Search and filters
Search and filters
6,368 dated events and 63 storylines match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,368 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 4,601–4,800 of 6,431, 200 to a page.Back to highlights
Entries
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1950s
-
Efland-Cheeks School gets its first addition
An addition went up in 1959 on the north side of the 1952 Efland-Cheeks School, which Archie Royal Davis had designed for Black children in western Orange County. A modern wing larger than the original school followed around 1980.
-
English professor Hugh Holman and his wife Verna build a Cape Cod house on Pine Lane
The story-and-a-half side-gabled house has two dormers and a small side wing.
-
Institute of Government staff draft a new state law on municipal annexation
Assistant directors Philip Green Jr., George Esser and Jake Wicker wrote a new North Carolina annexation law for a state study commission. The law, which stayed unchanged for more than forty years and became a model elsewhere, let the state's cities grow without being ringed by small incorporated suburbs.
-
J. H. and Pauline McAdams build a Ranch house on Revere Road
Their brick house at 418 Revere Road, with its shallow hipped roof, banks of awning windows and built-in carport, is the survey's model example of the Ranch house in Hillsborough.
-
Mary Claire Engstrom and her husband buy the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough
In 1959 Mary Claire Engstrom, who had earned a UNC doctorate in English literature in 1939, and her husband, UNC French professor Alfred G. Engstrom, bought the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough. From then on she turned her research to the history of Hillsborough and its surroundings.
-
Mount Herman Baptist Church leases the closed Murphey School
Once the school closed, the county board leased the empty building to Mt. Herman Baptist Church for one year at $25 a month.
-
Murphey School closes and its pupils go to Hillsborough
After years of falling attendance the county closed Murphey School in 1959 and moved its pupils to the elementary schools in Hillsborough.
-
Research Triangle Park and Orange County's growth
The Research Triangle Foundation, formed in 1959, ran the research park planned between Durham and Raleigh around UNC, N.C. State and Duke. That November Orange County commissioners said the park would bring the county mainly new residents and school costs rather than taxable industry, and began discussing county-wide zoning.
-
Robert Rosenbacher opens The Hub, a men's clothing store, on East Franklin Street
The Hub took the store Charles Shields had just closed after 36 years of running his Home Owned Grocery there. It stayed 37 years, closing in 1996.
-
Robert Seymour becomes the first pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church
Robert Seymour came to Chapel Hill in 1959 as the first minister of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, organized the year before. He led it until 1988.
-
Samuel Selden leaves the Playmakers and Harry E. Davis takes over the Department of Dramatic Art
Selden left Chapel Hill in 1959 to chair the Department of Theatre Arts at UCLA, and Harry E. Davis became chairman of the Department of Dramatic Art.
-
The Fairview Extension is platted and filled with look-alike Ranch houses
The south end of Fairview, west of North Nash Street and south of US 70, was platted in 1959. Its houses are three variations on one Ranch design that differ only in their outside materials, which suggests they were built on speculation.
-
The Institute's dormitory lodges sixteen thousand overnight guests in a year
Sixteen thousand people stayed overnight in the Knapp Building's dormitory during the 1959-60 academic year, and attendance at Institute events and instruction had grown about tenfold since the building opened in 1956.
-
The Masonic Hall on West Franklin Street is torn down for a department store parking lot
The Masonic Hall at Church Street was razed and its ground paved as a parking lot for the Belk-Leggett store next door.
-
The Oh Boy Drive-In opens at West Rosemary and Church streets
The Oh Boy Drive-In, run by the Boy family of Durham, was nearing completion at the corner of West Rosemary and Church streets in early July 1959. It was hiring in early August and serving cars by late August.
-
The law faculty and the Institute staff vote against merging the Institute into the law school
When Albert Coates pressed again to fold the Institute of Government into the UNC law school, both the law faculty and the Institute's own staff voted the idea down. Assistant director John Sanders warned that the Institute's service work would be subordinated to the law school and its identity lost.
-
University Methodist Church adds a Sunday school wing
The congregation built an education wing on the east side of its brick church at 150 East Franklin Street in 1959.
-
The Chapel Hill News Leader suspends publication
The semiweekly Chapel Hill News Leader announced in its January 29, 1959 issue that it was stopping publication. The paper had gone into receivership.
-
A Hollywood crew films a racing drama at Orange Speedway and the Colonial Inn
A film company shot scenes for a television drama starring James Whitmore at Orange Speedway and the Colonial Inn in Hillsborough. Speedway co-owner Enoch Staley brought in several well-known drivers, among them Buck Baker, for close-up scenes.
-
A state audit reports irregularities in the Institute of Government's accounts
State Auditor Henry Bridges reported a gap of $5,064.32 in the Institute's books, caused by careless record keeping and slow deposit of room fees and book sales, not by missing money. Coates took the blame and paid $5,100 at once; he was repaid once he documented the spending, but staff who had not been warned in advance were angry.
-
The University tears down the Abernethy house on South Columbia Street for Ackland grounds and parking
UNC bought the house from the widow of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, long the director of the University Infirmary, and tore it down to extend the Ackland Art Center grounds and make a gravel lot of about 60 faculty parking spaces. The house dated from 1905 and had housed many students.
-
Dwight Ray and Seaton Lloyd sell the Lloyd-Ray Hardware Store after 37 years
The partners sold the Carrboro hardware store they had opened in 1922, long a gathering place for local politics. Tilden Hardware and Furniture Store held its grand opening in the same space on May 1, 1959.
-
Cedar Grove's advisory committee asks for two more classrooms
Lonnie Thompson, Arthur Wells, Carter White, Wayne Compton and Oscar Beasley of the school's advisory committee asked the board for a two-classroom addition. The board agreed to consider it and in August approved Archie Royal Davis's plans with a $20,000 limit.
-
Orange County's first ABC liquor store opens north of Hillsboro
Two months after voters approved county liquor stores on February 3, the first ABC store opened in a new building that also held the county ABC warehouse, near where Highways 70 and 86 meet. It was the county's first legal whiskey sale in the modern era.
-
Chapel Hill Public Library shows Bayard Wootten photographs after her death
Weeks after Bayard Wootten died in New Bern, the Chapel Hill Public Library displayed her 1930s photographs of western North Carolina, made to illustrate two UNC Press books, Backwoods America and Cabins in the Laurel.
-
Sandy McClamroch is elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
McClamroch, one of five candidates for three seats, was elected on May 5, 1959 with F. E. Strowd and Roland Giduz, and was sworn in with Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell the following Monday night. Campaigning, he had called for coordinating town and university planning and for bringing the university's payments for town services above the table.
