Chronology

Civil rights era: 297 dated entries from the full dataset. Back to the highlights →

1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
2. 1945 A Negro library committee was already running library service for Black readers in Orange CountyInstitutional milestone · Orange County

   The committee met in September 1945 under chairman Mrs. M. D. McPherson, reported over a hundred new books received and 800 books circulated during the summer, and was assembling book kits for rural areas. Miss Annie Cameron was named as one of the people who started the library for Black residents of the county.

3. 1945 Carl Snavely returns to coach UNC footballCoaching appointment · Chapel Hill

   Snavely came back to Chapel Hill in 1945 after being assured that his program would have the full support of the administration. His 1946 to 1949 teams, built around Charlie Justice and returning servicemen, won two Southern Conference championships and played in three bowl games.

4. 1945 Morehead creates the foundation behind his Chapel Hill giftsInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

   In 1945 Morehead created the Morehead Foundation to pay for the Morehead Building on the campus at Chapel Hill and to establish the scholarship that carries his name.

5. 1945–1957 R. B. House becomes the first chancellor at Chapel HillUniversity leadership · Chapel Hill

   North Carolina created chancellorships for its three campuses in 1945, and President Frank Porter Graham turned to House, who had been executive secretary from 1926 and dean of administration from 1934. House held the post until 1957, the longest chancellorship at Chapel Hill.

6. 1945–1949 The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen runs its headquarters from Chapel HillProtest or organizing · Chapel Hill

   The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, an interracial group of Southern church people founded in 1934, kept its headquarters in Chapel Hill while Nelle Morton was general secretary from 1945 to 1949, working on race relations, labor conditions and the rural South.

7. 1945 The former Alberta mill reopens as Carrboro Woolen MillsFounding or opening · Carrboro

   After fifteen idle years the modernized Mill No. 4 building reopened as Carrboro Woolen Mills, which ran until the early 1960s.

8. 1945 UNC begins marking Hinton James Day each February 12Commemoration · Chapel Hill

   The university started Hinton James Day in 1945, during the sesquicentennial of its first student's arrival. It falls on February 12 and now also honors other Carolina firsts, including Sallie Walker Stockard and Henry Owl.

9. January 25, 1945 Newspaper describes the work of Orange County's public health nursesPublic health nursing · Orange County

   A News of Orange County piece described the county public health nurses' duties: school inspections, immunization against diphtheria and smallpox, well-baby clinics twice a month, a monthly maternity clinic, tuberculosis and venereal disease clinics, orthopedic referrals, and the wartime maternity and infant care program for servicemen's wives.

10. August 1945 William T. Couch leaves the University of North Carolina PressResignation · Chapel Hill

    Couch resigned in August 1945, after thirteen years as director, to lead the University of Chicago Press.

11. Fall 1945 The Negro Community Center opens for community useBuilding completion · Chapel Hill

    After the Navy Pre-Flight School wound down, the community center returned to town control on October 24, 1945 and opened to Black residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. By December a nursery school filled the basement, and an all-Black board chaired by Hubert Roberson ran the building under the Town Recreation Commission.

12. 1946 Charlie Justice chooses Carolina and begins four seasons at Chapel HillCollege career · Chapel Hill

    Justice was one of the most sought after players in the country after playing for the Bainbridge Navy team, and he chose Chapel Hill over South Carolina and Duke. He played tailback for Carl Snavely from 1946 to 1949, gaining 170 yards on 17 carries against Virginia in his freshman season.

13. 1946 First Baptist Church moved to its present site on North Roberson StreetBuilding opening · North Roberson Street, Chapel Hill

    The Black Baptist congregation organized in 1865, which first met in the Quaker school building on Franklin Street, moved to North Roberson Street in 1946. Rev. J. R. Manley served as its pastor for sixty-six years.

14. 1946 Katherine Kennedy Carmichael becomes the university's first dean of womenAppointment · Chapel Hill

    Carmichael, who held a Vanderbilt doctorate in British literature, took the new post at Chapel Hill in 1946 and taught an introductory literature course for the English department while serving as dean.

15. 1946 Morehead gives the university a million dollars for a planetariumGift · Chapel Hill

    In 1946 Morehead presented the university with one million dollars to build a planetarium and put the proposal to the Board of Trustees. The building opened in 1949.

16. 1946–1948 Terry Sanford serves as assistant director of UNC's Institute of GovernmentInstitutional role · Chapel Hill

    After the Second World War Sanford returned to Chapel Hill, completed a law degree in 1946 and served two years as assistant director of the Institute of Government before opening a law practice in Fayetteville.

17. 1946 Victory Village is built to house married veterans at UNCPostwar housing · Chapel Hill (UNC south campus)

    As returning veterans pushed enrollment to about 6,800, the federal government put up the prefabricated metal houses of Victory Village on 65 acres of UNC's south campus in 1946. About 350 student families lived there, and the last units were torn down in the early 1970s for the expansion of UNC Hospitals.

18. March 1946 Marinda McPherson sings a joint recital at the Orange County school auditoriumConcert · Hillsborough

    Mrs. M. D. McPherson and Galvin Lampley gave a joint recital in the Orange County school auditorium in Hillsboro. She sang The Star by James H. Rogers and Because by Guy d'Hardelot, and Lampley played De Falla and Chopin.

19. March 13–20, 1946 District health department X-ray unit offers free chest X-rays in Chapel HillPublic health campaign · Chapel Hill

    The Orange-Chatham-Person Health Department's X-ray unit operated at the Chapel Hill health department from March 13 to 20, 1946, offering free chest X-rays for tuberculosis to any Orange County resident. Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin urged residents to use it.

20. 1947 Chapel Hill High School moves into a new building on West Franklin StreetBuilding opening · Chapel Hill

    After five years in borrowed rooms, Chapel Hill's white high school moved into a new building on West Franklin Street, whose first section was paid for largely with insurance money from the 1942 fire. That section was nearly ready in late 1946, and the 1947 school year opened with an assembly in front of the new building.

21. 1947 General Assembly funds the Good Health Plan's four-year medical school and teaching hospitalLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

    The General Assembly appropriated money in 1947 to expand the UNC medical school at Chapel Hill to four years, enlarge the medical sciences building, and build a 400-bed hospital, a School of Nursing and staff residence halls. The plan grew out of a study commission Governor J. Melville Broughton created in 1944.

22. 1947 Local 403 petitions for student support in a campaign over university wagesLabor organizing · Chapel Hill

    After the legislature approved a 20 percent raise for state employees and the university dropped a wartime bonus, Local 403 workers circulated petitions and flyers asking students for support. Under shop steward Rebecca Clark laundry workers won wage increases, safer workspaces and better schedules.

23. March 1947 Orange County polio chapter reports buying an infant-size iron lungOrange County

    In its annual report, the Orange County chapter of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis said it had spent $500 in direct aid to polio patients and bought a $550 infant-size iron lung, kept for the time being at Watts Hospital.

24. April 1947–March 1949 Journey of Reconciliation comes to Chapel HillChapel Hill

    Interracial riders testing segregation on interstate buses reached Chapel Hill on April 12, 1947. The next day police arrested four of them at the bus station and a white cab driver struck rider James Peck. Convicted in Orange County, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joe Felmet surrendered at the Hillsborough courthouse on March 21, 1949 to serve chain-gang sentences.

25. June 24, 1947 Joseph Felmet is tried in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on the bus seating charge and sentenced to the roadsCourt case · Chapel Hill

    Felmet's trial, put off in May while Bayard Rustin and Igal Roodenko were tried, was held in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on June 24, 1947. He was sentenced to the county roads, appealed to Superior Court and posted a $50 bond.

26. 1947–1968 Occoneechee Speedway, HillsboroughStoryline · Hillsborough

    Bill France and four partners chartered a company in September 1947 to build a one-mile dirt oval by the old Occoneechee Farm, and it opened in June 1948. The track held a race in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949, was renamed Orange Speedway in 1954, and closed after Richard Petty won its last race on September 15, 1968.

27. October 23, 1947 Chapel Hill NAACP holds its first meeting at the Community CenterProtest or organizing · Chapel Hill

    On October 23, 1947, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP held its first official meeting at the Negro Community Center, now the Hargraves Center. The branch, which marked 75 years in 2022, gave Black residents a civil-rights organization apart from church and school.

28. October 27, 1947 The League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill applies for recognitionWomen's political organization · Chapel Hill

    Thirty-three women applied for provisional status as the League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill, raising the required finance money that fall. The league later became the League of Women Voters of the Chapel Hill Area in 1997 and of Orange, Durham and Chatham Counties in 2001.

29. 1948 Hyconeechee Regional Library is establishedFounding or opening · Countywide

    The three county library systems incorporated as one region to enlarge book collections, run a shared bookmobile and provide trained supervision. The regional board held its second meeting on September 13, 1948 at the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro, with Sydney Green of Orange County as president and Mrs. Douglas Davis as regional librarian.

30. 1948–1951 William Friday serves as assistant dean of students at UNC in Chapel HillAppointment · Chapel Hill

    After receiving his law degree from UNC in 1948, William Friday was assistant dean of students and later acting dean of students on the Chapel Hill campus until 1951, when he became assistant to Consolidated University president Gordon Gray.

31. March 1948 An Orange County Superior Court jury convicts Felmet and the other three Chapel Hill bus defendantsCourt case · Hillsborough

    A jury found Andrew S. Johnson, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joseph Felmet guilty of breaking the bus seating law, and Judge Chester Morris sentenced each to 30 days. The men, defended by C. J. Gates, Herman L. Taylor and E. R. Avent, appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court and posted bond.

