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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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Segregation and access to medical care
Black patients in the county went to Durham’s Lincoln Hospital from 1901, well-baby clinics were held separately in the 1940s, and the new hospitals of the 1950s opened with separate wards. UNC admitted its first Black medical student in 1951, the NAACP picketed Memorial Hospital in 1963, and the hospital ended racial segregation in 1965.
- 1910s
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Sallie Hemphill, later Sallie Markham Michie, buys the house at 121 South Columbia Street
Sallie Michie bought the two-story house next to what became the Ackland Art Museum in 1919 and kept it for 73 years, refusing for decades to sell it to the University.
- 1920s
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J. Cheshire Webb becomes president of the Eno Cotton Mills
Webb, a director of the Eno Cotton Mills since early manhood, was made president of the Hillsborough mill in 1921. He ran it until his death in 1932 and was also a director of the Rocky Mount Mills and the Bank of Orange.
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Segregated housing and neighborhood boundaries in Chapel Hill
New Chapel Hill subdivisions of the 1920s, Gimghoul in 1923 and William C. Coker's Rocky Ridge lots in 1927, carried deed restrictions on the race of residents, and realtors steered Black buyers such as Howard and Lillian Lee away from white neighborhoods. In May 1968 the town adopted North Carolina's first local open housing ordinance.
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The Tar Heel becomes the Daily Tar Heel
The commencement issue of June 7, 1929, was the first published as The Daily Tar Heel, after a plan to turn the tri-weekly Tar Heel into a daily went to the Student Activities Committee. Regular daily publication began with the new volume on September 20, 1929.
- 1930s
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UNC tears down the old Memorial Hall
The first Memorial Hall, closed in the fall of 1929 and declared unsafe in December 1929, was torn down in February 1930 after the trustees voted on January 28, 1930 to replace it with a new auditorium on the same site.
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Charles S. Mangum Jr. stays on to do research in the UNC law school
After finishing law school with the class of 1931, Charles S. Mangum Jr. stayed in Chapel Hill to do research in the university law school, the Daily Tar Heel reported that October.
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Contempo and the Intimate Bookshop begin in Chapel Hill
Milton Abernethy, Anthony Buttitta and three other young men distributed the first issue of Contempo, a four-page review of ideas and personalities, in Chapel Hill on April 27, 1931. They also ran the Intimate Bookshop from a dormitory room; by June it had moved above the Cavalier Cafeteria, and Contempo was later headquartered there.
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Langston Hughes reads in Gerrard Hall after Contempo prints "Christ in Alabama"
Milton Abernethy of Contempo invited Langston Hughes to Chapel Hill and printed his Scottsboro poem "Christ in Alabama" in the issue dated December 1, timed to appear days before the visit. Hughes spoke and read to students and townspeople in Gerrard Hall on the night of November 19, 1931.
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Kay Kyser's band closes the May Frolics dances in the Tin Can
Kay Kyser and his orchestra, made up of former UNC students, played the formal dance that closed the fourth annual May Frolics in the Tin Can. The band also gave a benefit concert in Memorial Hall the next afternoon.
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Janitors' Association president Elliot Washington asks for help joining a union
In 1934 Dean Robert House wrote to President Frank Porter Graham about a request from association president Elliot Washington for help with union membership, since the janitors could not afford local union dues.
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Kenneth Tanner builds West House on the campus's old Fraternity Row
Textile manufacturer Kenneth S. Tanner, a 1911 alumnus, put up the one-story brick West House near Swain Hall to lodge his son and other relatives at the university, with room for five students.
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The first of the new women's dormitories, later Alderman Residence Hall, opens
Built in 1937 with Public Works Administration money, the university's new women's dormitory, later named for Edwin Alderman for his support of women's education, was occupied by September 1937. Two more women's dormitories, later Kenan and McIver, opened in September 1939.
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Chapel Hill rededicates its Daniel Boone Trail marker opposite the post office
At a town ceremony Ella Boone Dixon, a Boone descendant, placed a flag over the Boone Trail plaque and J. Hampton Rich explained its legend. Mayor John M. Foushee led the program.
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Chapel Hill pharmacist Carl T. Durham is elected to Congress from the Sixth District
Durham, who had been named the Sixth District nominee, won the general election over write-in candidate Oscar G. Barker, and Chapel Hill voters gave him 703 votes to Barker's 57. He went on to serve 22 years in the House and retired in 1961.
- 1940s
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UNC junior Joe Felmet is elected executive secretary of the campus American Student Union
The Daily Tar Heel reported that Felmet, a junior from Asheville who had been active in the American Student Union for two years, was elected unanimously as executive secretary of the Carolina chapter after representing it at the group's national convention in New York. He took his A.B. at UNC in 1942.
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Charles E. Rush takes charge of the university library
Charles E. Rush, head of the Cleveland Public Library and a former vice president of the American Library Association, took over as university librarian, succeeding Carl M. White, who had left for the University of Illinois. Assistant librarian Olan V. Cook had run the library in the meantime.
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Eleanor Roosevelt speaks at Memorial Hall to close a post-war planning conference
Eleanor Roosevelt spoke in Memorial Hall at UNC to a capacity audience of about 2,000 people, closing a two-day conference on post-war planning sponsored by the Carolina Political Union and the International Student Service. She warned the audience that there was no going back to normalcy.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Swalin's newly professional North Carolina Symphony plays Memorial Hall
Benjamin Swalin brought the North Carolina Symphony to Memorial Hall after an expansion campaign that let him hire a professional orchestra for the first time. The Daily Tar Heel's critic, a longtime skeptic, wrote that it had become the most capable musical organization then playing in the state.
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Joseph Felmet is tried in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on the bus seating charge and sentenced to the roads
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.
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The Terrace View supper club opens a new building beside its first one
George J. Captain, who ran the Terrace View, held the official opening of a new building with a main floor and a mezzanine, added to the old one, which was kept for private parties. Ads that fall invited students to dine and dance in its "NEW home".
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Carl Boettcher carves the Circus Parade for the Circus Room
University woodcarver Carl Boettcher carved the Circus Parade, a redwood frieze nearly 25 feet long based on William Meade Prince's drawings, for the Circus Room snack bar in the Monogram Club building (now Jackson Hall).
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Fire damages the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house, the old Graham home on Battle Lane
A fire that began in the attic of the Alpha Gamma Delta house on Battle Lane, built for Edward Kidder Graham and still owned by his son, did about $6,000 in damage and left nine students without a home. Students carried out the furniture within ten minutes while a crowd of about 650 watched.