-
Mayor Cornwell presses the state to widen the highways into Chapel Hill
Sworn in for a new term with aldermen F. E. Strowd and Sandy McClamroch, Mayor Cornwell wrote to the state's director of highways urging four-lane roads toward Durham and Raleigh and calling U.S. 15-501 and N.C. 54 major entrances to the university.
-
Chapel Hill's ABC liquor store opens in Eastgate Shopping Center
The county ABC system's Chapel Hill store opened in Eastgate Shopping Center and sold between $2,000 and $3,000 of liquor a day in its first two days, about half again the daily average at the Hillsboro store, which had opened April 10.
-
O. David Garvin resigns as health director of the five county district
Garvin, health director for Orange, Person, Chatham, Lee and Caswell counties since 1944, resigned effective June 15, 1959 to rejoin the U.S. Public Health Service in its Chronic Disease Branch. The paper described him as a native of Wagner, South Carolina.
-
Stanley Vickers's parents apply for his transfer from Northside Elementary to Carrboro Elementary
After ten-year-old Stanley Boya Vickers finished fifth grade at Northside Elementary School in June 1959, his parents, Thomas Lee and Lattice Vickers, filed a written application to have him reassigned to Carrboro Elementary School, which was much nearer their home. The school board denied it on August 3, 1959.
-
Duke Power opens its remodeled Hillsboro office on King Street
Duke Power Company held an open house at its newly remodeled Hillsboro office, then numbered 110 King Street, showing new facilities and electric appliances. Manager C. B. Parris had served the town's customers since 1936.
-
Health officer asks county commissioners for money to buy polio vaccine
District health director O. David Garvin asked the Board of County Commissioners for a special appropriation to buy Salk vaccine for schoolchildren and pregnant women who could not pay, after federal vaccine allotments were cut and shots became required for school entry. The board agreed to provide funds if needed but told him to seek March of Dimes money from the county polio chapter first.
-
Jim Tatum dies at Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill
Tatum apparently contracted an overwhelming viral infection while visiting Canada with the coaches Peahead Walker and Frank Howard, and died one week after entering Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He was buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
-
Arthur Wells is named to the county's new agricultural extension advisory board
A 16-member Orange County Agricultural Extension Advisory Board, proposed by the extension service to advise on the county's farm program, was approved with Arthur Wells of Cedar Grove among its farmer representatives.
-
Chapel Hill school board refuses Stanley Vickers a transfer to all-white Carrboro Elementary and adopts a first-grade proximity policy
The Chapel Hill City Board of Education denied ten-year-old Stanley Vickers a transfer from all-Black Northside Elementary to the nearer all-white Carrboro Elementary School, and at the same meeting adopted a policy of limited integration at the first-grade level starting with the 1960-61 year. UNC law dean Henry Brandis, who had twice moved to approve the transfer, resigned from the board in protest and called the action both morally and legally indefensible.
-
White Cross voters turn down a merger with the Chapel Hill schools a second time
White Cross voters defeated a merger of their school into the Chapel Hill city district, 116 to 110, a year after Carrboro had joined it; a first vote had failed in May 1958. A third vote failed in the spring of 1960, and the county closed the school in 1961. The county board sold the White Cross property to Edmiston Realty Company for $14,900 in 1967.
-
Brandis returns for the Vickers hearing, then leaves the Chapel Hill school board
Brandis withdrew his August 3 resignation so he could sit at the board's hearing on Stanley Vickers's transfer request on August 31. He resigned again after that meeting, and the board named a committee to find his successor.
-
Orange County builds its third ABC store near the Alamance line at Carr
The county ABC board put up a concrete-block liquor store on Mutt Byrd's land about 200 yards from the Alamance County line on the Roxboro-Burlington highway, with opening expected in mid-September. By early 1960 nearly all of its sales went to Alamance County customers.
-
The county school board sells the old Carrboro School to the Town of Carrboro
After the new Carrboro elementary school opened, the Orange County Board of Education accepted the town's $30,000 bid, the only one at an August auction, for the empty 14-classroom building and auditorium on West Main Street. The town planned to make it a municipal building, and voters approved a $95,000 bond issue for the purchase and renovation on March 19, 1960.
-
Chapel Hill opens its Glen Lennox fire station
The town's second fire station, on South Hamilton Road in Glen Lennox, opened without ceremony when two pumper trucks moved in from the main station on Columbia Street. The aldermen had let contracts in February for the building, designed by Archie Davis of Durham and paid for from 1957 bonds.
-
Orange County commissioners give a cool reception to a Research Triangle planning request
At a special meeting, Orange County commissioners gave only a lukewarm reception to a request to help fund a land development survey for the Research Triangle area and took no action pending firm figures. The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the county expected to gain mostly new residents and school costs from the park rather than industry, and commissioners discussed zoning the area northeast of Chapel Hill toward the Durham County line.
-
James and Myrtle Graham, a Black Efland couple, buy the old Efland Home cottage
In December 1959 James Nills Graham, called Nello, and Myrtle McAdoo Graham, both raised on Efland farms, bought the former reformatory cottage and 2.4 acres, and the Graham family kept it for more than fifty years. They belonged to White Cross A.M.E. Church and are buried there.
- 1960s
-
A mill house is moved from South Wake Street to West Orange Street
The small house at 330 West Orange Street, built around 1941, is a mill house moved in the 1960s from the 200 block of South Wake Street.
-
A nursing home is built at 401 North Churton Street
A one-story brick nursing home, built in the form of the Ranch houses of its day, goes up about 1960 at 401 North Churton Street.
-
A two-story lodge for Prince Hall Masons and the Eastern Star is built on West Orange Street
A concrete-block lodge was built in the 1960s at 210 West Orange Street for St. James Lodge No. 494 of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge and the St. Anita Maria chapter No. 622 of the Eastern Star. It stands on the site of a school for Black children shown on the 1924 Sanborn map and gained a rear wing in 1991.
-
A vocational building is added at Central High School
Between 1960 and 1962 the county added a one-story, flat-roofed, brick-veneered vocational building with metal awning windows to the Central High campus in Hillsborough.
-
Architect Arthur Cogswell designs his own house on Marilyn Lane
Cogswell's 1960 house at 5 Marilyn Lane sits on two levels in a slope, planned on George Matsumoto's four-foot grid and sided in vertical pine, with a short bridge from the drive to the door and a living room under a row of small glass-ended gables. It won an award from the North Carolina chapter of the AIA.
-
Architect Wade Williams builds a Wright-influenced house for himself on Whitfield Road
Durham architect R. Wade Williams designed a flat-roofed Modernist house with exposed-aggregate block walls and dark-red board siding for himself and his wife, kitchen designer Mary Louise Gunter Williams, on an eighteen-acre wooded tract northeast of Chapel Hill. Her parents helped pay for it.
