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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1950s
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Lee Petty wins the 1950 season finale as Bill Rexford clinches the title
Lee Petty of Greensboro won the 200-mile race that closed NASCAR's 1950 Grand National season at Occoneechee Speedway, his first win at the track. Bill Rexford dropped out with engine trouble but took the championship when Fireball Roberts also failed to finish.
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The county board accepts Archie Royal Davis's plans for Cedar Grove School
The Orange County Board of Education approved Davis's final design for the Cedar Grove school for Black children: a low, flat-roofed brick building with long bands of classroom windows.
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The Terrace View Supper Club is advertised for foreclosure sale
After Efthimios and Virginia Mariakakis defaulted on a deed of trust, a trustee advertised the 32.5-acre tract "commonly known as the Terrace View Supper Club" for auction on the premises on December 9, 1950. A second trustee advertised a sale for December 30 under another deed of trust.
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Bids for Cedar Grove School run over budget and the board asks the state for $147,000
None of the construction bids opened on December 6, 1950, came within the budget, so the board rejected them all. On December 28 it voted to ask the state School Plant Construction, Improvement, and Repair Fund for a $147,000 grant to build the school.
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Alpha B. Wettach joins the university as dean of women students
Wettach also founded the Chapel Hill Experimental Kindergarten, the town's first kindergarten, and ran it in Mary Nash's old painting studio in the Nash house, where she and her husband rented.
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Charles E. Maddry returns to First Baptist Church, Hillsborough, for his last pastorate
After his years with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, Charles Edward Maddry served his final pastorate at the First Baptist Church in Hillsborough.
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Colonial Stores opens on West Franklin Street in a building put up by Jack Hazzard
The Colonial Stores chain opened in a new building Hazzard had built. After Colonial Stores left, the Chapel Hill Newspaper moved into the building in late 1973.
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Every Orange County high school, white and Black, takes part in a grassland speaking contest
As part of the pasture campaign, each high school in the county entered a grassland oratorical contest in 1951. The Hillsboro branch of the Durham Bank and Trust Company gave $75 in prizes and winners went on to a district contest.
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Gordon Ellis of the UNC education department builds a brick Cape Cod house on Pine Lane
Chemistry professor Henry Thomas and his wife Mary, a librarian at the UNC medical school, bought the house soon after it was finished.
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Irene Oliver Pender becomes instructional supervisor of the Orange County schools
After Cora Paul Bomar resigned in 1951, the county chose Aycock School teacher Irene Oliver Pender as supervisor. She led the drive for a centralized library in every elementary school and ran the federal NDEA and ESEA materials programs until she retired in June 1970.
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James Webb designs a house on Whitehead Circle for Joseph and Pearl Morrison
Architect James Webb designed a modern house at 407 Whitehead Circle for Joseph L. Morrison, a member of the university's journalism faculty, and his wife Pearl. The Morrisons lived there for more than fifty years; the house was sold in 2010.
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John Ehle teaches in UNC's radio, television and motion pictures department
Ehle, an Asheville native who came to Chapel Hill after infantry service in World War II and graduated from UNC in 1949, taught in the university's Communications Center, later the Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures, from 1951 to 1963. He published his first books while teaching there.
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Jordan's Grove School for Black children closes as the Cedar Grove Negro School opens
Jordan's Grove School for Black children closed in the fall of 1951, when it and six other small Black schools were combined in the new Cedar Grove Negro School, accepted by the county board that November. It is the only surviving rural field school building the 1993 survey could tie to African American pupils, abandoned in a farm field when recorded. A separate white Jordan's Grove school had merged into Aycock in 1930.
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Kay Kyser retires from show business and settles in Chapel Hill
Kay Kyser left radio and television and returned with his wife Georgia to Chapel Hill, where he lived on East Franklin Street for the rest of his life.
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Lincoln High School opens on Merritt Mill Road
In 1951 Lincoln High School, Chapel Hill's high school for Black students, moved from the old Orange County Training School building on Caldwell Street to a new building on Merritt Mill Road, and the old building became Northside Elementary. Lincoln used the Merritt Mill Road campus until 1966; the building is now the school district's Lincoln Center.
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Manly Wade Wellman settles in Chapel Hill
The writer Manly Wade Wellman, who had moved to Pinebluff, North Carolina, after the Second World War, relocated to Chapel Hill, where he lived for the rest of his life.
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Masons lay the cornerstone of North Carolina Memorial Hospital
University Lodge No. 408 shared in the Masonic ceremony that laid the cornerstone of the new Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill.
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Orange County 4-H members win at the Durham Fat Stock Show
In 1951 fifteen Orange County 4-H members showed fat steers, the largest group from any county, and ten took blue ribbons. Oliver Roberts showed the grand champion hog and Carl Walters the reserve champion.