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Kay Kyser leads a rained-out pep rally in Memorial Hall
When rain cancelled the outdoor rally and torchlight parade before the Texas game, Kay Kyser, his wife Georgia Carroll and coach Carl Snavely entertained more than 1,800 students in a packed Memorial Hall.
- 1950s
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Reeves Service Station takes over the Phillip Andrews station on West Franklin Street
The Gulf station at 214 West Franklin Street reopened under new management as Reeves Service Station on October 7, 1950, replacing Phillip Andrews Service Station.
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Gordon Gray is installed as president of the University of North Carolina
Gray, who had been secretary of the army, was installed as president of the three-campus University of North Carolina on October 10, 1950 at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, the last day of a program that moved from Greensboro to Chapel Hill to Raleigh. The board of trustees had approved his selection on February 6, 1950.
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UNC admits Edward O. Diggs, its first Black medical student
UNC mailed Edward O. Diggs of Winston-Salem, a pre-medical student at A&T College in Greensboro, his letter of admission to the School of Medicine under the trustees' April 4, 1951 policy. He enrolled in the fall of 1951.
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State says Chapel Hill's new tuberculosis hospital will take Black and white patients
A State Medical Care Commission spokesman said the $1,100,000 tuberculosis hospital under construction at Chapel Hill would treat Black and white patients. He noted that federal rules barred discrimination in federally aided hospitals but still allowed patients to be segregated.
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Howard Mumford Jones gives the address at the dedication of the university library addition
Howard Mumford Jones, a former member of the university's English faculty then at Harvard, gave the principal address, on the library in higher education, at the dedication of the $1.6 million addition to the university library, held in Memorial Hall.
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The legislature drops Collier Cobb Jr. from the university trustees
After eight years on the board, Cobb, chairman of the trustees' buildings committee for the Chapel Hill campus during the largest building program in its history, was left off the nominating list by the legislature's joint committee on trustees. He said he held no ill will.
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Gardner Hall, named for O. Max Gardner, opens with the new business school buildings
Gardner Hall, named for former governor O. Max Gardner, was one of three new School of Business Administration buildings set between the Library and South Building, with Carroll and Hanes halls. The University Placement Service moved into it, and the formal dedication of the three buildings was set for May 25, 1953.
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Vermont Royster wins the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing
Vermont C. Royster, a UNC graduate, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his regular editorials in The Wall Street Journal.
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Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar edit the Daily Tar Heel
UNC students Ed Yoder and Louis Kraar were listed together as editors of the Daily Tar Heel in the spring and fall of 1955.
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Les Petites Musicales stages The Magic Flute in Hill Hall
An abridged English Magic Flute in Hill Hall used the University Glee Club under Joel Carter, who also sang Papageno, with the former Metropolitan Opera bass Norman Cordon as Sarastro.
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Howell's The Kenan Professorships is named one of the best Southern books of
The Kenan Professorships, written by UNC English professor A. C. Howell and published by the University Press with illustrations by William Meade Prince and Adrian Lamb, was chosen for design among 25 best Southern books of 1956.
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Sophie Livas sells the Carolina Coffee Shop to Donald Belton
Sophie Livas, who had run the Carolina Coffee Shop since her husband George's death in 1956, sold it to Donald Belton, who took over on February 1, 1957.
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Jerrold Orne is appointed University Librarian
Chancellor Robert B. House announced Orne's appointment as university librarian, effective August 1, with the approval of President William C. Friday and the trustees. Orne came from the Air University library at Maxwell Air Force Base and succeeded Andrew H. Horn.
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The Chapel Hill Choral Club sings Bach's Christmas Oratorio
The Chapel Hill Choral Club, directed by Joel Carter, performed the first three parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Hill Hall as part of the Tuesday Evening Series.
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The University tears down the Abernethy house on South Columbia Street for Ackland grounds and parking
UNC bought the house from the widow of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, long the director of the University Infirmary, and tore it down to extend the Ackland Art Center grounds and make a gravel lot of about 60 faculty parking spaces. The house dated from 1905 and had housed many students.
- 1960s
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Lincoln High students picket Colonial Drug and sit in at the Bus Station Cafe
The day after the sit-in, nearly 100 Black high school students picketed Colonial Drug after manager John Carswell roped off its booths, while others filled the counter at the Bus Station Cafe until proprietor Leo Eliadis closed it and were served standing at the Long Meadow Dairy Bar.
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Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Chapel Hill
Invited by campus religious groups and the Carolina Forum, King spoke at University Baptist Church on May 8, 1960, visited two UNC sociology classes, and addressed an overflow crowd in Hill Hall on May 9 on the struggle for racial justice.
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President John F. Kennedy speaks at UNC
President John F. Kennedy received an honorary degree at UNC's University Day ceremony, held on the University's 168th birthday, and spoke to an estimated 32,000 people in Kenan Stadium. He pledged that Americans would be neither Red nor dead, and announced a $1 million federal materials research contract for UNC.
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Pat Cusick organizes a student peace group that becomes UNC's Student Peace Union chapter
On December 3, 1962 Pat Cusick announced the formation of Students for Peace, a UNC group that had adopted the Student Peace Union's statement of purpose. Later that month the group won approval as the UNC chapter of the national Student Peace Union, with Cusick as its leader.
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James Brittian is expelled from Lincoln High School after a civil rights march
Brittian, a student at the segregated Lincoln High School, was expelled for taking part in a civil rights protest march. He then became chairman of the Student Commission, a branch of the Chapel Hill Freedom Commission.
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Floyd McKissick and Malcolm X appear together at UNC's Memorial Hall
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.
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NAACP chapter pickets North Carolina Memorial Hospital over segregated rooms and wards
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.
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Student Peace Union marchers protest the Armed Forces Day theme at the Chapel Hill post office
Led by chairman Pat Cusick, Student Peace Union members and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom marched silently alongside the Air Force ROTC drill team to the post office to protest the day's theme, Power for Peace. Spectators called out 'Communists', but no incidents occurred.
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The Committee for Open Business presses Chapel Hill merchants to desegregate
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.
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Aldermen hear Daniel Pollitt's opinion that Chapel Hill may pass a public accommodations law, then shelve it
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.