-
Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro in
The 1960 census counted 42,970 people in Orange County, 12,573 in Chapel Hill and 1,997 in Carrboro. Chapel Hill township had 25,030, up from 18,222 in 1950.
-
Central High builds its "300" elementary wing
Another classroom building, the "300" wing or Elementary School building, went up at Central High from 1960 to 1962. With a vocational and band building finished in 1962, the campus reached the six buildings that stand today.
-
Charles E. Maddry writes a history of Mount Moriah Baptist Church
Charles Edward Maddry wrote a history of Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Orange County; it survives in his papers at UNC.
-
Cornelia Spencer Love gives private funds toward a new library on East Franklin Street
Love donated private money during the 1960s to help build the town's new public library on East Franklin Street.
-
Don Stewart designs a Japanese-influenced house for Robert and Ruth Mace
Around 1960 Stewart's work turned toward Asian models, as in the one-level house he drew for physicist Robert Mace and his wife Ruth at 222 Hillcrest Circle, off East Franklin Street. Its wide roof overhang and the screen beside the entrance have a Japanese cast, and a tall porch shades the south side.
-
Don Stewart designs the Bowers-Nelson House in Morgan Creek Hills
Built about 1960 at 903 Coker Drive, this small house on a sloping lot is Stewart's most direct borrowing from Japanese houses. Its post-and-beam frame is exposed outside and was first painted in bright colors, and paper shoji screens slide on tracks to divide the rooms.
-
Edward and Elizabeth Waugh publish The South Builds
Architect Edward Waugh and his wife Elizabeth published The South Builds with the University of North Carolina Press in 1960, a survey of new Southern architecture that favored modern buildings suited to the region's climate.
-
Henry Roland Totten develops the first sections of Coker Hills
Coker College hired UNC botanist Henry Roland Totten, a colleague of the late W. C. Coker, to develop its Estes Drive land, and the first sections of Coker Hills went up along Elliott and Clayton roads in 1960 and 1961. The rest of the neighborhood was built out through 1972.
-
Hillsborough and New Sharon Methodist churches each become a station church
Two years after they finished their shared parsonage, Hillsborough and New Sharon left the charge arrangement and each became a station church with its own pastor.
-
James Freeland builds the General Joseph E. Johnston Motel at US 70 and Interstate 85
Builder James Freeland put up the General Joseph E. Johnston Motel on US 70 near the new Interstate 85, part of a roadside group with his ice rink and, across the highway, the General Sherman Restaurant.
-
James Freeland buys the South Churton Street land that becomes Daniel Boone Village
James Freeland bought the land on South Churton Street in 1960. He developed it from the 1960s as Daniel Boone Village, a motel, restaurant and amusement complex, and his family kept it after his death.
-
James J. Freeland develops Holiday Park with a swimming pool
In the 1960s Freeland built Holiday Park northwest of town, a development with its own pool and other amenities; some of its houses were former Eno Mill village houses moved to the site.
-
James J. Freeland remodels and sells the Colonial Inn
Freeland, who also restored and moved old buildings, owned the Colonial Inn on West King Street for a time and remodeled it before selling it in the 1960s.
-
Manly Wade Wellman teaches creative writing at the university
Wellman taught creative writing classes in the Evening College of the University of North Carolina and was known for helping new writers.
-
Mrs. Erle G. Hill restores the Patterson-Palmer House with architect Archie Royal Davis
Owner Mrs. Erle G. Hill restored the Federal house on West Margaret Lane with architect Archie Royal Davis, replacing the roof, dormers, front portico, shutters and siding and returning the rooms to their first plan. By 1963 it was shown on Hillsborough's spring pilgrimage.
-
North Carolina Memorial Hospital admits its 100,000th patient
UNC A to Z records that the hospital welcomed its 100,000th patient in 1960, eight years after it opened.
-
Political scientist Gordon Cleveland designs his own Colonial Revival house on Pine Lane
Ellington & Sparrow built the side-hall house for Gordon and Martha Cleveland on a sloping lot with a full basement.
-
The Bellevue mill changes hands and runs as Hillsboro Mills
In the 1960s the mill was sold to investors from the Northeast, and trade directories list it as Hillsboro Mills.
-
The Chapel Hill Friends Meeting opens its meetinghouse
Mildred Ringwalt, who joined the Chapel Hill Friends in 1959, was influential in building the Quaker meetinghouse that opened in 1960 and later raised money to enlarge it. A Carolina Friends School tribute says she sold most of her Oriental art to finance the building and anonymously gave the money to finish it.
-
The Glendale subdivision is developed north of Battle Park
During the 1960s the Glendale subdivision was built on the hilly ground north of Battle Park, with houses by Cogswell/Hausler and other modernist firms.
-
The Haralson-Strudwick House on West Queen Street is torn down
The antebellum house that Dr. Edmund Strudwick had enlarged was razed in 1960. Its brick kitchen was kept and enlarged as a residence, and a Dutch Colonial Revival house went up on the site in 1969.
-
The Piedmont Electric office on East Tryon Street is raised to two stories
The flat-roofed brick office built for the Piedmont Electric Company around 1950 as a one-story building was enlarged to two stories in 1960.
-
The open court in the middle of the Bellevue mill is roofed over for storage
For more storage, the owners roofed the space inside the U-shaped mill with open-web steel trusses running from the main mill to the weaving room and closed its east side with a new wall, removing the 1923 stair tower.
-
UNC football coach Jim Hickey builds a two-story Colonial Revival house on Iris Lane
The weatherboarded house has a pedimented entrance porch and a garage wing topped by a small cupola. Hickey lived there until 1977.
-
UNC gives John Lindsay Morehead an honorary doctor of laws
The university honored Morehead, principal officer of the Morehead Foundation, as the architect of the Morehead scholarship plan.
-
William Van Sprinkle designs a long Contemporary Ranch on Buttons Road for Charles and Kay Bream
The six-bay house for the radiology professor mixes vertical wood and brick, with sliding windows and a carport set on the diagonal. Sprinkle, known for Colonial Revival work, here turned to a modern design.
-
Ted Danziger opens the Zoom-Zoom, a carryout restaurant on West Franklin Street
Ted Danziger opened Zigger's Zoom-Zoom, a carryout and home delivery restaurant managed by Hal Sieber, a block from his Rathskeller. Its menu ran from rotisserie chicken to lasagna in casseroles.
-
The Vickers family files its federal suit against the Chapel Hill City Board of Education
Suing through his parents, Stanley Vickers asked the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina to declare his right to attend the public schools without racial discrimination. After the board turned down his June 1960 application to Chapel Hill Junior High, the complaint was amended to seek that school, and the case was tried on October 5, 1960.
