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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1960s
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Five Forks Baptist Church dedicates its new block church
Needing room for a cemetery, the congregation moved to land bought from Arthur Wright for $1 and began building in 1966 with 2,400 donated blocks, much of the work done by the pastor, Tommy Willis, and members. The church was dedicated on December 10, 1967.
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Central High School becomes A. L. Stanback School
After Central High's last high school class graduated in 1968 and its older students moved to Orange High School, the school was renamed for its longtime principal A. L. Stanback and became an elementary school.
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Central High students march and Orange County schools integrate
In 1968 Black students at Central High School in Hillsborough walked out and marched to protest a plan for phased desegregation. After Central's last class graduated that spring, its high school students moved to Orange High, ending the county's dual school system in 1968–69.
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Chapel Hill adds five more public housing neighborhoods
North Columbia Street (1968), South Estes Drive (1970), and Airport Gardens, Rainbow Heights and South Roberson Street (all 1972) extended the town's public housing after the first two 1967 sites.
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Charles Kuralt wins a Peabody Award for On the Road
Kuralt received a personal Peabody Award for On the Road, his segment of Americana on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. He was then a CBS News correspondent based in New York.
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Daphne Athas teaches creative writing at UNC
Athas taught creative writing at UNC from 1968 until she retired from teaching in 2009. In the 1970s she took over the stylistics course Glossolalia, known for its annual student performances, and her students included Randall Kenan, Michael Parker and Sarah Dessen.
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Don Stewart designs a house on stilts over Booker Creek for his partner Bob Anderson
Stewart's 1968 house for Bob Anderson at 601 Brookview Drive in Lake Shore Hills sets a steep-gabled living pavilion on stilts over rocky Booker Creek, linked by a raised kitchen bridge to a bedroom wing on the hillside above.
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Don Stewart designs the Chapel Hill Professional Village
Stewart's 1968 office complex of one and two stories rests on heavy stone supports, with covered parking and planting built into the design and a bridge through its middle that echoes Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Gloria Williams directs the Chapel Hill Housing Authority
Gloria Williams was director of the Chapel Hill Housing Authority from 1968 until it merged with the town's Redevelopment Commission in September 1973, when she became assistant director. In 1969 she was the contact for placing families in the town's first public housing.
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Jeff MacNelly draws editorial cartoons for the Chapel Hill Weekly
UNC student Jeff MacNelly began drawing editorial cartoons for the Chapel Hill Weekly under editor Jim Shumaker, then left school to work for the paper full time. He modeled the editor in his later comic strip Shoe on Shumaker.
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Stanford Junior High School is built near Hillsborough with two classroom buildings and a gymnasium
Under Superintendent G. Paul Carr the county finished Stanford Junior High, a main classroom building for about 800 pupils, a second for about 225 and a gymnasium, on the 100-acre tract it shares with Orange High.
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Stonemason John Wesley Campbell, builder of Northside stone houses, dies
John Wesley Campbell, born about 1888 to a white father and a Black mother and trained in masonry from age seven, died in 1968. He worked on UNC buildings, Memorial Hospital and Franklin Street stores, built stone houses and the Hargraves Center in Northside, and taught the trade to his five sons and other Black masons.
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The Student Union and Student Stores open beside the undergraduate library around the Pit
In 1968 the Frank Porter Graham Student Union and the Josephus Daniels Student Stores opened on South Road with the new R. B. House Undergraduate Library. The two-story concrete and glass buildings frame a sunken brick court, the Pit, and moved the center of student life there.
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The new Chapel Hill Public Library opens at East Franklin and Boundary streets
The library left its rooms in the Hill House for a new building on the northwest corner of East Franklin and Boundary. When the library moved again in the 1990s, the building became home to the town museum.
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The old Hill House on West Franklin is condemned and boarded up after the library leaves
With the public library gone to its new building on East Franklin, the run-down Hill House beside the Baptist church was condemned and closed up.
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The undergraduate library named for R. B. House opens
The building put up in 1964 was occupied by the university in 1968 as the Robert B. House Undergraduate Library, named for the former chancellor.
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UNC names its new bookstore building for Josephus Daniels
In 1968 the university named its newly completed bookstore, which housed the Book Exchange and other student services, for Josephus Daniels, class of 1885 and a long-time trustee.
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UNC's new law school building is finished on South Road
A new building for the UNC School of Law was completed across South Road in 1968, part of the decade's boom of modernist construction along that street.
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Vic Huggins sells his East Franklin hardware store but lets it keep his name
Huggins sold the store he had owned since 1944, and Huggins Hardware ran on under new owners until Miami Subs replaced it between 1989 and 1993.
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Albert Coates suffers a stroke and is taken to Memorial Hospital
In late January 1968, while still teaching a criminal law class on a reduced schedule, Coates lost the use of his right arm and leg at home and was taken to Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill, where he spent about a week in intensive care. He was home on Hooper Lane a month later, and his doctor told him not to return to the classroom.
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A federal court struck down the Speaker Ban law in Dickson v. Sitterson
A three-judge federal court in Greensboro ruled North Carolina's Speaker Ban law unconstitutional because it was too vague. The suit had been filed in March 1966 by UNC student leaders and the two barred speakers, Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker, and UNC's leaders hoped the ruling ended the long controversy.
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Governor Moore recommends that the state and the trustees not appeal the Speaker Ban ruling
Three days after the decision, Governor Dan K. Moore said the state should not appeal the federal court's finding that the law was unconstitutionally vague and recommended that the trustees not appeal either, voicing his hope that they and the administration would keep the campuses from being exploited as outlets of discord and strife.
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The UNC trustees adopt six temporary speaker rules in place of the voided regulations
A week after the ruling the trustees approved, over Senator Tom White's plea to proceed calmly, six interim rules on the manner of a speaker's appearance (a senior faculty member presiding at the chancellor's request, public forums, balanced views, audience questions, sponsorship by recognized student groups), with the items the court had struck removed, pending further study by the executive committee on March 8.
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The trustees' executive committee asks Governor Moore to name a subcommittee on a permanent speaker policy
Meeting in Charlotte, the Board of Trustees' Executive Committee voted to ask the governor to appoint a subcommittee to study speaker regulations and recommend a permanent policy to the full board in May. Senator Tom White, who agreed with the state's decision not to appeal, said the board had resolved nothing; President Friday hoped the matter would be settled by May.