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Chapel Hill fills a bus for the March on Washington
The Student Peace Union, with Pat Cusick as local coordinator, organized a bus from Chapel Hill to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In late August Cusick reported every seat taken, with the bus due to leave about midnight August 27-28 and reach Washington the next morning.
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Daniel Pollitt's law review article calls the Speaker Ban constitutionally suspect
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.
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Sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile are doused with ammonia
Around New Year's Day 1964, sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile, Carlton Mize's segregated grocery on the Durham Road, were doused with ammonia and bleach water. Seven were treated for burns, among them NAACP youth leader Quinton Baker; four were arrested, and thirteen more were arrested at a second sit-in there the next day, when five more needed treatment.
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Watts Restaurant protests
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.
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Chapel Hill aldermen vote down a public accommodations ordinance
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.
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Institute of Government delivers its report on Chapel Hill's power to pass a public accommodations law
A report prepared by George Esser at the aldermen's request, gathering cases from all fifty states on a town's power to pass a public accommodations law, was completed and handed to Town Manager Robert Peck for the aldermen days before their vote. Esser said it showed the probable attitude of North Carolina courts toward a town using its general welfare power for that purpose.
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Survey finds N.C. Memorial Hospital still separates patients by race
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.
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Thirty-nine demonstrators are arrested sitting on the steps of Brady's Restaurant
On a Sunday night, 39 demonstrators, seven of them white, were arrested after sitting three deep on the front steps of the segregated Brady's Restaurant and blocking the door. The night before, 53 had been arrested in sit-downs in front of Brady's and the Rock Pile.
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The Holy Week fast began on the Franklin Street post office lawn
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.
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A Klan rally gathers at the post office fast and a UNC student is struck
On the fast's seventh day a Ku Klux Klan rally drew onlookers to the Franklin Street post office, where textile worker Milford Cordell Hill of Gold Hill struck UNC senior Louis S. Calhoun Jr. and knocked off his glasses; police officers who saw it swore out complaints.
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The Holy Week fast ends on Easter Sunday and the Rev. LaVert Taylor is hospitalized
The five fasters finished their eight-day water-only fast in front of the post office on Easter Sunday. The Rev. LaVert Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was admitted to Memorial Hospital with an upset stomach afterward; James Foushee had been treated there during the fast and released.
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The Committee of Concerned Citizens raises about $400 for injured demonstrators and the hospitalized faster
Committee members served bread and cheese for donations twice a day in the basement of the First Baptist Church, raising about $400 to cover the hospital bills of demonstrators hurt in sit-ins and of the Rev. LaVert Taylor after the fast.
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Supreme Court lets stand the ruling against segregated hospitals built with federal funds
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.
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Judge Mallard sentences fasters Pat Cusick and John Dunne to a year in jail
In Orange County Superior Court at Hillsborough, Judge Raymond B. Mallard gave Pat Cusick a year in jail on April 23 and John Dunne twelve months on April 24 for the February street-blocking demonstrations, among a dozen active sentences and about 100 suspended ones that stripped the Chapel Hill movement of its leaders four weeks after the fast.
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Chapel Hill Recorder's Court fines the man who struck a student at the post office fast
Judge William S. Stewart fined Milford Cordell Hill $50 and costs for striking Louis S. Calhoun Jr. at the scene of the fast on March 28, on complaints sworn out by the police officers who saw it.
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A Burger Chef hamburger stand opens at 337 West Rosemary Street
A Burger Chef franchise opened at 337 West Rosemary Street at 11 a.m. on May 6, 1964, selling 15-cent broiled hamburgers, shakes and fries. A week later it was advertising for more help.
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Austin Watts and his staff attack civil rights testers at Watts Restaurant
The night after the Civil Rights Act was signed, a mixed group of testers seeking service at Watts Restaurant was turned away and, the testers said, attacked with fists and clubs, and owner Austin Watts was charged with striking Pete Leak. Watts was convicted of assault in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on July 21 and fined the costs of court.
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Clarence's Bar and Grill turns away an integrated group the day after the Civil Rights Act
Five white people and one Black person asked for service at Clarence's Bar and Grill on West Franklin Street. Owner Clarence Gray refused them, saying he thought one of them was drunk. Testers visited other Chapel Hill restaurants that weekend as well.
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Eric Van Loon chairs the Carolina Political Union
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.
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Jim Medford is elected president of the campus YMCA
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.
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Memorial Hospital ends racial segregation
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.
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The Ku Klux Klan calls a rally in a field across from the General Sherman Restaurant
Robed Klansmen handed out bills in Hillsborough for a night rally at Interstate 85 and US 70, where scores of hooded members were expected in a field across from the General Sherman Restaurant.
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A House committee names the Sportsman's Lakeside Lodge as the Klan unit in Orange County
The House Un-American Activities Committee, investigating the Ku Klux Klan, named the Sportsman's Lakeside Lodge as the Klan organization in Orange County. Sheriff C. B. Knight told the Daily Tar Heel that three Klan meetings had been held in the county recently.
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Bob Powell is named executive director of the Carolina Forum
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.
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Medford is named to the student government State Affairs committee
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.
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Eunice Milton is listed among the members of the Order of Valkyries
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.
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Eric Van Loon becomes assistant to the student body president
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.
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Eunice Milton serves as president of the campus YWCA
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.
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John E. Greenbacker Jr. serves as associate editor of the Daily Tar Heel
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.
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Northside Elementary closed as the school system integrated
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.
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Wall speeches at the campus line
In 1966 the trustees barred Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker from the campus under the Speaker Ban law, so each spoke to students across the stone wall at McCorkle Place from the Franklin Street sidewalk. Students and the two speakers sued in Dickson v. Sitterson, a federal court struck the law down in 1968, and a marker went up at the wall in 2011.
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Carolina Forum chairman George Nicholson answers Professor W. C. George on the Forum's speakers
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.
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Students for a Democratic Society invites Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak at UNC
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.
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Gary Waller joins a student panel on the Speaker Ban in Memorial Hall
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.
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UNC trustees' executive committee bars Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker from the Chapel Hill campus
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.
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Nicholson criticizes SDS over the Aptheker invitation while backing the principle
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.
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Nicholson rebuts the Conservative Club chairman's charge about Forum speakers
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.
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Eight student groups re-invite Frank Wilkinson under the trustees' new speaker rules
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.
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Barred from Carroll Hall, Frank Wilkinson speaks to about 350 people at the Hillel House
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.
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Barred from campus by the Speaker Ban, Frank Wilkinson addressed UNC students from the Chapel Hill side of the wall
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.
