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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1940s
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A Negro library committee was already running library service for Black readers in Orange County
The committee met in September 1945 under chairman Mrs. M. D. McPherson, reported over a hundred new books received and 800 books circulated during the summer, and was assembling book kits for rural areas. Miss Annie Cameron was named as one of the people who started the library for Black residents of the county.
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A brick Colonial Revival office building is built at 115 East King Street
A one-story Flemish-bond brick office building with a slate roof and a large central display window was built at 115 East King Street around 1945.
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A row of Colonial-style stores fills the 300 and 400 blocks of West Franklin Street
As downtown pushed west after the war, an unbroken row of Williamsburg-inspired shops went up along West Franklin Street, many designed by Archie Davis.
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A. H. Poe buys Ben Strowd's Pure Oil station on West Franklin Street for his DeSoto dealership
Poe bought the Pure Oil service station from Ben Strowd and moved his DeSoto car agency into it.
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Andy Griffith plays his first role, in The Gondoliers at Memorial Hall
Andy Griffith, who had arrived at Carolina in July 1944, auditioned on a whim and made his stage debut in a Carolina Playmakers production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers at Memorial Hall.
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Black mason John Wesley Campbell and his sons build the stone Neville House in Carrboro
John Wesley Campbell and his sons, with Jeter Neville and mason Earnest Farrar, built the Nevilles' one-and-a-half-story bungalow of granite fieldstone trimmed in red brick, with an arcaded porch and a star and crescent moon set in stone beside the front windows. Campbell's son Handy said the stones came by army truck from Chatham County; the house is the least altered of Campbell's five 1940s stone buildings in Northside.
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Classics professor J. P. Harland builds the first postwar house in Laurel Hill
His shingled Colonial Revival cottage on Laurel Hill Road has an attached garage wing turned to face the street. Earlier Laurel Hill houses kept their garages at the far end of the driveway, so the nomination reads the wing as a sign of the car's new place in the suburb.
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Fitch Lumber moves its Mebane business to Carrboro after the Mebane branch burns
A. B. Fitch and all of the firm's Mebane operations came to Carrboro, and the Lloyd Street plant was enlarged around the same time.
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Four Orange County farmers run hybrid corn demonstrations
Four farmers ran corn demonstrations in 1945 on Experiment Station lines, using hybrid seed, shallow cultivation, close spacing and heavy nitrogen. The results showed yields could be more than doubled.
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George Livas becomes sole owner of the Carolina Coffee Shop
George Livas's partnership with James Gust ended and Livas became sole owner of the Carolina Coffee Shop, which he ran until his death in 1956.
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Hesslein and Company buys the Belle-Vue mill, ending local ownership
Belle-Vue Manufacturing Company had been run from Hillsborough since 1904, lately under L. E. Beard. In 1945 Hesslein and Company bought it and spent over half a million dollars on new machinery and on baths for the mill village houses.
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Homemont is platted as a Black neighborhood north of Hillsborough
Laid out in 1945 with gently curving streets and evenly spaced lots on Torain and Lawndale streets, Homemont filled mostly in the 1950s and 1960s with small Minimal Traditional houses, several of exposed concrete block, built by more than one builder for sale or rent. Next to a trash dump, it had no paved streets until the 1970s.
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John Scott Trotter sells the Hill House on West Franklin Street to the Baptist church
Trotter sold the Hill House, next to the Baptist church, to the congregation, which went on renting out its apartments. In 1958 the town's first public library opened in one of its rooms.
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John Wesley Campbell builds a fieldstone house for a pastor on North Graham Street
John Wesley Campbell designed and built a large fieldstone house at 214 North Graham Street in Northside for a local pastor, finished in 1945 and one of the first houses on the street. It is the largest of his four stone houses in the neighborhood, with a broad arched corner porch and a stone end chimney.
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Kay Kyser and his mother give Dean Edward Vernon Howell's library to UNC
Bandleader Kay Kyser and his mother, Mrs. Emily Royster Howell Kyser of Rocky Mount, gave the university library the private library of Edward Vernon Howell, the first dean of the School of Pharmacy, who had served thirty-four years. The collection held more than 3,500 items, many on North Carolina and the South during the Civil War.
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Laurel Hill Road is extended south beyond the 1927 plat
On the 1927 plat the road stopped at the south edge of 603 Laurel Hill Road. The extension carried it south toward the line later taken by the 15-501 Bypass and opened lots for postwar houses.
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Mason Alfred Barbee builds his own house on Jones Ferry Road
After working at the Carrboro munitions plant during the war, the African American mason Alfred Barbee spent three years building his own house on Jones Ferry Road near the Strayhorn family homes, using his carpentry as well as his masonry skills.
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Morehead creates the foundation behind his Chapel Hill gifts
In 1945 Morehead created the Morehead Foundation to pay for the Morehead Building on the campus at Chapel Hill and to establish the scholarship that carries his name.
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Only 950 Orange County farmers have electricity
A dozen years after the county's pioneering rural power line, only 950 Orange County farmers had electric service in 1945.
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R. B. House becomes the first chancellor at Chapel Hill
North Carolina created chancellorships for its three campuses in 1945, and President Frank Porter Graham turned to House, who had been executive secretary from 1926 and dean of administration from 1934. House held the post until 1957, the longest chancellorship at Chapel Hill.
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The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen runs its headquarters from Chapel Hill
The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, an interracial group of Southern church people founded in 1934, kept its headquarters in Chapel Hill while Nelle Morton was general secretary from 1945 to 1949, working on race relations, labor conditions and the rural South.
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The State Eugenics Board begins a county-wide study of mental illness and disability in Orange County
The North Carolina Eugenics Board chose Orange, a county of about 24,000 people that it judged typical of the state, to measure how many residents had been labeled mentally ill or mentally deficient, with an eye to its sterilization program. Field secretary George H. Lawrence gathered the records of the board, state hospitals, Caswell Training School, the draft board, school group tests and the county welfare and health departments.
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The Wesley Foundation takes up Methodist student work at Chapel Hill
Student work had lapsed for lack of money in 1931. After a committee of the Wesley Foundation Commission and the church drew up a plan, the commission raised its grant in December 1944, and Roy Everett came as the foundation's first director in the summer of 1945.
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The former Alberta mill reopens as Carrboro Woolen Mills
After fifteen idle years the modernized Mill No. 4 building reopened as Carrboro Woolen Mills, which ran until the early 1960s.
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The old campus infirmary is renamed Abernethy Hall
The university renamed its 1907 infirmary building Abernethy Hall in honor of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, the university physician from 1919 to 1933. The infirmary itself moved to a new building in 1946.