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Principal George Pierce and Arthur Wells ask for basketball goals and better lighting
Cedar Grove principal George Pierce and advisory council chairman Arthur Wells asked the board for basketball goals, better lighting, doors for the boys' restrooms and supplies for the lunchroom.
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Chapel Hill aldermen approve an open housing ordinance 3 to 2 on first reading
Weeks after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. and a petition signed by about 2,200 people, the Board of Aldermen voted 3 to 2 for a local ban on discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. The margin fell short of the two-thirds needed to pass on first reading, so the measure went to a second vote.
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The county board presents a plan to end its dual school system to federal civil rights officials
After the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare told Orange County to give up freedom of choice and balance its schools by race, the board met with Walter Warfield of the Office for Civil Rights' education branch to present its plan for ending separate Black and white schools. The plan took effect in 1969-70.
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Chapel Hill adopts North Carolina's first local open housing ordinance
On second reading the Board of Aldermen passed the open housing ordinance 4 to 0, effective immediately, making it a misdemeanor for an owner to discriminate by religion, race, color or national origin in selling or renting property in town. The penalty was a fine of up to $50 or up to 30 days in jail.
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Frank Wilkinson speaks on the UNC campus in Howell Hall
Three months after the ruling, Wilkinson gave his first permitted talk on the UNC campus, speaking on HUAC in Howell Hall at the invitation of the Carolina Political Union to about 35 people.
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Belton Edwards, a Black member, joins the county Board of Education
When A. B. Coleman resigned from the board in May 1968, Belton Edwards, whom Pender identifies as Black, took his place. The board had asked the county commissioners in 1965 for two Black members.
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Albert Coates speaks at the law school graduation after teaching his last class
Recovering from his stroke, Coates gave the law school's commencement address and told the graduates that they and he were leaving together, since he had taught his final class. It ended a law teaching career at Chapel Hill that began in 1923.
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Cone Mills honors Eno plant workers, most of them women, for fifty years at the mill
At the Eno Plant's seventieth anniversary celebration in Hillsborough, Cone Mills recognized at least six of its 385 employees for fifty or more years of work at the mill, five of them women.
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Drought drops University Lake to a sixth of its normal level and forces water rationing
With the lake nearly empty, the university spent about $100,000 on a pipe connecting Chapel Hill to Durham's water system and bought Durham water. Lawn watering and car washing were banned under penalty of fine, and there was concern that classes would be suspended before levels recovered by the end of 1969.
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Final race at Orange Speedway
Richard Petty won by seven laps in the last NASCAR Grand National race at Orange Speedway near Hillsborough, as the Occoneechee track had been called since 1954. The track closed after the race.
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A new iron railroad bridge is built over the Eno at Hillsborough
An iron railroad bridge on poured concrete piers, bearing a plaque of the Virginia Bridge Iron Company of Roanoke dated 1969, is built across the Eno at the south end of the district near Gold Park.
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Albert Coates publishes What the University of North Carolina Meant to Me
Coates's collection of autobiographical pieces followed him from a Smithfield boyhood through his student years and law teaching to the building of the Institute, with long sections on his work with the FBI and with the University's Extension Division.
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Alethea Burt retires from teaching at Central High School
Alethea Burt, who had led Ridge Road School until it closed in 1951 and then moved with her pupils to teach the elementary grades at Central High School in Hillsboro, retired at the end of the 1968-69 year.
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Alexander Julian opens Alexander's Ambition on Franklin Street
At 21, while his parents were away for a month, Alexander Julian took over a Franklin Street storefront and opened his own shop, Alexander's Ambition, at the site where Julian's now operates.
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Arthur Cleveland Nash, UNC's architect of the 1920s, dies in Baltimore
He died at the home of his daughter Katharine and her husband, Edward Caldwell, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Blyden Jackson joins UNC's English department and becomes its first tenured Black professor
Blyden Jackson joined the UNC-Chapel Hill English department in 1969 and became the university's first tenured Black faculty member. He established the study of African American literature at Carolina and later served as assistant dean of the Graduate School, working to recruit Black faculty and students.
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Braxton Foushee becomes Carrboro’s first Black alderman
Braxton Foushee was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1969, the first Black member of the town's governing board, and served until 1981. He pressed for paved roads and sidewalks in Black neighborhoods and counted bringing bus service to Carrboro as his proudest achievement.
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Carrboro’s Black political firsts
Braxton Foushee became Carrboro’s first Black alderman in 1969 and Robert Drakeford its first Black mayor in 1977, followed by Richard Knight Jr. as town manager, Hilliard Caldwell and Joal Hall Broun on the board, and Walter Horton as police chief in 2013. Barbara Foushee was sworn in as the first Black woman mayor in 2023, and the town named the Drakeford Library Complex in 2024.
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Chapel Hill and Carrboro music scene
Cat's Cradle opened in a small basement club near the UNC campus in 1969 and, after several moves, settled in Carrboro in 1993. With Merge Records, founded in Chapel Hill in 1989, and bands such as Superchunk and Polvo, the local scene drew national press in the early 1990s as a possible "next Seattle."
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Chi Omega joins its two East Franklin houses with a new center section
The sorority gained room by building a middle section linking the houses at 311 and 313 East Franklin.
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Cogswell/Hausler design Arthur Cogswell's second house on Elliott Road
The firm's 1969 house for Arthur Cogswell at 308 Elliott Road is a flat-roofed steel-frame building, plain and white outside, whose glass-walled rooms wrap around a terrace with a heated pool. It won a North Carolina AIA award.
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Engineering study for UNC recommends a reservoir on Cane Creek
After the 1968 drought left University Lake dangerously low, a study sponsored by the University of North Carolina and conducted by the engineering firm Hazen and Sawyer recommended damming Cane Creek. The Haw River, the proposed Jordan reservoir, an enlarged University Lake and the Eno were among the alternatives set aside.
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George Brown Tindall is named a Kenan professor of history
UNC gave Tindall a Kenan professorship in 1969, five years after he became a full professor of history.
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George F. Williams becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
After G. Paul Carr resigned, the board called George F. Williams, superintendent of the Brunswick County schools, to lead the Orange County system in 1969. He served eight years as the county's eleventh superintendent.
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Hank Anderson directs the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Department
Henry "Hank" Anderson III, who took a master's degree in recreation administration at UNC in 1969, directed the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Department from 1969 to 1977.