32. April 28, 1948 Four-county district board of health, now including Lee County, meets in Chapel HillInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

    The District Board of Health for Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties met at the Bank of Chapel Hill and extended the district's milk ordinance and excreta disposal ordinance to Lee County. Collier Cobb Jr. chaired the board.

33. June 27, 1948 Occoneechee Speedway opensFounding or opening · Hillsborough

    Occoneechee Speedway, a one-mile dirt oval that Bill France and four North Carolina partners built on the old Occoneechee Farm horse track outside Hillsborough, opened with a 100-mile NASCAR stock car race won by Fonty Flock.

34. July 8, 1948 Health officer urges typhoid shots after a case in HillsboroPublic health campaign · Orange County

    District Health Officer O. David Garvin urged Orange County residents to take the health department's typhoid vaccinations after a case of typhoid fever occurred in Hillsboro. Clinics were held at the Chapel Hill and Hillsboro health departments on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, and he advised sound privies and tested water.

35. August 1948 Chapel Hill's polio quarantine on children is liftedEpidemic response · Chapel Hill

    The month long mandatory quarantine of children sixteen and under, imposed during a polio outbreak in Chapel Hill and the vicinity, was ended, though District Health Officer O. David Garvin asked parents to keep children close to home and discouraged trips to the movies. He and the university physician notified the Veterans' Club and Graham Memorial that they could reopen.

36. August 26–September 13, 1948 Polio postpones the opening of Orange County schools twiceOrange County

    With 12 polio cases counted in the county by early August, Superintendent Glenn T. Proffitt, on the advice of health director O. David Garvin, moved the school opening from September 1 to September 7. After a second postponement the county schools opened on Monday, September 13, 1948, for about 4,000 pupils.

37. November 1948–December 1949 Schley Grange brings telephones to fifty-one families and wins a national community awardCommunity improvement · Schley

    For a National Grange and Sears-Roebuck Foundation contest, Schley Grange members cleared right-of-way, cut cedar poles and strung three miles of wire so the telephone company could give service to 51 families; they also held a soil conservation workshop with the extension service. Schley won the national prize in November 1948, and the new brick Grange hall it paid for was dedicated on December 6, 1949 before about five hundred people.

38. 1949–1950 Carmichael serves as acting president of the consolidated universityUniversity leadership · Chapel Hill

    Carmichael was acting president in 1949 and 1950, after Frank Porter Graham resigned to take a seat in the United States Senate.

39. January 7, 1949 North Carolina Supreme Court upholds the convictions of Felmet and the other Chapel Hill bus ridersCourt case · Chapel Hill

    In State v. Johnson the court affirmed the Orange County convictions, holding that the state seating statutes applied unless the riders proved they were interstate passengers. The opinion, like the lower court record, spells his name Joseph A. Felmont.

40. March–May 1949 Orange County Training School is renamed Lincoln High SchoolInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

    In March 1949 the Parent-Teachers Association of the Orange County Training School, Chapel Hill's school for Black students, voted to rename it Lincoln High School and sent the request to the superintendent and school board. By May 13, 1949, the Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the name had been changed.

41. March 31, 1949 District health department takes UNC public health students for field trainingInstitutional milestone · Orange County

    Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin announced that the district health department would serve as a field training center for eight UNC public health students, four in health education and four in public health nursing, working for ten weeks across Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties.

42. April 1949 Marinda McPherson sponsors the annual kite contest at the Hillsboro schoolSchool event · Hillsborough

    The annual kite contest sponsored by Mrs. M. D. McPherson was held on the school playground in Hillsboro, with prizes for the fastest getaway, the longest distance, dash and altitude, and the most original kite.

43. May 10, 1949 Morehead Planetarium is dedicatedFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

    Morehead Planetarium was dedicated at UNC on May 10, 1949.

44. May 22, 1949 The Orange County Negro Public Library held its grand opening at the community center in HillsboroFounding or opening · Hillsborough

    The library opened on a Sunday afternoon from 3 to 5 p.m. with Mrs. M. D. McPherson as directress and Miss Victoria Craig as librarian. Mrs. Douglas Davis, the tri-county regional librarian, sponsored the event and spoke, and Mrs. Eliza Webb attended for the Confederate Memorial Library.

45. August 7, 1949 NASCAR comes to Occoneechee SpeedwayHillsborough

    Occoneechee Speedway near Hillsborough hosted the third race of NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season, a 200-lap event won by Bob Flock. It is the only dirt track from that inaugural season that still survives.

46. September 12, 1949 Principal C. A. McDougle opens Lincoln High School's year under its new nameSchool year opening · Chapel Hill

    The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that Lincoln High School, the town's school for Black students, would open at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, September 12, 1949, as announced by Principal C. A. McDougle. The faculty list printed with the notice includes elementary teacher Mrs. Lucille R. McDougle and high school teacher Reginald D. Smith.

47. October 1949–June 1951 Black law students sue to enter UNC's Law SchoolCourt or legal action · Chapel Hill

    On October 25, 1949, Harold Epps and other law students at North Carolina College in Durham sued for admission to UNC's law school. A federal district court ruled against them on October 9, 1950, but the Fourth Circuit reversed on March 27, 1951, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the university's appeal on June 4, 1951.

48. 1950 Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro inCensus statistic · Orange County

    The 1950 census counted 34,435 people in Orange County, 9,177 in the town of Chapel Hill and 1,795 in Carrboro. Chapel Hill township as a whole had 18,222.

49. 1950 Charlie Justice receives UNC's Patterson MedalAward · Chapel Hill

    UNC placed Justice in the 1950 class of Patterson Medal winners, the university's award for its leading athlete. He had been Walter Camp National Player of the Year in 1948 and Heisman Trophy runner-up in 1948 and 1949.

50. February 1950 R. D. W. Connor is buried in the Chapel Hill CemeteryDeath and burial · Chapel Hill

    Connor died in February 1950, a year after retiring from the university, and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.

51. March 22, 1950 Carrboro Civic Club opens a public libraryFounding or opening · Carrboro

    The Carrboro Public Library, a project of the Carrboro Civic Club, opened on March 22, 1950, with an open house at the club's building near the Carrboro school. Mrs. Jack Shields was librarian, and books were lent free each Wednesday afternoon, with loans from the bookmobile and the county library in Hillsborough adding to the collection.

52. June 1950 Black residents opened a fund drive to build the Orange County Negro Public Library a building of its ownFundraising campaign · Hillsborough

    The library then held 2,254 books in a single room with shelves full and volumes stacked on the floor, and had circulated 2,015 books in the year. A committee including Mrs. Marinda D. McPherson, A. L. Stanback and Mrs. M. C. Burt asked for donations, naming $100 for outside sheeting and $70 for a roof.

53. August 10, 1950 Health officer closes the University pool as polio cases rise in Chapel HillChapel Hill

    After an emergency conference with six Chapel Hill physicians, District Health Officer O. David Garvin ordered the University swimming pool and all recreational facilities closed, with six polio cases in Chapel Hill and three more in the county. He asked parents to keep children at home or on their own block but did not recommend cancelling University classes or closing nursery schools.

54. October 12, 1950 Gordon Gray is installed as president of the University of North CarolinaUniversity leadership · Chapel Hill

    Gray, who had been secretary of the army, was installed as president of the three campus University of North Carolina on October 12, 1950. The board of trustees had approved his selection on February 6, 1950.

55. 1951–1963 John Ehle teaches in UNC's radio, television and motion pictures departmentInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

    Ehle, an Asheville native who came to Chapel Hill after infantry service in World War II and graduated from UNC in 1949, taught in the university's Communications Center, later the Department of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures, from 1951 to 1963. He published his first books while teaching there.

56. 1951 Lincoln High School opens on Merritt Mill RoadBuilding opening · Chapel Hill

    In 1951 Lincoln High School, Chapel Hill's high school for Black students, moved from the old Orange County Training School building on Caldwell Street to a new building on Merritt Mill Road, and the old building became Northside Elementary. Lincoln used the Merritt Mill Road campus until 1966; the building is now the school district's Lincoln Center.

57. 1951 The first Morehead scholars are selectedInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

    The scholarship Morehead endowed at Chapel Hill made its first selections in 1951.

58. 1951 to the mid-1950s The name Northside began to replace Pottersfield and SunsetNaming · Pottersfield and Sunset, Chapel Hill

    When the old Lincoln building became Northside Elementary in 1951, the school's name spread to the Black neighborhoods around it. By the mid-1950s Pottersfield, north of West Rosemary and west of Columbia Street, and its western neighbor Sunset were both being called Northside.

59. January to March 1951 Orange Fire Protective Association buys Orange County's first rural fire truckFire protection · Hillsborough and rural Orange County

    Because Hillsboro's town fire truck was restricted to calls within about a mile and a half of town, rural residents formed the Orange Fire Protective Association and raised money through one-time memberships of $10 for a house and more for farm buildings. By March 15, 1951, 260 members had given $4,500 and a Ford fire truck for the countryside had arrived, crewed by the town's volunteer firemen.

60. February 1951 Lucille Caldwell becomes the Negro Community Center's first paid directorEmployment milestone · Chapel Hill

    Lucille Caldwell was hired in February 1951 as the first paid director of Chapel Hill's Negro Community Center on Roberson Street, now the Hargraves Center. A town history calls her North Carolina's first Black professional recreation administrator. She led the center for twelve years and resigned in 1963.

61. April 24, 1951 UNC admits Edward O. Diggs, its first Black medical studentInstitutional milestone · UNC School of Medicine, Chapel Hill

    UNC mailed Edward O. Diggs of Winston-Salem, a pre-medical student at A&T College in Greensboro, his letter of admission to the School of Medicine under the trustees' April 4, 1951 policy. He enrolled in the fall of 1951.