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Town electricity and water are extended to West Hillsborough
Before the town took over in the late 1940s, the mills supplied power and water to their workers, cutting electricity to the houses during the day so the machinery could run, which left families without refrigeration.
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UNC establishes its Communication Center
The university set up a Communication Center at Chapel Hill in 1945. Departments of radio and religion followed in 1947.
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Newspaper describes the work of Orange County's public health nurses
A News of Orange County piece described the county public health nurses' duties: school inspections, immunization against diphtheria and smallpox, well-baby clinics twice a month, a monthly maternity clinic, tuberculosis and venereal disease clinics, orthopedic referrals, and the wartime maternity and infant care program for servicemen's wives.
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Chapel Hill teachers protest the legislature's plan to fix their salaries
At a meeting called by the local unit of the North Carolina Education Association, Chapel Hill teachers telegraphed protests against a legislative proposal to write teacher salaries into the budget bill, which they said would bar raises for two years. Representative John Umstead defended the bill to the staff and school board on January 21.
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The state credits Chapel Hill High's war bond sales with six ambulances
The State War Finance Office sent Chapel Hill High a certificate saying its students' Sixth War Loan bond purchases had bought six ambulances that would carry the school's name, and praised its store-window displays as among the most striking school projects in the state. The Proconian noted that the $11,700 on the certificate counted elementary sales; the high school alone sold about $1,100.
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Seven French journalists, among them Jean-Paul Sartre, visit the Pre-Flight School and its French cadets
Seven journalists of the newly freed French press, on a U.S. tour run by the Office of War Information, flew into Chapel Hill on a Sunday morning, ate the noon meal with the school's French cadets in Lenoir Hall and toured Navy Hall, Graham Dormitory and Woollen Gym. They also stopped at the university's Institute for Research in Social Science and the University Press.
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UNC begins marking Hinton James Day each February 12
The university started Hinton James Day in 1945, during the sesquicentennial of its first student's arrival. It falls on February 12 and now also honors other Carolina firsts, including Sallie Walker Stockard and Henry Owl.
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Chapel Hill High forms its first swimming team under UNC coach Willis Casey
Chapel Hill High started a swimming team, its first, coached by university swimming coach Willis Casey and an assistant, with some twenty boys training daily in the Bowman Gray pool at Woollen Gymnasium. In its first meet, on May 9, it lost 35-31 to the university's B squad.
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Paul Bryant becomes head of football at the Navy Pre-Flight School
When Glenn Killinger was detached for Florida, Lt. Comdr. Paul W. Bryant, the former Alabama end who had been line coach of the 1944 Cloudbusters, was named head of the school's football training course. He was to coach the 1945 varsity, whose season the Navy cancelled before it began.
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The Saturday Evening Post profiles Coates as 'The Ugly Duckling at Chapel Hill'
Warner Olivier's article cast Coates as the law school's misfit who had overcome objections to build an Institute admired around the country. It opened with a photograph of Albert and Gladys Coates in front of the Institute building.
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The Marine detachment that taught Pre-Flight cadets small arms is disbanded
The Marine Aviation Detachment, which had taught the cadets small arms and gunnery on the range and in class since 1942, was disbanded and its seven enlisted men sent to Camp Lejeune, with Navy gunnery specialists taking over. Its commander was Warrant Officer Faustin E. Wirkus, once known as the White King of La Gonave in Haiti.
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The county health department brings a tuberculosis and venereal disease campaign to Orange County Training School
The Orange County Health Department showed films and gave lectures on tuberculosis and venereal disease to parents at Orange County Training School on the evening of March 19, 1945, and to the students in assembly on March 22. The campaign was followed by tuberculin tests for all the school's children.
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Black laundry workers take complaints of racial pay discrimination to the Fair Employment Practice Committee
Press operators Bessie Hargraves and Etta Guthrie said white folders earned more because of race. At President Graham's request the personnel officer investigated, and his memo denied that race set the pay.
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Black rural school districts more than double their Red Cross gifts
A Red Cross drive among the county's rural Black residents, run through the rural schools by A. L. Stanback and county agent M. C. Burt, closed with $472.55 from 428 people, against $224 the year before. Ridge Road district, with Mrs. A. A. Burt as principal, gave $36.32.
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Chapel Hill High lets servicemen finish their diplomas with armed forces courses
Principal A. W. Honeycutt announced that former students who had left Chapel Hill High for the armed forces without enough credits to graduate could earn their diplomas through courses taken in the service, once the government sent their records to the school.
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The Farmers Exchange opens its Carrboro branch
The cooperative's Carrboro unit opened in March 1945, joining its Hillsborough branch. In the year to June 1952 the two branches bought $303,096 in produce and sold $1,149,392 in supplies.
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The school board names Charles W. Davis of Roanoke Rapids superintendent
The Chapel Hill school board chose Charles W. Davis, superintendent at Roanoke Rapids and an Orange County native and former university student, to succeed A. W. Honeycutt, who had asked in May 1944 not to be reappointed. The board valued his school-building experience as it faced a building program; he was to take office July 1, 1945.
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James Freeland knocks a Black man unconscious at his Fairview bowling alley
The News of Orange County reported, from Freeland's account, that Lorenzo Thompson came into Freeland's Fairview Bowling Alley about 11:30 on a Tuesday night, asked to bowl, said he had been allowed to bowl up north, and would not leave when told to. Freeland knocked him down with one punch. Thompson's head struck the concrete floor, and his brother and a friend took him to a doctor for stitches. The paper, which presented the incident as "a vivid reminder of racial distinction in the South," added that a knife fell from Thompson's pocket and that no charges had been brought against him. It reported no charge against Freeland.
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Chapel Hill High holds its first Career Day
The Kiwanis Club sponsored Chapel Hill High's first Career Day, with a keynote by W. D. Perry, the university's director of vocational study, and discussion groups on technology, agriculture, business, the fine arts, government, social work, science and the professions led by university faculty and Pre-Flight School officers.
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More than 6,000 Navy men, students and townspeople mourn President Roosevelt in Kenan Stadium
All Navy personnel in Chapel Hill, university students and faculty and townspeople, more than 6,000 in all, held a memorial service for President Roosevelt in Kenan Stadium. UNC president Frank P. Graham gave the eulogy, Pre-Flight chaplain George W. Cummins arranged it, the cadet choir sang and the Pre-Flight band's Black chorus sang Finlandia.
