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Recent decades · 1976–2026
- 1970s
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Adelaide Walters co-manages Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in Orange County
Adelaide Walters, a Democratic Party regional coordinator in the 1960s, was Orange County co-manager of Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign.
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Binkley takes over the Ridgefield daycare and renames it the Binkley Child Care Center
When the Community Church and the Housing Authority withdrew in 1976, Binkley took on the whole daycare operation and housed it at the church. It renamed it the Binkley Child Care Center to show where it was, serving the same families. The summer day camp the church had hosted moved to the Ridgefield center that year.
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Cane Creek is chosen as the site of a new reservoir and area landowners organize against it
A consultant's feasibility study concluded that Cane Creek, west of Carrboro, was the best site for a reservoir to supplement University Lake, and OWASA began assembling land there. Cane Creek residents and farmers formed a conservation group and fought the project in court for years, arguing that it would destroy farms and hasten the decline of agriculture and that expanding University Lake had not been properly considered.
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Carrboro grants its first unified business development permit, for Carr Mill
After about three months of hearings and negotiation from December 1975, Carrboro issued a conditional use permit for the mill project, the town's first for several businesses in more than one building on one lot. The developers agreed to keep the southwestern lawn as public open space, save trees, get Appearance Commission approval for the new building, give land for street widening, build sidewalks and put utilities underground.
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Hank Anderson starts a Saturday breakfast meeting of Black and social justice leaders
Anderson began hosting a Saturday morning breakfast at Dip's Restaurant where African American and social justice leaders discussed problems and political strategy. The group later made endorsements in Chapel Hill and Carrboro elections and carried his name.
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Hillsborough annexes West Hillsborough
West Hillsborough, which in 1950 had 1,456 residents and so outnumbered the town itself, came inside the town limits in 1976. Together with the next year's annexation it probably accounts for the town's population more than doubling between 1970 and 1980, from 1,444 to 3,019.
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Meals-on-Wheels begins serving from the Binkley Church lounge
Binkley gave its church lounge to the community-sponsored Meals-on-Wheels program, which delivered hot meals at low cost five days a week to people living alone who could not cook for themselves. By 1978 Memorial Hospital was catering it.
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Orange County adopts a policy for protecting the Eno River
After its task force reported in May 1976, still split over eminent domain, the county adopted a statement calling for permanent protection of the river through both state park ownership and restricted private ownership, backed by conservation zoning and easements. It asked the state to use condemnation only to protect the river, not to enlarge the park.
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Richard E. Whitted becomes the first Black chair of the Orange County commissioners
Four years after joining the board, Richard E. Whitted became the first Black chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners.
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Richard Knight Jr. becomes Carrboro's first Black town manager
Carrboro hired Richard Knight Jr. as its first Black town manager, and he served from 1976 to 1980. He left to become deputy city manager of Gainesville, Florida, and later became the first Black city manager of Dallas.
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Sonja Stone founds the Black Presence Committee of Chapel Hill-Carrboro
Sonja Haynes Stone founded and co-chaired the Black Presence Committee of Chapel Hill-Carrboro in 1976-77. In the same years she founded the Southeastern Black Press Institute and directed it from 1977 to 1979.
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Student government remakes its minority affairs committee as the Human Rights and Relations Committee
The Committee on the Status of Minorities and the Disadvantaged, set up by the Faculty Council in 1972 and inactive the year before, was remade by the new student government administration, with Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor's encouragement, as the Human Rights and Relations Committee. Chaired by a Black sophomore, it aimed at better relations between majority and minority students.
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The Carrboro Bicentennial Commission publishes Mack Watts's Carrboro Yesterday and Today
For the 1976 Bicentennial the town's commission issued Mack Watts's local history, Carrboro Yesterday and Today. The 1983 inventory drew on it for the Weaver House and other early sites and names Watts among the memoir writers who sharpened local interest in the town's past.
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The idle Carrboro depot is converted into The Station
Lee Epting restored the idle Carrboro depot and opened it as The Station restaurant, which was operating by April 1976. By the late 1970s The Station was also a bar with live bands.
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The university is Orange County's largest employer, with about 7,000 workers
Employment Security Commission figures in the 1976 plan counted 6,487 full-time and 526 part-time university employees and 3,150 at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. With only a handful of employers of more than 100 in the county, many residents commuted to Durham and Alamance counties; the county's labor force in 1974 was about 31,400.
