Chronology

Adeline McCall plays piano in a Folk Music Institute laboratory concert

The university's Institute of Folk Music held its second laboratory concert at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 1931, in Hill Music Hall, with Lamar Stringfield on flute, Adeline McCall on piano and Thor Johnson on viola. The program included a composition by Herbert Hazelman, an Asheville freshman.

Subject: Hill Hall

Rebecca Clark moves to Chapel Hill and goes to work in a faculty home

Clark, born around 1915 in Chatham County, moved to Chapel Hill in 1932 to live with a relative on Church Street. She went to work in the home of professor Vernon Howell while enrolled at the Orange County Training School.

Susan Grey Akers becomes UNC's first woman full professor

When Louis Round Wilson left the new School of Library Science, Akers was made its acting director and promoted to full professor, the first woman at UNC-Chapel Hill to hold that rank.

Beppie Branson moves The Little Shop to 142 East Franklin Street as sole owner

Elizabeth Lanier Branson and Mary Henderson had started a women's specialty shop near Henderson Street in the early 1930s. Branson took it across the street and ran it alone, and the old shop went on as Henderson's millinery.

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.

People: Frank Porter Graham · R. B. House

Mary Strayhorn Berry's recollections of antebellum Hillsborough are typed

A typed transcription of Mary Elizabeth Strayhorn Berry's "Reminiscences of the Old South" records the names, family ties and skills of many people enslaved by the Strayhorn, Nichols and other Hillsborough families, and her father's store and cobbler shop.

Certified teacher J. A. Lassiter becomes matron of the Efland Home

J. A. Lassiter, a certified teacher, replaced Sadie F. Powell as matron in May 1934, and her husband took over the farm. That year the girls canned, sewed clothes and bedding, and made cornhusk mattresses, baskets and rag rugs, and the cottage's porch was painted and its floors oiled.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A Chapel Hill branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is founded

Charlotte Adams founded a Chapel Hill branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The branch is now called WILPF Triangle.

Hilda C. Allen becomes superintendent of the Efland Home after a poor state report

Following a critical June 1935 state inspection and complaints about the home's management, the board's executive committee met in Durham in July and soon hired Hilda C. Allen as superintendent, keeping Lula Henderson as matron.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Superintendent Hilda Allen sends the girls' Efland Quartette to sing in local churches

To raise money and show the home's progress, Hilda Allen taught the girls spirituals and arranged for the Efland Quartette to sing at churches around the area during her superintendency.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Matron Lula B. Henderson and farm manager Lewis Walker are hired at the Efland Home

After J. A. Lassiter's husband was let go in March 1935, the home hired Lula B. Henderson as matron and Lewis Walker to run the farm in April. Henderson's husband, a retired minister living in Chapel Hill, taught the girls under the Emergency Relief Administration's adult education program.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Grace E. Holcombe revives home demonstration work in Orange County

Hired jointly by Orange and Chatham counties, Holcombe organized four home demonstration clubs and nine 4-H clubs within a year. By 1941, under her successor Woodward Byars, the county had 17 home demonstration clubs.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

Betty Smith comes to Chapel Hill with the Federal Theatre Project

The Federal Theater sent Smith to Chapel Hill in 1936 to work with Frederick H. Koch of the Carolina Playmakers. She stayed when the federal project expired, helped Koch compile American Folk Plays and took his classes for him in his absence.

People: Frederick H. Koch

Subject: Carolina Playmakers

Health officer reports on the preschool clinics in Chapel Hill and Carrboro

The health department finished its round of preschool clinics, with 25 children at the Chapel Hill clinic and 34 at Carrboro. Health officer W. P. Richardson credited a committee of women with much of the success and reported that 56 correctible defects were found among 38 of the 59 children examined.

Part of Public health in rural Orange County · 26 events

Hope Summerell Chamberlain talks about Old Days in Chapel Hill at the Bull's Head Bookshop

The Bull's Head Bookshop on the ground floor of the University Library announced a Tuesday afternoon talk by Chamberlain about her book, with autographed copies on sale for $1.35.

Subject: UNC Libraries

A puppet Hansel and Gretel is staged in Adeline McCall's music series for children

The Music Club and the Parent-Teacher Association presented Hansel and Gretel, a puppet show with music, at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 1936, in Hill Music Hall. It was the fifth in a series of music events for children under Adeline McCall's direction, and elementary school children sang songs from Humperdinck's opera.

Subject: Hill Hall

Betty Smith edits a collection of plays with Frederick Koch and Robert Finch

Smith coedited Plays for Schools and Little Theatres with Koch and Finch in 1937 and wrote a catalog of one-act plays.

Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events

People: Frederick H. Koch

Guion Griffis Johnson serves as president of the Chapel Hill PTA

Guion Griffis Johnson was president of the Chapel Hill PTA in 1937–1938 and a district PTA officer the following year.

Hilda Allen resigns as superintendent, leaving Lula Henderson in charge of the Efland Home

Saying she could not handle all her duties, Hilda C. Allen resigned in early May 1937 after making real gains in the home's conditions, and matron Lula Henderson took charge.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

State inspectors find the Efland Home failing and tell its board to fund it or close it

State welfare agents W. C. Ezell and T. L. Grier visited on July 2, 1937, and found the heat, plumbing and building in poor repair, about twenty acres in crops, the only cow dead and the mules unfit. Grier judged the home was not rehabilitating its girls and told the federation's board to raise enough money to fix it or shut it down.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Farm women open the Orange County curb market in Carrboro

A curb market run by Orange County farm women opened in the former McCauley store in Carrboro, selling vegetables, fruit, chickens, eggs, sausage, preserves and canned goods. It was organized with the county home demonstration agent, with thirteen women signed on as sellers before opening.

Subject: Carrboro Farmers’ Market · Home demonstration clubs

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.

UNC field work director George H. Lawrence reports the Efland Home's conditions as appalling

After a visit in April 1938, George H. Lawrence, field work director at the University of North Carolina, wrote to the state welfare director that the home was doing more harm than good and that the girls would be better fed in a county jail. Gifts from churches and neighbors had not kept up with the girls' needs.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Alice Noble becomes first adviser to the pharmacy school's Kappa Epsilon chapter

When the Lambda chapter of the Kappa Epsilon fraternity was set up at the School of Pharmacy in 1940, the school's librarian Alice Noble became its first adviser.

Subject: UNC School of Pharmacy

District health officer reports one of the district's best years for diphtheria

Although diphtheria was widespread in North Carolina in 1939, the Orange-Person-Chatham district recorded only 18 cases. Health officer W. P. Richardson credited immunization of children under six, warned that immunizations had fallen off over the past twelve months, and urged parents to have young children immunized.

Akers is named dean of the School of Library Science, UNC's first woman dean

Akers, director of the school since 1935, was named dean, the first woman dean at UNC-Chapel Hill. She held the post until 1954.

Guion Griffis Johnson leads home-front work in Chapel Hill and Orange County

During World War II Johnson chaired the Community Service Committee of the Chapel Hill War Price and Rationing Board, was public relations officer for the Orange County Office of Civil Defense, and collected war records for Orange County.

The Janitors' Association reorganizes as a CIO union local

The Janitors' Association became Local 403-P of the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, a CIO union. Minutes of July 2, 1942 name pay as the most important matter, and laundry worker Rebecca Clark became a shop steward.

People: Rebecca Clark

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.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: Memorial Hall

Guion Griffis Johnson lectures in the Navy V-12 program at the University

Johnson taught as a lecturer in the Naval V-12 program at the University of North Carolina in 1943–1944.

The Black women's clubs pay off the last of the Efland Home's debt

Four years after the home closed, the North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs cleared its remaining debt on the Efland reformatory in 1943, the year the legislature voted $25,000 for a state-run training school for Black girls.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, written in Chapel Hill, is published

Smith wrote the novel in a one-room house on North Street in Chapel Hill, rising about half past five and working against the chimney wall to keep warm. Harper published it on 17 August 1943 and it sold more than 150,000 copies within two weeks.

District health officer reports the season's typhoid cases

Dr. William P. Richardson, district health officer, reported two confirmed cases of typhoid fever in the district in the past two months, one in Chatham County and one in Person County, with a suspected case in Person County and indirect reports of two cases in Orange County that health officials had not been able to confirm.

Wartime day nursery opens for the children of Black working mothers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro

A federally funded day nursery for Black children opened at the Orange County Training School, caring for thirty children aged two to six from 7:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. while their mothers worked. Parents paid for food, and by October 1944 two nursery schools were running, one in the Masonic building on the edge of Carrboro and one on Brooks Street.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

Orange County's Black home demonstration clubs hold their first dress contest in Hillsboro

Women from every Black home demonstration club in the county modeled thirty-six dresses, suits and accessories they had made at the Hillsboro high school auditorium. By 1946 the clubs met monthly in rural communities including White Oak Grove, Jordan Grove, Cool Springs, Cedar Grove, Harmony, Ridge Road, St. Mary's, Sartin and Carr.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

Home demonstration clubs report the year's work at Achievement Day in Hillsboro

At the county home demonstration clubs' Achievement Day at the courthouse, the home agent reported that women had canned an average of 350 quarts and that 94 percent made their own clothes, and that the women's curb market in Chapel Hill had taken in $30,280.68 over the past year. Clubs from Caldwell, Carr, Cedar Grove, Efland, New Hope, Orange Grove, St. Mary's, Schley and Murphy had made 699 garments and 744 other articles for the Red Cross.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs · Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Katherine Kennedy Carmichael succeeds Inez Koonce Stacy as dean of women

Carmichael, who held a Vanderbilt doctorate in British literature, became dean of women at Chapel Hill in 1946, succeeding Inez Koonce Stacy, adviser to women from 1919 and dean of women from 1942. She also taught an introductory literature course for the English department.