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James Freeland opens a barbecue pit behind his Fairview Bowling Alley
James Freeland opened a barbecue pit behind the Fairview Bowling Alley and began serving barbecue every day. As with the alley, he built most of it himself.
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The Southern Association accredits Chapel Hill High for 1944-45
Principal A. W. Honeycutt received a certificate from Frank C. Jenkins, executive secretary of the Commission on Secondary Schools, stating that Chapel Hill High was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for the 1944-45 year, despite its makeshift quarters since the 1942 fire.
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Chapel Hill High's baseball team wins the county Class B title
Chapel Hill High beat Hillsboro 17-4 at Emerson Field in a replay ordered by the conference after Hillsboro's coach pulled his team off the field in an 8-8 game, taking the county Class B championship. On May 15 the Wildcats beat Dunn 18-3 in the first game of the district series.
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The Pre-Flight School marks the German surrender with vesper services in Memorial Hall
Instead of celebrating, the school observed victory in Europe with vesper services for all hands, their families and friends, the cadet choir singing, and Chaplain George W. Cummins preaching on 'Work and Worship'. The commanding officer and the chief of air primary training told the men to keep at work until Japan was beaten.
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UNC holds its sesquicentennial research conference
The university held its sesquicentennial research conference at Chapel Hill on May 9-11, 1945, to consider needs and opportunities for research and creative work for the welfare of the Southeast. One session took up the humanities and social sciences, with Dr. D. C. Allen of Johns Hopkins and Dr. Avery Craven of the University of Chicago as speakers.
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The Pre-Flight School marks three years with more than 15,000 cadets sent on to flight training
On its third anniversary, kept as a regular work day, the school counted more than 15,000 cadets who had finished its course and gone on to primary flight training since the first battalion arrived in May 1942, and noted that for more than a year it had been the only Pre-Flight school training French cadets.
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A survey finds that 37 percent of Orange County Training School's high school students hold paying jobs
A survey of the ninth, tenth and eleventh grades at Orange County Training School found that 37 percent of the students worked after school hours, 22 boys and 22 girls in fourteen kinds of jobs. Boys working as waiters averaged $20 a week, while girls in domestic service averaged $9 and waitresses $8.
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Orange County Training School's home economics department trains student teachers from three colleges
The home economics department of Orange County Training School, headed by Ruth Pope, supervised practice teachers from Bennett College, North Carolina College for Negroes and Shaw University during the 1944-45 year. Shaw sent one senior for a full semester under its new policy of supervised practice teaching.
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The Terrace View supper club opens on the Greensboro road west of Chapel Hill
The Terrace View, a dining and dancing club about five miles out the Greensboro road, was "christened" on Saturday, May 26, 1945 with a private ATO fraternity party held partly on its roof garden. By December it was open to the public every night, for couples only.
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The Training School's New Farmers chapter starts a purebred Poland China hog association
The New Farmers of America chapter at Orange County Training School bought a purebred Poland China sow and boar and organized an association to improve the hogs raised in its section of the county. The chapter offered the boar's services to farmers in the community, by arrangement with agriculture teacher B. F. Garrett.
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The first class of French naval officers begins a Pre-Flight course at Chapel Hill
An initial group of French naval officers reported for a four-week Pre-Flight course, the first officers of the French Navy trained at the school; they went on to Memphis in early July.
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Bill Tilden and Vincent Richards play a tennis exhibition before 1,100 fans at Chapel Hill
On a USO tour of service camps, tennis champions Bill Tilden, then 52, and Vincent Richards stopped at Chapel Hill and played for about 1,100 spectators; Tilden beat Richards 6-1, 6-1, and the pair then won a doubles match against a Pre-Flight instructor and a cadet.
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The outdoor pool named for Commodore O. O. Kessing is formally dedicated
The outdoor pool completed in 1943 and named by the university trustees for Commodore O. O. Kessing, the school's first commanding officer, was dedicated during the Pre-Flight sports finals. Chancellor Robert B. House presided, Comdr. James P. Raugh and President Frank P. Graham spoke, and a cypress plaque was unveiled in the pool's rock wall; the pool served the school, the university and the town.
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Coates deeds the Institute of Government building to the university
After the legislature appropriated $44,000 to pay off the rest of the mortgage, Coates transferred title to the Institute property to the University of North Carolina. This completed the 1941 merger plan, under which the university would take the building once it was clear of debt.
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The Cruise Club for the Navy enlisted men of Chapel Hill opens in the American Legion Hut
The ship's companies of the Pre-Flight School and the university's naval units opened the Cruise Club, their own social club, in the American Legion Hut on East Rosemary Street with a chicken buffet and dancing to the Cloudbuster swing band. The enlisted men had fitted up the building themselves.
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The Latta Cooperative Dairy opens its milk plant in Hillsborough
Organized in 1944, the Latta Cooperative Dairy built a small 500-gallon plant in Hillsborough that began work in June 1945. It bought milk from about thirty nearby farmers and ran routes in Hillsborough, Mebane and Durham.
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UNC gives Adelaide L. Fries an honorary Doctor of Letters
The University of North Carolina conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters on the Moravian historian Adelaide L. Fries of Winston-Salem in June 1945, a month after Wake Forest College had given her the same degree. She wore the academic gown her father had worn when the university gave him a similar degree.
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Philippe de Gaulle, son of General de Gaulle, trains at the Pre-Flight School with 29 other French naval officers
A second class of 30 French naval officers, including Lt. (jg) Philippe de Gaulle, son of Gen. Charles de Gaulle, reported for a four-week Pre-Flight course; 13 of them held the Croix de Guerre. They finished and left for primary flight training at Memphis on August 6.
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Chapel Hill celebrates the end of the war with Japan on Franklin Street
As the news spread that evening, townspeople, students and Pre-Flight School cadets filled Franklin Street while the campus bells rang and the fire siren sounded. Revelers draped the trees with toilet paper and lit a bonfire in the central block, and a policeman who tried to put it out was pushed aside.
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The National Munitions plant in Mill No. 7 closes
The shell-loading plant that National Munitions Corporation had run in Mill No. 7 since 1942 closed in August 1945. At its peak it employed 1,600 people, many of them former mill hands assembling anti-aircraft rounds, and it won the Army-Navy E award for production three times.
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The eugenics study counts Orange County draft rejections on mental grounds
Of about 6,000 Orange County men aged 18 to 38 registered for the draft by August 1945, 2,431 were accepted and 1,460 rejected; 622 of the rejections, 42.3 percent, were for a mental condition, and 357 of those were classed as mental deficiency. Lawrence warned that 133 of the 357 had simply failed the minimum intelligence standard, a category he said often stood in for illiteracy.
