Chronology

Hargraves Community Center, Civil rights era: 5 dated entries from the full dataset. Back to the highlights →

1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
2. Fall 1945 The Negro Community Center opens for community useBuilding completion · Chapel Hill

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Chapel Hill's swimming pool for Black residents, at the Roberson Street community center and now the A.D. Clark Pool, was dedicated on June 15, 1961. Cornelia Spencer Love gave $40,000 to build it, Black residents supplied labor and raised money for the bath house, and Adolphus D. Clark led the pool association.

6. 1973 The Community Center is renamed for William M. HargravesMemorial or commemoration · Chapel Hill

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

The other dated entries wait behind a subject, a place, an era, a month, or the All dated entries switch, and each storyline’s page carries its own component entries. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. Each card’s “Correct this” link opens the contact form with the entry already named. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated September 14, 2026.