-
Chapel Hill freedom movement
Nine Lincoln High students began Chapel Hill's sit-ins at Colonial Drug on February 28, 1960. Through 1963 and 1964 Black residents and UNC students picketed, marched and sat in, and held a Holy Week fast at the post office, but the aldermen narrowly rejected a public accommodations ordinance and many businesses stayed segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
-
The Chapel Hill Nine sit-in
Nine Black young men held Chapel Hill’s first sit-in at Colonial Drug.
-
Lincoln High students picket Colonial Drug and sit in at the Bus Station Cafe
The day after the sit-in, nearly 100 Black high school students picketed Colonial Drug after manager John Carswell roped off its booths, while others filled the counter at the Bus Station Cafe until proprietor Leo Eliadis closed it and were served standing at the Long Meadow Dairy Bar.
-
The Gormleys take over Dud's Tavern as Gormley's Truck Stop and Restaurant
Mr. and Mrs. L. H. Gormley, who had run the Castle Steak House in Durham, took over Dud's Tavern on Highway 70 and advertised it as Gormley's Truck Stop and Restaurant.
-
The Chapel Hill sit-in movement forms an executive committee and retains counsel
At a Tuesday night meeting the Lincoln High demonstrators and their adult supporters organized, set up an executive committee to coordinate the lunch-counter protests and acquired legal counsel.
-
The Chapel Hill CORE Committee rejects a second truce and resumes picketing as 27 ministers back the protests
After a week-long pause the students' 12-member executive committee, led by Harold Foster, declined the Human Relations Committee's request for a second truce and resumed afternoon picketing at Colonial Drug and Long Meadow Dairy. Twenty-seven Chapel Hill ministers issued a statement commending the peaceful, non-violent picketing.
-
Chapel Hill aldermen refuse Chief Blake's picketing-control ordinance
The Board of Aldermen unanimously declined to pass an ordinance against blocking sidewalks that Police Chief William W. Blake had requested as a safety measure, saying its passage would be misread as interference with the peaceful picketing at Colonial Drug.
-
W. C. George and Lucius Cheshire are named Orange County managers of I. Beverly Lake's campaign
I. Beverly Lake named W. C. George of Chapel Hill and Lucius M. Cheshire of Hillsborough, both directors of the pro-segregation North Carolina Defenders of States Rights, co-managers of his campaign for governor in Orange County.
-
Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Chapel Hill
Invited by campus religious groups and the Carolina Forum, King spoke at University Baptist Church on May 8, 1960, visited two UNC sociology classes, and addressed an overflow crowd in Hill Hall on May 9 on the struggle for racial justice.
-
Chapel Hill school board admits its first Black pupils to a white school, three first graders at Estes Hills Elementary
Acting under its new proximity policy, the board voted unanimously to grant three of twelve Black reassignment applications for the 1960-61 first grade at previously all-white Estes Hills Elementary School. Applications to transfer to the white junior high school, including Stanley Vickers's, were refused.
-
Chapel Hill aldermen pay the town's share of the Research Triangle planning commission budget
The Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen appropriated $1,545, six percent of the $25,750 budget of the Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission for 1960-61. The commission also asked the Orange County commissioners for four percent, or $1,030.
-
Roland and Clara McClamroch deed the Nash house to their daughter Anna McClamroch McFall
English professor Roland McClamroch and his wife had bought the house from the Nashes and rented it to Robert and Alpha Wettach, who moved out around 1960. The house stayed in the McClamroch family until 1983.
-
The county board buys 100 acres from S. T. Latta for a new consolidated high school
The board bought 100 acres from S. T. Latta in August 1960 for a new county high school, set aside $100,000 toward the building in July 1961 and accepted construction bids in May 1962. The school opened as Orange High School in 1963.
-
The Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association lays the cornerstone of its North Churton Street office
Cornerstone ceremonies were set for the association's new office on the east side of North Churton Street, half a block north of the court square, under construction since early June. Charles C. Hartmann of Greensboro designed the one-story Colonial Revival building with a drive-in window.
-
Young and Wilkins open the Better Homes and Gardens Idea Home on Christopher Road
The 1960 Better Homes and Gardens Idea Home, built by David Curl for the Chapel Hill realtors Young and Wilkins, opened for public tours at 808 Christopher Road, across the bypass from Glen Lennox. It was the only Idea Home shown in North Carolina that year and stayed open through October 2.
-
An Orange County jury convicts four men of arson and conspiracy in the Reverie plant fire
After a three-day trial in Orange County Superior Court, a jury found four men, among them an ILGWU representative from Atlanta, guilty of burning the Reverie Lingerie plant. Judge Raymond Mallard sentenced them the next day to five to twelve years, and all appealed.
-
Richard Petty wins his first race at Orange Speedway
Richard Petty, 23, took the pole and led all 110 laps of the September 100-mile race at Orange Speedway, finishing a lap ahead of Ned Jarrett. His father Lee had won the track's May race.
-
Two classrooms are added to the south wing of Cedar Grove School
The two classrooms at the south end of the original wing, built to Archie Royal Davis's plans on bids taken in fall 1959, were finished by September 6, 1960, when the board inspected them with Davis and contractor Lindsay Fogelman.
-
The Dickson house near Hillsborough is left empty when its last tenant moves out
The last tenant left the Dickson house, General Johnston's headquarters in 1865, and the house owned by Mary R. Few stood vacant beside the new Interstate 85 interchange. In March 1961 the News of Orange reported it crumbling while a motel site next door was offered for sale.
-
The university's attorney finds the trustees never deeded the cemetery to the town
In a letter of November 11, 1960 to J. A. Branch of the university business office, university attorney J. A. Williams reported no sign that the trustees had ever conveyed title to the cemetery land to Chapel Hill.
-
Governor Luther Hodges accepts the Knapp Building for the state at its dedication
A four-day dedication of the Institute of Government's headquarters, for which officials were invited by congressional district and the Kughler murals were unveiled, closed with Governor Hodges accepting the million-dollar building on behalf of the state. Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr. stayed for the whole program.
-
James Freeland opens his rebuilt Holiday Ice Rink beside the General Johnston Motel
James Freeland opened a new 65 by 180 foot Holiday Ice Rink on US 70 three miles west of Durham, replacing a rink whose roof had caved in under snow the winter before. It stood next to his new General Johnston Motel.
-
Aycock suspends a basketball player in the betting scandal and makes Dean Smith head coach
After the player Doug Moe accepted $75 from a gambler in 1961, Chancellor Aycock suspended him and said the integrity of the institution was involved. Aycock then raised assistant coach Dean Smith to head coach.
-
Cane Creek Reservoir and Bingham Township
From the first engineering studies of 1961 to the filling of the reservoir in 1989: OWASA's Cane Creek Reservoir, the watershed land purchases, and the Bingham Township farm families displaced.