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William T. Couch leaves the University of North Carolina Press
Couch resigned in August 1945, after thirteen years as director, to lead the University of Chicago Press.
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The Pre-Flight area reopens to students and townspeople as the last cadets leave
Station restrictions were lifted, the no-admittance signs, sentry huts and barriers came down, and the part of the campus the school had held since May 1942 was opened to university students and the town. The last cadets were transferred over the weekend, leaving staff to close the school by mid-October.
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The Cloudbuster prints its last issue, counting 18,700 cadets trained at Chapel Hill
The Pre-Flight School's weekly closed with an eight-page special, its 156th issue since September 19, 1942. It counted 18,700 cadets received for training, 1,220 officers indoctrinated as instructors, 360 French cadets and 78 French officers, and printed farewells from Mayor Robert W. Madry, who named every man of the station an honorary citizen of Chapel Hill.
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The Negro Community Center opens for community use
After the Navy Pre-Flight School wound down, the community center returned to town control on October 24, 1945 and opened to Black residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. By December a nursery school filled the basement, and an all-Black board chaired by Hubert Roberson ran the building under the Town Recreation Commission.
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The Historical Society of North Carolina is organized at Chapel Hill
A Historical Society of North Carolina was organized in Chapel Hill on November 17, 1945. The news item credits its founding largely to the efforts of one man, whose name falls outside the excerpt.
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An old house said to contain part of the Nunn Tavern is moved across Kenan Street for the bus station
To clear the lot for the new bus station, a large two-story house was hauled across Kenan Street to 405 West Franklin, where W. W. McCauley later lived. Bryant traces the house to a section of the Nunn Tavern of about 1776, which had already been moved to this lot in 1923 when the Baptist church was built at Franklin and Columbia.
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Black and white health education students from North Carolina College and UNC train together
From 1945 UNC faculty taught a public health education program for Black students at North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham. Lucy Morgan brought the two groups together in a journal club that met in Durham and Chapel Hill, sent them to field work together and held joint open houses, at times drawing the window shades in Chapel Hill; a 1946 photograph shows both groups at the Orange-Person-Chatham district's field training center.
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Carolina Coach Company builds a Williamsburg-style bus station on West Franklin Street
The bus station at 311 West Franklin Street had a pedimented portico, a cupola with a weathervane and other Colonial details.
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Central High School adds a twelfth grade
Central High School, the county's high school for Black students in Hillsborough, added a twelfth grade for the 1946-47 school year. By 1949-50 it served 443 elementary and 206 high school students.
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Charles Crisp Oliver builds an auto and tractor repair shop at the Cedar Grove crossroads
Oliver put up a one-story concrete block garage with a stepped parapet on the lot where his father, T. L. Oliver, had kept a blacksmith shop early in the century.
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Charlie Justice chooses Carolina and begins four seasons at Chapel Hill
Justice was one of the most sought after players in the country after playing for the Bainbridge Navy team, and he chose Chapel Hill over South Carolina and Duke. He played tailback for Carl Snavely from 1946 to 1949, gaining 170 yards on 17 carries against Virginia in his freshman season.
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Commerce dean Dudley D. Carroll builds a small brick house on Laurel Hill Road for an in-law
The one-story side-gabled house has a traditional form with a large transom and sidelights at the door. English professor Blyden Jackson later owned it.
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Henry W. Lewis joins the Institute of Government faculty
After his discharge from the Army, Lewis joined the small faculty of the Institute of Government at Chapel Hill, where he worked mainly on election law and the property tax.
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Johnson-Strowd-Ward opens a furniture store on West Franklin Street
The furniture firm began in one of A. H. Poe's car showrooms and in 1947 moved further west on West Franklin into a building put up for it.
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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.
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Kenneth M. Brinkhous chairs the UNC Department of Pathology
Brinkhous succeeded James B. Bullitt as chair of pathology at the UNC School of Medicine in 1946 and held the post until 1973, building a research program in thrombosis and hemostasis. His department invented the partial thromboplastin time (PTT) test used in clinical laboratories.
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Lee County joins the health district serving Orange
The district health department, begun with Person County in 1935 and joined by Chatham in 1937, added Lee County in 1946.
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Medical dean Isaac Hall Manning is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Isaac Hall Manning (1866-1946), the physician and medical school administrator who started Hospital Savings of North Carolina, the state's first medical insurance plan, was buried in the cemetery.
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Morehead gives the university a million dollars for a planetarium
In 1946 Morehead presented the university with one million dollars to build a planetarium and put the proposal to the Board of Trustees. The building opened in 1949.
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Orange County farmers seed the first ladino clover plots
There was no ladino clover in the county in 1945. Half a dozen farmers planted trial plots in 1946, and the next year about 200 farmers sowed more than 1,000 acres.
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Principal J. M. Harris refits the Murphey School lunchroom
Mrs. J. M. Harris, principal and teacher of the fifth and sixth grades, reported new chairs, tables, curtains and cooking equipment for the lunchroom in 1946. Her teachers were Myrtle Walker, Erna Link, Mrs. Chas F. Hudson and Florence Roat, and the school had a 4-H club, a chorus and a parent-teacher association.
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Terry Sanford revives Boys State, with William Friday among its counselors
After finishing his law courses, Sanford organized the first postwar Boys State session, staffed mostly by law students as counselors. Among them were William Friday, later president of the Consolidated University, whose first university paycheck came from the job, and William Aycock, a future chancellor.
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Terry Sanford serves as assistant director of UNC's Institute of Government
After the Second World War Sanford returned to Chapel Hill, completed a law degree in 1946 and served two years as assistant director of the Institute of Government before opening a law practice in Fayetteville.
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The Campbells build a stone bungalow for carpenter Vance Thompson on Broad Street
Next door to the Neville House, John Wesley Campbell and his sons designed and built a fieldstone Craftsman bungalow at 201 Broad Street for carpenter Vance Thompson and his family just after World War II. Land records show it finished by 1947; a Thompson son recalls moving in in 1946, and the family kept it until 2013.
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The Farmers Cooperative Dairy opens its plant in Chapel Hill
A larger cooperative of Orange, Chatham and Durham dairymen let the contract in June 1945 for a modern plant at West Franklin and Roberson streets; it was nearly finished in February 1946 and held a public open house at the end of May 1946. It handled fluid milk and made butter, ice cream and condensed milk.