62. May 1951 Orange County's seventeen home demonstration clubs count 443 membersWomen's extension work · Orange County

    During National Home Demonstration Week the county reported 443 women in 17 home demonstration clubs, served by two white agents and one Black agent, with 80 volunteer leaders who had held 62 meetings attended by 1,459 people the year before. Clubs made 38 United Nations flags for schools, churches and Grange halls as part of a citizenship study.

63. May 27, 1951 Orange County Negro Public Library dedicates its own buildingFounding or opening · Hillsborough

    About 150 people attended an open house on May 27, 1951 dedicating the Orange County Negro Public Library's own building in Hillsborough, a structure bought from Camp Butner and put up with volunteer labor. Begun in 1942 by Marinda McPherson, the library had opened to the public in 1949 and now held more than 3,000 books.

64. June 1951 UNC Law School begins desegregationFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

    About a week after the Supreme Court refused on June 4, 1951, to review McKissick v. Carmichael, Black students registered for summer session at UNC's law school, the first African Americans to enroll at the university. UNC Law names them as Harvey E. Beech, James L. Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd B. McKissick and James R. Walker.

65. 1951–1955 Desegregating the University of North CarolinaStoryline · Chapel Hill

    After a 1951 federal court decision in McKissick v. Carmichael, five Black students began law school classes at UNC on June 22, 1951. In September 1955, again under court order, LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon of Durham registered as the university's first Black undergraduates.

66. September 1951 State says Chapel Hill's new tuberculosis hospital will take Black and white patientsLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

    A State Medical Care Commission spokesman said the $1,100,000 tuberculosis hospital under construction at Chapel Hill would treat Black and white patients. He noted that federal rules barred discrimination in federally aided hospitals but still allowed patients to be segregated.

67. 1952 Carl Snavely leaves UNC after three losing seasonsDeparture · Chapel Hill

    Disputes over the size of the recruiting budget and Snavely's difficulty moving from the single wing to the split T weakened the program. After losing seasons in 1950, 1951 and 1952 he left UNC with a record there of 59 wins, 35 losses and 5 ties.

68. 1952 Eno Mill becomes part of Cone MillsDated milestone · West Hillsborough

    The subsidiary joined the Greensboro textile corporation.

69. 1952 Frank McGuire arrives at UNC to coach basketballCoaching appointment · Chapel Hill

    McGuire came to Chapel Hill in 1952 to take over a basketball program that ranked far behind football in the university's priorities. His first office at Carolina was the ticket booth at Woollen Gym.

70. 1952 UNC's new dental school building opens with separate facilities for Black and white patientsBuilding opening · UNC School of Dentistry, Chapel Hill

    The School of Dentistry's new building opened with what a university memo called separate, complete facilities for white and Black patients. Publicity photographs showed separate waiting rooms for each race.

71. June 1952 Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee graduate from UNC's law schoolGraduation · UNC School of Law, Chapel Hill

    A year after they entered as the first Black students at UNC's law school, Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee received their law degrees. UNC also lists James Robert Walker among the 1952 graduates.

72. August 21, 1952 Farmers Home Administration pushes livestock to raise tenant incomes near Cedar GroveFarm program · Cedar Grove

    The News of Orange County reported a Farmers Home Administration effort to raise tenant income by adding livestock to tobacco farming. Tenants on the Banks Wilson farm near Cedar Grove added hogs and other animals, and 42 county farm families had FHA operating loans.

73. September 1952 North Carolina Memorial Hospital opensFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

    North Carolina Memorial Hospital opened in September 1952 with the admission of its first patients, as the core of the new University Medical Center. Its opening allowed the UNC School of Medicine to grow from a two-year program into a four-year school.

74. October 1952 UNC School of Medicine admits its first third-year classInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

    A month after the hospital opened, the School of Medicine admitted its first third-year class, beginning clinical training in Chapel Hill. The school had offered only the first two years of medical study since its Raleigh clinical branch closed in 1910.

75. October 1952 UNC cancels two football games after a player and three students get polioChapel Hill

    The University of North Carolina called off its football games with Georgia on October 4 and N.C. State on October 11, 1952, because a player and three other students had been stricken with polio.

76. 1953 Community Church of Chapel Hill formsDated milestone · Chapel Hill

    An interracial congregation organized with Charles M. Jones as minister.

77. 1953 Rebecca Clark moves from the University Laundry to nursing at Memorial HospitalCareer · N.C. Memorial Hospital, Chapel Hill

    In 1953 Clark left the University Laundry for the newly built university hospital, where she spent the rest of her working years as a nurse. UNC's Employee Forum says she was the first licensed practical nurse in the campus infirmary and retired in 1979.

78. 1953 UNC dedicates the Forest Theatre to Frederick KochDedication · Forest Theatre, Chapel Hill

    In 1953 the university dedicated the stone amphitheatre in Battle Park to Koch, who had developed the site of the 1916 Shakespeare tercentenary dramas into a permanent theatre after he joined the faculty. The stone stage and seating had been rebuilt with Works Progress Administration funds in 1940.

79. January 1953 WCHL begins broadcastingBroadcast milestone · Chapel Hill

    WCHL, Chapel Hill's new commercial radio station, went on the air in January 1953 at 1360 on the dial with 1,000 watts, broadcasting from sunrise to sunset from a site on the Durham highway. General manager Sandy McClamroch ran it with partners Roy E. Fullen and Lonnie Dark; its first broadcast was set for January 18.

80. 1954 First four-year class graduates from the UNC School of MedicineInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

    In 1954 the UNC School of Medicine graduated its first class of students to complete all four years of medical training. The university's new dental and nursing schools graduated their first classes the same year.

81. 1954–1959 Tenant farming drops sharply in Orange CountyCensus statistic · Orange County

    Tenant-operated farms in Orange County fell from 513 of 1,939 farms in 1954 to 295 of 1,405 in 1959, and croppers fell from 261 to 135. In 1959, 500 of the county's farms were classed as tobacco farms.

82. February 14, 1954 Chapel Hill American Legion post gives an iron lung to N.C. Memorial HospitalChapel Hill

    The Chapel Hill post of the American Legion presented an iron lung, bought for about $1,600, to North Carolina Memorial Hospital, with Congressman Carl T. Durham making the presentation. Hospital director Robert R. Cadmus said the hospital had treated 90 polio patients, two from Orange County, in its first 18 months; it was the hospital's second iron lung.

83. May 17, 1954 Brown v. Board places local school segregation under constitutional challengeCourt or legal action · Countywide

    On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated public schools unconstitutional, putting Orange County's separate schools for Black and white children under legal challenge. Four days later Chapel Hill Mayor Edwin Lanier urged gradual adjustment, and school board chairman Carl Smith predicted little trouble in complying but expected high schools to be affected most.

84. November 8, 1954 Howard W. Odum dies in Chapel HillBirth or death · Chapel Hill

    Odum died in Chapel Hill on November 8, 1954, while still at work on several books, after 34 years on the UNC faculty.

85. 1955 Community Church starts an integrated preschoolDated milestone · Chapel Hill

    The congregation’s preschool admitted children across racial lines.

86. 1955–1973 Daniel Okun chairs UNC's Department of Environmental Sciences and EngineeringAcademic leadership · Chapel Hill

    Okun, who joined the UNC public health faculty in 1952, headed the department from 1955 to 1973, and it grew from three to 25 faculty members.

87. 1955 Edward O. Diggs becomes UNC's first Black medical graduateInstitutional milestone · UNC School of Medicine, Chapel Hill

    Edward O. Diggs graduated from the UNC School of Medicine in 1955, the first African American to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree from the university. James Slade, the school's second Black student, had enrolled in 1953.

88. 1955 J. Carlyle Sitterson becomes dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at UNCAppointment · Chapel Hill

    Sitterson, who had begun teaching history at UNC in 1935 while completing his doctorate, became dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in 1955. He was appointed vice-chancellor in 1965.

89. January 8, 1955 WUNC-TV begins broadcastingFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

    WUNC-TV began broadcasting from Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.

90. April 18–21, 1955 First Salk polio vaccinations given to Orange County first and second gradersPublic health campaign · Orange County

    Local physicians working under the county health department gave the first round of Salk polio vaccine to more than 1,150 Orange County first and second graders. The work began on Monday, April 18, 1955 with about 500 Chapel Hill area children and finished on April 21 with the Hillsboro, Efland and Aycock schools.

91. June 1955 Hilliard Caldwell leads the Chapel Hill chapter of the New Farmers of AmericaStudent leadership · Lincoln High School, Chapel Hill

    The Lincoln High School paper reported a prosperous 1954 to 1955 year for the chapter under Caldwell, its president, and printed his own account of the chapter's work.

92. July 21–27, 1955 Orange County first and second graders get their second Salk shotsChapel Hill; Hillsboro

    The district health department gave second Salk vaccine doses to children who had their first shot in the spring: in Chapel Hill on July 21 and 22 for pupils of the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Glenwood, Northside, White Cross and Little Red Schoolhouse schools, and in Hillsboro on July 27, with school buses sent to county schools. Turnout at Hillsboro was low, with only 65 children by 11 a.m.

93. September 1, 1955 Hilliard Caldwell writes the Negro Community news column for the Chapel Hill News LeaderNewspaper column · Chapel Hill

    Caldwell was named as correspondent at the head of the column, which carried news of Black Chapel Hill and asked Lincoln High School graduates to send in their college addresses for the next week's issue.

94. September 19, 1955 First Black undergraduates enter UNCChapel Hill

    LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon, all of Durham, became UNC's first Black undergraduates when they began classes on September 19, 1955. A three-judge federal court in Greensboro had ordered the university on September 10 to process their applications, and they registered in the General College.

