feet, was finished behind the gymnasium late in 1958 to Archie Royal Davis's plans. One open dining room filled two-thirds of it, with the kitchen, dishwashing and storage along the north side.
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Anne Firor Scott moves to Chapel Hill and takes a temporary history post at UNC
Anne Firor Scott and her husband Andrew Scott moved to Chapel Hill in 1958, when he joined UNC's political science department and she took a temporary position in history. They lived in the Highland Woods neighborhood for 47 years.
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Carr Store Road is paved through Cedar Grove
Carr Store Road, the east-west road through the Cedar Grove crossroads, was paved in 1958, about a decade after the north-south Efland-Cedar Grove Road. Until then farmers in the area could find farm-to-market roads impassable for months of the year.
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Central High's new gymnasium is finished after the fire
After the main building of Central High School burned in 1958, Archie Royal Davis designed a new school building and a gymnasium for the site; the gymnasium was finished in late 1958.
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Cornelia Spencer Love serves as a founding trustee of the Chapel Hill Public Library
Love was a trustee of the public library from its start in 1958 until 1970 and secretary of its board of directors. The library began in a small house in downtown Chapel Hill.
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Engineer Bob Anderson joins City Planning and Architecture Associates
Engineer Bob Anderson joined the Webb and Stewart firm in 1958 and later became Stewart's partner.
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Fire destroys the Presbyterian church on East Franklin Street
The University Presbyterian Church burned in 1958. The congregation built a larger church on the same site three years later.
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George Brown Tindall joins the UNC history faculty
Tindall, who took his graduate degrees at UNC, returned in 1958 as an associate professor of history and taught until he retired as Kenan professor emeritus in 1990.
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George Matsumoto draws plans for a Chapel Hill house for Cecile and Bryce DeWitt
Matsumoto's papers hold sketches, preliminary drawings and fourteen sheets of working drawings for a residence in Chapel Hill for Cecile and Bryce DeWitt.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church builds and moves into a new manse
A new manse drawn by pastor C. H. Reckard was finished and occupied early in 1958.
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Joe Page becomes sole owner of Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery
Page, a clerk in the East Franklin stationery store before the war, bought Herbert Ledbetter's share in 1947 and the rest of the business when Pickard died in 1958.
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Kemp Nye opens Kemp's Phonograph Records on East Franklin Street
Nye, who had worked for Milton Abernethy, opened a record shop in the store the Smiths' bookshop had just left.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church buys its first electronic organ and moves to full-time services
In Fred J. Boddie Jr.'s three-year pastorate the congregation bought its first electronic organ and moved to a full-time schedule of services.
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The Bellevue mill village is platted and its houses sold to private owners
After the mill company had been sold by 1956, its village was surveyed into lots in 1958 so the houses could be sold. Unlike the Eno mill houses, which were carried off to new sites, the Bellevue houses stayed where they were, which is why the village keeps its original streets but has irregular lot lines.
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The Donald Stewart House is built on Severin Street
A 1958 house at 408 Severin Street in Chapel Hill, known as the Donald Stewart House, is listed among Don Stewart's works. It was sold in 1970.
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The Intimate Bookshop moves into the old Berman Department Store on East Franklin Street
After Sam Berman's death, Paul and Isabel Smith moved their bookshop into the store his department store had used, the 119 East Franklin building it kept for forty years.
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William S. Powell becomes curator of the North Carolina Collection
Powell, who had joined the university library's North Carolina Collection in 1951, was named its curator after Mary Lindsay Thornton retired.
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The University's telephone system plans to double its East Rosemary Street exchange
The University-owned Chapel Hill telephone system announced a $300,000 addition that would double the size of its exchange building on East Rosemary Street, along with better party-line service. Bids for the addition were opened in March.
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Central High School burns
Early on the morning of February 14, 1958, fire destroyed the main building of Central High School, Hillsborough's high school for Black students, a one-story brick-veneer building of fifteen classrooms that also held offices and an auditorium. Its library of more than 4,000 books was lost. Classes moved into a new twelve-classroom building nearly finished on the campus for the elementary grades, with a few in the lunchroom, shops and nearby buildings. The county board had Durham architect Archie Royal Davis design a new building on the same site; contracts were let in May 1958, and the two-story classroom building was finished in 1959-60.
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The school board orders a new main building for Central High on the day of the fire
The night the old Central High building burned, the county board set aside $214,892 for a new 18-classroom building designed by Archie Royal Davis's firm. Construction went on through 1958.
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Portrait painter Clement Strudwick dies and is buried in Hillsborough
Clement Read Strudwick, who had painted in a workshop behind his parents' Hillsborough home, died on February 26, 1958. His funeral was held in the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and he was buried in the Hillsborough cemetery.
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Doris and James Field begin plans for the Timbercrest subdivision
Doris Gates Field and James MacDonald Field started planning Timbercrest, a subdivision on a thirty-seven-acre tract northeast of Chapel Hill, in February 1958, and kept five and a half acres of it for their own Modernist house.