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Jim Webb leaves City Planning and Architectural Associates and practices on his own
Webb withdrew from the partnership he had formed with Don Stewart and re-established his practice as James M. Webb, AIA and AICP. He kept his office in the old Methodist church on Rosemary Street for the rest of his career.
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North Carolina National Bank builds a new office running from Franklin to Rosemary Street
NCNB finished its expansion with a single building, three stories tall on Franklin Street and six on Rosemary. Its Franklin frontage took in the old Bank of Chapel Hill and the stores beside it.
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Orange County Schools open kindergarten classes and extend them to every five-year-old
Kindergarten began in the county schools with the 1969-70 reorganization, housed at Central Elementary and Efland-Cheeks. By the end of Superintendent Williams's term in 1977 it had grown from a partial program to one serving all five-year-olds.
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Orange County Schools regroup pupils by grade across the Hillsborough schools to complete integration
For 1969-70 the county put all its pupils outside the Efland area into Hillsborough schools, each serving set grades: kindergarten at Central Elementary, grades 1-2 at Cameron Park, 3-4 at Central, 5-6 at the old Orange Junior High, 7-9 at a new Orange Junior High and 10-12 at Orange High. Efland-Cheeks took kindergarten through third grade and Efland Elementary grades 4-6, and Aycock, Cedar Grove and West Hillsborough dropped out as separate schools.
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Orange High School is enlarged with new buildings
Six years after it opened as the county's consolidated high school, Orange High near Hillsborough added buildings in 1969 under the new superintendent George F. Williams.
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Pete Galifianakis opens Hector's Restaurant on East Franklin Street
Hector's opened in 1969 under the slogan 'Famous Since 1969'. After a fire left only its outer walls, it was rebuilt and reopened in the mid-1990s.
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Taylor Hall is completed and named for Dean Isaac M. Taylor
The University completed a medical school building in Chapel Hill in 1969 that honors Isaac Taylor, then dean of the School of Medicine.
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The Cat's Cradle opens in Chapel Hill
Cat's Cradle opened in 1969 as a tiny basement music club near the UNC campus, named for Kurt Vonnegut's novel. After moves within Chapel Hill it settled at 300 East Main Street in Carrboro in 1993, where it became a regular stop for touring acts.
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The Cat’s Cradle and the “Chapel Hill sound” of the
The Cat’s Cradle opened in 1969, Merge Records was founded in 1989, and by 1992 Superchunk, Polvo, Archers of Loaf and the clubs of Franklin Street had national magazines asking whether Chapel Hill was the next Seattle. The Cradle moved to Carrboro in 1993, Ben Folds Five and the Squirrel Nut Zippers followed, and Merge’s anniversary festivals and the Cradle’s 50th year in 2019 marked a scene that outlived the label hunt.
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The McCauley house, said to be part of the old Patterson inn and Nunn tavern, is razed for a Dunkin Donuts
A two-story house on West Franklin, once William W. McCauley's home, was torn down to clear the lot for a Dunkin Donuts. Bryant identifies it as an original section of James Patterson's inn, later Nunn's tavern and the John Canada School, moved here in stages from Franklin and Columbia.
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The class of 1966 unveils a bronze Thomas Wolfe memorial beside Person Hall
An 850-pound bronze relief of an angel, designed by art professor Richard Kinnaird from an idea of Armistead Maupin, was unveiled at the northeast corner of Person Hall. It moved to New East in 1972 and later to a courtyard between Murphey and Greenlaw halls.
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Two wings designed by Archie Royal Davis are added to the Carolina Inn
The third major addition to the Carolina Inn, designed by Archie Royal Davis in 1969, was largely finished by commencement in May 1970. Two wings on the Pittsboro Street side held a new cafeteria, ballroom and larger kitchen and forty-five more guest rooms, and the main entrance moved from Cameron Avenue to Pittsboro Street.
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UNC foodworkers’ struggles
UNC cafeteria workers struck twice in 1969 over pay and working conditions.
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UNC head football coach Bill Dooley buys the Wood house on Fern Lane
Dooley bought the 1957 Ranch built for radiologist Ernest Wood and lived there until 1994.
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West End Graded School closes
The West Hillsborough elementary school closed in 1969, perhaps because the new Central Elementary School took its pupils once schools were integrated. The main building later burned, leaving only the rear wings.
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UNC faculty publicly debate dropping ROTC, and a Faculty Council committee is named
An open faculty discussion of removing ROTC led to a Faculty Council committee under historian George V. Taylor, which proposed a Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense to take in naval and aerospace science while keeping ROTC as an option.
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UNC food workers' strike
On February 23, 1969 food service workers at UNC's Lenoir Hall left their counters and sat down at the cafeteria tables, and by the next morning nearly 100 dining hall employees had refused to report for work. The strike ended on March 21 when the University agreed to raise the hourly minimum from $1.60 to $1.80, pay roughly $180,000 in back wages, and appoint a Black supervisor.
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Governor Scott orders Lenoir Hall reopened under Highway Patrol guard
After Chancellor Sitterson closed Lenoir Hall on March 5 during the foodworkers' strike, Governor Bob Scott ordered it reopened, sent at least 50 state patrolmen to Chapel Hill and mobilized a National Guard unit in Durham. The dining hall opened the next morning with more than 40 riot-equipped troopers and about 25 Chapel Hill police at its entrances while as many as 300 people picketed.
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State troopers clear Manning Hall on Governor Scott's orders
About 75 state troopers ringed Manning Hall, the striking food workers' headquarters, on the afternoon of March 13 after Governor Bob Scott ordered it vacated. Students left before police arrived, and a crowd of up to 1,000 then rallied on the steps of South Building.
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Cedar Grove's advisory council petitions to keep the school open
As the county prepared to integrate its schools, the Cedar Grove Advisory Council brought the board a petition asking that Cedar Grove School run fully through 1969-70 and that the integration plan be reconsidered. The council said the community did not intend to give up its school.
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Howard Lee and Roland Giduz meet in an open forum at the Newman Center
About 100 people heard the two mayoral candidates differ on the Mitchell Lane open storm drain, a local option sales tax, the Inter-Church Council low-income housing project and developers' seats on the Planning Board. Lee called the drain the town's responsibility; Giduz, twelve years an alderman, was asked why it had not been covered.
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An early-morning fire guts the Tempo Room on East Franklin Street
A fire found at 4:15 a.m. destroyed Pete Galifianakis's Tempo Room in the basement under Town and Campus, which took smoke damage; three fire trucks had it out within an hour. Within days a "new" Tempo Room was serving beer in a basement at another spot.