95. December 1955 Health officer calls tuberculosis Orange County's number one health problemPublic health campaign · Orange County

    Asked about tuberculosis, County Health Officer David Garvin said it was the county's number one public health problem. He said drugs, surgery and better treatment had cut the death rate sharply over ten years, but that as many cases were being found as when deaths were four times as great, and that finding unknown cases was the department's biggest problem.

96. 1956 Eno Mill houses are relocatedDated milestone · West Hillsborough

    Most company houses moved into nearby neighborhoods.

97. 1956 Jim Tatum returns to Chapel Hill as head football coachCoaching appointment · Chapel Hill

    Tatum came back to UNC in 1956 at a substantial cut in salary and reorganized and expanded the university's Educational Foundation, the source of its athletic grants-in-aid. He had the only losing season of his career that year, 2-7-1, and followed it with 6-4 records in 1957 and 1958.

98. 1956–57 season McGuire's undefeated Tar Heels play their home games at Woollen GymSeason · Chapel Hill

    McGuire's 1956-57 team won 32 straight games and the national championship, beating Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in triple overtime as 12-point underdogs. Only eight of those wins came at home in Woollen Gym, where a hole was drilled in the wall for a television camera lens.

99. 1956 Morehead gives the sundial in front of the planetariumGift · Chapel Hill, Morehead Planetarium

    In 1956 Morehead funded the sundial set in front of the planetarium building in Chapel Hill.

100. March 1, 1956 William Friday becomes acting president of the Consolidated UniversityAppointment · South Building, Chapel Hill

     Named acting president at 35 while the trustees searched for Gordon Gray's successor, Friday began his duties on March 1, 1956. The board approved him as president on October 26, 1956, and at his first news conference he named moving the administrative offices from South Building on the Chapel Hill campus to the old Institute of Government building on Franklin Street as a first goal.

101. 1957 Daniel H. Pollitt joins the UNC law facultyArrival · Chapel Hill

     Pollitt came to the UNC School of Law in 1957 as an associate professor of constitutional and labor law, after resigning from the University of Arkansas rather than sign an oath disavowing membership in the NAACP.

102. March 23, 1957 UNC men’s basketball wins the 1957 NCAA national championshipChapel Hill

     UNC defeated Kansas, 54–53 in triple overtime, to win the national title.

103. April 11, 1957 The General Assembly lets Hillsboro convey the library lot to the Hillsboro Library AssociationLaw or policy · Hillsborough

     A 1957 act authorized the Hillsboro town commissioners to convey the lot at Tryon and Churton streets holding the Hillsboro Library to the Hillsboro Library Association, and an adjoining lot to the Presbyterian church. Either lot would revert to the town if it stopped being used for the purpose named in the act.

104. July 1, 1957–August 1964 William B. Aycock serves as chancellor of UNC at Chapel HillUniversity leadership · Chapel Hill

     Aycock, on the law faculty at Chapel Hill since 1948, was chief administrator of the university there from July 1, 1957 until August 1964. His records cover desegregation, the state's speaker ban law and the Dixie Classic betting scandal.

105. August 29, 1957 Lincoln High prepares to open with sixteen teachers and about four hundred pupilsSchool year opening · Chapel Hill

     In the Chapel Hill News Leader's back to school report, Principal C. A. McDougle said Lincoln High School would have sixteen teachers and that enrollment would probably reach 400, against 381 on the first day of the previous year. Two of the teachers were new that year.

106. November 1957 Orange County Historical Museum is foundedInstitutional milestone · Hillsborough

     The Hillsborough Garden Club, led by Mrs. Clarence Jones, founded the Orange County Historical Museum, which opened in November 1957 on the second floor of the 1845 Orange County Courthouse after the county commissioners approved the space and gave $250. The museum moved to its Churton Street home in 1983.

107. December 7, 1957 The first televised ACC regular season game is played at Woollen GymBroadcast · Chapel Hill

     Television producer C. D. Chesley brought his cameras into Woollen Gym for Carolina's fourteenth meeting with Clemson, the first regular season ACC game ever televised. McGuire's team won 79-55.

108. 1958 Carr Store Road is paved through Cedar GroveRoads · Cedar Grove

     Carr Store Road, the east-west road through the Cedar Grove crossroads, was paved in 1958, about a decade after the north-south Efland-Cedar Grove Road. Until then farmers in the area could find farm-to-market roads impassable for months of the year.

109. 1958–1970 Cornelia Spencer Love serves as a founding trustee of the Chapel Hill Public LibraryCivic service · Chapel Hill

     Love was a trustee of the public library from its start in 1958 until 1970 and secretary of its board of directors. The library began in a small house in downtown Chapel Hill.

110. February 14, 1958 Central High School burnsDisaster or violence · Hillsborough

     On the morning of February 14, 1958, fire destroyed the 1936 main building of Central High School, Hillsborough's high school for Black students, including its office, auditorium and several classrooms. Students moved into a newly built structure meant for junior high use, and a new main classroom building designed by Archie Royal Davis went up on the site in 1958.

111. September 20, 1958 The Ackland Art Museum opensInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     UNC dedicated the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center on September 20, 1958, the morning after a preview for faculty. Ackland had left his bequest to Duke, which refused it, and nine years of litigation sent it to Chapel Hill; the Georgian building held galleries, an art library, classrooms, studios and offices.

112. September 21, 1958 Binkley Baptist Church organizesDated milestone · Chapel Hill

     Fifty-six charter members established the congregation, initially worshiping on campus.

113. December 15, 1958 Chapel Hill Public Library opensFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

     Chapel Hill's first public library held its formal opening on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House on West Franklin Street, with about 4,500 books, 2,000 of them lent by state and regional libraries. It moved to its own building at 523 East Franklin Street in 1967 and to Pritchard Park in 1994.

114. By 1959 Charlie Mason's motor court on West Rosemary Street was lodging Black travelersBusiness · 603 West Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill

     Mason's Motor Court at 603 West Rosemary Street, with the Starlite Supper Club, gave Black travelers and touring musicians a place to stay when other Chapel Hill hotels turned them away. The building is gone and the Greenbridge condominiums now stand on the site.

115. 1959 Community Church dedicates its first buildingDated milestone · Chapel Hill

     The building housed worship, classes, and offices.

116. 1959 Mary Claire Engstrom and her husband buy the Nash-Hooper House in HillsboroughPersonal milestone · Hillsborough, Nash-Hooper House

     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.

117. From 1959 Research Triangle Park and Orange County's growthStoryline · Chapel Hill

     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.

118. May 5, 1959 Sandy McClamroch is elected to the Chapel Hill Board of AldermenElection · Chapel Hill

     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.

119. June 15, 1959 O. David Garvin resigns as health director of the five county districtResignation · Orange County

     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.

120. June 23, 1959 Stanley Vickers's parents apply for his transfer from Northside Elementary to Carrboro ElementarySchool desegregation · Chapel Hill

     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.

121. July 13, 1959 Health officer asks county commissioners for money to buy polio vaccineHillsborough

     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.

122. July 23, 1959 Jim Tatum dies at Memorial Hospital in Chapel HillDeath · 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.

123. August 3, 1959 Chapel Hill school board refuses Stanley Vickers a transfer to all-white Carrboro Elementary and adopts a first-grade proximity policyLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

     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 that first-grade reassignment requests based on geographic proximity would ordinarily be granted starting with the 1960-61 year. UNC law dean Henry Brandis, who had voted for the transfer, resigned from the board in protest and called the action legally and morally indefensible.

124. November 16, 1959 Orange County commissioners give a cool reception to a Research Triangle planning requestCounty decision · Orange County

     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.

125. 1960 Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro inCensus statistic · Orange County

     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.

126. 1960s Cornelia Spencer Love gives private funds toward a new library on East Franklin StreetGift · East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill

     Love donated private money during the 1960s to help build the town's new public library on East Franklin Street.

127. 1960 North Carolina Memorial Hospital admits its 100,000th patientInstitutional milestone · North Carolina Memorial Hospital, Chapel Hill

     UNC A to Z records that the hospital welcomed its 100,000th patient in 1960, eight years after it opened.

128. February 2, 1960 The Vickers family files its federal suit against the Chapel Hill City Board of EducationCourt case · Chapel Hill

     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.

129. 1960–1964 Chapel Hill freedom movementStoryline · Chapel Hill

     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.

130. February 28, 1960 The Chapel Hill Nine sit-inProtest · Chapel Hill

     Nine Black young men held Chapel Hill’s first sit-in at Colonial Drug.

131. May 8–9, 1960 Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Chapel HillChapel 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.

132. June 1960 Chapel Hill aldermen pay the town's share of the Research Triangle planning commission budgetTown decision · Chapel Hill

     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.

133. June 27, 1960 Chapel Hill school board admits its first Black pupils to a white school, three first graders at Estes Hills ElementaryInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     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.

134. 1961 Aycock suspends a basketball player in the betting scandal and makes Dean Smith head coachUniversity leadership · Chapel Hill

     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.

135. Fall 1961 Carrboro Elementary School enrolls its first Black pupilsInstitutional milestone · Carrboro

     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.

136. Fall 1961 Chapel Hill assigns first graders by residence zone and becomes the first North Carolina district with no all-white schoolLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

     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.

137. 1961–1966 Desegregating the Chapel Hill and Carrboro schoolsStoryline · Carrboro

     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.

138. 1961 Frank McGuire leaves UNC and Dean Smith succeeds himCoaching change · Chapel Hill

     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.

139. 1961–1963 Orange County Board of Education closes Caldwell SchoolSchool closing · Caldwell

     The school board voted in 1961 to close the white-only Caldwell School, built in 1925, as desegregation approached. After a plan to send its pupils to Cameron Park in Hillsborough, they were assigned to Aycock School in Cedar Grove by May 1963, and the county could not sell the building until 1973.