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The Gospel Baptist Tabernacle is organized
Willie Thompson, S. E. Elmore and W. J. Johnson organized the Gospel Baptist Tabernacle and built a 250-seat church the same year, with Elmore as first pastor.
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The Institute builds a Highway Patrol training camp on Raleigh Road
Coates won approval to put a training camp on the eastern edge of the campus, on the south side of Raleigh Road at Country Club Road. State Highway Department crews brought seven wooden barracks built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from Camp Mackall near Fort Bragg and set them in a U around a drill yard, with water and sewer lines run from the university gym.
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The Pick Theatre on East Franklin Street closes
The Pick Theatre shut its doors in 1946. Its building was later remodeled for J. B. Robbins's House of Fashion, a clothing store that ran until 1969.
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The Public Health Service moves its Syphilis Experimental Laboratory to the School of Public Health
After the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation dropped its venereal disease research money and Johns Hopkins closed its Laboratory of Experimental Therapeutics, the Public Health Service made Chapel Hill the main research laboratory of its Venereal Disease Division. The university agreed to put up a building for it, a second closed federal laboratory sent more staff and equipment in 1949, and Dr. Harold Magnuson's Department of Experimental Medicine grew out of the work.
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The county buys land from Mary Vincent for a Cedar Grove school for Black children
In May 1945 board members Charlie Stanford and James Compton were asked to find a site near Vincent's Store crossroads for a Cedar Grove school for Black children. The board bought the land from Mary Vincent for $1,000 in 1946.
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The eugenics study gives group intelligence tests to Orange County elementary pupils
As part of the Eugenics Board study, every elementary school child in the county was to be group-tested; of the first 2,900 tested, 489 (just over 15 percent) scored below 70 and 111 scored 60 or under. Lawrence conceded the tests had been built and normed mainly on white children and might not be valid for Black pupils.
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The school opens a Department of Public Health Nutrition under A. Hughes Bryan
Rosenau had planned the department before his death, calling nutrition the South's leading public health problem, and the General Education Board paid for it. Dr. A. Hughes Bryan set up its laboratory in Building C, a temporary structure on the north side of MacNider Hall, and the department enrolled its first M.P.H. students in 1950.
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Union Grove Methodist Church builds a stone Gothic Revival church
Union Grove Methodist, organized a century earlier, builds a stone church in the Gothic Revival style around 1946.
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Victory Village is built to house married veterans at UNC
As returning veterans pushed enrollment to about 6,800, the federal government put up the prefabricated metal houses of Victory Village on 65 acres of UNC's south campus in 1946. About 350 student families lived there, and the last units were torn down in the early 1970s for the expansion of UNC Hospitals.
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Popular Government resumes regular publication under William Cochrane
After a three-year gap and a single issue in 1945, the Institute's magazine came out nine times a year from January 1946, edited by Cochrane. He also managed the Institute's daily business until he left in 1955 for Senator Kerr Scott's staff.
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Thomas J. Wilson III becomes director of the University of North Carolina Press
Dr. Thomas J. Wilson III became director of the University of North Carolina Press in January 1946, succeeding W. T. Couch. He stayed little more than a year, resigning in 1947 to become director of the Harvard University Press.
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The Health Club of Hillsboro, led by Roosevelt Warner, turns the old Community Hall into a community center
The News of Orange County reported that the old Community Hall in Hillsboro was being made into a community center under the sponsorship of the Health Club of Hillsboro, whose president was Roosevelt Warner. The Youth Club held a Valentine dance in the hall on February 14.
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District health department X-ray unit offers free chest X-rays in Chapel Hill
The Orange-Chatham-Person Health Department's X-ray unit operated at the Chapel Hill health department from March 13 to 20, 1946, offering free chest X-rays for tuberculosis to any Orange County resident. Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin urged residents to use it.
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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.
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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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Mrs. Collier Cobb sells the Cobb Terrace bungalows to private owners
Collier Cobb had kept the Aladdin kit bungalows at the north end of Henderson Street as rentals for young faculty. After his death in 1934 his widow kept them until April 1946, when she offered them for sale, first to the tenants and then to other faculty; by late June nine of the eleven had been sold.
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C. S. Cates opens a new movie theater in the old Hollywood Theatre building in West Hillsborough
Cates, a World War II veteran, remodeled the building the Hollywood Theatre had used, with new sound and projection equipment and seats, and advertised the opening for Wednesday, May 1, with a contest to name the house.
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County commissioners refuse to relicense beer sales at the Log Cabin filling station
The Orange County commissioners voted unanimously to keep refusing J. A. Thompson a license to sell beer at his filling station, the Log Cabin, on the Mebane road. Thompson and his wife called it a "Dirty Deal" and their lawyer pleaded for another chance without success.
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The county board approves twelve classrooms and a gymnasium for Central School
The board approved a building program of twelve classrooms and a gymnasium at Central, the county's school for Black students in Hillsborough.
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The county board closes Orange Grove School and sends its pupils to Hillsboro
The board discontinued Orange Grove School and first planned to split its children between Hillsboro and White Cross. Parents objected strongly to White Cross, so the board voted to send them all to Hillsboro; the school site went to Cane Creek Baptist Church for $50 in 1947.
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The county board ends high school classes at Efland
The board voted to discontinue Efland High School and send its students to Aycock and Hillsboro, leaving Efland an elementary school.
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The eugenics study finds 48 sterilizations among the Orange County residents it has recorded
Outside the draft rejections, the study had compiled records on 336 county residents aged 18 to 38 by spring 1946, classing 233 as mentally deficient and 88 as mentally ill. Thirty-three of the 336 had been sterilized under Eugenics Board orders and 15 more had been sterilized for physical reasons on the county welfare department's recommendation.
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The old Pre-Flight Armory reopens as a Scuttlebutt snack bar and bookstore
Instead of razing it for a dormitory, the university turned the Pre-Flight School's armory into a second Scuttlebutt, a soda fountain, bookstore and student hangout in the lower quadrangle.
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Lutherans organize Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chapel Hill
Holy Trinity, the first Lutheran congregation in Orange County, was organized with 34 charter members and D. P. Rudisill as pastor. Its building was consecrated on January 6, 1952.
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Fire destroys the barbecue pit at Dud's Tavern near Hillsborough
A Monday afternoon fire destroyed the barbecue pit building and its contents at Dud's Tavern, with damage put at $1,800. The fire had gained too much headway by the time the Hillsborough fire department reached it.
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Poe-Mangum Auto Service finishes a showroom and parts wing at its West Franklin Street station
Bill Poe and Marvin Mangum added a DeSoto-Plymouth showroom and a parts department to their Pure Oil service station, stretching the building to a 140-foot front. The Weekly called it one of the biggest building projects in town since the war.