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Herbert Aptheker gives his evening talk at the Community Church
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.
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Herbert Aptheker speaks to students across the McCorkle Place wall
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.
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Gary Waller debates Wilson Clark at the first Di-Phi Senate debate
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.
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Bob Powell wins the runoff for UNC student body president
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.
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Chancellor Sitterson makes student leaders erase a taped meeting
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.
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Powell is named to the student-faculty committee on visiting speakers
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.
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Powell takes office as UNC student body president
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.
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The Sharyn Lynn Shoppe moves into the former Village Cafeteria at 122 East Franklin Street
The Sharyn Lynn Shoppe, a women's clothing store, moved from farther along East Franklin Street into 122 East Franklin, the address the Village Cafeteria had used. The move marks the end of the cafeteria.
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Carolyn Kizer is a visiting writer-in-residence at UNC
Poet Carolyn Kizer was one of four writers-in-residence UNC brought to campus for the 1967–68 year, meeting informally with classes and student writers and giving a public address. During the residency she directed the student publication project of a new English course on little magazines.
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Max Steele directs the UNC Creative Writing Program
After Jessie Rehder died in 1967, Max Steele became director of UNC's Creative Writing Program and led it until 1986. Writers he mentored include Randall Kenan, Jill McCorkle and Lawrence Naumoff.
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A three-judge federal court hears arguments in Dickson v. Sitterson at Greensboro
Judges Clement F. Haynsworth, Edwin M. Stanley and Algernon L. Butler heard 45 minutes a side in the U.S. Middle District courtroom. McNeill Smith called the law vague, ambiguous, unconstitutional and void on its face; W. T. Joyner Sr. answered for the University that the 1965 amendment had abolished the original ban. The court then held the case under advisement for a year.
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Gloria Williams directs the Chapel Hill Housing Authority
Gloria Williams was director of the Chapel Hill Housing Authority from 1968 until it merged with the town's Redevelopment Commission in September 1973, when she became assistant director. In 1969 she was the contact for placing families in the town's first public housing.
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A federal court struck down the Speaker Ban law in Dickson v. Sitterson
A three-judge federal court in Greensboro ruled North Carolina's Speaker Ban law unconstitutional because it was too vague. The suit had been filed in March 1966 by UNC student leaders and the two barred speakers, Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker, and UNC's leaders hoped the ruling ended the long controversy.
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Governor Moore recommends that the state and the trustees not appeal the Speaker Ban ruling
Three days after the decision, Governor Dan K. Moore said the state should not appeal the federal court's finding that the law was unconstitutionally vague and recommended that the trustees not appeal either, voicing his hope that they and the administration would keep the campuses from being exploited as outlets of discord and strife.
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The UNC trustees adopt six temporary speaker rules in place of the voided regulations
A week after the ruling the trustees approved, over Senator Tom White's plea to proceed calmly, six interim rules on the manner of a speaker's appearance (a senior faculty member presiding at the chancellor's request, public forums, balanced views, audience questions, sponsorship by recognized student groups), with the items the court had struck removed, pending further study by the executive committee on March 8.
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The trustees' executive committee asks Governor Moore to name a subcommittee on a permanent speaker policy
Meeting in Charlotte, the Board of Trustees' Executive Committee voted to ask the governor to appoint a subcommittee to study speaker regulations and recommend a permanent policy to the full board in May. Senator Tom White, who agreed with the state's decision not to appeal, said the board had resolved nothing; President Friday hoped the matter would be settled by May.
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Black students march through downtown Chapel Hill the day after Martin Luther King Jr. is killed
Led by Preston Dobbins of the Black Student Movement, Black students marched through the downtown stores in sympathy for King and in protest of his assassination. The march ended with the burning of several Confederate flags on Franklin Street and outside the Kappa Alpha house.
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Chapel Hill holds a memorial march and two services for Martin Luther King Jr.
About 600 people, Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson and President William C. Friday among them, marched from Y Court to First Baptist Church on Roberson Street, where some 600 townspeople had gathered for a community service. The next day about 2,000 students and faculty attended a second service in Memorial Hall, with 11 o'clock classes called off.
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Black Student Movement calls on Black students and university workers to stay away in mourning for King
The Black Student Movement handed sheets to Black university employees asking them to stay home on April 9 in mourning for Martin Luther King Jr., saying the university had done too little to honor him. Chancellor Sitterson let non-academic employees who wished it take a half day off.
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Chapel Hill aldermen approve an open housing ordinance 3 to 2 on first reading
Weeks after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. and a petition signed by about 2,200 people, the Board of Aldermen voted 3 to 2 for a local ban on discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. The margin fell short of the two-thirds needed to pass on first reading, so the measure went to a second vote.
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George Watts Hill Jr. is tapped as an honorary member of the Order of the Golden Fleece
At a ceremony in Memorial Hall, the university's Order of the Golden Fleece tapped George Watts Hill Jr., Dean Maurice Lee and Dr. Daniel Patterson, all of Chapel Hill, as honorary members along with eighteen new student members.
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Chapel Hill adopts North Carolina's first local open housing ordinance
On second reading the Board of Aldermen passed the open housing ordinance 4 to 0, effective immediately, making it a misdemeanor for an owner to discriminate by religion, race, color or national origin in selling or renting property in town. The penalty was a fine of up to $50 or up to 30 days in jail.
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Frank Wilkinson speaks on the UNC campus in Howell Hall
Three months after the ruling, Wilkinson gave his first permitted talk on the UNC campus, speaking on HUAC in Howell Hall at the invitation of the Carolina Political Union to about 35 people.
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Governor Scott orders Lenoir Hall reopened under Highway Patrol guard
After Chancellor Sitterson closed Lenoir Hall on March 5 during the foodworkers' strike, Governor Bob Scott ordered it reopened, sent at least 50 state patrolmen to Chapel Hill and mobilized a National Guard unit in Durham. The dining hall opened the next morning with more than 40 riot-equipped troopers and about 25 Chapel Hill police at its entrances while as many as 300 people picketed.
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State troopers clear Manning Hall on Governor Scott's orders
About 75 state troopers ringed Manning Hall, the striking food workers' headquarters, on the afternoon of March 13 after Governor Bob Scott ordered it vacated. Students left before police arrived, and a crowd of up to 1,000 then rallied on the steps of South Building.