-
Carrboro Elementary School enrolls its first Black pupils
Eight Black first graders were assigned to Carrboro Elementary under the 1961 zoning map, the school Stanley Vickers had been refused two years earlier. All but two requested and received transfers back to the Black school, so two Black children enrolled at Carrboro that fall.
-
Chapel Hill assigns first graders by residence zone and becomes the first North Carolina district with no all-white school
A school board elected on a desegregation platform took office on July 1, 1961 and adopted a single first-grade attendance map, assigning 24 Black children to Glenwood, 10 to Estes Hills and 8 to Carrboro Elementary after the zones were redrawn to reduce Carrboro's share. When school opened, every school in the district had at least one Black pupil for the first time in the state's history, and no incidents were reported.
-
Church and student groups picket Chapel Hill's Varsity Theatre
Local church groups and student organizations picketed the Varsity Theatre after Black patrons were refused entry. Later that year the management agreed to admit Black UNC students with ID, and the town's theaters were fully desegregated by early 1962.
-
Clara Jones is appointed a supervisor of the Orange County schools
Clara Jones, a Person County principal for twenty-seven years, joined the county staff as supervisor in 1961, assigned to the Cedar Grove, Efland-Cheeks and A. L. Stanback schools for Black children. After integration she ran special education testing and placement, and she retired in 1974.
-
Desegregating the Chapel Hill and Carrboro schools
After the school board refused in 1959 to admit ten-year-old Stanley Vickers to Carrboro Elementary, his parents sued, and their 1961 win in federal court set the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools on the course to desegregation. In 1966 all-Black Lincoln High merged into Chapel Hill High, and Lincoln's name, colors and mascot were left behind.
-
Frank McGuire leaves UNC and Dean Smith succeeds him
McGuire left Chapel Hill in 1961 to coach the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA. Dean Smith, who had joined his staff as an assistant in 1958, became head coach of the Tar Heels.
-
Historian J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton (1878-1961), the historian who built the Southern Historical Collection in the university library, was buried in the cemetery.
-
James Freeland's General Sherman Restaurant opens at US 70 and Interstate 85
The General Sherman Restaurant, built by James Freeland across the highway from his General Johnston Motel, opened around the clock and was billed as Orange County's newest. It became a common place for Democratic Party dinners and club luncheons in the early 1960s.
-
Leo Eliadis closes his bus station grill and opens Leo's Restaurant on West Franklin Street
After a Duke student sat in the Black section of the Chapel Hill bus station grill in June 1961 and was arrested at Leo Eliadis's request, Eliadis shut the grill. By early September he had opened Leo's Restaurant on West Franklin Street.
-
Mount Bright Baptist Church buys the Ellison lot and builds its first parsonage
Under its pastor Fred J. Boddie Jr. the congregation bought the Ellison home lot and put up its first parsonage there.
-
Teacher Maude Faucette retires after a long career in elementary schools
Maude Faucette, the last of the family at the house on the Eno, taught elementary school, seventh grade above all, in Orange and Caswell counties and in Arkansas before retiring in 1961.
-
The Field-Robbins House goes up on Timberly Drive
Doris and James Field built a Modernist house of contrasting materials and varied roof levels on their Timbercrest land in 1961 but lost it after defaulting on the mortgage. Dermatologist Jack Robbins and nurse Catherine Robbins bought it in August 1962, finished the interior and lived there the rest of their lives.
-
The Presbyterians build a larger church where the burned one stood
Three years after the 1958 fire, a new and bigger Presbyterian church went up on the old site on East Franklin Street.
-
The first Black students enter the formerly white Chapel Hill junior-senior high school on Franklin Street
For 1961-62 the board granted two of three Black applications to the white junior high school and later reassigned a fourth child who had moved into the district, while the federal court ordered Stanley Vickers admitted to the eighth grade there. Sheila Florence, who described herself as one of the first four Black students and who graduated from Chapel Hill High School on Franklin Street in 1965, was one of them, and Eugene Hines was another Black student in the school.
-
Troy and Robin Andrews return to the farm and enlarge the old Lloyd log house
After Troy Andrews retired in 1961 and inherited the farm with his sister Nita, he and Robin moved back and renovated and enlarged the early nineteenth-century hewn log house built for the Lloyd family, living there while they planned their new house.
-
UNC considers the Jordan Reservoir for its water and Okun argues for Cane Creek
While Okun was on sabbatical in 1961 the university began considering the Jordan Reservoir as a water source; on his return he persuaded the board that Cane Creek, which his students had studied in the 1950s, was the better site.
-
William Lanier Hunt gives 103 acres of the Morgan Creek gorge to UNC
Hunt gave UNC and the state about 103 acres of creek gorge and Catawba rhododendron bluffs along Morgan Creek, which became the William Lanier Hunt Arboretum, part of the North Carolina Botanical Garden lands.
-
L. J. Phipps and Stanley Peele form a law partnership in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill attorney L. J. Phipps took Stanley Peele, associated with him since he was admitted to the bar in 1959, into partnership.
-
Black parents at White Cross ask to send their children to White Cross School
The parents of 23 Black children living near White Cross applied to move them from the Hillsboro Negro elementary school, a long daily bus ride away, to the white school in their own community. Most of the children had gone to school in Chapel Hill until White Cross voters again turned down a merger with the Chapel Hill district in 1960.
-
The county school board refuses the White Cross transfer requests
The Orange County Board of Education turned down the Black families' request, saying no reassignment had been asked for within ten days of the parents being notified of their children's school.
-
UNC moves the Mitchell family graves from the campus to the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Four graves of Elisha Mitchell's infant sons and grandsons, in the old Mitchell garden near the center of campus, were exhumed under archaeologist Joffre Coe to make room for the expansion of the university's television and communications work. They were reburied in the Horace Williams plot in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery with the Rev. Vance Barron officiating.
-
Orange County's fourth ABC store opens at US 70 and Interstate 85
Orange County's fourth and largest ABC liquor store opened beside the General Sherman Restaurant, half a mile from the Durham County line. James Freeland built the colonial-style building and leased it to the county board; it was said to be the only ABC store in North Carolina on an interstate highway.
-
Kenan Oil Company buys A. J. Snipes Jr.'s oil business and brings Phillips 66 to Hillsboro
Kenan Oil Company of Durham, the Phillips 66 franchise holder, bought A. J. Snipes Jr.'s Esso distributorship on Highway 70, its first foothold in Hillsboro, and kept Snipes on as its local agent.
-
Floyd McKissick represents the White Cross children at a school board hearing
At a hearing on the transfers, the children were represented by Durham attorney Floyd McKissick; the county board denied them again, reading a statement it had prepared before the hearing began.
-
Carr's Super Market opens its new store across the street in Hillsboro
Carr's Super Market began a six-week grand opening of its new $250,000 store, five times the size of its old one across the street, with a terrazzo floor. Building began in April 1960, and Brodie Carr's son saw it through after his father had a stroke.