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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.
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University laundry workers stage a sit-down strike
The workers, some earning thirty-five cents an hour, stopped work on their own and set a further strike for October 14. Student Martin Watkins reported it to President Graham and to trustee Josephus Daniels.
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Charles A. McDougle becomes principal of Orange County Training School
Charles A. McDougle, who had taught at the school earlier, became principal of Orange County Training School in Chapel Hill at the opening of the 1946-47 year. Students credited the new principal with longer class periods, a new lunch room and other changes in his first months, and he went on to lead the school as Lincoln High.
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John A. Parker arrives and UNC's planning program begins classes
John A. Parker, hired in 1945 to found a Department of City and Regional Planning, arrived in Chapel Hill in September 1946, and classes began that fall with four students. The department's first office was in the Alumni Building, shared with the Institute for Research in Social Science.
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The Institute of Government's first State Highway Patrol school opens in Chapel Hill
With money from the legislature to bring the Patrol back to its prewar strength, Governor Gregg Cherry's administration turned to the Institute, which offered an eight-week course for about a hundred recruits chosen from 1,300 applicants. Classes began on October 13, with instructors from the FBI, the State Bureau of Investigation, Northwestern University and New York University.
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Forty-four graduates of the Institute's Patrol school are sworn in as state troopers
Fifty-three men finished the first eight-week course, and 44 took the oath as State Highway Patrol officers on December 7; the other nine were hired as places opened within the year. After the 1947 legislature voted to double the Patrol, Sanford and Pace ran two more sessions.
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Orange County Training School opens a lunch room in the Craig building and adds two classrooms
Orange County Training School opened a school lunch room in the Craig building just below the school grounds, set up by home economics girls and agriculture boys with dishes and towels given by community women. Two new classrooms, under construction since the summer of 1946 to relieve crowding, were also about to open.
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The Training School's student council forms a student court
The student council of Orange County Training School formed a student court to promote loyalty and better conduct, under the supervision of music director H. B. Pickard, social science teacher Julia Caldwell and agriculture teacher R. D. Smith. Students served as judge, sergeant at arms and secretaries.
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A community cannery is set up at Aycock School
G. A. Munn and E. F. Cude told the board in July 1947 that the cannery at Aycock School had used $3,500 and needed $1,500 more to finish.
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A wartime Army garage from Camp Butner is moved to North Churton Street
A one-story garage of concrete block and weatherboard, built at Camp Butner in 1942, was moved to 132 North Churton Street in Hillsborough in 1947. It still has five of its original wooden overhead doors.
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An Order of the Eastern Star chapter is established in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill gained a chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, twenty-two years after Hillsborough's.
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Architect James Webb moves to Chapel Hill to help start UNC's planning program
James Webb, an architect and planner trained at Berkeley and MIT who had worked for William Wurster, came to Chapel Hill in 1947 to help John Parker set up the university's program in city and regional planning. He taught there until 1975 and kept a private practice that brought San Francisco Bay area modernism to the town.
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Bethsada Baptist Church builds a 500-seat church
Bethsada Baptist Church, a Black congregation led by Jesse Morrow and Rudy Whitmore, built a church seating 500 in 1947.
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Brinkhous begins research on dogs that carry hemophilia
Brinkhous began studying canine carriers of hemophilia in 1947. The work led to the laboratory now called the Francis Owen Blood Research Laboratory and to UNC's hemophilia research and treatment center.
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Clyde Roberts wins the Bank of Chapel Hill corn growing contest
The Bank of Chapel Hill sponsored a yearly corn contest with at least 50 entrants. In 1947 Clyde Roberts won with 93.3 bushels of N. C. Hybrid 26 on one acre, against a contest average of 61.9.
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Dickerson Chapel's old courthouse frame is encased in brick
In 1947 the frame building that began as the third Orange County courthouse was covered in brick, giving Dickerson Chapel A.M.E. Church its present look with pointed-arch stained-glass windows and an entrance tower and steeple.
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General Assembly funds the Good Health Plan's four-year medical school and teaching hospital
The General Assembly appropriated money in 1947 to expand the UNC medical school at Chapel Hill to four years, enlarge the medical sciences building, and build a 400-bed hospital, a School of Nursing and staff residence halls. The plan grew out of a study commission Governor J. Melville Broughton created in 1944.
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J. Spencer Love serves as a university trustee
The founder of Burlington Mills sat on the University of North Carolina's board of trustees from 1947 until his death in 1962.
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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.
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Milton Julian opens the Clothing Cupboard on West Franklin Street
Milton's Clothing Cupboard was among the businesses started on West Franklin in 1947 and 1948. It later moved to East Franklin, where it stayed until the mid-1990s.
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Mr. and Mrs. W. V. Fryer give a Baldwin organ to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
During Irving Birdseye's pastorate the Fryers gave a new Baldwin organ in memory of R. H. Claytor Sr., and also carpeted the sanctuary's pulpit and aisles.
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North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the medical center, from
The Good Health Plan of 1947 funded a four-year medical school and teaching hospital at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina Memorial Hospital admitted its first patients in September 1952. It ended racial segregation in 1965, became UNC Hospitals in 1989 and the UNC Health Care System in 1998, and with the cancer and neurosciences hospitals made the town a medical center employing about 7,000 people by 2010.
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Orange County breeders organize the Spotted Poland China Breeders Association
Hog breeders formed a county Spotted Poland China association in 1947, building on 4-H pig chains started by the Chapel Hill Rotary Club and the Sears-Roebuck Foundation. It had 65 members four years later.
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Orville Campbell starts the Colonial Press in Carrboro
Established in 1947, the Colonial Press did commercial printing for the university and state agencies and had 20 workers by 1953. Its owner also wrote the football song All the Way Choo-Choo.
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The Farmers Mutual Exchange opens a pulpwood yard in Carrboro
In 1947 the Exchange began buying pulpwood at its Carrboro warehouse, paying cash for any amount from a wagonload up. The book calls this new market the main advance in county farm forestry.
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The New Hope community helps build Camp New Hope for Orange Presbytery
Beginning in 1947 the New Hope Grange community contributed a good deal toward building Camp New Hope, which belonged to Orange Presbytery. The camp was also open to other youth groups, among them 4-H clubs and Boy Scouts.
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The Orange Hosiery Mill starts at Efland
Opened in 1947, the Orange Hosiery Mill was the only one of Efland's four family hosiery plants under corporate ownership. Together the four employed about 100.