140. Fall 1961 The first Black students enter the formerly white Chapel Hill junior-senior high school on Franklin StreetInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     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.

141. 1961 UNC considers the Jordan Reservoir for its water and Okun argues for Cane CreekWater supply · Chapel Hill

     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.

142. May 1961 Sandy McClamroch is elected mayor of Chapel Hill without oppositionElection · Chapel Hill

     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.

143. May 8, 1961 McClamroch is sworn in as mayor and Joe Page is named to his aldermen seatTown government · Chapel Hill

     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.

144. June 15, 1961 A.D. Clark Pool opensBuilding opening · Chapel Hill

     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.

145. August 4, 1961 Federal court rules Chapel Hill denied Stanley Vickers a junior high transfer because of his raceCourt case · Chapel Hill

     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.

146. October 12, 1961 President John F. Kennedy speaks at UNCSpeech or visit · Chapel Hill

     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.

147. November 22, 1961 Lincoln High's football team wins an undefeated state championshipSports milestone · Chapel Hill

     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.

148. 1962 Albert Coates retires as director of the Institute of GovernmentRetirement · Chapel Hill

     Coates ran the Institute he founded until he retired from it and from the university in 1962.

149. 1962 Julius Chambers graduates first in his class from the UNC School of LawGraduation · Chapel Hill

     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.

150. 1962 Nate Davis moves from Northside Elementary to Chapel Hill Junior HighSchool integration · Chapel Hill Junior High School, Chapel Hill

     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.

151. January 1962 Hyconeechee Regional Library director David Flick writes a books column for the News of Orange CountyAppointment · 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.

152. March 1962 Orange County was still running a separate library for Black readersInstitutional milestone · Hillsborough

     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.

153. June 1962 Chapel Hill Human Relations Committee asks for a Black nurse on the district health staffAdvocacy · Chapel Hill

     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.

154. December 19, 1962 Chapel Hill Planning Board reviews the Research Triangle Planning Area land use planTown planning · Chapel Hill

     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.

155. 1963 Aycock and Hillsborough High schools are consolidated into Orange High SchoolSchool consolidation · Cedar Grove

     When Orange High School opened in 1963, the county consolidated the high school grades of Aycock School in Cedar Grove and Hillsborough High School into it, and the older buildings became junior high or elementary schools. Some Aycock seniors went to Eastern Alamance High School in Mebane, but most went to Orange High.

156. 1963 David Caldwell's family bought a home on Rogers RoadFamily settlement · 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.

157. 1963–1964 Floyd McKissick sends organizers to Chapel Hill and defends arrested demonstratorsCivil rights action · Chapel Hill

     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.

158. 1963 Inter-Church Council formsDated milestone · Chapel Hill and Carrboro

     Seven women’s organizing led to coordinated local poverty relief.

159. 1963–1965 Mary Claire Engstrom documents 122 Hillsborough sites for the Historic American Buildings SurveySurvey or documentation · Hillsborough

     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.

160. 1963 Mary Claire Engstrom helps found the Hillsborough Historical SocietyFounding or opening · Hillsborough

     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.

161. Fall 1963 Orange High School begins desegregationFounding or opening · Hillsborough

     Tonya and Narviar Cathcart entered Orange High School after their family’s transfer petition was approved.

162. March 1963 Chapel Hill Planning Board favors a large village in response to the Triangle commission's development planTown planning · Chapel Hill

     Reviewing the Research Triangle Planning Commission staff's General Development Plan for Chapel Hill to 1980, the Planning Board went on record preferring that the town grow as a large village rather than a small city. The plan also addressed subdivision layout, a collector road system and a proposed lake on Bolin Creek north of town.

163. April 1963 NAACP chapter pickets North Carolina Memorial Hospital over segregated rooms and wardsProtest · North Carolina Memorial Hospital, Chapel Hill

     The UNC chapter of the NAACP organized a picket in April 1963 to protest that private rooms and certain wards for Black patients at the hospital were still segregated, although outpatient clinics, recovery rooms, pediatrics and the cafeteria had been integrated. Hospital officials opposed the demonstration.

164. April 19, 1963 Floyd McKissick and Malcolm X appear together at UNC's Memorial HallSpeech or lecture · Memorial Hall, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

     A day after their meeting in Durham, Durham attorney Floyd McKissick and Malcolm X appeared at UNC in a meeting moved from Howell Hall to Memorial Hall when about 1,600 people came. McKissick said he believed the Muslim movement had grown out of the frustration of Black Americans.

165. May–July 1963 Research Triangle Planning Commission projects Chapel Hill school growth toPlanning study · Chapel Hill

     John Scott of the Research Triangle Planning Commission told the Chapel Hill School Board that district enrollment could reach 8,000 pupils by 1980, more than double the current number, and cited a 1960 township population of 25,000. The commission delivered its full report on school needs to 1980 by late July.

166. May–July 1963 The Committee for Open Business presses Chapel Hill merchants to desegregateProtest or organizing · Chapel Hill

     The Committee for Open Business grew out of a Student Peace Union boycott of 13 segregated Chapel Hill restaurants and first met in early May 1963 to coordinate students and townspeople. On July 19 its sit-in at the Merchants Association office on West Franklin Street ended with 34 arrests.

167. May 7, 1963 Roosevelt Warner is elected the first Black member of the Hillsboro Board of CommissionersElection · Hillsborough

     Roosevelt Warner, a masonry contractor and business owner, led the field of eleven candidates with 281 votes for the five-member Board of Town Commissioners on his second try, unseating incumbent Herman H. Strayhorn. Two years earlier he had been the town's first Black candidate, finishing last with 180 votes.

168. June 25, 1963 Aldermen hear Daniel Pollitt's opinion that Chapel Hill may pass a public accommodations law, then shelve itLaw or policy · Chapel Hill Town Hall

     At a Town Hall hearing attended by more than 200 people, Mayor Sandy McClamroch read an opinion by Pollitt that Chapel Hill had the authority to enact a public accommodations ordinance and that similar laws elsewhere had withstood court tests. The Board of Aldermen then voted 4 to 2 to postpone the ordinance indefinitely.

169. 1963–1968 Speaker Ban controversyStoryline · Countywide

     The General Assembly passed the Speaker Ban on June 26, 1963, barring known Communists and people who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment from speaking on state campuses. In March 1966 Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker spoke to UNC students from the Franklin Street side of the wall, and a federal court struck the law down on February 19, 1968.

170. November 1963 Daniel Pollitt's law review article calls the Speaker Ban constitutionally suspectLaw or policy · UNC campus, Chapel Hill

     Pollitt's article Campus Censorship: The North Carolina Visiting Speakers Law, written for the December 1963 North Carolina Law Review, argued that the Speaker Ban raised serious problems of free speech, self-incrimination and due process. The Daily Tar Heel called it the first known legal analysis of the law by a lawyer outside the attorney general's office.

171. 1964 Binkley moves to Willow DriveDated milestone · Chapel Hill

     The congregation occupied its first permanent building.

172. 1964–1966 and 1976–1983 Mary Claire Engstrom chairs the Historic Hillsborough CommissionInstitutional milestone · Hillsborough

     Mary Claire Engstrom chaired the Historic Hillsborough Commission, a state-appointed body created in 1963, from 1964 to 1966 and again from 1976 to 1983. Her research files for the commission and other projects cover deeds, cemeteries, mills, inns, Quaker settlements and schools such as the Hillsborough Academy and the Burwell School.

173. 1964 Realtors steer Howard and Lillian Lee away from white subdivisionsDiscrimination case · Colony Woods, Chapel Hill

     After moving to Chapel Hill for graduate study, Howard and Lillian Lee searched for about six months while realtors hesitated to show them houses in white subdivisions. They bought in Colony Woods, then received threatening calls and had a cross burned on their lawn.

174. January 1964 Survey finds N.C. Memorial Hospital still separates patients by raceSegregation practice · North Carolina Memorial Hospital, Chapel Hill

     A Daily Tar Heel survey of Chapel Hill accommodations listed North Carolina Memorial Hospital among places keeping segregation, with director E. B. Crawford Jr. saying the hospital had two floors of mostly Black patients and did not generally integrate patient rooms.

175. January–July 1964 Watts Restaurant protestsProtest · Chapel Hill

     Sit-ins at the segregated Watts Restaurant and Motel on South Columbia Street began on January 2, 1964. Over the next days demonstrators were urinated on, hosed and struck with a broom handle, and Duke and UNC faculty were among those arrested. The owners held out after the Civil Rights Act and desegregated on July 10, 1964.

176. January 13, 1964 Chapel Hill aldermen vote down a public accommodations ordinanceLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

     The Board of Aldermen rejected, 4 to 2, an ordinance that would have required all town businesses to serve Black customers, and set up a nine-member committee on race relations instead. Integration leaders promised more demonstrations.

177. March 1964 Supreme Court lets stand the ruling against segregated hospitals built with federal fundsCourt case · Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, Greensboro

     The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, leaving in place the Fourth Circuit's November 1, 1963 ruling that Greensboro hospitals built with Hill-Burton money could not segregate doctors or patients. The Daily Tar Heel carried the decision on its front page.

178. March 22, 1964 More than 25,000 Orange County residents take Sabin oral polio vaccine on one SundayChapel Hill; Carrboro; Hillsborough; Cedar Grove; Efland

     The Durham-Orange County Medical Foundation ran a Sunday oral polio vaccine campaign at eight public school feeding stations in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Cedar Grove and Efland. A total of 25,679 people took the vaccine on a sugar cube, about 56 percent of the county, with Glenwood School alone serving 5,063; a second dose was set for May 17.