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Women outnumber men in the entering freshman class for the first time
The Chapel Hill Newspaper warned that fewer of the state's future leaders would be university men. Joan Scott answered that women's studies could build alumnae loyalty.
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Chapel Hill aldermen adopt ordinances creating a historic district and commission
After a crowded public hearing, the Board of Aldermen unanimously set up a 131-acre Historic Conservation District around East Rosemary, East Franklin, Hillsborough, Boundary and North streets, with a commission to approve exterior changes and delay demolitions. George Watts Hill Jr. spoke for the ordinances and faulted the university for keeping its campus out.
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The Alberta Mill complex is listed on the National Register
The mill, the railroad depot and the brick grist mill were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places, a year after the 1975 nomination made during the fight over demolishing the mill.
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Black journalism students organize the North Carolina Association of Journalists
Black students in the School of Journalism organized the association to promote the Black press, on an idea of Afro-American Studies director Sonja Stone; Winston-Salem Chronicle publishers Ernest Pitt and Ndubisi Egemonye spoke at its first meeting.
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UNC drops its National Achievement weekend after student government refuses its share
The Campus Governing Council declined to pay its third of the cost of National Achievement weekend, which each year brought high-scoring Black high school seniors to the campus, while granting $4,990 to Project Uplift; Harold Wallace's Special Programs office then dropped the 1976 weekend. BSM chairperson Gloria Carney said the BSM would press for full university funding of minority recruitment programs.
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UNC opens a Junior Year in Ghana exchange
The Curriculum in African and Afro-American Studies and the International Center offered UNC students, for the first time, a 1976-77 junior year at the University of Ghana for up to 24 hours of credit, building on ties formed through the Carolina Population Center.
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St. Mary's Chapel near Hillsborough joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed St. Mary's Chapel, the 1859 brick Episcopal chapel northeast of Hillsborough, on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. It was one of 84 properties across the state approved that day.
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County planners hold community meetings across rural Chapel Hill Township
To gather views for a township development plan the commissioners had asked for, the planning department met residents at the New Hope Fire Station, Mt. Carmel Church, the Homestead Community Center in Calvander and Damascus Church, handing out a questionnaire on county issues. The report describes this kind of outreach as new for county planning.
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An erosion control officer joins the Orange County planning department
After the county adopted an erosion control ordinance, an erosion control officer joined the planning department in March 1976, and builders now had to get an erosion control permit before a building permit.
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Hillsborough votes to buy the old Ray Motor Company building for a fire station
The town agreed to pay $60,000 for the former Ford dealership on Churton Street as a home for the fire department, and Orange Rural Fire bought the lot next door. The Hillsborough and Orange Rural departments moved there later in 1976.
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WUNC-FM returns to the air as an NPR affiliate
UNC's radio station WUNC, which had begun FM broadcasting in 1952 and had been silenced by equipment problems in the early 1970s, returned to the air from Chapel Hill on April 3, 1976, as a National Public Radio affiliate.
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Alpha Phi Alpha founds its Mu Zeta chapter at UNC
Alpha Phi Alpha's Mu Zeta chapter was founded with 16 men on its first line. In its first year it canvassed the campus and Franklin Street for the NAACP's legal defense, ran a big brother program for local boys and gave its first scholarship.
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Film critic Donald Bogle lectures at the fifth Black Arts Cultural Festival
Donald Bogle, author of Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks, traced the roles given Black actors in Hollywood films before an audience in Memorial Auditorium, as part of the Black Student Movement's fifth annual Black Arts Cultural Festival. Poet Jayne Cortez also appeared at the spring festival.
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Rural Chapel Hill Township residents rank land-use planning and roads as top concerns
Questionnaires from the four spring meetings put land-use planning first at New Hope and Calvander, road upkeep first at Damascus and fire protection first at Mt. Carmel, where residents leaned partly on Chatham County fire units. Saving farmland ranked in the top five at every meeting, and planners credited the New Hope Improvement Association for fire protection ranking low at New Hope.
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Superintendent George F. Williams defends the demerit system at Stanford Junior High
A Concerned Parents Group met in Hillsborough to protest suspensions under the demerit system at C. W. Stanford Junior High and voted to take its case to the school board and, failing that, to court. George F. Williams defended the system as fair while saying alternatives were under discussion.
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The Campus Governing Council funds the BSM at a third of its request
The student Campus Governing Council's finance committee cut the BSM's 1976-77 request of $26,550 to $8,750 plus a $10,000 loan; the council added $100 for the choir and $1,500 for a new Black Arts Festival category.