-
The school board's lawyer advises closing White Cross School rather than fight the case
A. H. Graham, attorney for the county board, told it the transfer fight could not be won and recommended shutting White Cross School instead.
-
Carrboro shows off its new town hall in the old Carrboro School
Several hundred people toured the renovated school at an open house. It now held the mayor's and clerk's offices, an auditorium, the public library, the police and fire departments with a jail, and National Guard quarters; the town had begun moving in that winter.
-
The Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association opens its new downtown office
The association held a public open house with prize drawings at its new office on North Churton Street, the building later known as the Hillsborough Savings Bank. Its 1950 office stayed open as a second location.
-
The county board votes to close White Cross School and send its white pupils to Hillsborough
Rather than admit the Black children, the Orange County school board decided to close White Cross School at the end of the school year and move its 75 white pupils to Cameron Park School in West Hillsboro, a step it tied to its ten-year building program.
-
Roosevelt Warner runs as the first Black candidate for Hillsboro's town board
Warner filed for one of the five seats on the Hillsboro Board of Commissioners, the first Black candidate to seek election in the town. In the May 2 election he finished last of the eight candidates with 180 votes; he won a seat on his second try in 1963.
-
McClamroch is sworn in as mayor and Joe Page is named to his aldermen seat
McClamroch and three re-elected aldermen, Adelaide Walters, Paul Wager and Hubert Robinson, were sworn in at the Monday night meeting of the Board of Aldermen by Recorder's Court Judge William Stewart. The board named businessman Joe Page to the unexpired two year aldermen's term McClamroch left on becoming mayor, and elected Mrs. Walters mayor pro tem.
-
Sandy McClamroch is elected mayor of Chapel Hill without opposition
McClamroch ran unopposed for mayor in the May 1961 town election. Before the vote he took questions from residents at a public meeting at the Negro Community Center sponsored by the Chapel Hill Fellowship for School Integration and the Civic Club, and on a WUNC radio panel, saying he wanted to improve the town's public relations and would discuss merging Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
-
Jones Grove dedicates a concrete-block church built by its own members
Congregants Otha Thompson and A. J. Breeze served as general contractors and Thomas Watkins supplied lumber for a front-gable concrete-block sanctuary paid for with members' gifts. The 1928 frame church to the west was torn down when it was done.
-
A.D. Clark Pool opens
Chapel Hill's swimming pool for Black residents, at the Roberson Street community center and now the A.D. Clark Pool, was dedicated on June 15, 1961. Cornelia Spencer Love gave $40,000 to build it, Black residents supplied labor and raised money for the bath house, and Adolphus D. Clark led the pool association.
-
R. D. Smith is named to a new Chapel Hill Planning Board
After the whole Planning Board resigned in June 1961 in protest at the aldermen's handling of its recommendations, the aldermen named five members of a new board, among them R. D. Smith, the vocational agriculture teacher at Lincoln High School. The county commissioners named the other five.
-
Chapel Hill church women ask the county for a welfare office in Chapel Hill
A group from the Chapel Hill Council of United Church Women, including Mildred Ringwalt, asked the Orange County commissioners for a branch welfare office in the Chapel Hill area with a caseworker at least two days a week, and offered volunteers. The acting welfare superintendent replied that lay volunteers could not do casework.
-
Workmen begin tearing down Dave Neville's old store at Main Street and the railroad
Dismantling began on the frame store at Main Street and the University Railroad tracks, known over the years as Dave Neville's general store, Partin's grocery and the Carrboro Feed and Seed Store. Owner Harvey Bennett took it down at the town board's informal request, since Carrboro's fire code barred prolonging the life of frame buildings downtown.
-
Federal court rules Chapel Hill denied Stanley Vickers a junior high transfer because of his race
Chief Judge Edwin M. Stanley of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina held that the Chapel Hill City Board of Education had refused Vickers reassignment to all-white Chapel Hill Junior High School on account of race and that he was entitled to be admitted there for the 1961-62 school year. The suit had been filed on February 2, 1960 and tried on October 5, 1960.
-
The Railway Express Agency moves its office to East Main Street in Carrboro
The Chapel Hill express office moved into new quarters at 209 East Main Street in Carrboro, with room for customers to park. Its old building on North Columbia Street was coming down for the new Orange Savings and Loan office.
-
University National Bank of Chapel Hill becomes part of Central Carolina Bank
The University National Bank of Chapel Hill merged into the Durham Bank and Trust Company, which took the new name Central Carolina Bank and Trust Company. Both Chapel Hill offices reopened under the new name, with O. Gordon Perry as manager for Chapel Hill.
-
President John F. Kennedy speaks at UNC
President John F. Kennedy received an honorary degree at UNC's University Day ceremony, held on the University's 168th birthday, and spoke to an estimated 32,000 people in Kenan Stadium. He pledged that Americans would be neither Red nor dead, and announced a $1 million federal materials research contract for UNC.
-
Joe Weatherly wins the first 150-miler at Orange Speedway
Joe Weatherly won the 150-mile race that closed the 1961 Grand National season at Orange Speedway, the first race of that length at the track, setting a lap record of 95.15 miles per hour and a race average of 86.11.
-
Dud Walters reopens his old tavern as Dud's Fish House
J. Dud Walters and his wife reopened the former Dud's Tavern and Truck Stop after renovations as Dud's Fish House and Restaurant, serving fish and seafood with curb service and take-home orders.
-
Kenan Oil opens its new bulk plant and warehouse north of Hillsborough
Work began in September on a bulk plant and warehouse on the north side of Highway 70 behind the Phillips 66 station, and the company invited the public to inspect the finished plant and offices on Saturday, November 11.
-
Lincoln High's football team wins an undefeated state championship
Coach William D. Peerman's Lincoln High Tigers won the state 2-A football championship for Black high schools on November 22, 1961, beating previously unbeaten Ridgeview High of Hickory 22-0 to finish 12-0. The season was unbeaten but not unscored upon: Harnett High scored six points in the eastern title game.
-
Godfrey's Home Supply Store moves into a new building on Highway 70
E. W. "Booster" Godfrey opened a new, larger building for his hardware, clothing and household goods store next door to his old location on Highway 70 north of Hillsboro, with Esso gas out front.
-
Ruth Faison Shaw holds a finger-painting show in Chapel Hill
The Chapel Hill Weekly ran a page of photographs of a finger-painting show by Shaw, showing her at work and a display in a garden.
-
Student Peace Union symbols are painted on UNC's military buildings and the armory gun
In one of the first antiwar acts on campus, someone painted the Student Peace Union insignia on several military buildings and on the antiaircraft gun in front of the Naval Armory.