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Orange County closes thirteen small schools for Black children and consolidates their pupils
At the start of the 1951-52 school year the county shut thirteen one- and two-teacher schools for Black children, put eleven new buses on the roads and consolidated every Black school except three near Efland. New buildings opened that year at the Cedar Grove school.
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Produce seller Rachel Crook is abducted and murdered
Rachel Crook, who ran a fish and produce stand at the corner of West Franklin and Merritt Mill Road, was kidnapped and killed. Her killer was never identified, and the restaurant that later opened on her corner took the name Crook's Corner.
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The Unitarian Fellowship of Chapel Hill is organized
A lay Unitarian fellowship began holding religious meetings in Chapel Hill. It had 25 members in 1953.
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The county board elects G. Paul Carr superintendent of the Orange County schools
Gabriel Paul Carr, principal of Angier High School, became the county's tenth school superintendent in 1951, succeeding Glenn T. Proffit, who left for the Harnett County superintendency. Carr served eighteen years, through the consolidation of schools and the desegregation of the system, and resigned effective June 30, 1969.
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The first Morehead scholars are selected
The scholarship Morehead endowed at Chapel Hill made its first selections in 1951.
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The name Northside began to replace Pottersfield and Sunset
When the old Lincoln building became Northside Elementary in 1951, the school's name spread to the Black neighborhoods around it. By the mid-1950s Pottersfield, north of West Rosemary and west of Columbia Street, and its western neighbor Sunset were both being called Northside.
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UNC establishes its School of Nursing
The School of Nursing was established at Chapel Hill in 1951, with Elizabeth L. Kemble as dean. Its first class was due to graduate in 1955.
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The county board buys the Morrow land for Efland-Cheeks, a new school for Black children
The board decided to buy the Morrow land for a new school for Black children in the Efland district, named Efland-Cheeks.
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Orange Fire Protective Association buys Orange County's first rural fire truck
Because Hillsboro's town fire truck was restricted to calls within about a mile and a half of town, rural residents formed the Orange Fire Protective Association and raised money through one-time memberships of $10 for a house and more for farm buildings. By March 15, 1951, 260 members had given $4,500 and a Ford fire truck for the countryside had arrived, crewed by the town's volunteer firemen.
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Construction of Cedar Grove School begins
Work on the new school for Black children on NC 86 north of Hillsborough started in January 1951. By early February a well had been drilled and the footings poured.
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The board cuts the north wing and kitchen from the Cedar Grove School plans
To lower costs, the county board struck the six-classroom north wing, the kitchen, floor tile, clocks, bells, sidewalks and other items from Davis's design. The gymnasium was to serve as a multipurpose room partitioned into four classrooms until money for more space could be found.
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Lucille Caldwell becomes the Negro Community Center's first paid director
Lucille Caldwell was hired in February 1951 as the first paid director of Chapel Hill's Negro Community Center on Roberson Street, now the Hargraves Center. A town history calls her North Carolina's first Black professional recreation administrator. She led the center for twelve years and resigned in 1963.
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Visiting Japanese educator-librarians tour the Efland school library
A group of Japanese educator-librarians hosted by the UNC School of Education visited the Orange County schools under the lead of helping teacher Cora Paul Bomar. They asked to see the Efland school library, built the year before by community volunteers, after reading her article on it in North Carolina Education.
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Annie Strowd becomes superintendent of public welfare
Strowd succeeded Mrs. Jean Heer, who had followed W. T. Mattox after his death in 1947, and still held the post when the book was written.
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Efland businessman Stephen Carl Forrest dies
S. C. Forrest, 68, a leading Efland businessman whose 1920s house on US 70 is on the state Study List, died at Duke Hospital after a heart attack and was buried at Fairfield cemetery. His sons T. J. and S. C. Forrest Jr. stayed in Efland.
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The News of Orange prints a photograph of a Ridge Road School classroom
An article on newer classroom methods in the county's Black schools ran a picture of Ridge Road pupils adding to a bulletin board, a few months before the school closed. It is the only historic photograph of the interior that has been found.
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UNC admits Edward O. Diggs, its first Black medical student
UNC mailed Edward O. Diggs of Winston-Salem, a pre-medical student at A&T College in Greensboro, his letter of admission to the School of Medicine under the trustees' April 4, 1951 policy. He enrolled in the fall of 1951.
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Fonty Flock wins the spring race at Occoneechee
Fonty Flock won the spring NASCAR Grand National race at Occoneechee Speedway, with Frank Mundy second and Bill Blair third.
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The Grand Lodge of North Carolina meets in Chapel Hill
The state's Grand Lodge of Masons came to Chapel Hill for its annual session, with W. E. Caldwell, a member of University Lodge, as Grand Master.