Marinda McPherson sings a joint recital at the Orange County school auditorium

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.

Bayard Wootten shows her Mobile photographs at Person Hall

Bayard Wootten gave a talk, A Photographer Discusses Mobile in the Spring, in the small gallery at Person Hall, where a collection of the pictures she had made in Mobile that spring was on exhibit.

Subject: Person Hall

Local 403 petitions for student support in a campaign over university wages

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.

People: Rebecca Clark

The League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill applies for recognition

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.

Hillsborough holds a combined flower show and garden pilgrimage

The Hillsborough Garden Club held its flower show together with the state garden pilgrimage, opening historic homes and gardens on a "Colonial Hillsboro" theme. Addie Williams Totten of Chapel Hill, state flower show chairman, planned it with the club; it was the first time the two events had been combined.

Marinda McPherson sponsors the annual kite contest at the Hillsboro school

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.

Subject: Hillsborough High School

Guion Griffis Johnson is president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches

After returning to Chapel Hill from Atlanta in 1947, Johnson served on the boards of the Chapel Hill Community Council and Community Club, and in 1950 she was president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches.

Carrboro Civic Club opens a public library

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.

Alpha B. Wettach joins the university as dean of women students

Wettach also founded the Chapel Hill Experimental Kindergarten, the town's first kindergarten, and ran it in Mary Nash's old painting studio in the Nash house, where she and her husband rented.

Annie Strowd becomes superintendent of public welfare

Strowd succeeded Mrs. Jean Heer, who had followed W. T. Mattox after his death in 1947, and still held the post when the book was written.

Orange County's seventeen home demonstration clubs count 443 members

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

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

Rebecca Clark moves from the University Laundry to nursing at Memorial Hospital

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

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

Sophie Livas is installed as Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star chapter in Chapel Hill

Sophie Livas was installed as Worthy Matron of University Chapter 264, Order of the Eastern Star, succeeding Elizabeth Montgomery.

Bayard Wootten sells her Chapel Hill studio and returns to New Bern

Bayard Wootten sold the Wootten-Moulton Studio to her longtime manager T. C. Moore, who kept it running, and left Chapel Hill for her old home town of New Bern.

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.

Frances Hargraves teaches Chapel Hill's new special education classes at Northside School

The Chapel Hill schools had begun special education classes, one at Chapel Hill Elementary School and one taught by Frances Hargraves at Northside School. The Junior Service League paid a $200 scholarship for her training.

Subject: Northside School · Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Efland Home trustees sell the old reformatory farm to W. G. Fields Jr. and Nannette Fields

After nearly two decades of unknown use, the home's trustees sold the Efland property on April 29, 1957, to W. G. Fields Jr. and his wife Nannette, Chapel Hill investors, who cut the land west of the cottage into eight tracts between Redman Crossing and what is now I-40. The federation later gave about $12,000 from the sale toward a chapel at Dobbs School near Kinston.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Chapel Hill Elementary pupils play carols with professional musicians at the school Christmas program

At the Chapel Hill Elementary School Christmas programs on December 17, 1957, directed musically by Adeline McCall, supervisor of music in the Chapel Hill schools, children playing psalteries, violins and bells accompanied the carols with two harpists, violinist Dorothy Alden and flutist Dorothy Hickok. The programs also staged the play Alias Santa Claus.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Anne Firor Scott moves to Chapel Hill and takes a temporary history post at UNC

Anne Firor Scott and her husband Andrew Scott moved to Chapel Hill in 1958, when he joined UNC's political science department and she took a temporary position in history. They lived in the Highland Woods neighborhood for 47 years.

Cornelia Spencer Love serves as a founding trustee of the Chapel Hill Public Library

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.

Subject: Chapel Hill Public Library

Mary Claire Engstrom and her husband buy the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough

In 1959 Mary Claire Engstrom, who had earned a UNC doctorate in English literature in 1939, and her husband, UNC French professor Alfred G. Engstrom, bought the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough. From then on she turned her research to the history of Hillsborough and its surroundings.

People: Alfred G. Engstrom

Subject: Nash-Hooper House

Chapel Hill Public Library shows Bayard Wootten photographs after her death

Weeks after Bayard Wootten died in New Bern, the Chapel Hill Public Library displayed her 1930s photographs of western North Carolina, made to illustrate two UNC Press books, Backwoods America and Cabins in the Laurel.