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Howard Lee and Roland Giduz meet in an open forum at the Newman Center
About 100 people heard the two mayoral candidates differ on the Mitchell Lane open storm drain, a local option sales tax, the Inter-Church Council low-income housing project and developers' seats on the Planning Board. Lee called the drain the town's responsibility; Giduz, twelve years an alderman, was asked why it had not been covered.
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An early-morning fire guts the Tempo Room on East Franklin Street
A fire found at 4:15 a.m. destroyed Pete Galifianakis's Tempo Room in the basement under Town and Campus, which took smoke damage; three fire trucks had it out within an hour. Within days a "new" Tempo Room was serving beer in a basement at another spot.
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Mayoral and aldermanic candidates answer questions at the Institute of Government
Lee, Giduz and all seven candidates for the Board of Aldermen took questions at an open forum. Sharp exchanges came over a police review board, which Lee said he had never favored, and over whether the town should pay to cover the Mitchell Lane drain, on which Giduz cited county health tests and Steve Bernholz answered that 'the ditch stinks'.
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Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel Hill
Howard N. Lee defeated Roland Giduz by about 400 votes on May 6, 1969, in the largest turnout for a Chapel Hill election to that date, becoming the town's first Black mayor. He was the first African American elected mayor of a predominantly white Southern town since Reconstruction.
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Howard Lee takes the oath as mayor of Chapel Hill at Town Hall
More than 140 people packed the second-floor room of Town Hall for the 7:30 p.m. meeting at which town clerk Roberts swore in Lee after outgoing mayor Sandy McClamroch reviewed his ten years in office. New aldermen Joe Nassif, Mary Prothro, George Coxhead and Ross Scroggs were sworn in, and Lee's first board elected David Ethridge mayor pro tem.
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County planning board recommends rezoning the Blackwood Station tract for Fiber Industries
The Orange County Planning Board unanimously recommended rezoning the 450-acre Blackwood Station tract from residential to industrial for a $100 million Fiber Industries plant promising 1,500 jobs. Board member Mark Burnham pressed for stricter performance standards, and commissioners Carl Smith, Ira Ward and Harvey Bennett had backed the Chamber of Commerce's pro-Fiber campaign.
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Fiber Industries withdraws its New Hope Creek rezoning request; commissioners chairman Carl Smith blames opponents
Fiber Industries withdrew its request to rezone 450 acres near New Hope Creek for a plant after opposition from UNC, Duke and Mayor Howard Lee. County commissioners chairman Carl Smith blamed 'unintelligent intellectuals' and a town political 'machine', and said Lee, the town's Black mayor, was not serving Black residents by opposing the plant.
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Striking SAGA cafeteria workers vote 94 to 26 to join AFSCME
In the strike's third week the full-time SAGA food service workers marched from a noon rally at Wilson Library to the Student Union and voted 94 to 26 for representation by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. SAGA's regional director said mediation with the union would begin that weekend.
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WCHL declines to publicize the Walk Against Hunger during the Community Chest drive
General manager Jim Heavner, that year's chairman of the local Community Chest, said WCHL would not give public service time to the Walk Against Hunger because the station gave all its spots to the Community Chest during its campaign.
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Two union officials and a striking worker are arrested at Lenoir Hall; Chancellor Sitterson pledges to subsidize workers SAGA does not rehire
On the strike's 24th day two union officials and a striking worker were arrested at Lenoir Dining Hall in the morning. Later that day Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson said the University would subsidize any workers SAGA did not rehire, after efforts to revive negotiations had stalled on the rehiring question.
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Police charge pickets at Lenoir Hall; nine are arrested and four hurt
About 25 police charged a group of pickets and sympathizers at the north end of Lenoir Hall when they did not disperse. Nine people were arrested, including AFSCME official Gene Gore and graduate student John Wheeler, and four were treated at Memorial Hospital. The next day Mayor Howard Lee announced that town police were being withdrawn from the strike scene.
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The 31-day SAGA strike is settled
Union and management reached a settlement on Monday morning and the workers approved the contract unanimously, returning to work the next day. The contract ran to June 30, 1970 and provided job classification, seniority, a minimum four-hour day, ten paid holidays, ten sick days, an end to split shifts and a no-strike clause; the University promised to find jobs for the more than 50 workers SAGA planned to phase out by February 1, 1970.
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Eight men charged during the cafeteria strike appear in Orange County District Court
Howard Fuller of Malcolm X Liberation University, two of its students, AFSCME official Gene Gore and four others charged with disorderly conduct, riot, failure to disperse or interfering with officers during the strike appeared before Judge D. M. McLellan, who continued the cases to January 7, 1970 at the defendants' request.
- 1970s
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Killing of James Cates
James Cates, a Black Chapel Hill man, was stabbed to death in the Pit at UNC in November 1970, and three Durham men were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury in 1971. Memorial marches followed, a remembrance coalition formed, the Justice Department opened a cold-case investigation in 2022, and UNC dedicated a memorial to him in the Pit that year.
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Carolyn Kizer joins the UNC English faculty to head poetry writing
Kizer joined UNC's English department on February 1, 1970, as a visiting lecturer, to develop a poetry curriculum and head the poetry side of the creative writing program under Max Steele. She remained UNC's poet-in-residence until 1974.
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The J. Spencer Love Clinics open in Memorial Hospital's new outpatient building
The $10.4 million Ambulatory Patient Care Center at North Carolina Memorial Hospital, dedicated on February 8, 1970, held the J. Spencer Love Clinics, 181 outpatient examination and treatment rooms named for the late founder of Burlington Industries. Burlington chairman Charles F. Myers Jr. and Love's widow, Mrs. Nathan M. Ayers, were among the guests.
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Tom Bello is sworn in as student body president
Tom Bello was sworn in as president of the UNC student body, with Bill Blue as vice president and Ann Rothe also among the new leaders of Student Government.
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Student Legislature passes a resolution calling a class boycott over the invasion of Cambodia
On the night of Nixon's Cambodia announcement the Student Legislature passed a resolution urging students to boycott classes on May 6. Student Body President Tom Bello called the strike and a student body meeting the next day, before the Kent State killings turned the one-day boycott into a general strike.
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The old Methodist parsonage, later the Kappa Psi house, is torn down for a parking lot
A contractor demolished the brick house on West Rosemary Street that had been the Methodist parsonage and then the Kappa Psi house, turning down a $10,000 offer to move and restore it. Its owner, county commissioner Carl Smith, planned to lease the lot to the town for parking.