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The Village Theatre becomes the Varsity under new owners
Varsity Theatres, Inc., of High Point, headed by Hugh J. Smart, took over Chapel Hill's Village Theatre, renamed it the Varsity and made it a first-run house. The Village was the old Carolina Theatre, renamed in 1942 when the new Carolina opened.
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Dean Brandis handles the applications of Pauli Murray and three other Black students to the law school
After the trustees left admissions to each professional school's dean, Brandis wrote Chancellor R. B. House about four Black applicants, Pauli Murray, J. Kenneth Lee, Harvey E. Beech and William C. Chance Jr., and on June 6 told Murray the school offered no graduate law courses. The UNC Libraries exhibit reads these letters as showing the law school resisting integration.
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Trustees make the campus heads chancellors and add a university vice-presidency
On May 22, 1951, on President Gordon Gray's recommendation, the trustees made the controller a vice-president, created a second vice-presidency, and gave the heads of the branches the title of chancellor. Logan Wilson filled the new post that fall.
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Orange County Negro Public Library dedicates its own building
About 150 people attended an open house on May 27, 1951 dedicating the Orange County Negro Public Library's own building in Hillsborough, a structure bought from Camp Butner and put up with volunteer labor. Begun in 1942 by Marinda McPherson, the library had opened to the public in 1949 and now held more than 3,000 books.
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Orange County's seventeen home demonstration clubs count 443 members
During National Home Demonstration Week the county reported 443 women in 17 home demonstration clubs, served by two white agents and one Black agent, with 80 volunteer leaders who had held 62 meetings attended by 1,459 people the year before. Clubs made 38 United Nations flags for schools, churches and Grange halls as part of a citizenship study.
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Desegregating the University of North Carolina
After a 1951 federal court decision in McKissick v. Carmichael, five Black students began law school classes at UNC on June 22, 1951. In September 1955, again under court order, LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon of Durham registered as the university's first Black undergraduates.
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UNC Law School begins desegregation
About a week after the Supreme Court refused on June 4, 1951, to review McKissick v. Carmichael, Black students registered for summer session at UNC's law school, the first African Americans to enroll at the university. UNC Law names them as Harvey E. Beech, James L. Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd B. McKissick and James R. Walker.
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Bethel Baptist Church marks its hundredth anniversary
Bethel Baptist Church celebrated its centennial with an all-day program and picnic on the grounds. UNC Chancellor Robert B. House gave the morning address and Annie Strowd read notes on the church's history.
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The main building of Chapel Hill High School opens on West Franklin Street
The new main building of the high school on West Franklin Street opened in part on September 10, 1951, with five classrooms and the science department ready and the rest due about two months later. It joined the first section, later called the old wing, in use since 1947.
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State says Chapel Hill's new tuberculosis hospital will take Black and white patients
A State Medical Care Commission spokesman said the $1,100,000 tuberculosis hospital under construction at Chapel Hill would treat Black and white patients. He noted that federal rules barred discrimination in federally aided hospitals but still allowed patients to be segregated.
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Lochiel, the Fagan family home outside Hillsborough, burns to the ground
Fire destroyed the Fagan home, the three-story frame house known as Lochiel, on a Saturday afternoon while no one was home. Only a few pieces of furniture were saved, and onlookers following the fire truck blocked it on the way back from refilling.
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Bill Chance opens the Hillsboro Lunch on West King Street
Bill Chance opened the Hillsboro Lunch, a sandwich bar and short-order eatery next to Wynne's Beauty Salon, serving Cotton Nichols' barbecue, Brunswick stew and milkshakes from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Margaret Riley, formerly of the Hickory House, ran the service.
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Cedar Grove parents ask for a say in hiring teachers and get a Black building committee
Seven Cedar Grove PTA members asked for a local committee with power to hire and dismiss the new school's teachers, and for paint and tile floors. The board named a building committee of Dallas Sheppherd Burnett, Wayne Compton, D. W. Torain, Elijah Poole and Oscar Carver Beasley but gave it no say over staff; it did approve the paint and the floor tile.
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The register of deeds begins photographing and microfilming deeds
New deeds were photographed, with the film kept by Hall and McChesney of Syracuse and a print returned for the county's books, and the older deed books were filmed as well. Deeds had been typed rather than handwritten since January 1, 1930.
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William Meade Prince dies at his home in Greenwood
William Meade Prince, illustrator, former head of the university's art department and author of The Southern Part of Heaven, died by suicide in the studio of his Greenwood home. The Weekly wrote that the village felt the loss deeply.
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Morris Telephone Company opens an exchange at Efland with lines to Cedar Grove
The Morris Telephone Company put a new 30-line switchboard into service in its new building next to the Baptist church in Efland, along with about 14 miles of rural lines running to the Cedar Grove community.