-
Albert Coates gives Chancellor Aycock a 158-page account of the Institute's past and needs
Using staff tallies of thirty years of Institute publications, training and finances, Coates wrote Chancellor William B. Aycock a long report on how the Institute began and grew and what it would need. It also argued for waiving the retirement rule in his case, and it became the core of his later published history of the Institute.
-
Arthur Cogswell opens his own architecture firm in Chapel Hill
Arthur Cogswell, a UNC graduate of 1952 who trained in architecture at State College and spent the late 1950s in Don Stewart's office, opened his own Chapel Hill practice in 1962, designing flat-roofed, cantilevered houses in the spare manner he learned from George Matsumoto.
-
Belton Edwards becomes principal of Cedar Grove School
Belton Edwards, a South Carolina native and North Carolina A&T graduate, followed Harold Webb as principal in 1962 and stayed until 1968, when he became the first Black member of the Orange County Board of Education. George Pierce succeeded him at the school.
-
Beta Theta Pi builds a social hall annex and remodels its house
In 1962 the chapter put up a frame social hall behind the house, enclosed the porte cochere, raised the south wing to match the north wing, and replaced the main stair.
-
Binkley Baptist Church takes James Forbes as a student intern
Under Robert Seymour, Binkley Memorial Baptist Church accepted James A. Forbes Jr., a Black divinity student, as its intern in 1962.
-
Four high-rise dormitories go up on UNC's south campus
Between 1962 and 1967 the firm of Graves and Toy built Craig, Ehringhaus, Morrison and Hinton James, steel-framed residence towers faced in brick and grouped around Chase Hall at the south edge of campus. Open metal balconies on the back serve as hallways to the student suites.
-
Frederick Brooks gives a guest lecture at UNC
While working on IBM's System/360, Brooks visited UNC for an interview and a guest lecture, Ten Research Problems in Computer Science, which impressed the administration and led to the new department.
-
Julius Chambers graduates first in his class from the UNC School of Law
Chambers graduated first in his class from the University's School of Law in Chapel Hill in 1962. He went on to practice civil rights law in Charlotte.
-
Lillian Hughes Prince leaves funds to the Carolina Playmakers
Lillian Hughes Prince, who had acted in thirty or more Playmakers productions, left considerable funds to the Carolina Playmakers in her will. She died in New York and was buried in Chapel Hill Cemetery.
-
Nate Davis moves from Northside Elementary to Chapel Hill Junior High
In 1962, after sixth grade at Northside Elementary, Davis went to Chapel Hill Junior High School on Franklin Street as one of the first Black students in the town's formerly white schools. Harassment kept him out of school for two or three months, and he later attended the new Chapel Hill High School when it opened.
-
Quakers from the Chapel Hill and Durham meetings found Carolina Friends School
Members of the Chapel Hill and Durham Friends meetings founded Carolina Friends School as a purposely integrated school, beginning with early education programs in the two meeting houses. Mildred Ringwalt was one of the seven founders and the first clerk of its board of trustees.
-
Robert Burns and Brian Shawcroft design a house for Robert Work on Hillcrest Circle
Robert Burns and Brian Shawcroft designed the 1962 house at 214 Hillcrest Circle for the chemist Robert Work and his wife: two levels stepped into the hillside, a glazed rear wall, an elevated deck and a central open stair. It won a national Homes for Better Living award and a state AIA award.
-
Hyconeechee Regional Library director David Flick writes a books column for the News of Orange County
By January 1962 the News of Orange County was running "Between the Covers," a column of news and comment on books in the public library by the director of the Hyconeechee Regional Library. The North Carolina Library Association's 1962 directory lists David Flick as the region's director, at Yanceyville.
-
James Riley opens the Hillsboro Fish Market in the old Godfrey's store on Highway 70
James Riley opened the Hillsboro Fish Market on Highway 70 West, in front of Kenan Oil Company in the former Godfrey's Home Supply store, selling fresh fish cleaned free. By August 1962 it had moved to his old market next to Eno Methodist Church.
-
Two federally funded kindergartens operate at the Efland schools
A federal research grant was paying for two public kindergartens in the county, one at Efland Elementary and one at Efland-Cheeks, the Black school. The board limited them to five-year-olds living in the Efland district.
-
Portrait of the late Sheriff Oddie Clayton is hung in the sheriff's office
A portrait of the late Orange County sheriff Oddie Clayton, painted by Hillsborough artist Edmund Strudwick and paid for by public subscription in a drive led by ABC Police Chief Burch Compton, was hung in the county sheriff's office before members of his family.
-
Law dean Henry Brandis Jr. turns down Albert Coates's last appeal for a merger
Coates sent Dean Henry Brandis Jr. a pleading letter with thirty-nine pages of enclosures urging that the Institute become part of the law school. Brandis refused to reopen the question and said that once Coates returned to full-time teaching, Institute staff would no longer teach his courses, since their part had weakened the school's instruction.
-
Orange County was still running a separate library for Black readers
The county bookmobile schedule printed in March 1962 listed a Thursday stop from 1:30 to 2:00 at the Orange Co. Negro Public Library. The previous year's vacation reading club invited children to register either at the Confederate Memorial Public Library or at the Orange County Negro Public Library in Hillsboro.
-
Carl Smith leads the Democratic primary for Orange County commissioner
Carl Smith of Chapel Hill topped the six-man Democratic primary for three county commissioner seats with 3,783 votes, ahead of Gordon Cleveland and Donald McDade; nomination usually amounted to election in the county.
-
Chapel Hill Human Relations Committee asks for a Black nurse on the district health staff
At a Chapel Hill Human Relations Committee meeting, Esther Atwater said the district health department needed a Black nurse on its staff. Chairman Dr. William Joyner said he would take the request to District Health Officer Dr. O. D. Garvin.
-
Chancellor Aycock chooses John Sanders to succeed Albert Coates as director of the Institute
After Coates would not name a successor through months of talks, Chancellor William B. Aycock picked assistant director John Sanders, then thirty-five, who accepted in a short meeting with Aycock and Dean of Faculty James Godfrey. Sanders, on the staff since October 1956, took over when Coates left the post on August 31, 1962.
-
The Orange County Council on Alcoholism opens its headquarters in an addition to Calvin Burch's cabinet shop
The council's rehabilitation committee moved into a new office built onto Calvin Burch's cabinet shop on old NC 86, rented as a round-the-clock place for counseling and advice. Burch chaired the committee, which reported 54 cases in its first year there.
-
The Orange Printshop closes after 39 years
The Orange Printshop, founded by Louis Graves in 1923 with the Chapel Hill Weekly, stopped work at the close of business on August 15, 1962. W. M. Pugh had run it as lessee since the 1940s, and the building had just been sold to the Bank of Chapel Hill.