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UNC student strike of
After the Kent State shootings and the invasion of Cambodia, UNC students began a class boycott on May 5, 1970, and more than 4,000 people marched through downtown Chapel Hill the next day. Classes were not cancelled; the faculty instead voted to let striking students take grades on work completed or finish courses later.
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The student body meets in Polk Place and more than 4,000 march through downtown Chapel Hill behind four coffins
Tom Bello chaired an emergency meeting of the student body in Polk Place, then led a march half a mile long down Franklin Street behind four coffins for the Kent State dead; estimates ran from 4,000 to 6,000. That night 900 students planned the boycott, 2,500 held a candlelight memorial at McCorkle Place and marched again down Franklin Street, and strikers camped in Polk Place for an all-night vigil.
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The general faculty votes to let striking students take their grades as they stand or finish coursework later
With more than 4,000 students rallying outside, the general faculty meeting in Hill Hall overwhelmingly approved a substitute motion by Marvin Silver and Gerhard Lenski calling the strike 'a reasonable, peaceful and responsible course of action' and allowing final grades on work completed so far or delayed completion of course requirements, with a right of appeal. Faculty chairman Daniel Okun's letter the next day explained the policy as no penalties for strike absences and make-up exams for those who could not in conscience sit the scheduled exam.
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Students sit in at South Building and hand Chancellor Sitterson a petition of 800 names confessing to the disruption policy
Seventy-five to 100 students occupied the South Building lobby for over an hour to protest the trustees' disruption policy and its use against three students charged after the December cafeteria strike. Three were admitted to Chancellor Sitterson's office with a petition of 800 UNC students indicting themselves for violating the policy during the strike's first days; Sitterson said the matter lay with President Friday. Bello and the strike steering committee condemned the sit-in.
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Tom Bello asks students to nominate candidates for chancellor
With Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson returning to teaching, student body president Tom Bello issued an open letter asking students to send names to the Advisory Committee on the Chancellorship, chaired by state Rep. Ike F. Andrews, by November 1.
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Durham motorcycle gang member charged with murder in the Cates stabbing
Durham County officers arrested Ronnie Broadwell, 28, a member of the Durham Storm Troopers motorcycle gang, at Watts Hospital early on the morning of the stabbing, and he was charged with murder and held without bond in the Orange County Jail. By November 24 four white men were in jail and a second man, Bryan King of Durham, faced an assault charge.
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James Cates is killed outside the UNC Student Union
James Lewis Cates Jr., 22, a Black Chapel Hill resident, was stabbed outside the UNC Student Union shortly before 2 a.m. during an all-night dance, in a clash with members of Durham's Storm Troopers motorcycle gang, and died at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. Three white men charged in his death were acquitted by an all-white jury in 1971.
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Mayor Howard Lee leads a memorial march for James Cates
About 65 people joined a memorial march for James Cates led by Mayor Howard Lee and Alderman R. D. Smith, four days after the killing.
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Black residents question the police handling of the Cates killing
Black residents met at the Roberson Street Center to discuss how police handled the stabbing, young Black residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro asked the Justice Department to investigate the campus police, and a fund was started to hire extra counsel for the prosecution. Vice Chancellor Joseph Eagles and Assistant Chancellor Claiborne Jones began reviewing the campus police response.
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Three Durham men bound over to the grand jury in the Cates killing
At a preliminary hearing in Hillsborough, Ronnie Broadwell, Rufus Nelson and William Johnson were bound over to the Orange County Grand Jury on murder charges and held without bond. Medical testimony indicated that immediate care could have prevented Cates's death.
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Chapel Hill aldermen approve a student Christmas street party on Franklin Street
At student body president Tom Bello's proposal, the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a Christmas street party on Franklin Street for Saturday, December 12, 1970, run by Student Government with the town and the Merchants Association, on condition that the students set it up and cleaned up afterward.
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UNC announces Vermont Royster will join its faculty as Kenan professor of journalism and public affairs
The university announced that Vermont C. Royster, retiring as editor of The Wall Street Journal, would join the UNC faculty the next September as Kenan professor of journalism and public affairs. He taught journalism and political science in Chapel Hill until 1981.
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Chancellor Sitterson tells Tom Bello the university will control student activity fees
A dispute over student activity fees began when Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson told student body president Tom Bello that the university would keep control of spending all student activity fees. In March Student Government took a 90-page report to the trustees' executive committee asking it to confirm Student Government's authority over the fees.
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Chapel Hill's Board of Adjustment turns down a ten-pump gas station on West Franklin Street
The Board of Adjustment voted unanimously to deny Kenan Oil Company a special use permit to clear the site of an older service station and build a ten-pump self-service gas pavilion. The company sued, and in December 1971 Superior Court upheld the denial.
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Trial of three Storm Troopers for the death of James Cates opens
Ronnie Broadwell, Rufus Paul Nelson and William Johnson went on trial in Orange County Superior Court in Hillsborough before Judge Thomas Cooper on second-degree murder charges, reduced from first degree. District Solicitor Herbert Pierce prosecuted, and prosecution witnesses placed the three defendants around Cates with weapons.
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All-white jury acquits three men in the killing of James Cates
A jury of 11 men and one woman, all white, found Ronnie Broadwell, Rufus Paul Nelson and William Johnson not guilty after about an hour and a half of deliberation. The defense called no witnesses.
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Howard Lee is re-elected mayor over Jack Maultsby
Lee won a second term against three challengers, leading restaurant co-owner Jack Maultsby 1,999 to 1,352 with two-thirds of the vote counted on election night; NCpedia gives his final share as 64 percent. The same ballot narrowly approved a Chapel Hill-Carrboro bus system in Chapel Hill, which Carrboro voters rejected.
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Black Student Movement holds a first-anniversary memorial for James Cates
The Black Student Movement and the Afro-American Society of Chapel Hill High School gathered at noon at the Confederate Monument and marched across campus to the Pit in memory of Cates. The service also protested the killing of William Murphy by a highway patrolman in Ayden.
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Rogers Road landfill opens
Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County opened a shared, unlined county landfill on Eubanks Road, built in late 1972 beside the historically Black Rogers-Eubanks community, whose residents were told it would close after about ten years. It was expanded repeatedly and ran for 41 years, closing in June 2013.
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The Orange County landfill campaign
The Eubanks Road landfill opened beside the Rogers Road community in 1972; four decades of expansions, lawsuits and the neighborhood's demands ended with its closure in 2013.