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Mayoral and aldermanic candidates answer questions at the Institute of Government
Lee, Giduz and all seven candidates for the Board of Aldermen took questions at an open forum. Sharp exchanges came over a police review board, which Lee said he had never favored, and over whether the town should pay to cover the Mitchell Lane drain, on which Giduz cited county health tests and Steve Bernholz answered that 'the ditch stinks'.
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Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel Hill
Howard N. Lee defeated Roland Giduz by about 400 votes on May 6, 1969, in the largest turnout for a Chapel Hill election to that date, becoming the town's first Black mayor. He was the first African American elected mayor of a predominantly white Southern town since Reconstruction.
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Rebecca Clark carries voters to the polls in Howard Lee's mayoral campaign
Clark worked on Howard Lee's campaign for mayor, sending her son's Greyhound bus street to street to take voters to the polls, and helped count ballots by hand on election night. Lee won the May 6, 1969 election.
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Howard Lee takes the oath as mayor of Chapel Hill at Town Hall
More than 140 people packed the second-floor room of Town Hall for the 7:30 p.m. meeting at which town clerk Roberts swore in Lee after outgoing mayor Sandy McClamroch reviewed his ten years in office. New aldermen Joe Nassif, Mary Prothro, George Coxhead and Ross Scroggs were sworn in, and Lee's first board elected David Ethridge mayor pro tem.
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UNC hands campus dining to the SAGA Food Service contract
Two months after settling the spring strike the University signed a contract with SAGA Food Services on May 19, 1969, ending its own management of campus dining. SAGA laid off many temporary and part-time workers within weeks, which set up the second strike that autumn.
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Cedar Grove School closes under the county's integration plan
The county board announced in May 1969 that Cedar Grove School would not operate in 1969-70. The school closed at the end of the 1968-69 year despite the community's appeals, and its pupils moved to schools in Efland and Hillsborough.
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Superintendent Carr's final report recommends studying a merger of the county and Chapel Hill school units
In his closing report to the State Superintendent in 1969, G. Paul Carr asked the board to have outside educators study combining the county and Chapel Hill units. He also urged a supplementary school tax, written board policies, kindergartens for all children, a return to six-grade elementary schools and special education at the high school.
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County planning board recommends rezoning the Blackwood Station tract for Fiber Industries
The Orange County Planning Board unanimously recommended rezoning the 450-acre Blackwood Station tract from residential to industrial for a $100 million Fiber Industries plant promising 1,500 jobs. Board member Mark Burnham pressed for stricter performance standards, and commissioners Carl Smith, Ira Ward and Harvey Bennett had backed the Chamber of Commerce's pro-Fiber campaign.
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Fiber Industries withdraws its New Hope Creek rezoning request; commissioners chairman Carl Smith blames opponents
Fiber Industries withdrew its request to rezone 450 acres near New Hope Creek for a plant after opposition from UNC, Duke and Mayor Howard Lee. County commissioners chairman Carl Smith blamed 'unintelligent intellectuals' and a town political 'machine', and said Lee, the town's Black mayor, was not serving Black residents by opposing the plant.
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UNC foodworkers strike a second time
About 250 of UNC's 275 cafeteria workers, organized as the UNC Non-Academic Employees Union, struck SAGA Food Services on November 7, 1969 over pay, job reclassification, and the firing of workers for union activity. They voted on November 21 to affiliate with AFSCME, and the strike was settled in December after Ralph Abernathy visited the strikers and Black students from across the state threatened to converge on the campus.
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Striking SAGA cafeteria workers vote 94 to 26 to join AFSCME
In the strike's third week the full-time SAGA food service workers marched from a noon rally at Wilson Library to the Student Union and voted 94 to 26 for representation by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. SAGA's regional director said mediation with the union would begin that weekend.
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WCHL declines to publicize the Walk Against Hunger during the Community Chest drive
General manager Jim Heavner, that year's chairman of the local Community Chest, said WCHL would not give public service time to the Walk Against Hunger because the station gave all its spots to the Community Chest during its campaign.
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Two union officials and a striking worker are arrested at Lenoir Hall; Chancellor Sitterson pledges to subsidize workers SAGA does not rehire
On the strike's 24th day two union officials and a striking worker were arrested at Lenoir Dining Hall in the morning. Later that day Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson said the University would subsidize any workers SAGA did not rehire, after efforts to revive negotiations had stalled on the rehiring question.
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Police charge pickets at Lenoir Hall; nine are arrested and four hurt
About 25 police charged a group of pickets and sympathizers at the north end of Lenoir Hall when they did not disperse. Nine people were arrested, including AFSCME official Gene Gore and graduate student John Wheeler, and four were treated at Memorial Hospital. The next day Mayor Howard Lee announced that town police were being withdrawn from the strike scene.
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The 31-day SAGA strike is settled
Union and management reached a settlement on Monday morning and the workers approved the contract unanimously, returning to work the next day. The contract ran to June 30, 1970 and provided job classification, seniority, a minimum four-hour day, ten paid holidays, ten sick days, an end to split shifts and a no-strike clause; the University promised to find jobs for the more than 50 workers SAGA planned to phase out by February 1, 1970.
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Eight men charged during the cafeteria strike appear in Orange County District Court
Howard Fuller of Malcolm X Liberation University, two of its students, AFSCME official Gene Gore and four others charged with disorderly conduct, riot, failure to disperse or interfering with officers during the strike appeared before Judge D. M. McLellan, who continued the cases to January 7, 1970 at the defendants' request.
- 1970s
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A government grant paves Fairview's streets and repairs its houses
Fairview, then outside the town and known to residents as a mud hole with bad septic systems and no paved streets or streetlights, had its streets paved in the 1970s with a government grant, which also paid to repair houses that lacked indoor plumbing.
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Azalea Hill, designed by William Lanier Hunt, is planted at the Botanical Garden
The garden's first specific planting project, sponsored by the Men's Garden Club of Chapel Hill and designed by Hunt, neared completion as work-study students under Ken Moore set native azaleas along a new trail.
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Berryhill Hall is completed and named for W. Reece Berryhill
The University completed a medical school building in Chapel Hill in 1970 and named it for W. Reece Berryhill, who had been dean of the School of Medicine since 1941.
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Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro in
The 1970 census counted 57,567 people in Orange County, 26,199 in Chapel Hill (26,195 of them in the Orange County part) and 5,058 in Carrboro. Chapel Hill's population had more than doubled since 1960.