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Albert and Gladys Coates move into their own house on Hooper Lane
In 1947 the couple bought a lot on Hooper Lane in what had been the back garden of Edward Kidder Graham's house. Coates rejected a contemporary design by architects Jim and John Webb, the house went up as a two-story Georgian, and they moved in about the time the Gardner Award money arrived.
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Architect George Matsumoto draws plans for Dr. Isaac Taylor's house on Morgan Creek Road
George Matsumoto of the State College School of Design drew the plans for the house of Dr. Isaac M. Taylor, new to the medical school faculty, in Morgan Creek Hills. The Taylors raised their children there, among them the singer James Taylor.
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Architect John B. Webb joins his brother James in Chapel Hill
John B. Webb, also Berkeley-trained and shaped by William Wurster, practiced alongside his brother in Chapel Hill from 1952 to 1957. The two are credited with bringing the regional modernism of the San Francisco Bay area to the town.
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Bob Cox and Monk Jennings open Town & Campus in place of Wilbur Kutz's Varsity Shop
Cox and Jennings's clothing store, Town & Campus, took over the East Franklin store where Kutz had run the Varsity Shop. It was replaced by another clothier between 1989 and 1993.
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Chapel Hill builds a new elementary school in the Glen Lennox area
In the fall of 1952 an elementary school was being built in the Glen Lennox area, the first of several planned so young children would not have to travel into downtown traffic.
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Cole's Store opens beside its owner's house on West Hill Avenue
The small concrete-block store and gas station on North West Hill Avenue, built on the same lot as the owner's home, follows the pattern of rural crossroads stores of the 1940s and 1950s.
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Dr. Robert T. Cadmus, first director of Memorial Hospital, builds a colonial Ranch on Iris Lane
The five-bay brick Ranch has a large picture window and a sunporch at one end. Cadmus came to run the new North Carolina Memorial Hospital, part of the postwar wave of medical staff who needed houses near campus.
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Eno Mill becomes part of Cone Mills
The subsidiary joined the Greensboro textile corporation.
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Frank McGuire arrives at UNC to coach basketball
McGuire came to Chapel Hill in 1952 to take over a basketball program that ranked far behind football in the university's priorities. His first office at Carolina was the ticket booth at Woollen Gym.
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Isaac M. Taylor joins the new Department of Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine
Taylor, a 1942 Carolina graduate with a Harvard medical degree, returned to Chapel Hill in 1952 at the invitation of medical dean Reece Berryhill as one of the first members of the medical school's department of medicine.
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J. Spencer Love gives the Institute of Government $50,000 to spend as Coates sees fit
Textile executive J. Spencer Love, whose $15,000 in 1942 had carried the Institute until the state budget took over its costs, sent Albert Coates another $50,000 with no conditions on its use.
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James and Maxine Freeland open the Ja-Max Motor Lodge on US 70
Named for its owners, the long one-story motel northwest of town on the main Greensboro-Durham road let guests park at their own doors, and its hipped roof, stone veneer and horizontal-pane windows borrow from the Ranch house. It was probably the first of Freeland's motels, a string that later ran to Durham, Mebane and Roxboro and included Chapel Hill's Tar Heel Motel.
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Jim Webb designs a Contemporary house on Laurel Hill Road for psychologists Louis and Thelma Thurstone
The low L-shaped house has vertical wood siding, a hipped roof with wide eaves and a carport joined by a screen porch; Ellington & Sparrow built it. Webb counted it among his firm's best work.
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Joffre Coe publishes an archaeological survey of the Occoneechee Hills area
Coe's study The Cultural Sequence of the Carolina Piedmont, in a volume edited by James B. Griffin, reported a survey and excavation near the Occoneechee Hills outside Hillsborough carried out under the Archaeological Society of North Carolina.
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Morgan Creek Hills subdivision begins beside the new 15-501 Bypass
Work on Morgan Creek Hills, on the south side of the 15-501 Bypass, started while the bypass itself was being built between 1952 and 1954. The land had several owners, among them William Chambers Coker and Bill Hunt, and the neighborhood filled in over many years with large houses on rough, hilly lots.
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Neurosurgeon Warner Wells buys the Pratt house on East Franklin Street
Ten years after Joseph Hyde Pratt's death, Dr. Warner Wells, a neurosurgeon on the UNC medical school faculty, buys the Pratt house on East Franklin Street, which became known as the Pratt-Wells House.
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Oliver K. Cornwell becomes chair of UNC's Department of Physical Education and Athletics
After Robert Fetzer retired in 1952, Cornwell became chair of the combined department, while Charles P. Erickson became director of athletics. By 1955 the two parts had been separated again.
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Orange County sells $250,000 in bonds for a new courthouse
The courthouse bonds brought the county's net bonded debt to $1,378,000 at the end of 1952. The new courthouse was then rising beside the old one on the same axis, sharing a courtyard.