179. March 22, 1964 The Holy Week fast began on the Franklin Street post office lawnProtest · Chapel Hill

     At sunrise on Palm Sunday, Freedom Committee members John Dunne, Pat Cusick, James Foushee and the Rev. LeVert Taylor began an eight-day, water-only fast on the grounds of the Chapel Hill post office, planned to last through Easter. The fast was aimed at the Board of Aldermen, and a fifth faster joined within two days.

180. July 2, 1964 The Civil Rights Act changes the legal ground for local integrationLaw or policy · Countywide

     The Civil Rights Act, signed on July 2, 1964, barred segregation in restaurants, hotels and theaters. Within a week, testers found eight of 13 previously segregated Chapel Hill-area businesses serving Black customers, while five, including a Franklin Street beer parlor, still refused.

181. September 1, 1964–February 15, 1966 Paul F. Sharp serves as chief administrator of UNC at Chapel HillUniversity leadership · Chapel Hill

     Sharp was chief administrative officer of the university at Chapel Hill from September 1, 1964 to February 15, 1966. His records document the state's speaker ban law and programs in medical education, and he left to become president of Drake University.

182. 1965–1966 Eric Van Loon chairs the Carolina Political UnionStudent organization office · Chapel Hill

     A Daily Tar Heel profile in May 1966 reported that Van Loon, a junior from Nashville, had spent the past year as chairman of the Carolina Political Union, vice president of the debating team, National Student Association campus coordinator, a Morrison resident adviser and treasurer of the Carolina Symposium.

183. 1965 Karen Parker becomes the first Black woman to earn an undergraduate degree at UNCEducation milestone · Chapel Hill

     Karen L. Parker, who transferred from the Woman's College in Greensboro in 1963 as UNC's first Black woman undergraduate, graduated in journalism in 1965. She was the first African American woman to receive an undergraduate degree from the University, and as a student she joined Chapel Hill sit-ins and was arrested in December 1963.

184. 1965 Ruth Anderson Stephens becomes the first Black graduate of UNC's School of NursingInstitutional milestone · UNC School of Nursing, Chapel Hill

     Ruth Anderson Stephens completed the School of Nursing's master's program in nursing education and administration in 1965, the school's first African American graduate.

185. 1965 UNC names its Chapel Hill gymnasium for William D. Carmichael Jr.Naming · Chapel Hill

     Four years after his death the university named the gymnasium at Chapel Hill for Carmichael. NCpedia lists buildings named for him on three campuses, the television building at Greensboro, the gymnasium at Raleigh and the auditorium at Chapel Hill.

186. March 1965 Jim Medford is elected president of the campus YMCAStudent election · UNC, Chapel Hill

     A Daily Tar Heel photograph taken on the steps of South Building shows Jim Medford as the newly elected YMCA president with the other officers chosen in the campus Y election.

187. April 1965 Harper and Row publishes John Ehle's The Free Men, an account of the Chapel Hill protestsPublication · Chapel Hill

     Ehle's nonfiction book traced the 1963–1964 civil rights campaign in Chapel Hill through three of its leaders, John Dunne, Pat Cusick and Quinton Baker, from the first pickets at a cafe to mass arrests and long prison sentences.

188. May 1965 Memorial Hospital ends racial segregationChapel Hill

     After a federal inspection team found the hospital out of compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Chancellor Paul F. Sharp announced it would take immediate steps to obey the law. The hospital had assigned patients to rooms by what it called cultural background, and room assignments now had to be made without regard to race.

189. May 20, 1965 Three Black students desegregate Aycock School in Cedar GroveSchool desegregation · Cedar Grove

     Under the county's Freedom of Choice plan, three Black families asked for their children to be transferred to the white Aycock School, and on May 20, 1965 the three students were assigned and began attending. United States Marshals escorted at least one of them.

190. October 1965 Bob Powell is named executive director of the Carolina ForumStudent office · UNC, Chapel Hill

     The Daily Tar Heel's list of student government appointments made by Student Body President Paul Dickson gives Bob Powell as executive director of the Carolina Forum for the 1965-66 year.

191. October 1965 Medford is named to the student government State Affairs committeeCommittee appointment · UNC, Chapel Hill

     Student Body President Paul Dickson's committee appointments, printed in the Daily Tar Heel, put Jim Medford on the State Affairs committee along with Henry Patterson and Taylor Branch.

192. November 17, 1965 Eunice Milton is listed among the members of the Order of ValkyriesStudent honorary · UNC, Chapel Hill

     When the Order of Valkyries, described by the Daily Tar Heel as the highest women's honorary organization on campus, tapped new members in November 1965, Eunice Milton was named among the seven continuing members. She appears again in the honorary's March 1966 list.

193. 1966 Baptist Association rejects Binkley membershipDated milestone · Chapel Hill

     The local association denied admission over Binkley’s open membership policy.

194. 1966 Eric Van Loon becomes assistant to the student body presidentStudent government · Chapel Hill

     After Robert S. Powell Jr. was elected student body president in the spring of 1966, the Daily Tar Heel reported that Van Loon had newly taken on the roles of student legislator, National Student Association delegate and presidential assistant to Powell. He had run unsuccessfully for student body treasurer the previous spring.

195. 1966 Eunice Milton serves as president of the campus YWCAStudent office · UNC, Chapel Hill

     The Daily Tar Heel called Milton the YWCA president when it reported the filing of the Speaker Ban suit on April 1, 1966, and the former YWCA president when it reported on the case in May.

196. 1966 Integrated Chapel Hill High opens on High School RoadEducation milestone · Chapel Hill

     A new Chapel Hill High School campus opened on High School Road in 1966 as the town's first racially integrated high school, taking in the white student body from the Franklin Street school together with Lincoln High's students. Under freedom of choice the board had planned for white students to occupy the building a year before Black students joined, but Black students applied together for 1966 so that the school would not first be seen as belonging to the white students.

197. 1966 John E. Greenbacker Jr. leads the Dialectic and Philanthropic literary societyStudent organization office · Chapel Hill

     The federal court's findings in Dickson v. Sitterson list Greenbacker as president of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Society, one of the recognized student organizations whose officers brought the Speaker Ban suit. The Daily Tar Heel likewise named him as Di-Phi president among the ten student leaders who wrote to Chancellor Sitterson on March 1, 1966.

198. 1966 John E. Greenbacker Jr. serves as associate editor of the Daily Tar HeelStudent journalism · Chapel Hill

     The masthead of the December 7, 1966 Daily Tar Heel lists Greenbacker as associate editor under editor Fred Thomas. He wrote signed opinion pieces, and a letter in the same issue takes issue with his Sunday column profiling the SDS leader Gary Waller.

199. 1966 Lincoln High School closes during integrationPreservation or planning · Chapel Hill

     Lincoln High on Merritt Mill Road, the Black high school led since 1946 by principal C. A. McDougle, stopped operating as a secondary school in 1966 and its students were reassigned to the new Chapel Hill High, completing the desegregation of the district's schools. McDougle became an assistant principal there and Lincoln's championship football coach William D. Peerman was made an assistant coach after a contested board vote; Lincoln's name, colors, mascot and much of its memorabilia were not carried over.

200. 1966 Northside Elementary closed as the school system integratedInstitutional milestone · 350 Caldwell Street, Chapel Hill

     The Caldwell Street school closed soon after the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools began mandatory integration in 1966, and the building was turned into office space.

201. 1966 Stuart Matthews serves on the steering committee of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic SocietyStudent organization office · Chapel Hill

     The federal court's findings in Dickson v. Sitterson list Matthews as a member of the steering committee of Students for a Democratic Society, one of the recognized campus organizations whose officers brought the suit. The Daily Tar Heel adds that Matthews and Gary Waller invited Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak under SDS sponsorship on January 3, 1966.

202. January 1966 Students for a Democratic Society invites Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak at UNCProtest · Chapel Hill

     The UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society invited Frank Wilkinson, who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment when questioned in California about Communist activities, and the Communist theoretician Herbert Aptheker to speak on campus. After the trustees barred both men, Student Government under Paul Dickson, the Daily Tar Heel, the Carolina Forum, the YMCA and YWCA, the Di-Phi and the Carolina Political Union joined SDS in renewing the invitations.

203. January 9, 1966 Carolina Forum chairman George Nicholson answers Professor W. C. George on the Forum's speakersCampus debate · UNC, Chapel Hill

     Nicholson told the Daily Tar Heel that the Forum invited both liberals and conservatives, naming Strom Thurmond and Ross Barnett among its recent guests, after the segregationist UNC professor W. C. George said it largely ignored conservative racial views.

204. February 1966 Gary Waller becomes chairman of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic SocietyStudent organization office · Chapel Hill

     A UNC Libraries exhibit states that Waller, a graduate student in the Department of Sociology, was vice chairman of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became chairman when Jim McCorkel resigned on February 2, 1966 to spend more time on his graduate studies.

205. February 1, 1966 Dickson, Nicholson and McCrary invite Herbert Aptheker to speak on campusSpeaker invitation · UNC, Chapel Hill

     Three of the students who later sued invited Aptheker to speak at Chapel Hill on March 9, 1966 under the sponsorship of Student Government, the Carolina Forum and the Daily Tar Heel. Aptheker accepted two days later.

206. February 7, 1966 Gary Waller joins a student panel on the Speaker Ban in Memorial HallStudent meeting · Chapel Hill

     The Daily Tar Heel reported that student body president Paul Dickson presided over a noon meeting of students and faculty in Memorial Hall, with a panel of four that included Waller, Carolina Conservative Club president Wilson Clark and the SDS faculty advisers Joseph Straley and Lewis Lipsitz. The meeting adopted a resolution about four and a half hours before the trustees' executive committee voted 8 to 3 to bar Herbert Aptheker from speaking.