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The Carolina Gay Association hosts the first Southeastern Gay Conference at UNC
The Carolina Gay Association sponsored the first Southeastern Gay Conference on the Chapel Hill campus, a weekend of workshops, panels and lectures that Lambda said drew hundreds. It became an annual regional conference that later moved among Southern cities.
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The Totten Center opens at the North Carolina Botanical Garden
The garden's administrative and interpretive building, its first permanent building, opened in 1976. A bequest from the estate of Henry Roland and Adelaide Totten made it possible, and it was named for them.
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Kappa Alpha Psi charters its Theta Omicron chapter at UNC
Kappa Alpha Psi's Theta Omicron chapter was chartered with eight men, after two earlier pledge lines had been taken in.
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County planners take a preliminary land plan back to four rural communities
In a second round of meetings at Mt. Carmel Church on Farrington Road, the Homestead Road Community Center in Calvander, the New Hope Improvement Center on Piney Mountain Road and Damascus Church, planners showed residents the ranked needs, draft goals and a preliminary plan for Chapel Hill Township. Most who came told the staff the process had given their communities more say over their land than ever before.
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Afro-American Studies teaches its first course on the history of the Black press
Sonja Haynes Stone, with a graduate assistant, taught Afro-American Studies 65, the History of the Black Press, in the first summer session of 1976, and that spring she had helped students form the North Carolina Association of Journalists to support the Black press. In 1976-77 Bernadine Moses taught the first Black press course offered in the regular session.
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Carrboro moves to take over the Carr Court program from Binkley
In June 1976 the Town of Carrboro, through its Recreation Commission, planned to take full charge of the Carr Court program and condemned the old center building, ending Binkley's eight years of support.
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County planners propose a six-class land classification for Chapel Hill Township
Adapting the draft state system under the Land Policy Act of 1974, the plan sorted the township into six classes, from developed town land and 8.6 square miles of "transition" land for ten years of urban growth along NC 86 and US 15-501 to conservation land along streams, in Duke Forest and around University Lake. Four rural clusters were marked as "community" areas: the Mt. Carmel Church area, Heritage Hills and Dogwood Acres, Blackwood Station, and NC 54 at SR 1944.
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Orange County planners favor an I-40 route that would follow I-85
The 1976 plan judged the state's Alternate 4, which would carry I-40 traffic on an improved I-85, the least harmful choice. It warned that the other corridors through Chapel Hill Township would break the farm and forest belt between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough and harm Duke Forest and New Hope Creek.
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Orange County planners issue a ten-year planning guide centered on Chapel Hill Township
The county Planning Department, working with the Planning Board and state planners and paid for in part by a federal 701 grant, issued A Planning/Management Process for Orange County, meant as a ten-year guide for managing growth in Chapel Hill Township and later the rest of the county. Its land classification system and development plan had not been adopted by the commissioners when it went to press.
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The county's sketch plan calls for a rural greenbelt north of Chapel Hill and Carrboro
The Sketch Development Policy Plan would keep high-density housing inside Chapel Hill and Carrboro, confine new shops to five convenience areas such as Blackwood Station and Mt. Carmel, and hold the land toward Hillsborough at low density so that Duke Forest, farms and streams would form a natural greenbelt. Heavier industry was steered to other parts of the county.
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The town's SIFT program places teenagers in summer jobs
The Town of Chapel Hill's Summer Involvement For Teenagers (S.I.F.T.) program, a central office matching teenagers with job openings, had 190 applicants in the summer of 1976 and filled 174 temporary jobs such as babysitting, painting and yard work, along with town jobs in recreation, the library, summer camps and transportation; only six steady jobs came from local businesses.
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The school board sells the empty Cedar Grove School to Orange County for ten dollars
After the building had stood vacant for nearly a decade, the Orange County Board of Education conveyed the former school and its eight acres to the county for $10.
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The state approves conveying the university's water and wastewater systems to OWASA
The Governor and Council of State approved the conveyance of the University of North Carolina's water and wastewater utilities to OWASA under Agreements of Sale and Purchase among the university, the two towns and the authority. The university's Board of Trustees had approved the conveyance on June 11, 1976.
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Judge Stanley Peele wins the Democratic primary for his district court seat
Incumbent district judge Stanley Peele of Chapel Hill won the primary with 13,390 votes to 5,445 for Chapel Hill attorney Charles Hodson and 2,171 for Gerid Cumby of Alamance.