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The Pegasus, a gay bar, operates in the former Cave on West Franklin Street
In 1972 the basement bar once called the Cave, under the Record and Tape Center near Carrboro, ran as the Pegasus, a gay bar with a jukebox and a back room for dancing. A letter in the Daily Tar Heel called it defunct by February 1973.
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Cat's Cradle reopens on West Rosemary Street
After about a year closed, Cat's Cradle reopened in 1973 at 405½ West Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, its second home, run by Marcia Wilson and Bill Smith. Its first home had been a small basement room near campus.
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The Black Student Movement opens Upendo Lounge in Chase Hall
Upendo, Swahili for love, opened as a Black student lounge in Chase Hall under the Black Student Movement, with a dedication and a party. It replaced an old mini-union and was open to the whole campus.
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Howard Lee wins a third term as mayor by a landslide
In Chapel Hill's first November municipal election Lee carried every reporting precinct, taking 5,001 votes to 1,109 for graduate student Douglas Holmes, whom he had also beaten in 1971. NCpedia puts his share at 89 percent.
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Carolyn Kizer and Po Fei Huang read Chinese poems in Greenlaw Hall
Kizer, then UNC's poet-in-residence, and Po Fei Huang, director of East Asian language and literature at Yale, read and chanted Chinese poems and translations in 101 Greenlaw as part of a week of programs on East Asia.
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Chapel Hill Transit begins service
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.
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The Carolina Gay Association forms
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.
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Mickey Ewell opens Harrison's, a basement bar with a dress code, on Franklin Street
Harrison's, a downstairs bar in downtown Chapel Hill named for its owner Harrison "Mickey" Ewell, opened with a doorkeeper and a dress code aimed at an uptown crowd, and turned away men in tank shirts on its opening night.
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Chapel Hill churches and residents sponsor Vietnamese refugee families
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.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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The idle Carrboro depot is converted into The Station
Lee Epting restored the idle Carrboro depot and opened it as The Station restaurant, which was operating by April 1976. By the late 1970s The Station was also a bar with live bands.
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Chapel Hill aldermen adopt ordinances creating a historic district and commission
After a crowded public hearing, the Board of Aldermen unanimously set up a 131-acre Historic Conservation District around East Rosemary, East Franklin, Hillsborough, Boundary and North streets, with a commission to approve exterior changes and delay demolitions. George Watts Hill Jr. spoke for the ordinances and faulted the university for keeping its campus out.
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Severe drought creates a local water crisis
A drought from August 1976 to January 1977 forced Chapel Hill and UNC to buy more water from Durham, ban unnecessary water use and cut campus services. By August 1977 University Lake was lower still, and the new Orange Water and Sewer Authority kept conservation rules and used federal drought aid to buy Durham water.
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UNC trustees approve a Cane Creek pipeline on OWASA's recommendation
With University Lake 64 inches below capacity, the UNC Board of Trustees approved an $824,450 pipeline and small temporary dam to draw water from Cane Creek, described as a step toward the planned reservoir. OWASA, due to take over the University water system in January 1977, recommended the Cane Creek project over alternatives that included pumping raw water from the Haw River to a treatment plant.
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Orange Grove residents form the Cane Creek Conservation Authority
Farm families around Cane Creek organized the Cane Creek Conservation Authority to stop the dam and elected 23-year-old dairy farmer Bobby Kirk president; the group had about 100 active members and said 12 dairy farms would be affected. It argued that the reservoir would end farming in the area, that owners had not been consulted, and that Jordan Lake and other sources were alternatives.
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A Western Sizzlin' steakhouse opens at 324 West Rosemary Street and draws neighborhood pickets
The Western Sizzlin' Steakhouse opened on a Friday at 324 West Rosemary Street. Two days later about ten residents of the nearby Amity Court area picketed it in the rain over century-old trees felled for it and the traffic it brought.
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David Bacon opens the Pyewacket, a vegetarian restaurant on West Franklin Street
The Pyewacket opened in 1977 as a vegetarian café on West Franklin Street, run by David Bacon. By 1980 it had moved across the street into the Courtyard at 431 West Franklin, the former Farmers Dairy building, and added seafood, a bar and live jazz.
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Martini's, a Northern Italian restaurant, opens at 206 West Main Street in Carrboro
Martini's served Northern Italian food, with a bar and an outdoor patio, in the West Main Street building that had housed La Pizza. In 1989 it said it had been serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro for 12 years.
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Carr Mill Shopping Village opens in Carrboro's renovated mill
Carr Mill Shopping Village, a shopping center built inside Carrboro's renovated former textile mill, was scheduled to open on May 1, 1977, with ten retail stores, a Harris Teeter supermarket and a Revco drug store. By that September it advertised about 25 businesses; the complex is now known as Carr Mill Mall.
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Bill Thorpe leads the voting for the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
In his second run for office, Bill Thorpe led the field from the early returns and won one of four seats on the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen, with Bev Kawalec, Marilyn Boulton and Gerry Cohen.
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Bob Drakeford is elected mayor of Carrboro
Robert "Bob" Drakeford, a Carrboro alderman since 1975 and a Carrboro Community Coalition candidate, won the mayor's race on November 8, 1977, with 57 percent of the vote over John Boone. He was the town's first Black mayor and served until 1983.
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Chief District Judge Peele halts Carrboro fire-lane towing
In a class-action suit by four Carrboro residents, three of them UNC students, Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele issued a temporary restraining order barring the town from enforcing its ordinance allowing cars to be towed from marked fire lanes on private property.
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Jeff MacNelly wins a second Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
Jeff MacNelly, a former Daily Tar Heel sports editor and Chapel Hill Weekly cartoonist, won his second Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning while at The Richmond News Leader.
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Neighbors oppose the university's request to rezone the former Baity land
At a Board of Aldermen hearing, Elizabeth C. Baity and nearby residents opposed putting 36 acres of the land she had sold the university in 1974 under University A zoning, amid rumors of a sports coliseum. George Watts Hill Jr. asked the aldermen to take time to study University A zoning, and they sent the request to the planning board.
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Plans are announced for a Chapel Hill branch of the Orange County court clerk's office
Clerk of Superior Court Frank Frederick and Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele announced plans for a Chapel Hill branch of the clerk's office, to open in January and handle traffic tickets and other misdemeanors docketed for district court in Chapel Hill.