Subject: Chapel Hill Public Library

Cornelia Spencer Love gives private funds toward a new library on East Franklin Street

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

Subject: Chapel Hill Public Library

The Chapel Hill Friends Meeting opens its meetinghouse

Mildred Ringwalt, who joined the Chapel Hill Friends in 1959, was influential in building the Quaker meetinghouse that opened in 1960 and later raised money to enlarge it. A Carolina Friends School tribute says she sold most of her Oriental art to finance the building and anonymously gave the money to finish it.

People: Dudley Dewitt Carroll

Teacher Maude Faucette retires after a long career in elementary schools

Maude Faucette, the last of the family at the house on the Eno, taught elementary school, seventh grade above all, in Orange and Caswell counties and in Arkansas before retiring in 1961.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

Chapel Hill church women ask the county for a welfare office in Chapel Hill

A group from the Chapel Hill Council of United Church Women, including Mildred Ringwalt, asked the Orange County commissioners for a branch welfare office in the Chapel Hill area with a caseworker at least two days a week, and offered volunteers. The acting welfare superintendent replied that lay volunteers could not do casework.

Lillian Hughes Prince leaves funds to the Carolina Playmakers

Lillian Hughes Prince, who had acted in thirty or more Playmakers productions, left considerable funds to the Carolina Playmakers in her will. She died in New York and was buried in Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Subject: Carolina Playmakers · Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Quakers from the Chapel Hill and Durham meetings found Carolina Friends School

Members of the Chapel Hill and Durham Friends meetings founded Carolina Friends School as a purposely integrated school, beginning with early education programs in the two meeting houses. Mildred Ringwalt was one of the seven founders and the first clerk of its board of trustees.

Inter-Church Council forms

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

Subject: Inter-Faith Council for Social Service

Mary Claire Engstrom documents 122 Hillsborough sites for the Historic American Buildings Survey

From 1963 to 1965 Mary Claire Engstrom documented 122 old structures and historic sites in and around Hillsborough for the Historic American Buildings Survey. Her research helped many of them reach the National Register, including the Nash-Hooper House as a National Historic Landmark, and helped establish two Hillsborough historic districts.

Subject: Nash-Hooper House

Mary Claire Engstrom helps found the Hillsborough Historical Society

Mary Claire Engstrom was instrumental in founding the Hillsborough Historical Society, which filed National Register applications for local buildings, led walking tours and published newsletters and journals. It merged with the Orange County Historical Museum in 2007.

Subject: Orange County Historical Museum

Karen Parker is arrested at a sit-in at Leo's restaurant

Parker, UNC's first Black woman undergraduate and a CORE member, went with other demonstrators to Leo's, a segregated restaurant in downtown Chapel Hill, where they were arrested and taken to jail. She described it in her diary entry of December 18.

Part of The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 · 16 events

Fanny McDade, laundress to generations of students, is buried at 103 in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Fanny McDade (1861-1964), an African American woman who did students' laundry for many years, died at 103 and is thought to be the oldest person buried in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Mary Claire Engstrom chairs the Historic Hillsborough Commission

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.

Subject: Burwell School

Gloria Williams asks the school board to readmit boycotting Lincoln High students

At the Chapel Hill school board meeting, Mrs. Gloria Williams, speaking for parents of students who had joined the Chapel Hill Freedom Committee's boycott of Lincoln High School, asked that all of them be readmitted. The board upheld the expulsion of two senior leaders, Henry Sanford and James Brittain, after Superintendent Howard Thompson said he would resign if they returned.

Part of Segregated schooling and the rise of Lincoln and Central High Schools · 45 events

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

The Historic Hillsborough Commission buys the Burwell School

The commission bought the house from the Spurgeon children and began restoring it to look as it had after the 1848 enlargement.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

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.

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.

People: James A. Medford

Hortense McClinton joins the UNC School of Social Work as the university's first Black faculty member

McClinton turned down a grant-funded UNC offer in 1964 and accepted a better-funded position in the School of Social Work in July 1966. She was the only Black faculty member at UNC for three years.

Wednesday vigils against the Vietnam War at the Chapel Hill post office

Every Wednesday from 1967 through 1973, Charlotte Adams and fellow protesters of the Chapel Hill branch of WILPF stood in silent vigil in front of the Chapel Hill post office against U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza

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.

Cone Mills honors Eno plant workers, most of them women, for fifty years at the mill

At the Eno Plant's seventieth anniversary celebration in Hillsborough, Cone Mills recognized at least six of its 385 employees for fifty or more years of work at the mill, five of them women.