-
Edmund Strudwick speaks against a new federal access road and bridge into Hillsborough
At a public hearing in Hillsborough on a proposed $338,000 federal project for a new access road and bridge into the town, artist Edmund Strudwick opposed it, saying he did not want more cars coming up Churton Street. The News of Orange County called the opposition thin.
-
Albert Coates retires as director of the Institute of Government
Coates retired as director of the Institute he founded on August 31, 1962, but stayed on the law faculty, teaching full time until about 1967 and a reduced load until a stroke in early 1968.
-
Charles E. Maddry's funeral is held at Hillsborough Baptist Church
Charles E. Maddry, pastor of the church at the start and end of his fifty-three-year ministry and former head of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, died on September 17 and was buried at Richmond after a funeral in the Hillsborough church.
-
James J. Freeland's Dixie Motor Inn opens at Interstate 85 and NC 86
The Dixie Motor Inn, owned by James J. and James Rae Freeland, opened two miles south of Hillsborough where Interstate 85 meets NC 86. It had 16 air-conditioned units and was the sixth motel the elder Freeland had built in Orange, Durham and Wake counties.
-
Neal's Restaurant opens beside the Dixie Motor Inn south of Hillsborough
Neal Humphries, a Durham restaurant man for 15 years, opened Neal's Restaurant next to the new Dixie Motor Inn at I-85 and NC 86. It seated 75, stayed open around the clock and served steaks, seafood and fried chicken.
-
Chapel Hill Planning Board reviews the Research Triangle Planning Area land use plan
The Chapel Hill Planning Board held a special meeting to review the Research Triangle Planning Commission's land use plan for the planning area, which projected population and density to 1980. The Chapel Hill Weekly described the plan as a major guide for future zoning changes and school locations.
-
Pat Cusick organizes a student peace group that becomes UNC's Student Peace Union chapter
On December 3, 1962 Pat Cusick announced the formation of Students for Peace, a UNC group that had adopted the Student Peace Union's statement of purpose. Later that month the group won approval as the UNC chapter of the national Student Peace Union, with Cusick as its leader.
-
Arthur Cogswell designs a barrel-vaulted concrete house for David Hill
In 1963 Cogswell built a concrete house with a barrel-vaulted roof at 205 Wood Circle in Coker Hills for Duke engineering professor David Hill, an example of the period's trials of new building materials.
-
Aycock and Hillsborough High schools are consolidated into Orange High School
On February 4, 1963 the county board of education resolved to consolidate the high schools at Hillsborough and Aycock into the new Orange High School, which opened in 1963 with Charles Yelverton as its first principal. The new Orange Junior High School was housed in the old Hillsborough High School building, and Aycock continued as an elementary school.
-
Chapel Hill Town Hall is remodeled with a mezzanine over the old fire bays
A general remodeling added a mezzanine over the first-floor fire engine garage and a new stair, and the engine doors on Columbia Street were later filled with windows.
-
David Caldwell's family bought a home on Rogers Road
David Caldwell, later a RENA leader, said his family moved from Merritt Mill Road to Rogers Road when Black families got the chance to buy homes there. He recalled a farming neighborhood of about thirteen houses, with dirt roads and cornfields.
-
Floyd McKissick sends organizers to Chapel Hill and defends arrested demonstrators
As head of CORE's Durham office, McKissick sent organizer Quinton Baker to Chapel Hill in 1963 to teach nonviolence and demonstration tactics, and he acted as attorney for many demonstrators arrested there. Letters to him in 1964 include one written from the Orange County jail.
-
Governor Terry Sanford establishes the Historic Hillsborough Commission
Interest stirred by the county and town bicentennials led to the commission, whose first projects included buying and restoring the Burwell School in 1965.
-
Guy B. Johnson is named Kenan professor of anthropology and sociology
Johnson became Kenan professor of anthropology and sociology at UNC in 1963 and retired six years later.
-
Inter-Church Council forms
Seven women’s organizing led to coordinated local poverty relief.
-
James Brittian is expelled from Lincoln High School after a civil rights march
Brittian, a student at the segregated Lincoln High School, was expelled for taking part in a civil rights protest march. He then became chairman of the Student Commission, a branch of the Chapel Hill Freedom Commission.
-
Mary Claire Engstrom documents 122 Hillsborough sites for the Historic American Buildings Survey
From 1963 to 1965 Mary Claire Engstrom documented 122 old structures and historic sites in and around Hillsborough for the Historic American Buildings Survey. Her research helped many of them reach the National Register, including the Nash-Hooper House as a National Historic Landmark, and helped establish two Hillsborough historic districts.
-
Mary Claire Engstrom helps found the Hillsborough Historical Society
Mary Claire Engstrom was instrumental in founding the Hillsborough Historical Society, which filed National Register applications for local buildings, led walking tours and published newsletters and journals. It merged with the Orange County Historical Museum in 2007.
-
Orange High School begins desegregation
Tonya and Narviar Cathcart entered Orange High School after their family’s transfer petition was approved.
-
Orange Junior High School opens in the old Hillsborough High School building
When the county consolidated its white high schools into Orange High in 1963, it organized Orange Junior High School for grades six through nine in the old Hillsborough High School building, with Ted Shoaf as principal.
-
Peg Owens takes over Lake Forest and names it Lake Forest Estates
Peg Owens bought part of the Lake Forest subdivision in 1963 and carried on its development. She also acquired the land west of Eastwood Lake along today's North Shore Drive, laid out its streets and built many of its first houses between 1965 and 1968, and gave the whole area the name Lake Forest Estates.
-
The Chapel Hill Weekly moves into the old Harris-Connors Chevrolet agency on West Franklin
The town's weekly paper took over the space the Chevrolet dealer had left. Renamed the Chapel Hill Newspaper, it moved a few doors west in late 1973.
-
The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations
Marches, sit-ins and arrests over segregated businesses from 1963 into 1964, the aldermen's refusal of a public accommodations ordinance, the Holy Week fast, and the Watts Restaurant protests and the Klopfer speedy-trial case that grew out of them.
-
The Colonial Dames erect a marble monument to the hanged Regulators beside the Hughes Academy schoolhouse
In 1963 the North Carolina Society of the Colonial Dames of America erected a marble slab monument to the six Regulators hanged at Hillsborough in June 1771, placing it next to the historic Hughes Academy schoolhouse in Hillsborough. The men's grave, thought to lie near the Eno, has never been found.
-
The General Assembly makes the Orange County Board of Education an elected five-member board
A 1963 local act (H.B. 1329) set the county school board at five members chosen by voters in partisan elections from 1964 on, with six-year staggered terms and no more than two members from any one township.
-
The Underwood family buys Murphey School at public auction
The school property was sold at public auction in 1963 to the Underwood family.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