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The William Edward McPherson House is built on Nash Street in West Hillsborough
The 2017 Hillsborough architectural survey records the William Edward McPherson House at 303 Nash Street and dates it to 1947. The McPherson family, whose Edward (Pete) McPherson managed Hillsboro's Black All-Stars baseball team in these years, owned several lots along the west side of Nash Street.
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The first section of the new Chapel Hill High School opens on West Franklin Street
After five years in borrowed rooms, Chapel Hill's white high school moved into a new building on West Franklin Street, whose first section was paid for largely with insurance money from the 1942 fire. That section was nearly ready in late 1946, and the 1947 school year opened with an assembly in front of the new building.
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Cates's Esso station in Hillsborough is named the cleanest Esso station in North Carolina
A statewide survey by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey picked C. H. Cates's Esso station in Hillsborough as the cleanest Esso station in North Carolina, ahead of stations in Elizabeth City and Durham. The company arranged to name him on its Esso Reporter broadcast over WPTF.
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Eugenics Board field secretary George H. Lawrence publishes the Orange County sterilization study
In the North Carolina Medical Journal, Lawrence argued from the Orange County figures that mental deficiency ran highest among poor, rural and Black residents, and he urged doctors to recommend sterilization to such patients and refer them to the county welfare superintendent, who filed the petitions. He wrote that the board sought wider use of the existing law rather than mass sterilization.
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The Hickory House restaurant opens in downtown Hillsborough
E. W. Godfrey's Hickory House opened to the public at noon on a Saturday after an informal inspection the night before, and became a regular meeting place for town merchants and clubs. In May 1948 it installed air conditioning, which the paper called a first for a Hillsboro business.
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The University of North Carolina Press marks its twenty-fifth anniversary
The University of North Carolina Press celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary on March 13, 1947, with an open house.
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Orange County polio chapter reports buying an infant-size iron lung
In its annual report, the Orange County chapter of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis said it had spent $500 in direct aid to polio patients and bought a $550 infant-size iron lung, kept for the time being at Watts Hospital.
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Hillsboro's Black baseball team opens its season at McPherson's Baseball Park before a record crowd
The News of Orange County's column for the Black community reported that the baseball season opened at McPherson's Baseball Park on Sunday, April 6, before a record crowd; the home team lost to the Roxboro Stars and on Easter Monday to the Graham Stars.
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Journey of Reconciliation comes to Chapel Hill
Interracial riders testing segregation on interstate buses reached Chapel Hill on April 12, 1947. The next day police arrested four of them at the bus station and a white cab driver struck rider James Peck. Convicted in Orange County, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joe Felmet surrendered at the Hillsborough courthouse on March 21, 1949 to serve chain-gang sentences.
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Charles M. Jones takes interracial bus riders into his home
According to Frank Porter Graham, Jones, without being a party to the project, took into his home as a refuge from threats of violence the riders of both races who were testing the law requiring separate seats on interstate and state buses, the Journey of Reconciliation that reached Chapel Hill in April 1947. Graham added that Jones's home was once stoned and his family's safety threatened.
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Edward G. McGavran becomes dean of the School of Public Health
McGavran was appointed dean of the UNC School of Public Health in April 1947 and led it until July 1, 1963, when he returned to full-time teaching. Full-time faculty grew from fourteen in 1948 to sixty-four by 1964.
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The county board elects Glenn T. Proffit superintendent and keeps R. H. Claytor as his assistant
Meeting on May 5, 1947, the Board of Education elected G. T. Proffit superintendent and R. H. Claytor his assistant, offering $2,400 a year part time or $3,000 full time; Claytor chose full time. The board passed a resolution of appreciation for his thirty years with the county schools.
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Paul Henderson reopens the restored Colonial Inn in Hillsborough
Col. Paul Henderson bought the run-down inn on West King Street in 1946 and restored it as a hotel and dining room, managed by Martin Henderson. About 100 people came to the formal opening of the dining hall, a Hillsboro Merchants Association dinner addressed by R. B. House.
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The Training School's New Farmers hold their first auction of repaired furniture
The New Farmers of America chapter at Orange County Training School collected old furniture in the community, repaired and refinished it in the school shop, and for the first time sold it at an auction to finance chapter activities. The chapter also gave yearly to the Black orphanage at Oxford and helped the nursery school collect canned food.
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A dinner at the Carolina Inn marks Fetzer's twenty-five years as director of athletics
A dinner at the Carolina Inn on June 7, 1947 celebrated twenty-five years of Robert A. Fetzer's work in University athletics; the printed program called them twenty-five years as director of athletics. He had come in 1921 as assistant to his brother Bill, the director, and became director of athletics himself under the five-year contracts announced in January 1923.
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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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A bronze plaque honoring Lt. George Howard Jr. is placed at the Naval Armory
A plaque to naval officer Lt. George Howard Jr. was put up under the armory's portico, where it still hangs.
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Mrs. Walter D. Toy sells her West Franklin Street home for business use
Mrs. Walter D. Toy sold the house she and her late husband had owned since the late 1890s to Margaret Davis Haywood of Durham, and the lot was to be used for business. The Weekly tied the sale to the business district's spread west along Franklin Street and noted talk of an A&P store on the site.
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Dr. S. A. Nathan opens the Curve Inn, a curb-service stand on Strowd Hill
Dr. S. A. Nathan opened the Curve Inn, a curb-service place on the Durham road halfway down Strowd Hill, with his son Marx as co-manager. It sold beer, sandwiches and fried chicken and was known for the pronto pup, a batter-dipped hot dog.
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Glenn T. Proffit succeeds R. H. Claytor as Orange County school superintendent
Glenn Theodor Proffit, a Wilkes County native who had led high schools in Clinton, Harnett County and Dunn, took over the county schools in July 1947 and served until 1951.
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Cora Bomar joins the Chapel Hill elementary school faculty
When the Chapel Hill schools opened in September 1947, Miss Cora Bomar was listed among the teachers of the elementary school under principal Mildred Mooneyhan. She had come to North Carolina that year.
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Morris Telephone Company switches Hillsborough to dial telephones in a new exchange building
The Morris Telephone Company of Roxboro replaced Hillsborough's hand-crank telephones with a dial system housed in a new brick exchange on East King Street, begun in March 1947 at an estimated cost of $40,000 with equipment. The cutover was set for 4 p.m. on Monday, September 1.
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Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough
Bill France and four partners chartered a company in September 1947 to build a one-mile dirt oval by the old Occoneechee Farm, and it opened in June 1948. The track held a race in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949, was renamed Orange Speedway in 1954, and closed after Richard Petty won its last race on September 15, 1968.