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Cogswell/Hausler design Ridgefield Townhouses, subsidized housing off South Estes Drive
The firm's 1970 Ridgefield Townhouses, on a secluded tract at the end of South Estes Drive, are two-story brick and frame apartments built on a small budget but made to look like middle-class housing, set in courtyards around a community building and playground. The 44-unit neighborhood joined the town's public housing after Craig-Gomains and Lindsay Street (1967) and North Columbia Street (1968).
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Cogswell/Hausler design a new sanctuary for the Community Church on Purefoy Road
In 1970 the firm added a two-story International Style sanctuary with stained siding and large south windows to the Community Church at 106 Purefoy Road, tied to the congregation's plain brick building of 1957 by George Matsumoto through a glass link. The integrated, nondenominational church had been founded in 1953 by the Rev. Charlie Jones and members who left Chapel Hill Presbyterian with him.
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Daniel Okun serves as chair of the UNC faculty
Okun was chair of the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1970 to 1973, while still heading his department.
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Fitch Lumber razes its early buildings and opens a self-service hardware store
All the first frame buildings on North Greensboro Street came down for new shops and sheds, and a large one-story hardware store was built south of the rail spur on ground once lined with mill houses.
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Fred Battle directs the Hargraves Center
Fred Battle, a Lincoln High graduate of 1962, directed Chapel Hill's Hargraves Center, the former Negro Community Center on Roberson Street, from 1970 to 1987.
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James J. Freeland remodels the William Whitted House on East Queen Street
In the 1970s Freeland remodeled the William Whitted House, one of several historic Hillsborough buildings he restored or moved.
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Killing of James Cates
James Cates, a Black Chapel Hill man, was stabbed to death in the Pit at UNC in November 1970, and three Durham men were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury in 1971. Memorial marches followed, a remembrance coalition formed, the Justice Department opened a cold-case investigation in 2022, and UNC dedicated a memorial to him in the Pit that year.
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Mary Claire Engstrom surveys the family graveyards of Orange County
In the 1970s the Hillsborough historian Mary Claire Engstrom recorded cemeteries across the county, many of them private burial grounds on farms. Her index was kept at the Register of Deeds in Hillsborough.
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Northside and Pine Knolls residents resist federal urban renewal
When Northside and Pine Knolls were targeted for urban renewal, residents confronted HUD and avoided the wholesale clearance seen in Durham's Hayti, winning home improvements and new construction instead.
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Orange–Chatham Comprehensive Health Services begins
Orange-Chatham Comprehensive Health Services began in 1970 as a joint venture of UNC's Division of Health Affairs and a local community action program, bringing federally funded primary care to rural residents. UNC staffed its health centers, including Prospect Hill and Haywood-Moncure, from September 1970, and the program later became Piedmont Health.
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Robert Campbell moves to Rogers Road as the county landfill is built beside it
Campbell, who grew up in the Northside community of Chapel Hill, moved to Rogers Road in the early 1970s, as the Orange County landfill was going in next to the neighborhood. He later became president of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP.
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Roberta Jackson joins UNC's School of Education as its first Black tenure-track faculty member
Roberta Jackson joined the UNC School of Education in 1970, a year after her husband Blyden Jackson joined the English department, as the school's first Black tenure-track faculty member. She earned tenure in 1974 and became the first tenured Black woman in the university's Division of Academic Affairs.
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The Hill family sells parts of Riverbend Farm for Eno River State Park
In the 1970s and 1980s the Hills sold portions of their acreage along the Eno to the new state park, leaving about 27 acres with the house.
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The Hillsborough Historical Society buys the Nash Law Office
After several private owners, the Hillsborough Historical Society bought the Nash Law Office on West Margaret Lane, the oldest law office in town. It had served as a music studio for the Nash and Kollock School until 1907.
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The former Bellevue mill is sold again and runs as Falk Fibers and Fabrics
In the 1970s northeastern investors bought the mill again; directories list it as Falk, Fibers, and Fabrics, with a dyeing and finishing subsidiary at the same site.
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The former Murphey School becomes a nightclub
From some time in the early 1970s until the mid-1980s the old school was run as a nightclub. It stood empty from 1986.
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The old St. Mary's School reopens as a private college preparatory school
The St. Mary's School building, closed since 1943, reopened in 1970 as a private college preparatory school.
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Carolyn Kizer joins the UNC English faculty to head poetry writing
Kizer joined UNC's English department on February 1, 1970, as a visiting lecturer, to develop a poetry curriculum and head the poetry side of the creative writing program under Max Steele. She remained UNC's poet-in-residence until 1974.
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Tom Bello is sworn in as student body president
Tom Bello, who ran as an independent, was sworn in as president of the UNC student body, with Bill Blue as vice president and Ann Rothe also among the new leaders of Student Government.
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Student Legislature passes a resolution calling a class boycott over the invasion of Cambodia
On the night of Nixon's Cambodia announcement the Student Legislature passed a resolution urging students to boycott classes on May 6. Student Body President Tom Bello called the strike and a student body meeting the next day, before the Kent State killings turned the one-day boycott into a general strike.
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The old Methodist parsonage, later the Kappa Psi house, is torn down for a parking lot
A contractor demolished the brick house on West Rosemary Street that had been the Methodist parsonage and then the Kappa Psi house, turning down a $10,000 offer to move and restore it. Its owner, county commissioner Carl Smith, planned to lease the lot to the town for parking.
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UNC student strike of
After the Kent State shootings and the invasion of Cambodia, UNC students began a class boycott on May 5, 1970, and more than 4,000 people marched through downtown Chapel Hill the next day. Classes were not cancelled; the faculty instead voted to let striking students take grades on work completed or finish courses later.
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The student body meets in Polk Place and more than 4,000 march through downtown Chapel Hill behind four coffins
Tom Bello chaired an emergency meeting of the student body in Polk Place, then led a march half a mile long down Franklin Street behind four coffins for the Kent State dead; estimates ran from 4,000 to 6,000. That night 900 students planned the boycott, 2,500 held a candlelight memorial at McCorkle Place and marched again down Franklin Street, and strikers camped in Polk Place for an all-night vigil.