Subject: Eno Mill

Rebecca Clark carries voters to the polls in Howard Lee's mayoral campaign

Clark worked on Howard Lee's campaign for mayor, sending her son's Greyhound bus street to street to take voters to the polls, and helped count ballots by hand on election night. Lee won the May 6, 1969 election.

People: Howard N. Lee

Roberta Jackson joins UNC's School of Education as its first Black tenure-track faculty member

Roberta Jackson joined the UNC School of Education in 1970, a year after her husband Blyden Jackson joined the English department, as the school's first Black tenure-track faculty member. She earned tenure in 1974 and became the first tenured Black woman in the university's Division of Academic Affairs.

People: Blyden Jackson

Hortense McClinton begins teaching a course on institutional racism

In 1972 McClinton launched a course on institutional racism in the UNC School of Social Work.

Marinda Dunnigan McPherson is recorded singing songs she learned from her family

McKellar Israel recorded McPherson in the fall of 1972 and the fall of 1973, singing children's games, play party songs and spirituals she learned from family members, among them songs she first recalled hearing her grandmother Marinda Hart sing about 1920. Israel also interviewed her and her husband David McPherson about community events and history.

UNC abolishes the office of dean of women

The university ended the dean of women's office in 1972, after twenty-six years under Katherine Kennedy Carmichael. She stayed on as associate dean of students for supportive services.

Betty Smith is buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery

Smith died in January 1972 after being moved to a convalescent home in Shelton, Connecticut. A funeral mass was said at St. Thomas More Church in Chapel Hill and she was buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery.

Orange County Rape Crisis Center is founded

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

Albert Coates publishes By Her Own Bootstraps, on women and the law in North Carolina

Growing out of his family law teaching, the book traced how North Carolina law on women's political rights and domestic freedoms had changed, and gave much space to the Equal Rights Amendment debate, which Coates supported.

Carolyn A. Wallace heads the Southern Historical Collection and the Manuscripts Department

Wallace, born in Hillsborough, served as curator of the UNC library's Manuscripts Department and director of the Southern Historical Collection from 1975 to 1987, following James I. Copeland.

People: J. Isaac Copeland

Subject: UNC Libraries

Katherine Kennedy Carmichael retires from the university

Carmichael retired in 1977, thirty-one years after she became dean of women.

The Burwell School opens to visitors

The restored house has been open to visitors every year since 1977.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Pauli Murray celebrates her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross

Murray, newly ordained an Episcopal priest, celebrated her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the invitation of the rector Peter James Lee, who cited her family's connection to the parish. Her grandmother Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald had been baptized in the same chapel on December 20, 1854.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Pauli Murray declines an honorary degree from UNC

Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor wrote to Murray on February 10, 1978 offering her an honorary Doctor of Laws at the commencement of May 14, 1978. Murray declined, citing the University's dispute with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare over dismantling segregation and her refusal to share the platform with Governor Jim Hunt.

People: N. Ferebee Taylor

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.

People: Miriam Slifkin

Karen Shelton becomes head coach of UNC field hockey

Shelton took over the Tar Heel program in 1981, after finishing at West Chester State in 1979 and spending a year as an assistant coach at Franklin and Marshall. She coached at Chapel Hill for 42 seasons and had 40 winning ones.

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.

The Love Trust is established for the Chapel Hill Public Library

A $350,000 estate gift from Cornelia Spencer Love created the Love Trust in 1982. The library foundation has managed it since 1999 and it has given the library more than $2.3 million.

Subject: Chapel Hill Public Library

Elizabeth Cotten is named a National Heritage Fellow

The National Endowment for the Arts named Cotten, a self-taught songster and songwriter born near Chapel Hill and author of Freight Train, a 1984 National Heritage Fellow. The NEA lists her in Syracuse, New York.

I-40 through Orange County is named the Harriet Morehead Berry Freeway

The Board of Transportation named a section of Interstate 40 through Orange County for Berry, the Hillsborough-born Good Roads campaigner. A state highway marker to her was cast the same year for NC 86 at I-40 north of Chapel Hill.

Carmichael Residence Hall is dedicated

The university dedicated a new six-storey residence hall for 486 students, named for Katherine Kennedy Carmichael.

Valerie Foushee works as an administrative officer for the Chapel Hill Police Department

Foushee spent 21 years as an administrative officer with the Chapel Hill Police Department, from 1987 to 2008.

Eleanor Kinnaird is sworn in as mayor of Carrboro

Elizabeth R. Holland administered the oath of office to Mayor-elect Eleanor Kinnaird at the Board of Aldermen meeting of December 1, 1987. The board had approved the abstract of votes cast at the November 3, 1987 election earlier in the meeting, and outgoing mayor James V. Porto Jr. and departing aldermen Zona Norwood and John Boone made their parting remarks.