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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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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.
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Chapel Hill NAACP holds its first meeting at the Community Center
In October 1947 local organizers held the first meeting of the Chapel Hill branch of the NAACP, a milestone for the Negro Community Center, now the Hargraves Center. By late November the chapter was meeting at the center, where it re-elected Adolphus Clark as president. The branch marked 75 years in 2022.
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Fire destroys the Farmers Exchange livestock market near Hillsborough
A fire of unknown origin leveled the Farmers Exchange livestock pens and office on the old Durham road near Hillsborough. The loss was put at $15,000; the workers escaped, but 13 to 20 cattle and 18 hogs died.
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A bus route begins running through West Hillsborough
Until 1948, when a bus line started running through its streets, mill families without cars had no easy way to reach downtown Hillsborough, nearly a mile away, or the rest of the county.
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A state historical marker is approved for the Revolutionary paper mill near Hillsborough
The committee of historians from North Carolina colleges and universities that approves the state's highway historical markers took up the site of a Revolutionary paper mill near Hillsborough in 1948, along with five former locations of the Bingham School and a marker for William A. Graham.
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Archie Royal Davis becomes architect for the Orange County schools
In 1948 the Durham architect Archie Royal Davis became architect for the Orange County school system. His work for the county included Cedar Grove and Efland-Cheeks schools for Black children, the first Cameron Park School building, Central High's 1959-60 main building and Central Elementary.
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Architect James Webb designs a modernist house on Round Hill Road for Norman Eliason
One of Webb's first Chapel Hill commissions was a modest low-gabled house for English professor Norman Eliason and his wife, with a broad carport at the front and a covered walk leading to the door.
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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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Charlie McAdams and George Crawford Amick open the A & M Grill in Mebane
Charlie McAdams Sr., who had sold barbecue from a service station kitchen since 1947, opened the A & M Grill with building owner George Crawford Amick. The name joined their two initials.
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George Campbell and his father build a stone house on North Graham Street
On a lot owned by George Campbell, he and his father John Wesley Campbell, helped by the other Campbell sons, designed and built a small one-story fieldstone house at 203 North Graham Street, finished in 1948. It is the only one of the family's Northside stone houses whose stonework runs up into the gable.
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George Kirkland, Chapel Hill's first African American dentist, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
George Kirkland (1899-1948), the first Black dentist in Chapel Hill, was buried in the cemetery.
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Hyconeechee Regional Library is established
The three county library systems incorporated as one region to enlarge book collections, run a shared bookmobile and provide trained supervision. The regional board held its second meeting on September 13, 1948 at the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro, with Sydney Green of Orange County as president and Mrs. Douglas Davis as regional librarian.
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J. L. Phelps wins the county corn contest with 136.4 bushels an acre
In the 1948 Bank of Chapel Hill contest eleven growers topped 100 bushels an acre. The winner, with 136.4 bushels, was J. L. Phelps, from the county's sandy tobacco section.
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James Welch Patton becomes director of the Southern Historical Collection
Patton succeeded J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton as director of the Southern Historical Collection at the UNC library and taught a North Carolina history course each year while he held the post.
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Jim Webb designs a house on Dogwood Drive for Thomas and Margaret Stanback
NCModernist lists the Thomas M. and Margaret Lide Stanback House at 531 Dogwood Drive, dated 1948, as Jim Webb's design in collaboration with Larry Enersen, citing Dail Dixon. Webb had come to UNC's planning school the year before.
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Lambert Davis is named director of the University of North Carolina Press
Lambert Davis, an editor at Harcourt, Brace & Company of New York, was appointed director of the University of North Carolina Press, succeeding Dr. T. J. Wilson III, who had left to direct the Harvard University Press.
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Lattisville Grove Baptist Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Lattisville Grove Baptist Church near Caldwell builds a frame church in the Gothic Revival manner in 1948, late for the style.
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Lt. Gov. Alexander Graham has Watts Carr remodel Montrose as a Colonial Revival house
In 1948 Lt. Gov. Alexander Graham and his wife hired Durham architect Watts Carr to turn the Victorian house at Montrose into a Colonial Revival one, with a high hipped roof, side wings and a Georgian Revival entrance. Carr helped work in mantels, doors and trim from old Orange County houses, including double doors from the Burwell School.
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New Sharon Church members build a $50,000 church and pay for it in a year
Members of New Sharon Church, most of them poultry farmers, put up a $50,000 building in 1948 and 1949. It was dedicated on Sunday, June 5, 1949, at a homecoming of about 800 people, and Lefler and Wager say the cost was cleared within a year.
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Orange County abolishes the office of treasurer
The treasurer, first called trustee, had held county money since 1778 without any power over spending. The office ended in 1948.
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Ridge Road School reports 75 pupils and a 149-book library
The principal's report for 1948-49 counted 75 children enrolled, 57 in average attendance, with the sixth and seventh grades the largest group at 40. The school's equipment was a globe, a flag, word cards, art supplies and a library of 149 books.
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Ted Danziger names the passage to his Rathskeller Amber Alley
Danziger gave the name Amber Alley to the passageway off East Franklin Street that led down to his new Rathskeller. The Weekly said the name came from the yellow lanterns along its walls, not from the novel Forever Amber.
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Ted Danziger opens the Rathskeller in the basement of his father's candy shop
Edward Danziger's son Ted opened the Rathskeller in the basement of the Danziger candy store on Franklin Street. The Hall of Fame credits it with being the first local restaurant to serve draft beer.
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The A&P leaves East Franklin for a new store on the old Toy lot on West Franklin Street
The grocery chain moved off East Franklin into a building it put up on the former Walter Dallum Toy property, bought for the purpose in 1947. Rose's store then spread into the space the A&P had left.
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The News of Orange County is sold to E. J. Hamlin
In 1948 the News of Orange County changed hands again, passing to E. J. Hamlin.
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The School of Public Health establishes a Department of Field Training
In the spring of 1948, early in Dean Edward G. McGavran's tenure, the School of Public Health set up a Department of Field Training, bringing it to eight departments.
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The county board hires supervisors of instruction for its Black and white schools
The board decided to hire supervisors of instruction and chose Norma Snipes for the Black schools and later Cora Paul Bomar for the white schools. In 1955 the state ended Snipes's position under a rule of one supervisor per hundred teachers, and she went to teach at Efland-Cheeks.
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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 8, 2026. Download the full chronology as a spreadsheet (CSV).