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The general faculty votes to let striking students take their grades as they stand or finish coursework later
With more than 4,000 students rallying outside, the general faculty meeting in Hill Hall overwhelmingly approved a substitute motion by Marvin Silver and Gerhard Lenski calling the strike 'a reasonable, peaceful and responsible course of action' and allowing final grades on work completed so far or delayed completion of course requirements, with a right of appeal. Faculty chairman Daniel Okun's letter the next day explained the policy as no penalties for strike absences and make-up exams for those who could not in conscience sit the scheduled exam.
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Student Government's 'The Strike Continues?' release turns the strike toward canvassing and calls a Memorial Hall teach-in
Tom Bello's Student Government press release declared that rallies alone would not end the war and redirected the strike, which it said now involved well over half the student body, toward canvassing, petitions and visits to Congress. It announced a faculty panel on the war for 3 p.m. Monday, May 11 in Memorial Hall with Samuel Wells, James Leutze, Andrew Scott, Daniel Pollitt and David Lapkin.
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Students sit in at South Building and hand Chancellor Sitterson a petition of 800 names confessing to the disruption policy
Seventy-five to 100 students occupied the South Building lobby for over an hour to protest the trustees' disruption policy and its use against three students charged after the December cafeteria strike. Three were admitted to Chancellor Sitterson's office with a petition of 800 UNC students indicting themselves for violating the policy during the strike's first days; Sitterson said the matter lay with President Friday. Bello and the strike steering committee condemned the sit-in.
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Burwell School is listed in the National Register
On September 15, 1970 the National Park Service listed Burwell School in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Tom Bello asks students to nominate candidates for chancellor
With Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson returning to teaching, student body president Tom Bello issued an open letter asking students to send names to the Advisory Committee on the Chancellorship, chaired by state Rep. Ike F. Andrews, by November 1.
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UNC dedicates Greenlaw Hall
The university dedicated Greenlaw Hall in Edwin Greenlaw's honor on October 4, 1970. Construction had begun in 1966.
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Durham motorcycle gang member charged with murder in the Cates stabbing
Durham County officers arrested Ronnie Broadwell, 28, a member of the Durham Storm Troopers motorcycle gang, at Watts Hospital early on the morning of the stabbing, and he was charged with murder and held without bond in the Orange County Jail. By November 24 four white men were in jail and a second man, Bryan King of Durham, faced an assault charge.
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James Cates is killed outside the UNC Student Union
James Lewis Cates Jr., 22, a Black Chapel Hill resident, was stabbed outside the UNC Student Union shortly before 2 a.m. during an all-night dance, in a clash with members of Durham's Storm Troopers motorcycle gang, and died at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. Three white men charged in his death were acquitted by an all-white jury in 1971.
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Mayor Howard Lee leads a memorial march for James Cates
About 65 people joined a memorial march for James Cates led by Mayor Howard Lee and Alderman R. D. Smith, four days after the killing.
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Black residents question the police handling of the Cates killing
Black residents met at the Roberson Street Center to discuss how police handled the stabbing, young Black residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro asked the Justice Department to investigate the campus police, and a fund was started to hire extra counsel for the prosecution. Vice Chancellor Joseph Eagles and Assistant Chancellor Claiborne Jones began reviewing the campus police response.
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Three Durham men bound over to the grand jury in the Cates killing
At a preliminary hearing in Hillsborough, Ronnie Broadwell, Rufus Nelson and William Johnson were bound over to the Orange County Grand Jury on murder charges and held without bond. Medical testimony indicated that immediate care could have prevented Cates's death.
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Students march on the Naval Armory and serve an eviction notice on the NROTC
Led by two 1969 West Point graduates, student protesters marched to the armory and served a mock eviction notice, arguing the revised ROTC curriculum only made military training easier to accept.
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Chapel Hill aldermen approve a student Christmas street party on Franklin Street
At student body president Tom Bello's proposal, the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a Christmas street party on Franklin Street for Saturday, December 12, 1970, run by Student Government with the town and the Merchants Association, on condition that the students set it up and cleaned up afterward.
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A ten-story chemistry laboratory tower is added to Venable Hall
In 1971 the university added a ten-story laboratory tower for chemistry to Venable Hall, one of the modernist buildings of its 1960s and early 1970s building boom along South Road.
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Brick mason William "Smitty" Smith does his first stone repair, at the Carolina Inn
Trained on brick, William E. Smith did his first rock work in 1971 or 1972 on the Pittsboro Street side of the Carolina Inn after watching an older mason on Cameron Avenue for an hour. He went on to run his own masonry business for more than fifty years.
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Christopher Fordham serves as dean of the UNC School of Medicine
Fordham, who had earned a certificate in medicine at UNC in 1949, was dean of the School of Medicine from 1971 to 1979 and for part of that time also vice chancellor for health affairs. The Area Health Education Centers program began under him.
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Daphne Athas publishes Entering Ephesus, a novel set in Carrboro and Chapel Hill
Her coming-of-age novel, set in Carrboro and Chapel Hill during World War II among intellectuals, poor southerners and Greek immigrants, was named one of the ten best novels of the year by Time magazine.
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Don Stewart designs the State Employees Credit Union office on Pittsboro Street
Stewart's 1971 credit union building on Pittsboro Street uses stone walls and roof planes that seem to float above them, a mild form of modernism.
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Joe Hackney serves as an assistant district attorney in Orange and Chatham counties
After clerking for Justice Frank Huskins of the state Supreme Court, Joe Hackney worked as an assistant district attorney in Orange and Chatham counties from 1971 to 1974.
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John Bunting co-captains Carolina's ACC championship football team
Linebacker John Bunting was co-captain, with quarterback Paul Miller, of the 1971 Tar Heels, who went 9-3 and won the Atlantic Coast Conference title. He was named first-team All-ACC and the team's defensive MVP.
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Kenan Laboratories open for the chemistry department
The chemistry department's Kenan Labs opened in 1971, a building project Little led as chair to give the growing faculty laboratory space.
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Orange High School gets a gymnasium
The Orange High gymnasium, the fourth building on the campus plan, is dated 1971 under Superintendent George F. Williams.
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Orange and Alamance agree on Orange children attending Alamance schools
Worried that growing numbers of western Orange children rode Alamance buses to Mebane schools, the board released to Alamance all children living within a mile of the county line and let those farther out stay if they chose. It also allowed out-of-county attendance if families paid tuition and provided transportation.
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The Flower Ladies move off the main sidewalk to NCNB Plaza
In 1971 the Flower Ladies moved their stands from the Franklin Street sidewalk into the NCNB Plaza passage and the alley next to the Intimate Bookshop.