Southern Oral History Program records histories of UNC people for the bicentennial

For UNC's bicentennial the Southern Oral History Program, then directed by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, added more than 300 interviews with the university's students, chancellors and service workers.

Eleanor Kinnaird is sworn in for a second term as mayor of Carrboro

Town clerk Sarah C. Williamson administered the oath to Mayor-elect Kinnaird and to aldermen-elect Hilliard Caldwell and Tom Gurganus after the board approved the abstract of votes from the November 7, 1989 election. Jacquelyn Gist was sworn in as an alderman at the same meeting.

People: Hilliard Caldwell · Jacquelyn Gist

Randee Haven-O'Donnell is named Soil and Water Conservation Teacher of the Year

Haven-O'Donnell, who taught in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, was named Orange County and North Carolina Soil and Water Conservation Teacher of the Year.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Joe and Lucy Straley receive the first Charles M. Jones award of the local ACLU

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union gave Joe and Lucy Straley, both 79, its Charles M. Jones award for their work for peace, social justice and racial integration. The award, begun that year, recognizes contributions to civil liberties and civil rights in Orange and Chatham counties.

People: Joe Straley · Charles M. Jones

UNC hires Jenny Levy to start its women's lacrosse program

Carolina added women's lacrosse as a varsity sport and in October 1994 named Levy, then an assistant coach at Georgetown, its first head coach. She is still the only head coach the program has had.

People: John Swofford

Ellie Kinnaird is elected to the North Carolina Senate

Kinnaird left the Carrboro mayor's office for the state Senate, where she sat from 1997 until 2013 representing a district that included Orange County. She had earned a law degree from North Carolina Central University while serving as mayor.

Frances Hargraves carries the Olympic torch down Franklin Street

The 1996 Olympic torch relay passed through Chapel Hill and Carrboro on its way to Atlanta. Frances Hargraves, 82, a retired special education teacher chosen as one of five Chapel Hill Community Heroes, took the flame from Chuck Stone at Columbia Street and carried it down Franklin Street.

People: Chuck Stone

Valerie Foushee is elected to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board

Foushee was elected to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro city schools board in 1997 and served until 2004, pressing for equity in the schools. It was the first of the local offices she held over 25 years in local and state government.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Mary Claire Engstrom dies

Mary Claire Engstrom, born in Kansas City in 1906, died on May 20, 1997. She had lived in Hillsborough and continued her historical research there until her death.

Project HomeStart opens

Project HomeStart, transitional housing for homeless families on Homestead Road, opened in 1998 as a joint project of the Inter-Faith Council and the Orange County/Durham Coalition for Battered Women. By October it housed five families; it now runs as IFC's HomeStart shelter for women and families.

Subject: Inter-Faith Council for Social Service

The University Laundry is renamed for housekeeping leaders Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark

On January 28, 1998 the trustees voted to rename the 1920s University Laundry for Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark, who led campus housekeepers in the 1930s and 1940s. The building was rededicated on September 17, 1998.

People: Rebecca Clark · Kennon Cheek

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall receives the National Humanities Medal

President Clinton presented Hall with a National Humanities Medal as founder and director of UNC-Chapel Hill's Southern Oral History Program and a scholar of the New South.

People: Bill Clinton

UNC awards Gladys Coates an honorary doctor of laws

At ninety-nine, Gladys Coates, who had worked beside her husband in building the Institute and spent decades researching the University's past, received an honorary LL.D. from the University.

A state highway marker for Elizabeth Keckly goes up on North Churton Street in Hillsborough

North Carolina highway marker G-115, cast in 2002, stands on North Churton Street at Union Street in Hillsborough. It records Keckly as a Burwell family slave who lived there in the 1830s, bought her freedom in 1855, dressed Mary Todd Lincoln and published her memoir in 1868.

Institute of Government names a Knapp Building courtyard for Gladys Coates

After Gladys Hall Coates died at 100 at her Chapel Hill home on September 25, 2002, the Institute of Government named a garden courtyard and veranda beside the former auditorium in the Knapp Building's east wing in her memory.

Subject: Institute of Government

Frances Hargraves dies at her Caldwell Street home

Frances Neal Hargraves, a retired Chapel Hill-Carrboro teacher and community volunteer, died at her home on Caldwell Street. Her funeral at St. Paul AME Church, where she had taught Sunday school for 53 years, filled the church and its annex, and the church planned a memorial garden in her name.

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

Mel and Zora Rashkis Elementary School is dedicated

Hundreds of students, parents and residents attended the dedication of the district's newest elementary school, which opened that August. The school board named it for Mel and Zora Rashkis for their work with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools since they moved to the area in 1962.

People: Mel Rashkis

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Valerie Foushee is elected to the Orange County Board of Commissioners

Foushee served on the Orange County Board of Commissioners from 2004 to 2012. Her official House biography says she was the first African American woman to chair the county commission.