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Philip Green's guidebook for zoning and planning boards is published
Green, who had learned the field on the Charlotte study, wrote a 430-page guidebook that the Institute published in 1952, the first such work for local zoning and planning boards in North Carolina. He went on to a national reputation in zoning and planning law.
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Service station operator Roseman builds a brick Ranch house on West Tryon Street
Mr. Roseman, who ran a gas station downtown, built a brick Ranch house with an attached carport at 311 West Tryon Street in 1952, replacing an earlier frame house.
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The 15-501 Bypass is built along the south side of Chapel Hill
The book places construction of the 15-501 Bypass in 1952 to 1954. Morgan Creek Hills, one of the town's large postwar subdivisions, was laid out along its south side during those same years.
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The Tar Heel Hosiery Mill starts at Efland
The newest of the Efland family hosiery plants, the Tar Heel Hosiery Mill, began in 1952 making full-fashioned hose.
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The Webb brothers design a house on Whitehead Circle for Alex and Betty McMahon
James M. Webb and John B. Webb Associates designed the J. Alex and Betty W. McMahon House at 419 Whitehead Circle, a long house with flat roofs at different heights, a privacy wall and small windows toward the street, and large windows opening to the woods behind.
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The county builds the classroom building and cafeteria later used by A. L. Stanback School
A classroom building and a cafeteria on the Hillsborough campus that became A. L. Stanback School, the grades 6-7 school by 1983, date from 1952 under Superintendent G. Paul Carr.
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The district health department starts bedside nursing in southern Orange County
When the book was written, the health department's latest service was a small bedside nursing program for southern Orange County, carried on jointly with the University Hospital and its outpatient department. For 1952-53 the county appropriated $14,000 to the department.
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The last three schools for Black children near Efland are consolidated at Efland-Cheeks
In the 1952-53 school year the three remaining small schools for Black children in the Efland area were merged into Efland-Cheeks School, completing the consolidation of the county's Black schools begun the year before.
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UNC names Cobb Dormitory for Collier Cobb
The university named its new Cobb Dormitory in honor of the geologist Collier Cobb, who had taught at UNC for forty years.
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UNC trustees set aside Mason Farm land for a botanical garden
The university's Board of Trustees allocated about 72 acres of its Mason Farm property for the North Carolina Botanical Garden, officially establishing it. Botanist H. R. Totten's efforts helped procure the site.
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UNC's new dental school building opens with separate facilities for Black and white patients
The School of Dentistry's new building opened with what a university memo called separate, complete facilities for white and Black patients. Publicity photographs showed separate waiting rooms for each race.
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Holy Trinity Lutheran Church consecrates its Chapel Hill church
Holy Trinity Lutheran's new church in Chapel Hill, built in 1951 with 300 seats, was consecrated on January 6, 1952.
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Episcopalians organize the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill
A second Episcopal congregation in Chapel Hill was organized with Maurice Arthur Kidder as its first pastor. Ground was broken for its building in June 1953.
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University trustees give Albert Coates the O. Max Gardner Award
By unanimous vote the trustees named Coates the faculty member of the Consolidated University who had done most that year for the welfare of humanity, under the award created by the late governor's will. Coates accepted it for the Institute, and it carried $10,000.
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The county board sells off its remaining small schoolhouses
In March 1952 the board sold the last small school buildings, among them the Fairfield school for Black children, Sartin, Poplar Grove, Morris Grove and Hickory Grove, for prices from $300 to $2,010. Around the same time Carr School went to Jim Wade for $800.
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Howard Mumford Jones gives the address at the dedication of the university library addition
Howard Mumford Jones, a former member of the university's English faculty then at Harvard, gave the principal address, on the library in higher education, at the dedication of the $1.6 million addition to the university library, held in Memorial Hall.
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Hillsborough Baptist Church ordains J. G. Goodwin Jr.
J. G. Goodwin Jr. was ordained in the Hillsborough church and later went as a missionary to Korea.
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Eben Merritt stops highway crews with an injunction over land taken for the new bypass
Filling station owner Eben G. Merritt got an injunction that briefly halted State Highway Commission work near Morgan Creek, arguing that the new bypass and the rerouted Pittsboro road would cut through his pasture, isolate his new house and pull his station off the main highway for far less than they were worth. A court-appointed commission set his damages at $6,000 in March 1953, and he appealed.
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Fetzer retires as director of athletics and becomes executive director of the Morehead Foundation
The trustees' executive committee approved Robert A. Fetzer's retirement as the University's director of athletics, and he took up the post of executive director of the Morehead Foundation, which he held until his death.
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Tim Flock wins the 100-mile Grand National at Occoneechee
Tim Flock, driving a 1951 Hudson Hornet, took the lead on the 45th lap and won the 100-mile NASCAR Grand National race at Occoneechee Speedway before 5,000 spectators, with his brother Fonty second.