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Woody Durham calls Carolina football and basketball on the radio
Durham, a 1963 UNC graduate, was the radio play-by-play voice of Tar Heel football and men's basketball for 40 years, calling more than 1,800 broadcasts.
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UNC announces Vermont Royster will join its faculty as Kenan professor of journalism and public affairs
The university announced that Vermont C. Royster, retiring as editor of The Wall Street Journal, would join the UNC faculty the next September as Kenan professor of journalism and public affairs. He taught journalism and political science in Chapel Hill until 1981.
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Chancellor Sitterson tells Tom Bello the university will control student activity fees
A dispute over student activity fees began when Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson told student body president Tom Bello that the university would keep control of spending all student activity fees. In March Student Government took a 90-page report to the trustees' executive committee asking it to confirm Student Government's authority over the fees.
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Student Donnie Riddle is stabbed to death at Orange High School
Donnie Riddle was killed in the Orange High bus parking lot while trying to shield the assistant principal from three former students who had dropped out. The school stayed closed until February 7, when enough officers were on hand to keep out anyone without business there.
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Chapel Hill's Board of Adjustment turns down a ten-pump gas station on West Franklin Street
The Board of Adjustment voted unanimously to deny Kenan Oil Company a special use permit to clear the site of an older service station and build a ten-pump self-service gas pavilion. The company sued, and in December 1971 Superior Court upheld the denial.
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Trial of three Storm Troopers for the death of James Cates opens
Ronnie Broadwell, Rufus Paul Nelson and William Johnson went on trial in Orange County Superior Court in Hillsborough before Judge Thomas Cooper on second-degree murder charges, reduced from first degree. District Solicitor Herbert Pierce prosecuted, and prosecution witnesses placed the three defendants around Cates with weapons.
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All-white jury acquits three men in the killing of James Cates
A jury of 11 men and one woman, all white, found Ronnie Broadwell, Rufus Paul Nelson and William Johnson not guilty after about an hour and a half of deliberation. The defense called no witnesses.
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The Hazel-Nash House is listed in the National Register
On March 31, 1971 the National Park Service listed the Hazel-Nash House in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Eagle Lodge is listed in the National Register
On April 16, 1971 the National Park Service listed Eagle Lodge in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Howard Lee is re-elected mayor over Jack Maultsby
Lee won a second term against three challengers, leading restaurant co-owner Jack Maultsby 1,999 to 1,352 with two-thirds of the vote counted on election night; NCpedia gives his final share as 64 percent. The same ballot narrowly approved a Chapel Hill-Carrboro bus system in Chapel Hill, which Carrboro voters rejected.
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Playmakers Theatre (Smith Hall) is listed in the National Register
On June 24, 1971 the National Park Service listed Playmakers Theatre (Smith Hall) in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church and Churchyard is listed in the National Register
On June 24, 1971 the National Park Service listed Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church and Churchyard in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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The Old Orange County Courthouse is listed in the National Register
On June 24, 1971 the National Park Service listed the Old Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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General Assembly gives North Carolina Memorial Hospital its own board of directors
Legislation passed in July 1971 created a board of directors for the hospital and separated it administratively from the School of Medicine, whose dean it had answered to since 1956.
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The Ruffin-Roulhac House is listed in the National Register
On August 5, 1971 the National Park Service listed the Ruffin-Roulhac House in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Ayr Mount is listed in the National Register
On August 26, 1971 the National Park Service listed Ayr Mount in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Sans Souci is listed in the National Register
On August 26, 1971 the National Park Service listed Sans Souci in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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The Nash Law Office is listed in the National Register
On September 28, 1971 the National Park Service listed the Nash Law Office in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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The Nash-Hooper House is listed in the National Register
On November 11, 1971 the National Park Service listed the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Black Student Movement holds a first-anniversary memorial for James Cates
The Black Student Movement and the Afro-American Society of Chapel Hill High School gathered at noon at the Confederate Monument and marched across campus to the Pit in memory of Cates. The service also protested the killing of William Murphy by a highway patrolman in Ayden.
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The governor appoints a commission to study the future of the university's water and sewer systems
Governor Robert W. Scott named a Utilities Study Commission to weigh whether the University of North Carolina should keep, sell or otherwise dispose of the water and sewer systems it operated for Chapel Hill and Carrboro. On May 28, 1976 the commission concluded that divesting most of the university's utility holdings was the best course.
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The Chapel Hill Historic District is listed in the National Register
On December 16, 1971 the National Park Service listed the Chapel Hill Historic District in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Andy Griffith sets up a scholarship for Carolina drama and music students
Griffith established a scholarship fund in his name for promising dramatic art and music students at Carolina, which the university says continues today.
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Charles E. Daye joins the UNC School of Law as its first Black tenure-track professor
Charles E. Daye, a Durham native, came to the UNC law faculty in 1972 from Covington & Burling as the school's first African American tenure-track professor. He taught torts, housing and community development and administrative advocacy, and advised the Black Law Students Association from 1972 until 2014.
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Daniel Boone Village grows into an amusement park
By 1972 the Daniel Boone Recreation Park had a roller rink, an ice rink, a ski lift, a refrigerated toboggan slide, an antique car and wax museum, a fort, an amphitheater and a campground, circled by a small railroad on which costumed performers staged holdups. With relocated log cabins and false-front shops it looked like a frontier town, and Freeland was dubbed the "Walt Disney of Hillsborough."
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Efland and Orange Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporated
As the Orange Rural Fire Department's board worked from 1971 to set up fire districts covering the whole county, rural communities formed their own departments: the Orange Grove Volunteer Fire Department in 1972 and the Efland Volunteer Fire Department on September 8, 1972. New Hope followed in February 1973.
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Frank Porter Graham is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972), first president of the consolidated University of North Carolina and later a United States senator, was buried in the cemetery.
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Hortense McClinton begins teaching a course on institutional racism
In 1972 McClinton launched a course on institutional racism in the UNC School of Social Work.
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Jeff MacNelly wins the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
Jeff MacNelly, a former Chapel Hill Weekly cartoonist then drawing for The Richmond News Leader, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning at the age of 24.
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Jon Condoret designs a Modernist house for Drs. Jerome and Jacqueline Harris
Chapel Hill architect Jon Andre Condoret, an Algerian-born graduate of the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, designed an L-shaped brick and cedar house with clerestory windows for Duke physicians Jerome and Jacqueline Harris on a wooded tract of nearly fifty acres northeast of Hillsborough.