207. February 7, 1966 UNC trustees' executive committee bars Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker from the Chapel Hill campusLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

     Meeting in Governor Dan K. Moore's office in Raleigh, the executive committee of the UNC board of trustees voted 8 to 3 to deny university facilities to Aptheker and Wilkinson and suspended all other invitations covered by the speaker ban law until the full board adopted rules. Earlier that day more than 800 students and faculty at a Memorial Hall meeting had backed Aptheker's right to speak.

208. February 11, 1966 Nicholson criticizes SDS over the Aptheker invitation while backing the principleCampus debate · UNC, Chapel Hill

     The Carolina Forum chairman called the Students for a Democratic Society invitation to Herbert Aptheker ill-timed and planned for sensationalism, and said the Forum had joined the invitation only in support of the principle of free speech.

209. February 13, 1966 Nicholson rebuts the Conservative Club chairman's charge about Forum speakersCampus debate · UNC, Chapel Hill

     Answering Carolina Conservative Club chairman Wilson Clark, Nicholson said the Forum's budget was 2,000 dollars rather than 6,000, that it had invited conservative speakers, and that John Birch Society founder Robert Welch was coming to campus later that month.

210. February 16, 1966 – January 31, 1972 J. Carlyle Sitterson serves as chief administrator of UNC at Chapel HillAdministration · Chapel Hill

     Sitterson was the chief administrative officer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from February 16, 1966 to January 31, 1972. His records as chancellor cover desegregation and the federal HEW lawsuit, the Speaker Ban law, protest against the Vietnam War and campus unrest.

211. February 28, 1966 Stuart Matthews and Gary Waller write to Chancellor Sitterson inviting Herbert ApthekerCorrespondence · Chapel Hill

     On the day the full board of trustees adopted new speaker regulations, Matthews and Waller wrote to Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson for the UNC Chapel Hill chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, asking that Herbert Aptheker be allowed to speak on campus about the war in Vietnam on March 9. The letter set out his publications, speaking engagements and his Supreme Court passport case.

212. March 1966 Chancellor Sitterson makes student leaders erase a taped meetingMeeting · Chapel Hill

     The Daily Tar Heel reported that Paul Dickson, Eric Van Loon and George Nicholson met Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson in his office for about thirty minutes, and that Van Loon carried a tape recorder. When Sitterson found the conversation was being recorded he made them play the tape back and erase it, saying it upset him that they had not mentioned it.

213. March 1966 Powell is named to the student-faculty committee on visiting speakersCommittee appointment · UNC, Chapel Hill

     The Daily Tar Heel listed Bob Powell first among the members of the student-faculty committee on visiting speakers, in the same story that printed the students' request to the chancellor.

214. March 1, 1966 Eight student groups re-invite Frank Wilkinson under the trustees' new speaker rulesProtest · Chapel Hill

     The day after the full board of trustees adopted speaker regulations on February 28, Paul Dickson and leaders of the Carolina Forum, the YMCA, the YWCA, the Daily Tar Heel, the Di-Phi, Students for a Democratic Society and the Carolina Political Union formally told Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson that Wilkinson was invited for March 2 and Aptheker for March 9. Wilkinson spoke to the Duke Bar Association in Durham that day.

215. March 2, 1966 Barred from Carroll Hall, Frank Wilkinson speaks to about 350 people at the Hillel HouseProtest · Hillel House, Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill

     That evening campus security officer Arthur Beaumont, acting on the chancellor's orders, kept Wilkinson, Paul Dickson and about 200 students out of Carroll Hall, and the group moved to the Hillel House on Cameron Avenue, where almost 350 people heard Wilkinson speak on HUAC. He told them a test case with several plaintiffs would be prepared at once.

216. March 2, 1966 Barred from campus by the Speaker Ban, Frank Wilkinson addressed UNC students from the Chapel Hill side of the wallChapel Hill

     After Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson refused him campus speaking privileges, Frank Wilkinson spoke for about 10 minutes from the Franklin Street sidewalk while about 1,200 students and faculty stood across the low stone wall on McCorkle Place. Student body president Paul Dickson introduced him and predicted a court case.

217. March 9, 1966 Herbert Aptheker gives his evening talk at the Community ChurchPublic lecture · Community Church, Purefoy Road, Chapel Hill

     Kept off campus, Aptheker gave his evening talk to about 350 people at the interdenominational Community Church on Purefoy Road. Paul Dickson then announced a Free Speech Defense Fund to pay for a lawsuit.

218. March 9, 1966 Herbert Aptheker speaks to students across the McCorkle Place wallProtest · McCorkle Place wall at Franklin Street, Chapel Hill

     At noon Paul Dickson led Aptheker, invited by SDS and the Committee for Free Inquiry, onto McCorkle Place near the Confederate monument, where campus police chief Arthur Beaumont halted Dickson's introduction and warned of arrest. Aptheker crossed the low stone wall to the Franklin Street sidewalk and spoke to a crowd estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 on the campus side.

219. March 14, 1966 Student leaders ask the chancellor to let Wilkinson and Aptheker speak on campusPetition · Chapel Hill

     Paul Dickson and the heads of Carolina Forum, the YMCA, the YWCA, Di-Phi, the Carolina Political Union and SDS wrote to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson asking that Wilkinson speak on March 23 and Aptheker on March 25, or on later dates.

220. March 15, 1966 Gary Waller debates Wilson Clark at the first Di-Phi Senate debateStudent debate · Chapel Hill

     The Daily Tar Heel announced that Waller and Carolina Conservative Club president Wilson Clark would be the principal speakers at the inaugural debate of the Di-Phi Senate that evening in New West, on whether human rights should supersede property rights in a modern society.

221. March 29, 1966 Bob Powell wins the runoff for UNC student body presidentStudent election · UNC, Chapel Hill

     Powell, the Student Party candidate, beat University Party candidate Teddy O'Toole by 2,401 votes to 1,993 in the runoff, two days before the Speaker Ban suit was filed.

222. March 31, 1966 Students and the two speakers file Dickson v. Sitterson against the Speaker BanCourt case · U.S. District Court, Greensboro

     Minutes after Sitterson refused the students' request, Paul Dickson and eleven other student leaders, joined by Wilkinson and Aptheker as plaintiffs, sued Sitterson, President William C. Friday and the trustees in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Attorney McNeill Smith took the case without fee.

223. April 14, 1966 Powell takes office as UNC student body presidentStudent office · UNC, Chapel Hill

     The Daily Tar Heel said the new president's inauguration was set for April 14, 1966. Its April 15 issue describes Bob Powell acting as student body president with Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson at a campus clothing drive.

224. October 14, 1966 The Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley formsPreservation action · Eno River

     Residents who had begun organizing in 1965 against plans to dam the Eno for a water-supply reservoir formed the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley on October 14, 1966. Led by Margaret and Holger Nygard, it began the campaign that preserved the river corridor in Durham and Orange counties.

225. December 8, 1966 Supreme Court hears Klopfer v. North CarolinaCourt case · Washington, D.C.; Orange County case

     The Supreme Court heard arguments in Peter Klopfer’s speedy-trial case, arising from an Orange County trespass prosecution.

226. From 1967 Black student activism at UNCStoryline · Chapel Hill

     Black students founded the Black Student Movement at UNC in November 1967. It presented 23 demands to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson in December 1968, backed the cafeteria workers' strike of 1969, and in the 1990s pressed for a freestanding Black cultural center, which opened as the Sonja Haynes Stone Center in 2004.

227. 1967 Chapel Hill High School graduates its first desegregated classInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     The class of 1967 was the first to finish at the merged Chapel Hill High School. The school board then debated the fate of the empty Lincoln building through 1969 and 1970, and voted to keep it for school use after sustained objection from Black residents to selling it.

228. 1967 Chapel Hill opens its first public housing at Craig-Gomains and Lindsay StreetBuilding opening · Chapel Hill

     Chapel Hill's first public housing neighborhoods were Craig-Gomains (40 units) and Lindsay Street (9 units), both built in 1967. Both remain in the town's 296-unit, 12-neighborhood public housing portfolio.

229. 1967 UNC names a new south campus residence hall for Hinton JamesCampus building · UNC, Chapel Hill

     The university built a ten-story residence hall on south campus in 1967 and named it for Hinton James, the first student to reach Chapel Hill in 1795. The hall houses 964 students in eight-person suites.

230. 1967 UNC students open SHAC, the nation's first student-run free clinicFounding or opening · Orange County

     The Student Health Action Coalition began in 1967 with a few UNC medical students seeing patients in supporters' homes. It now holds a free Wednesday evening clinic at the Carrboro Community Health Center, with student interpreting teams in Spanish and Mandarin.

231. March 13, 1967 The U.S. Supreme Court decided Klopfer v. North Carolina, the speedy-trial case that grew out of a Chapel Hill sit-in arrestCourt case · Washington, D.C.; Orange County case

     The Supreme Court applied the constitutional speedy-trial right to state prosecutions in Peter Klopfer’s case.

232. 1968 Central High students march and Orange County schools integrateProtest · Hillsborough

     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.

233. 1968–1972 Chapel Hill adds five more public housing neighborhoodsBuilding opening · Chapel Hill

     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.

234. 1968–2009 Daphne Athas teaches creative writing at UNCInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     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.

235. 1968 The undergraduate library named for R. B. House opensBuilding · Chapel Hill

     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.

236. 1968 UNC names its new bookstore building for Josephus DanielsNaming · Chapel Hill

     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.

237. February 19, 1968 A federal court struck down the Speaker Ban law in Dickson v. SittersonCourt case · Chapel Hill

     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.

