Chronology

Housing, Neighborhoods & Displacement, Early twentieth century: 16 dated entries from the full dataset. Back to the highlights →

1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
2. 1916 Chapel Hill's white graded school and high school move into a new West Franklin Street buildingEducation milestone · Chapel Hill

   Paid for by a $35,000 bond, a new Chapel Hill Graded School building designed by Hook and Rogers was finished on West Franklin Street in spring 1916. It housed white elementary and high school students, and Chapel Hill High School counts 1916 as its founding year, though its classes predate the building.

3. 1916 The Hackney school near Merritt Mill Road became the Orange County Training SchoolFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

   Louis Hackney had opened Hackney's Educational and Industrial School for Black students in 1913. In 1916 he sold the property to the Chapel Hill School District trustees for $2,300, and the school was renamed Orange County Training School with a Mr. Malone as principal.

4. About 1920 Kennon Cheek joins the janitorial staff of Venable HallEmployment · UNC campus, Chapel Hill

   Cheek began working for the university as a boy, helping his father Rubin Cheek, a stonemason born in slavery in Warren County, lay the stone walls around the campus. Around 1920 he joined the janitorial staff of Venable Hall.

5. 1920s Luther R. Hargraves built the tin-roofed houses that gave Tin Top its nameNeighborhood formation · Hargraves Street, Chapel Hill and Carrboro

   Luther R. Hargraves, a carpenter and Chapel Hill's first African American mortician, built a row of houses with tin roofs on Hargraves Street near the railroad tracks behind St. Paul AME, and the cluster became known as Tin Top or Tin Top Alley.

6. 1923 The Order of Gimghouls plats its Chapel Hill subdivision with racial deed restrictionsLaw or policy · Gimghoul neighborhood, Chapel Hill

   The Junior Order of Gimghouls subdivided its land east of campus into house lots, with a plat recorded in Orange County Plat Book 1, page 51. The original deed covenants carried the racial restrictions standard for the period, along with setbacks and a requirement that the order review house plans.

7. 1924 Kennon Cheek helps negotiate the land swap that brought Hackney's school to NorthsideLand transaction · Northside, Chapel Hill

   Cheek's daughter Marian Cheek Jackson said he was instrumental in negotiating the 1924 land swap that moved Hackney's Educational and Industrial School from South Merritt Mill Road into the Northside community.

8. June 1928 Chapel Hill adopts its first zoning ordinanceLaw or policy · Chapel Hill

   The Board of Aldermen unanimously adopted an ordinance dividing the town into two residence zones and two business zones, with height limits, setbacks, yard rules and a board of adjustment. The published text makes no reference to race.

9. 1932 Kennon Cheek moves that the Janitors' Association give to the student loan fundLabor organizing · UNC campus, Chapel Hill

   Frank Porter Graham came to an association meeting to tell the janitors that the Depression would cut their wages but that everyone would come through together. Cheek then moved that the Janitors' Association give five dollars to the fund set up to keep students in school, the first campus organization to contribute to it.

10. 1932–1938 St. Joseph CME built its first church on West Rosemary StreetBuilding opening · 510 West Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill

    Henry Baldwin, Margaret Burnette and Kennon Cheek mortgaged their homes for the down payment on the Rosemary Street lot, which Black leaders had judged too small for a new high school. A frame church went up under Rev. Joseph S. Miller and was dedicated as St. Joseph Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

11. August 21–22, 1937 Racial violence erupts in western Chapel Hill and CarrboroDisaster or violence · Chapel Hill

    Late on Saturday, August 21, 1937, a white filling-station attendant struck Tom Atwater, a Black man, with a bottle near West Franklin Street. An angry crowd gathered, some throwing stones and firing guns, and armed white men from Carrboro fired on them from a barricaded truck. Four men were shot before Durham police with tear gas restored calm.

12. September 8, 1939 Citizens buy land for a Negro Community CenterLand or property · Chapel Hill

    Ten Chapel Hill men, among them Louis Graves, R. B. House and Paul Wager, signed a $1,500 note at the Bank of Chapel Hill to buy about five acres of the old Craig place at the west end of Rosemary Lane for a Black community center. The project grew out of concerns raised by the Negro Civic Club.

13. 1940 Kennon Cheek dies at his home in NorthsideDeath · Northside, Chapel Hill

    Cheek, born in Chapel Hill about 1890, lived out his life in the house he built on land in Northside bought from the university's holdings, and died there in 1940 after diabetes and overwork wore him down in the late 1930s.

14. 1940 UNC receives the Horace Williams tract by bequestLand acquisition · Horace Williams tract, Chapel Hill

    The core of what became the Carolina North tract, north of Estes Drive and west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, came to the university as a bequest from Professor Horace Williams. The university later bought adjoining land, and parts of the site were used as an airport, landfill, town operations center and animal shelter.

15. July 29, 1940 Community Center land is deeded to Chapel HillLand or property · Chapel Hill

    The trustees holding the five-acre community-center site deeded it to the Town of Chapel Hill, whose aldermen had voted in May to accept the title and sponsor the project, since the WPA required government ownership. The deed limited the land to a community center and recreation for Black residents.

16. January 9, 1941 Construction begins on the Negro Community CenterBuilding construction · Chapel Hill

    Work on the Negro Community Center began on January 9, 1941, with Clarence Webb directing a crew of 20 and Charles Craig, the Black architect and contractor who drew the plans, helping supervise. A WPA grant paid most of the cost, and Black masons, carpenters and other workers donated their labor.

17. May 22, 1942–October 24, 1945 The Navy B-1 Band lives in the Community CenterCommunity milestone · Chapel Hill

    With the community center unfinished for lack of funds, the town lent it on May 22, 1942 to the Navy as quarters for the B-1 Band, the Black musicians of the Pre-Flight School. The Navy, not the band, finished and equipped the building, and the band lived there from that summer until the town regained it on October 24, 1945.

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.