Randee Haven-O'Donnell is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen

After serving on the Carrboro Planning Board and other town advisory boards, Haven-O'Donnell won a seat on the Board of Aldermen in 2005, the first of five consecutive terms. She had moved to Carrboro in 1978 and taught in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

UNC Libraries opens the exhibit Slavery and the Making of the University

University archivists mounted an exhibit on the enslaved and free Black people who built and served the early university, including cabinetmaker Thomas Day and poet George Moses Horton.

People: George Moses Horton

Subject: UNC Libraries

The Unsung Founders Memorial is dedicated in McCorkle Place

The Class of 2002's gift, a black granite table held up by 300 bronze figures by artist Do-Ho Suh, honors the people of color, bond and free, who helped build the university.

People: Do-Ho Suh

Subject: McCorkle Place (with the Davie Poplar)

Chapel Hill names the post office plaza Peace and Justice Plaza

The Town Council named the space in front of the Franklin Street post office Peace and Justice Plaza, after a petition to honor Charlotte Adams and Joe and Lucy Straley. Lucy Straley, then 92, told the Daily Tar Heel the plaza had long been the couple's main backdrop for protest.

People: Joe Straley · Bill Thorpe · Charlotte Adams

Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza

Beverly Scarlett is sworn in as a district court judge for Orange and Chatham counties

Appointed by Governor Mike Easley on January 19, 2007, Scarlett was sworn in to a new District 15B seat added for the growing caseload. She was Orange County's first African American district court judge.

Valerie Foushee finishes her UNC degree

Foushee had left the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after two years and returned later to finish, graduating in 2008 with a degree in political science and African and Afro-American studies. She was by then an Orange County commissioner.

Karen Shelton receives UNC's C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award

The university gave Shelton its C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award for her long service to Carolina. She had been inducted into the campus honor society the Order of the Golden Fleece in March 2002.

Rebecca Clark's name is added to the Peace and Justice Plaza plaque

Clark, Yonni Chapman, the Rev. Charles M. Jones and Dan Pollitt were honored after their deaths for their work for civil rights, social justice and equality in Chapel Hill. Their names were added to the plaque at Peace and Justice Plaza, in front of the historic post office on Franklin Street.

People: Yonni Chapman · Charles M. Jones · Daniel H. Pollitt

Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza

Ellie Kinnaird resigns her state senate seat

Kinnaird announced her resignation after nine terms, saying she could not get anything done in the short session as one of seventeen Democrats in a fifty-member chamber. She said she would instead work with churches and community groups to help voters obtain the photo identification the state had just begun to require. Democrats from the counties she represented were to choose her successor.

Carol Folt is installed as chancellor at Chapel Hill

Folt was installed as the eleventh chancellor of the university on University Day in Polk Place, the first woman to hold the post. Chief Justice Sarah Parker administered the oath, and system president Tom Ross presided and presented the chancellor's medallion.

Anne Firor Scott is awarded the 2013 National Humanities Medal

Scott, a Duke University historian, received the 2013 National Humanities Medal for pioneering the study of southern women. The citation credits her research with establishing women's history as vital to understanding the American South.

Merge Records holds its 25th anniversary festival in Carrboro

Merge marked 25 years with a festival built around Cat's Cradle, ending with an outdoor show in the club's parking lot that organizers expected to draw about 3,000 people after the indoor nights sold out. Passes were sold through the Cat's Cradle website.

Part of The Cat’s Cradle and the “Chapel Hill sound” of the 1990s · 27 events

People: Mac McCaughan

Subject: Cat’s Cradle

Joal Broun is sworn in to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board

The district said Broun, a former Carrboro alderman then directing the state's lobbying compliance division, was sworn in to fill the seat left by Michelle Brownstein's resignation. She had also served on the Orange Water and Sewer Authority board and the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Mildred Council receives EmPOWERment's first POWER award

At a gala at the Friday Center, basketball coach Roy Williams presented Mildred "Mama Dip" Council with the inaugural POWER award from EmPOWERment Inc., a group promoting affordable housing and economic development in Chapel Hill's neediest neighborhoods. The honor came in the month of her restaurant's 40th anniversary.

People: Roy Williams

Barbara Foushee receives the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP's Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award

The branch gave Foushee its Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award for work promoting diversity and social justice. She was then the branch's secretary.

UNC's Noteworthy Firsts program honors Karen Parker

At a reception in Kenan Stadium, UNC honored Parker among 21 people whose names were given to need-based undergraduate awards and graduate fellowships in its Noteworthy Firsts initiative, begun by Chancellor Carol Folt in 2016.