238. April 22, 1968 Chapel Hill aldermen approve an open housing ordinance 3 to 2 on first readingLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

     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.

239. May 13, 1968 Chapel Hill adopts North Carolina's first local open housing ordinanceLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

     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.

240. May 15, 1968 Frank Wilkinson speaks on the UNC campus in Howell HallPublic lecture · Howell Hall, UNC

     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.

241. August 1968 Drought drops University Lake to a sixth of its normal level and forces water rationingEnvironmental event · Chapel Hill

     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.

242. August 10, 1968 Cone Mills honors Eno plant workers, most of them women, for fifty years at the millWomen's labor · Hillsborough

     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.

243. September 15, 1968 Final race at Orange SpeedwayHillsborough

     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.

244. 1969 Braxton Foushee becomes Carrboro’s first Black aldermanElection · Carrboro

     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.

245. From 1969 Chapel Hill and Carrboro music sceneStoryline · Carrboro

     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."

246. 1969 Engineering study for UNC recommends a reservoir on Cane CreekPlanning study · Cane Creek, Orange County

     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.

247. 1969 The Cat's Cradle opens in Chapel HillBusiness opening · 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.

248. 1969 UNC foodworkers’ strugglesStoryline · Chapel Hill

     UNC cafeteria workers struck twice in 1969 over pay and working conditions.

249. February 23 – March 21, 1969 UNC food workers' strikeProtest · Chapel Hill

     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.

250. March 5–6, 1969 Governor Scott orders Lenoir Hall reopened under Highway Patrol guardState intervention · Lenoir Hall, Chapel Hill

     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.

251. March 13, 1969 State troopers clear Manning Hall on Governor Scott's ordersState intervention · Manning Hall, Chapel Hill

     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.

252. May 6, 1969 Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel HillPolitical milestone · 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.

253. May 6, 1969 Rebecca Clark carries voters to the polls in Howard Lee's mayoral campaignElection · Chapel Hill

     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.

254. May 19, 1969 UNC hands campus dining to the SAGA Food Service contractInstitutional milestone · Lenoir Hall, Chapel Hill

     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.

255. November 7 – December 9, 1969 UNC foodworkers strike a second timeLabor action · Chapel Hill

     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.

256. 1970 Berryhill Hall is completed and named for W. Reece BerryhillBuilding named · UNC School of Medicine, Chapel Hill

     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.

257. 1970 Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro inCensus statistic · Orange County

     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.

258. 1970–1973 Daniel Okun serves as chair of the UNC facultyAcademic leadership · Chapel Hill

     Okun was chair of the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1970 to 1973, while still heading his department.

259. 1970s Northside and Pine Knolls residents resist federal urban renewalCommunity resistance · Northside and Pine Knolls, Chapel Hill

     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.

260. 1970 Orange–Chatham Comprehensive Health Services beginsInstitutional milestone · Orange and Chatham counties

     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.

261. Early 1970s Robert Campbell moves to Rogers Road as the county landfill is built beside itArrival · Rogers Road, Chapel Hill

     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.

262. May 1970 UNC student strike ofProtest · Chapel Hill

     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.

263. Late November 1970 Black residents question the police handling of the Cates killingCommunity response · Chapel Hill

     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.

264. November 21, 1970 Durham motorcycle gang member charged with murder in the Cates stabbingArrest · Chapel Hill

     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.

265. November 21, 1970 James Cates is killed outside the UNC Student UnionDisaster or violence · Chapel Hill

     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.

266. November 25, 1970 Mayor Howard Lee leads a memorial march for James CatesProtest · Chapel Hill

     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.

267. December 1, 1970 Three Durham men bound over to the grand jury in the Cates killingCourt case · Hillsborough

     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.

268. 1971 Daphne Athas publishes Entering Ephesus, a novel set in Carrboro and Chapel HillPublication · 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.

269. March 22, 1971 Trial of three Storm Troopers for the death of James Cates opensCourt case · Hillsborough

     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.

270. March 25, 1971 All-white jury acquits three men in the killing of James CatesCourt case · Hillsborough

     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.

271. July 1971 General Assembly gives North Carolina Memorial Hospital its own board of directorsLaw or policy · North Carolina Memorial Hospital, Chapel Hill

     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.

272. November 1971 The governor appoints a commission to study the future of the university's water and sewer systemsInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     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.

273. November 19, 1971 Black Student Movement holds a first-anniversary memorial for James CatesProtest · Chapel Hill

     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.

274. 1972 Efland and Orange Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporatedFire protection · Efland

     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.

275. 1972–1973 Marinda Dunnigan McPherson is recorded singing songs she learned from her familyField recording · Hillsborough

     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.

276. 1972 Phillips Russell publishes These Old Stone WallsPublication · Chapel Hill

     Russell's last book, a collection of stories and historical anecdotes about Chapel Hill, appeared in 1972, two years before he died.

277. 1972–2019 Rogers Road environmental justiceStoryline · Chapel Hill

     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.

278. 1972 Rogers Road landfill opensPreservation or planning · Chapel Hill

     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.

279. 1972 UNC School of Medicine launches the Area Health Education Centers programFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

     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.

280. 1972 UNC abolishes the office of dean of womenAdministrative change · Chapel Hill

     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.

281. January 1972 Betty Smith is buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial CemeteryDeath and burial · Chapel Hill

     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.

282. September 1972 New Hope Improvement Association sues to stop the Eubanks Road landfillProtest · Eubanks Road, Chapel Hill

     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.

283. September 14, 1972 Chapel Hill aldermen voted to buy the Eubanks Road site for the county landfillLand acquisition · Chapel Hill

     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.

284. November 30, 1972 Officials signed the landfill agreement that carried promises to the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhoodLaw or policy · Orange County

     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.

285. 1973 Black Student Movement march remembers James CatesCommemoration · Chapel Hill

     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.

286. 1973 Cat's Cradle moves to West Rosemary StreetRelocation · 405½ West Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill

     The club left its first home, a basement room near campus, for 405½ West Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, its second location.

287. 1973–1975 Eno River State Park is createdPreservation or planning · Eno River

     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.

288. 1973 The Community Center is renamed for William M. HargravesMemorial or commemoration · Chapel Hill

     Chapel Hill's Roberson Street Center, built in the 1940s as the town's segregated Negro Community Center, was renamed in 1973 the William M. Hargraves Recreation Center. Hargraves, a Black resident who had served on the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Commission, had died in an automobile accident.

289. 1973 The Southern Oral History Program is foundedInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     UNC's Southern Oral History Program was founded in 1973 under historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, its founding director until 2011, and was first housed in the history department. Its interviews with Southerners, now more than 7,500 recordings kept in Wilson Library, include many Chapel Hill and Orange County narrators.

290. 1974 Chase Park and Elliott Woods apartments are completedDated milestone · Chapel Hill

     The Inter-Church Council's housing corporation finished Chase Park and Elliott Woods, 79 federally assisted low-income apartments on Elliott Road in Chapel Hill. Construction began in January 1973, and the complexes took applications from June 1974.

291. 1974 Orange County Rape Crisis Center is foundedDated milestone · Countywide

     The organization established local support and advocacy for survivors of sexual violence.

292. 1974–1975 Residents campaign to save Carrboro's former textile mill from demolitionPreservation action · Carrboro

     In 1974 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen decided the vacant former Alberta mill should be demolished to make way for a modern shopping center. Residents led by Frances Shetley petitioned against it, the owner agreed not to tear it down, and the complex was nominated for the National Register in June 1975.

293. August 1974 The ArtSchool is foundedInstitutional milestone · Carrboro

     Jacques Menache, who had earned an MFA at UNC the year before, opened the ArtSchool in Carrboro in August 1974 to offer art classes. By 1978 the Carrboro ArtSchool also ran a gallery theatre, and the organization later became The ArtsCenter, which moved to Roberson Street in 2023.

294. August 1, 1974 Chapel Hill Transit begins serviceFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

     Chapel Hill's municipal bus system began running on August 1, 1974, after Mayor Howard Lee and UNC Chancellor Ferebee Taylor cut the ribbon, with eight town, campus and park-and-ride routes. Carrboro was not yet served.

295. September 1974 The Carolina Gay Association formsProtest or organizing · Chapel Hill

     Students who had met weekly since February 1974 as the Gay Awareness Rap Group won recognition from UNC's Dean of Student Affairs in early September 1974 and took the name Carolina Gay Association. The group met in Craige dormitory and in 1976 sponsored the first Southeastern Gay Conference.

296. 1975 UNC Lineberger Cancer Center is establishedInstitutional milestone · Chapel Hill

     UNC established a cancer research center in 1975 under founding director Joseph Pagano. Later named for the Lineberger family of Belmont, who helped fund its 1984 building, it earned NCI comprehensive status in 1990 and is North Carolina's only public one.

297. June 1975 Orange County and the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro create the Orange Water and Sewer AuthorityFounding or opening · Orange County

     The Orange County Board of Commissioners and the governing boards of Chapel Hill and Carrboro incorporated OWASA under Chapter 162A of the North Carolina General Statutes. It was created as a public body to acquire, consolidate and operate the three existing water and sewer systems serving the area.

298. By July 1975 Chapel Hill churches and residents sponsor Vietnamese refugee familiesDated milestone · Chapel Hill and Carrboro

     By July 1975 Chapel Hill residents had sponsored two Vietnamese refugee families and expected more. Four churches pledged about $1,500 for a family sponsored by UNC historian Thomas Reefe, and volunteers were directed to INFO, a referral service in the Inter-Church Council building.

The other dated entries wait behind a subject, a place, an era, a month, or the All dated entries switch, and each storyline’s page carries its own component entries. 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. Each card’s “Correct this” link opens the contact form with the entry already named. 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 September 14, 2026.