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Marinda Dunnigan McPherson is recorded singing songs she learned from her family
McKellar Israel recorded McPherson in the fall of 1972 and the fall of 1973, singing children's games, play party songs and spirituals she learned from family members, among them songs she first recalled hearing her grandmother Marinda Hart sing about 1920. Israel also interviewed her and her husband David McPherson about community events and history.
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North Carolina funds UNC's TEACCH autism program as a statewide system of regional centers
State funding in 1972 created a regional-center system for TEACCH, the autism program Eric Schopler had developed at UNC-Chapel Hill, providing clinical services, training and research across North Carolina.
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Phillips Russell publishes These Old Stone Walls
Russell's last book, a collection of stories and historical anecdotes about Chapel Hill, appeared in 1972, two years before he died.
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Restaurateur Edward "Papa D" Danziger is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Edward "Papa D" Danziger (1893-1972), whose Chapel Hill restaurants fed generations of students, was buried in the cemetery.
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Richard E. Whitted becomes Orange County's first Black county commissioner
Richard E. Whitted, born in Hillsborough, became the first Black member of the Orange County Board of Commissioners in 1972.
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Rogers Road environmental justice
In 1972 officials placed the county landfill on Eubanks Road beside the historically Black Rogers Road community, promising it would run about ten years. It was expanded instead and did not close until 2013, and residents' organizing through the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association helped win a sewer line for the neighborhood, completed in 2019.
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Rogers Road landfill opens
Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County opened a shared, unlined county landfill on Eubanks Road, built in late 1972 beside the historically Black Rogers-Eubanks community, whose residents were told it would close after about ten years. It was expanded repeatedly and ran for 41 years, closing in June 2013.
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The James Tilley farmhouse is moved farther back from NC 54
In 1972 the Tilley I-house was shifted to a spot farther from NC 54, a move the report says damaged its historic character.
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The Orange County landfill campaign
The Eubanks Road landfill opened beside the Rogers Road community in 1972; four decades of expansions, lawsuits and the neighborhood's demands ended with its closure in 2013.
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The Pegasus, a gay bar, operates in the former Cave on West Franklin Street
In 1972 the basement bar once called the Cave, under the Record and Tape Center near Carrboro, ran as the Pegasus, a gay bar with a jukebox and a back room for dancing. A letter in the Daily Tar Heel called it defunct by February 1973.
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The Town of Hillsborough buys the Ruffin-Roulhac House for its town hall
The Ruffin-Roulhac House and its outbuildings, empty since the 1920s, were sold to the Town of Hillsborough in 1972. The town rehabilitated them as its town hall complex by 1975.
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UNC School of Medicine launches the Area Health Education Centers program
The AHEC program began in 1972 with three regions under an 8.5 million dollar federal contract with the UNC School of Medicine, to train and place health professionals across North Carolina. The General Assembly funded a statewide network of nine regions in 1974, and all nine were running by 1975.
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UNC abolishes the office of dean of women
The university ended the dean of women's office in 1972, after twenty-six years under Katherine Kennedy Carmichael. She stayed on as associate dean of students for supportive services.
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UNC names its new history building Hamilton Hall
The university named the new building occupied by its History Department for J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, founder of the Southern Historical Collection.
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Walter Royal Davis serves as a UNC trustee
Davis sat on the university's board of trustees and in the 1970s argued that proceeds from the state's sale of the university's utilities should go to the university.
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Betty Smith is buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery
Smith died in January 1972 after being moved to a convalescent home in Shelton, Connecticut. A funeral mass was said at St. Thomas More Church in Chapel Hill and she was buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery.
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N. Ferebee Taylor serves as chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill
Nelson Ferebee Taylor was the chief administrative officer of the Chapel Hill campus for eight years. His office's records deal with desegregation, the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare lawsuit and consent decree, and campus development.
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The Chapel of the Cross is listed in the National Register
On February 1, 1972 the National Park Service listed the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Moorefields is listed in the National Register
Moorefields was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. It was the earliest listing among the six rural Orange County properties the 1993 county survey found on the Register.
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Chapel Hill aldermen voted to buy the Eubanks Road site for the county landfill
Three months after the Chestnut Ridge site was abandoned, the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to buy a 200-acre tract on Eubanks Road for $235,000. An unlined landfill was then built on about 80 acres of it, next to the Black Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood.
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New Hope Improvement Association sues to stop the Eubanks Road landfill
Opponents of the landfill formed the New Hope Improvement Association, which drew about 500 members, and filed a lawsuit in late September 1972. The suit was denied in early October.
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The Commandant's House is listed in the National Register
The castellated brick house built for the Hillsborough Military Academy's commandant, the academy's only major surviving building, was entered in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Officials signed the landfill agreement that carried promises to the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood
RENA's chronology records that Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee, Mayor Robert Wells Jr. and county commission chairman H.D. Bennett signed the full landfill agreement. Residents remember Lee promising that their road would be paved and that the filled site would become a recreation center for them.
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Black Student Movement march remembers James Cates
A Black Student Movement march in memory of James Cates was photographed by Les Todd, whose print is now held in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives at Wilson Library.
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Cat's Cradle reopens on West Rosemary Street
After about a year closed, Cat's Cradle reopened in 1973 at 405½ West Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, its second home, run by Marcia Wilson and Bill Smith. Its first home had been a small basement room near campus.
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Chancellor Taylor spends a night in Winston Residence Hall
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor and other administrators stayed overnight in Winston Residence Hall to draw attention to overcrowded student housing. The same year Winston became UNC's first room-by-room coed residence hall.
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Eno River State Park is created
After years of citizen opposition to damming the Eno for a reservoir, Governor James Holshouser accepted the first tracts for Eno River State Park in June 1973, including 90 acres donated by Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Bernheim. The first 1,000 acres opened to the public in 1975 along the river in Orange and Durham counties.
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Henry W. Lewis serves as director of the Institute of Government
Lewis succeeded to the directorship of the Institute of Government in 1973 and held it until he retired from the faculty in 1979.
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Hillsborough designates its local historic district
In the same year the Hillsborough Historic District was nominated to the National Register, the town designated a local historic district.
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Powell moves from the North Carolina Collection to the history faculty
Powell left the North Carolina Collection to teach North Carolina history on the UNC faculty, where he stayed until 1986 and taught more than 6,000 students.
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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.