People: Carol L. Folt

Subject: Kenan Stadium

Barbara Foushee is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen

Foushee, who announced her candidacy in March 2017 saying she wanted a seat at the table where changes were made, won a seat in the 2017 municipal election. She served on the town's governing board for six years before being elected mayor.

Part of Carrboro’s Black political firsts · 12 events

Burwell School Historic Site marks the bicentennial of Elizabeth Keckly

Through 2018 the Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough marked the 200th anniversary of Keckly's birth with an exhibition that included an original copy of her memoir and a replica of a purple velvet dress she made, sewn by local seamstress Karen DeSombre.

Subject: Burwell School

University Archives publishes the names of 119 enslaved people who built and worked at the university

Drawing on research by archivists, historians and students in Jim Leloudis's fall 2017 History 398 class, the archives listed 119 enslaved people who built and labored at the university from 1795 to 1865, including November Caldwell and David Barham.

Chapel Hill residents walk and sing in memory of Mama Dip

The day before Mildred Council's funeral at Chapel Hill Bible Church, William Thorpe of UNC Walk For Health led a walk through Chapel Hill in her memory, with people singing "This Little Light of Mine" from porches along the way.

Danita Mason-Hogans presents Chapel Hill's civil rights timeline to the town council

The Historic Civil Rights Commemorations Task Force, created by Mayor Pam Hemminger in the fall of 2017, gave the council a timeline of people, places and events in the town's civil rights struggle. Mason-Hogans, one of its leaders, told the council that who tells the history matters as much as the history itself.

UNC names its new field hockey stadium for Karen Shelton

The university announced that its field hockey facility would be called Karen Shelton Stadium, the first UNC playing field named in honor of a woman. The team had moved in at the start of preseason that August, and the stadium holds about 1,000 spectators.

People: Carol L. Folt

Chapel Hill's council accepts the task force plan for a Chapel Hill Nine marker

The council voted unanimously to accept the recommendations for a marker in front of 450 West Franklin Street, where Colonial Drug stood, and sent the plans to the town manager. Mason-Hogans, a task force member, said the marker and the learning around it mattered for young people.

Folt orders the Silent Sam pedestal removed and announces she will step down

Folt ordered the removal on the Monday and announced in a campuswide email that she would resign, saying the remaining parts of the monument threatened the safety of the community. The university said at 1 a.m. on Tuesday that removal had begun, and by 2:40 a.m. a crew had taken the last of the base from the quad.

Part of Toppling of Silent Sam, 2018

Subject: Silent Sam (UNC Confederate monument) · McCorkle Place (with the Davie Poplar)

The Chapel Hill Nine marker site is dedicated on the 59th anniversary of the sit-in

The town dedicated the marker site at 5 p.m. in front of the West End Wine Bar, where Colonial Drug had stood, and a march to First Baptist Church followed for a community celebration. Mason-Hogans, a main proponent of the marker, spoke about the task force's work.

Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill

Joal Broun is elected chair of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board

The board elected Broun chair by unanimous vote after chair Margaret Samuels resigned during a recall push over the Glenwood Elementary dual language magnet decision. Mary Ann Wolf took the vice chair seat Broun had held.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Merge Records holds its 30th anniversary festival at Cat's Cradle and in Durham

More than 30 acts from the label's roster played MRG30 over four days. The Carrboro nights were at Cat's Cradle, where Superchunk closed the Thursday bill at midnight, and the opening night and after party were in Durham. Fans held a potluck and kickball game at Wilson Park in Carrboro on the Friday.

Part of The Cat’s Cradle and the “Chapel Hill sound” of the 1990s · 27 events

People: Mac McCaughan

Subject: Cat’s Cradle

Carrboro's Board of Aldermen votes to rename itself the Town Council

After 50 years as the Board of Aldermen, a name the General Assembly approved in 1969, Carrboro's governing board passed a resolution changing its title to Town Council as part of making the town code gender neutral. It had tentatively approved the change after a public hearing on November 12. Randee Haven-O'Donnell said members who had sat on the board had felt the pinch of being called aldermen.

Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz formally charges the Commission on History, Race and a Way Forward

The commission, formed in 2019 and co-chaired by Jim Leloudis and Patricia Parker, was charged with researching the university's history with race and recommending how to reckon with it.

People: Kevin M. Guskiewicz

Exhibit honoring housekeeping and facilities staff opens in the renovated Cheek-Clark Building

A lobby exhibit in the renovated Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark Building presents the lives of Cheek, Clark and groundskeeper William Hubbard with a timeline of the university's housekeeping and facilities work.

People: Rebecca Clark · Kennon Cheek

Jenny Levy is elected to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame

UNC announced that Levy had been chosen for the 2021 class of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in her 26th season at Carolina, with a record of 373 wins and 117 losses and two NCAA titles at that point.