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County welfare spending reaches $190,973 a year
In the year ending June 30, 1952 the welfare department spent $190,973.26, about three-quarters of it state and federal money. Old age assistance for about 290 people and aid to about 125 families with dependent children were the largest items.
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Assistant track coach Joe Hilton designs and builds his own house on Oakwood Drive
Joe Hilton, UNC's assistant track coach, cleared the lot by axe, drew the plans with his wife, and with their son and Victory Village neighbors built a $22,000 ranch house, starting in June 1952. Carrboro contractor Herman Lloyd advised him; the family hoped to move in by September 1953.
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Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee graduate from UNC's law school
A year after they entered as the first Black students at UNC's law school, Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee received their law degrees. UNC also lists James Robert Walker among the 1952 graduates.
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UNC Press publishes Mangum's study of tenant farmer law
The University of North Carolina Press published The Legal Status of the Tenant Farmer in the Southeast by Charles S. Mangum Jr. of Chapel Hill, a 22-chapter treatise on farm tenancy law that closed with proposed reforms.
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Orange Speedway, Inc. takes over the Hillsborough track
Bill France Sr. became president of the new Orange Speedway, Inc., with Ann France as secretary-treasurer and Enoch Staley as vice-president; the other three original partners were no longer with the track. It was known as Orange Speedway from 1954.
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Farmers Home Administration pushes livestock to raise tenant incomes near Cedar Grove
The News of Orange County reported a Farmers Home Administration effort to raise tenant income by adding livestock to tobacco farming. Tenants on the Banks Wilson farm near Cedar Grove added hogs and other animals, and 42 county farm families had FHA operating loans.
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Orange County commissioners turn to professional appraisers for a property revaluation
In August 1952 the commissioners heard a representative of the Southern Mapping and Engineering Company and told county accountant and tax supervisor Ira Ward to draft a contract. By January 1953 they had decided with Ward that values would be set at current market value as of January 1, 1953, with a board of assessors overseeing the appraisers.
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Dr. L. L. Vine buys the Nathan Veterinary Hospital and renames it
Dr. S. A. Nathan and Dr. L. L. Vine dissolved their partnership, and Vine, who had worked with Nathan for some years, took over the animal hospital on the Durham road as the Vine Veterinary Hospital.
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The county board votes to borrow for a six-classroom wing at Cedar Grove School
On a motion by board member Kemp S. Cate, the board voted to borrow $30,000 from the state literary fund and add $25,000 from its capital budget to build the north classroom wing cut from the 1951 plans. The county commissioners approved the loan.
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Ben Schreiber turns the Harry's Grill building into the Youth Center, a children's clothing store
Ben Schreiber and his wife closed their restaurant, Harry's Grill, and opened the Youth Center, a clothing store for infants and children, in the same building next to the Carolina Theatre.
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North Carolina Memorial Hospital opens
North Carolina Memorial Hospital opened to patients on Tuesday, September 2, 1952, without a formal ceremony, as the core of the new University Medical Center. Its opening allowed the UNC School of Medicine to grow from a two-year program into a four-year school.
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The county board buys the Cameron Park property in Hillsborough for a new elementary school
The board paid Rebecca Wall $18,000 for the Cameron Park property and named the school to be built there Cameron Park.
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Millard Lee Bess joins the Cedar Grove School staff
The county board hired Millard Lee Bess, a Gaston County native, Winston-Salem State graduate and World War II veteran, for Cedar Grove School in September 1952.
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The Hong Kong, an American-Chinese restaurant, opens in the former Curve Inn
The Hong Kong, advertised as an American-Chinese restaurant, held its grand opening on the site of the former Curve Inn on the Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard.
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About forty groups report on the Rural Progress Program at a county meeting in Hillsborough
In 1952 farm, civic and church groups competed to raise family farm income by $1,000, improve every home and finish a community project. Results and awards were given at a county-wide meeting in Hillsborough on October 30, and the program was repeated in 1953.
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Fairview Baptist Church is organized in Hillsborough
Fairview Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough in October 1952 under pastor James Clegg and put up a 250-seat building that year.
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Fonty Flock wins at Occoneechee weeks after his Darlington victory
Fonty Flock, winner of the Southern 500 at Darlington, won the October Grand National race at Occoneechee Speedway weeks after his 500-mile Darlington victory.
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UNC School of Medicine admits its first third-year class
A month after the hospital opened, the School of Medicine admitted its first third-year class, beginning clinical training in Chapel Hill. The school had offered only the first two years of medical study since its Raleigh clinical branch closed in 1910.
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UNC cancels two football games after a player and three students get polio
The University of North Carolina called off its football games with Georgia on October 4 and N.C. State on October 11, 1952, because a player and three other students had been stricken with polio.