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The Orange County Women's Center is established
An anonymous $30,000 gift in March 1979 created a fund for an Orange County Women's Center, meant to give office space to the rape crisis center, the Women's Health Counseling Service and the Orange-Durham Coalition for Battered Women, along with classes and counseling. By April 1980 it was open at 307 North Columbia Street, and it later merged with the Family Violence Prevention Center of Orange County to form Compass Center.
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The Shack, a longtime beer bar on West Rosemary Street, closes
Owner John L. "Wheaties" Richardson closed the Shack at 5 a.m. after a farewell party, and by late May the building was being emptied for demolition. Before it was a bar the building had been a garage for the jitneys to the Durham train station and a bicycle shop.
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State commission overrules its hearing panel and backs condemnation
A three-member Environmental Management Commission panel recommended in March 1979 that OWASA be denied the certificate, but the full commission adopted the minority report and granted it. The Daily Tar Heel reported this was the first time the full commission had gone against a panel's recommendation.
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Joe Straley is elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council
In the municipal election, newcomer Joe Straley won one of four council seats with 2,796 votes, joining James C. Wallace, R. D. Smith and Jonathan Howes and edging out Joe Herzenberg. He was sworn in for a four-year term in December.
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Orange County voters defeat a $17.8 million school bond backed by both superintendents
Superintendents Michael Simmons of the Orange County schools and Robert Hanes of Chapel Hill-Carrboro had spoken for the bonds, saying both systems needed classrooms for growing enrollment and for students with special needs. Voters rejected them 7,447 to 4,517, and Simmons blamed the size of the issues and the economy.
- 1980s
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UNC housekeepers present grievances to the Physical Plant
Thirty Physical Plant housekeeping assistants gave director Claude Swecker a list of grievances in Berryhill Hall, including the rehiring of Gene Alston, an organizer they said had been fired for organizing. On April 2 Swecker granted two concessions to about sixty housekeepers.
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Vermont Royster is among the first inductees of UNC's North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame
The UNC School of Journalism began its Journalism Hall of Fame in 1981, inducting Vermont Royster, former editor of The Wall Street Journal, with Pete McKnight and Charles Kuralt.
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Biscuit Towne, USA opens in the former Roy Rogers at 106 Mallette Street
After the Roy Rogers roast beef restaurant at 106 Mallette Street closed in the summer of 1981, Biscuit Towne, USA opened in its building in August. It specialized in biscuits and stayed open 24 hours.
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The Upper Deck tavern opens above the Porthole restaurant
Barry Huff opened the Upper Deck, a tavern in the Porthole restaurant's old second-floor storage space, in November 1981. John Hartley left the Carolina Theatre to manage it.
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Gloria Williams leads Joint Orange Chatham Community Action
As director of Joint Orange Chatham Community Action (JOCCA), the county anti-poverty agency, Gloria Williams gave poor families emergency food, spoke for tenants at the 1984 Orange County hearings on a minimum housing code and ran a summer youth work program.
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Bill Neal and Gene Hamer reopen Crook's Corner
Bill Neal, a former manager of La Residence, and Gene Hamer leased Crook's Corner, a West Franklin Street barbecue restaurant opened by Cam Hill in 1978 and closed in November 1981, and planned to reopen it in February 1982 serving Southern-style meals. Under Neal and later chef Bill Smith it became nationally known.
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Opponents sue in federal court, arguing the dam permit has lapsed
The Cane Creek Conservation Authority filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming OWASA's Corps permit expired on August 31, 1982 because no fill had actually been placed at the site. OWASA said its preliminary work before the deadline kept the permit valid.
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Francis Chan opens the Jade Palace Chinese and Seafood Restaurant on East Main Street in Carrboro
Francis Chan, a biomedical engineer who ran the restaurant on the side, opened Jade Palace at 103 East Main Street in November 1982; he and his wife Jenny marked its 25th year in 2007. In 1985 it was the only Chinese restaurant in the area that delivered.
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Herbert Chu opens the Four Five Six Chinese restaurant at 118 East Franklin Street
Herbert Chu, who had opened the House of Chu in 1970 and was a partner in the Hunam restaurant, opened Four Five Six, a cafeteria-style Chinese restaurant, in the space Blimpie's had left.
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Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen opens
Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen, a drive-through biscuit restaurant from a small chain begun in Henderson and Louisburg in 1977 and 1978, was operating at 1305 East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill by September 1983.
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Annie Dillard reads at UNC during a two-week campus visit
Dillard spent two weeks in Chapel Hill in March 1983 as a preliminary event of the student-run Fine Arts Festival, giving a poetry reading on March 16 and leading afternoon seminars. The festival's organizer later said she was shocked by the size of the audiences for Dillard and Robert Bly.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro coalition organizes for the 20th anniversary March on Washington
Fred Battle chaired the Chapel Hill-Carrboro 20th Anniversary Coalition, which first met on May 29, 1983, and raised money to send buses from Chapel Hill to the August 27 march for jobs, peace and freedom in Washington. A UNC campus group worked as part of the local coalition.
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OWASA agrees to buy the Stanford dairy farm at the dam site
The same day the commission ruled, OWASA agreed to buy 267 acres of the dam site from dairy farmers William and Joyce Stanford for about $1.28 million, bringing it to 60 percent of the 728 acres it needed. Between 20 and 25 of the 48 affected landowners had sold by then.
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State commission grants OWASA condemnation power for the third time
After a second hearing in late 1982, the Environmental Management Commission reissued OWASA's certificate in March 1983, a Wake County Superior Court judge sent it back, and on October 13 the commission reinstated OWASA's power of eminent domain. Mike Teer, by then president of the Cane Creek Conservation Authority, said the group would appeal.
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OWASA buys out most of the Cane Creek landowners
By April 1986 OWASA owned 48 of the 50 parcels needed for the reservoir, almost all bought through negotiated sales. Sam Crawford recalled an opening offer of $500 an acre that rose to about $3,500 to $3,600, and that his family lost 50 acres, including their biggest field.
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Vermont Royster wins the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary
Vermont Royster, Kenan professor emeritus in the UNC School of Journalism, won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary for his weekly Wall Street Journal column "Thinking Things Over." It was his second Pulitzer, thirty years after the first.
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The Upper Deck closes after the Porthole building owner ends its lease
The Upper Deck tavern above the Porthole closed on July 31, 1984, after building owner Willard Marley declined to renew its month-to-month lease. Owner Barry Huff said Marley thought the bar was hurting the Porthole's business.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 4, 2026.