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Hillsborough and New Sharon Methodists dedicate the parsonage they built together
The two churches put up a new parsonage on lot 94 in 1957-58 at a cost of about $22,000 and dedicated it on a Sunday afternoon in March 1958, with W. A. Seawell as pastor and Taylor Bivins chairing the building committee.
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A Cedar Grove delegation asks for a classroom and playground to win accreditation
Seeking state accreditation, a delegation from the school asked the board for one more classroom so the library could be used as a library again, land for a playground, paint for the north wing and outdoor floodlights. The board took no action.
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The Hillsboro post office moves into Fred Cates's new building on South Churton Street
The post office moved to a new air-conditioned building by the Eno at the south edge of town, which Fred Cates built for about $25,000 and leased to the government over the objections of the mayor and town board. It was dedicated on August 9 before about 200 people.
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The state declines to accredit Cedar Grove School for lack of space
Ruth Lawrence Woodson, state supervisor of the Black elementary schools, refused accreditation because the school had too few classrooms and was using its library as a fourth-grade room. Her report counted the parents' involvement, a staff study program, the office, auditorium and clinic room in its favor.
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Carrboro voters approve merging their school district with the Chapel Hill unit
On August 5, 1958 the Carrboro school district voted 713 to 303 to merge with the Chapel Hill city school unit and levy a 15-cent school tax, after a spring vote had failed. The county board sold the old Carrboro School to R. B. Todd for $30,000 in September 1959.
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The Osbunn Theater reopens under a new operator after W. M. Chance's death
The Osbunn Theater, closed for several months after the death of its owner W. M. Chance, reopened under Sam R. Owens of Durham, who leased it from the Chance family. Owens had run drive-in theaters in Durham, Burlington and Fayetteville.
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Bill France leases Orange Speedway to the Orange County Board of Education
Bill France signed a ten-year lease letting Hillsboro High School use the Orange Speedway grounds as its athletic field, for $100 a year, while races continued.
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The Ackland Art Museum opens
UNC dedicated the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center on September 20, 1958, the morning after a preview for faculty. Ackland had left his bequest to Duke, which refused it, and nine years of litigation sent it to Chapel Hill; the Georgian building held galleries, an art library, classrooms, studios and offices.
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Binkley Baptist Church organizes
Fifty-six charter members established the congregation, initially worshiping on campus.
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Moses Burt retires after 23 years as Orange County's agent for Black farmers
Moses Cimuel Burt, a World War I veteran trained at NC A&T, Hampton and Cornell, retired as the county's African American extension agent in September 1958. Since 1935 he had backed farm programs in the county's Black schools and helped start 4-H clubs.
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Ruth Faison Shaw brings her finger-painting case histories to the University
The Chapel Hill News Leader reported that Shaw, recently of Chapel Hill, was giving the University more than a thousand case histories on personality diagnosis through finger painting and was working as its consultant in therapy.
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Chapel Hill Public Library opens
Chapel Hill's first public library held its formal opening on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House on West Franklin Street, with about 4,500 books, 2,000 of them lent by state and regional libraries. It moved to its own building at 523 East Franklin Street in 1967 and to Pritchard Park in 1994.
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The Chapel Hill Choral Club sings Bach's Christmas Oratorio
The Chapel Hill Choral Club, directed by Joel Carter, performed the first three parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Hill Hall as part of the Tuesday Evening Series.
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A new Carrboro Elementary School is built at the end of Ash Street
With the new school open, the 1921 graded school on West Main Street, where Josie Sturdivant had been principal until about 1947, was converted to Carrboro Town Hall.
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Archie Royal Davis's new main building for Central High goes up
After the 1958 fire, Archie Royal Davis designed a two-story, flat-roofed brick main building and a barrel-roofed gymnasium for Central High School. The main building went up in 1959-60; the campus is now Hillsborough Elementary.
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Cameron Park School in Hillsborough gets its first addition
Three years after it opened, the county enlarged Cameron Park School with a second section of building, raised under Superintendent G. Paul Carr to plans by the architect Archie Royal Davis.
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Carrboro's schools join the Chapel Hill city unit
The merger Carrboro voters approved in August 1958 took effect with the 1959-60 school year, taking 462 pupils out of the Orange County system; in 1958-59 Carrboro Elementary had stayed under the county board while high school pupils and Black elementary pupils could attend Chapel Hill schools free.
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Chapel Hill's city directory lists sixteen bricklayers, twelve in Black neighborhoods
The 1959 Hill's Chapel Hill directory named sixteen bricklayers, twelve of them living in Northside and other historically Black neighborhoods. By 1962 the list had grown to eighteen, including John, Handy and Leo Campbell.
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Community Church dedicates its first building
The building housed worship, classes, and offices.
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Duke Power dismantles its Eno steam plant
Duke Power sold most of the equipment of its standby steam plant in Eno Township to the Sid Rancer Company, a junk dealer, for $30,500 before January 1, 1960, and tore down six of the twelve company houses. The county lost several hundred thousand dollars in tax valuation.
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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.