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The Knapp Foundation pledges $500,000 toward a new building for the Institute of Government
University President Gordon Gray secured a commitment from the foundation of the late Joseph Palmer Knapp for a $500,000 grant, to be matched by the same sum from the state, to build the Institute a new home. Coates had wanted the money as an endowment beside a state-built building, but Gray followed the matching plan that Margaret Knapp favored.
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The county school board advertises the White Oak Grove school lot for sale
The Orange County Board of Education gave notice that it would sell at the courthouse on January 10, 1953, a lot on the Cedar Grove-Carr road beside White Oak Grove Church, with its frame, tin-roofed building. The sale followed the opening of the new Cedar Grove school for Black children, which replaced the small rural schools.
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Collier Cobb Jr. leaves the Orange County Board of Commissioners after fourteen years
Elected in 1938 and chairman since December 1942, Cobb left the county board after seven terms, having missed only three meetings. The new board passed a resolution thanking him, and he pointed to the school improvement program and the start of the new courthouse.
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Stephen J. Edwards's Midway Barber Shop is open on West Rosemary Street
Edwards's Midway Barber Shop was advertising on West Rosemary Street, at the Chapel Hill and Carrboro line, by late 1952. His son Stepney Edwards later ran the Black-owned shop.
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Architect Edward Waugh designs a house for Dr. C. G. Thomas on Morgan Creek Road
Edward (Terry) Waugh of the State College School of Design drew several of the first Morgan Creek Hills houses for doctors who came to teach at the enlarged medical school. His 1953 house at 408 Morgan Creek Road, for surgery professor C. G. (Tim) Thomas and his wife, is a small side-gabled house of long red Norman brick and redwood that steps down its slope.
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Binkley Baptist and the Community Church of Chapel Hill
The Community Church of Chapel Hill formed in 1953 as an interracial congregation and started an integrated preschool in 1955; Binkley Baptist organized in 1958 under Robert Seymour. The Baptist association refused Binkley membership in 1966 over its open membership, the state and Southern conventions disassociated from it in 1992, and the Community Church joined the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1993.
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Bruce Strowd sells his car business to Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard
After thirty years at 100 West Franklin Street, Strowd sold the dealership in 1953. The new owners kept it in the same building for two more years.
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Carroll Hall is built and named for Dudley D. Carroll
The university completed the main building of its business school in 1953 and named it Carroll Hall for the School of Commerce's first dean. It became home to the journalism school in 1999.
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Cedar Grove School's six-classroom north wing is finished
The north wing Archie Royal Davis had drawn in 1951 was finished late in 1953 and closely matches the original classroom wing. With the new rooms the multipurpose room became the gymnasium and auditorium. Davis and board members Harry Breeze and C. W. Stanford inspected the wing in January 1954.
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Community Church of Chapel Hill forms
An interracial congregation organized with Charles M. Jones as minister.
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Fletcher M. Green chairs the UNC history department
Green, a Kenan Professor since 1946, chaired the University of North Carolina's Department of History from 1953 to 1960. He retired in 1968.
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Hillsborough Heights is laid out, with a street named for James J. Freeland
The African American neighborhood on Terrell, Central, Forrest, Coley and Freeland streets, below US 70 on the west side of North Nash Street, was laid out in the 1950s. Its Freeland Street was named for the builder, who probably put up houses there.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church adds Strudwick Hall, a fellowship hall named for Shepperd Strudwick
In C. H. Reckard's pastorate the church built a fellowship hall to his drawings and named it for Shepperd Strudwick, elder, Sunday school superintendent and clerk of session.
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Hugh Lefler and Paul Wager edit a bicentennial history of Orange County
For the county's 200th anniversary, Lefler and Wager edited Orange County, 1752-1952, with chapters by about fifteen contributors on early history, agriculture, industry, schools and more, plus a dictionary of county biography and lists of county officials.
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Kay Kyser helps raise the money to put WUNC-TV on the air
Kay Kyser toured the state with William C. Friday and Billy Carmichael Jr. to raise money for UNC's educational television station, which went on the air from Chapel Hill in January 1955.
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Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church builds a parsonage on West Corbin Street
Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church builds a brick parsonage at 211 West Corbin Street in 1953, under its pastor the Rev. J. R. Bridges. The church still owns the house.
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Rebecca Clark moves from the University Laundry to nursing at Memorial Hospital
In 1953 Clark left the University Laundry for the newly built university hospital, where she spent the rest of her working years as a nurse. UNC's Employee Forum says she was the first licensed practical nurse in the campus infirmary and retired in 1979.
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Robert F. Schenkkan becomes director of the university's educational television venture
After the FCC granted the Consolidated University of North Carolina an educational television license, Schenkkan became director of the new venture, which went on the air as WUNC-TV from the Communication Center in Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.
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The Bellevue mill employs 355 workers on two shifts
In 1953 the mill had 355 workers on two shifts, and the company still owned its mill village, whose houses now had indoor plumbing.
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The Hospital Savings Association moves from East Franklin into a large new building on West Franklin
The association left its two-bay store on East Franklin for big new quarters on West Franklin. By the late 1960s it had become Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
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The Rock Baptist Church building on West Franklin Street is torn down
The Black Baptist congregation's church on West Franklin, in use since 1908, was demolished late in 1953 once its new church on North Roberson Street was finished.
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The Webb brothers build a small two-level house for Ruth Price in Westwood
University instructor Ruth Price, on a tight budget, hired James and John Webb in 1953 to build her house at 4 Briar Bridge Lane, a steep corner lot in the older Westwood subdivision. The book ranks it among the smallest and best of the Webb houses; its main floor centers on a skylit living room with a built-in study nook.
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The university gives J. Spencer Love an honorary doctor of laws
J. Spencer Love was among the five people the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gave honorary degrees in 1953, a year whose list also included the poet Robert Frost.
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UNC dedicates the Forest Theatre to Frederick Koch
In 1953 the university dedicated the stone amphitheatre in Battle Park to Koch, who had developed the site of the 1916 Shakespeare tercentenary dramas into a permanent theatre after he joined the faculty. The stone stage and seating had been rebuilt with Works Progress Administration funds in 1940.
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William C. Coker dies and leaves his land north of town to Coker College
At his death in 1953, botanist and real estate developer William Chambers Coker left a large tract along Estes Drive, including the land around Eastwood Lake, to Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina. The college later had the land developed, producing Coker Hills and Lake Forest.
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Covenant Presbyterian Church is organized in Chapel Hill
A second Presbyterian congregation, Covenant, was organized in Chapel Hill. It had 33 members and no building in 1953.
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WCHL begins broadcasting
WCHL, Chapel Hill's new commercial radio station, went on the air in January 1953 at 1360 on the dial with 1,000 watts, broadcasting from sunrise to sunset from a site on the Durham highway. General manager Sandy McClamroch ran it with partners Roy E. Fullen and Lonnie Dark; its first broadcast was set for January 18.
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The county board gives up the High Rock School land
The county board waived its rights to the two acres of the abandoned High Rock School near Efland in favor of the landowner, John A. Thompson. High Rock had been merged into the Efland-Cheeks school in 1952.
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Fire damages the Hillsboro Lunch on West King Street
A Sunday night fire, blamed on spontaneous combustion, broke a front plate glass window and damaged the partition between the kitchen and the lunch room. Owner Bill Chance said he was fully insured and would reopen once repairs were made.
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Matthew Strum takes over Dud's Tavern
Dud's Tavern advertised that it was under the new ownership and management of Matthew Strum, offering home-cooked food along with gas, oil and auto service.
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North Carolina Memorial Hospital is dedicated
Exercises at Chapel Hill on April 23-24, 1953, dedicated North Carolina Memorial Hospital and marked the new four-year School of Medicine and the schools of dentistry and nursing. The hospital had opened in September 1952.
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The legislature drops Collier Cobb Jr. from the university trustees
After eight years on the board, Cobb, chairman of the trustees' buildings committee for the Chapel Hill campus during the largest building program in its history, was left off the nominating list by the legislature's joint committee on trustees. He said he held no ill will.
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Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
Robinson led the five candidates with 571 votes and Wager followed with 560; Kenneth Putnam took the third seat. The Weekly noted Robinson was the second Black person elected to public office in Chapel Hill, the first since Reconstruction, and it was Wager's first run for office.
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The News of Orange prints the first picture of the Cedar Grove Negro School
A front-page photograph presented the new school as a major piece of the county's three-year building program. The story listed seven classrooms, a library, an office, a heating plant, two toilets and a multipurpose room used from the start as four classrooms.
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Edmund Strudwick's portrait of C. T. Council is given to the School of Pharmacy
University President Gordon Gray presented a portrait of Durham's C. T. Council, painted by Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough, to the UNC School of Pharmacy, where Dean E. A. Brecht accepted it at a luncheon in the Morehead building.
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Gardner Hall, named for O. Max Gardner, opens with the new business school buildings
Gardner Hall, named for former governor O. Max Gardner, was one of three new School of Business Administration buildings set between the Library and South Building, with Carroll and Hanes halls. The University Placement Service moved into it, and the formal dedication of the three buildings was set for May 25, 1953.
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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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Charles E. Rush retires as the university's director of libraries
Rush retired as librarian on July 1, 1954, after thirteen years. Andrew H. Horn, associate librarian at the University of California at Los Angeles, was chosen to succeed him as director of libraries.
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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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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.