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Seven landowners near Hillsborough sue to stop the Eno River State Park plan
Just as master planning resumed, seven landowners near Hillsborough sued the state, arguing that adopting a park master plan would be an unlawful taking of their property. A restraining order and injunction halted the planning for more than two years.
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Severe drought creates a local water crisis
A drought from August 1976 to January 1977 forced Chapel Hill and UNC to buy more water from Durham, ban unnecessary water use and cut campus services. By August 1977 University Lake was lower still, and the new Orange Water and Sewer Authority kept conservation rules and used federal drought aid to buy Durham water.
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The Carolina Gay Association begins publishing its newsletter, Lambda
The Carolina Gay Association published the first issue of Lambda, a special orientation edition marked Volume I, Number 1, mailed from Box 39 in the Student Union. The newsletter stayed the association's paper under each of its later names.
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Work begins on the shopping mall in Carr Mill and its new grocery and drug store building
The first phase of the mill's redevelopment, the ground-floor shopping mall, the new grocery and drug store building and site work, began in August 1976. It was paid for with a $1.2 million construction loan from Mutual Savings and Loan of Charlotte, and Wooten-Brawley and Company of Statesville was the contractor.
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The Paisley-Rice log house joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Paisley-Rice log house near Mebane on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
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The University Space Committee votes to move the Chase cafeteria into Upendo Lounge's space
The University Space Committee decided to move the Servomation cafeteria from the second to the first floor of Chase Hall, taking the room the Black Student Movement had used as Upendo Lounge without promising it other space. The BSM, which said it was neither consulted nor told, met Dean of Student Affairs Donald Boulton and Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor and held a press conference, but Taylor declined to overrule the committee.
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Angela Davis comes to Chapel Hill to rally support for a Labor Day march
Activist Angela Davis visited the UNC campus to build support for the Labor Day National March for Human Rights and Labor Rights in Raleigh, sponsored by the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. Black Ink later reported that the Raleigh march drew little support.
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Chapel Hill High offers a coeducational gym class under Title IX
Following the federal Title IX rule that school programs be open to both sexes, Chapel Hill High School began a coeducational physical education class taught by Becky Considine, with 25 boys and girls playing tennis and voting on later sports; she expected all physical education to be coeducational by the next year. The school's health course had also become coeducational that fall.
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The Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools add adult bus drivers and monitors after a spring bus accident
After a school bus accident in the spring of 1976, the school system changed its bus operation, adding adult drivers and bus monitors and requiring twelve hours of behind-the-wheel training. By October only six of the thirty-six routes had adult drivers, students drove the rest, and the shortage forced cuts in activity bus trips.
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The school nurse expands health counseling at Chapel Hill High
School nurse Susan Spalt expanded health and guidance services at Chapel Hill High School in 1976-77, seeing students every other Monday about pregnancy, abortion, venereal disease, smoking and family problems and arranging treatment elsewhere when needed. She also directed the system's health curriculum, her salary paid partly by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board for alcohol education.
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UNC trustees approve a Cane Creek pipeline on OWASA's recommendation
With University Lake 64 inches below capacity, the UNC Board of Trustees approved an $824,450 pipeline and small temporary dam to draw water from Cane Creek, described as a step toward the planned reservoir. OWASA, due to take over the University water system in January 1977, recommended the Cane Creek project over alternatives that included pumping raw water from the Haw River to a treatment plant.
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Black students march in silent protest at University Day over Upendo Lounge
While administrators and faculty paraded for University Day, Black Student Movement members marched in silent protest against the loss of Upendo Lounge, one placard saying they would not stand by and be insulted. Dean Donald Boulton praised their quiet dignity, and during the Space Committee's review of its decision he guaranteed the BSM room on the second floor of Chase.
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The BSM refuses new Upendo space until it gets an apology
Dean of Student Affairs Donald Boulton offered the Black Student Movement 2,000 square feet on the second floor of Chase for a new Upendo Lounge. The BSM general body voted not to accept it until Boulton and the Space Committee apologized and promised that students would be consulted on such decisions, and it sent letters instead of attending a planning meeting the next day.
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The School of Journalism holds a workshop on the Black press
The UNC School of Journalism invited Black newspaper editors, publishers, television journalists and students to a two-day workshop on the Black press, with Armistead Pride as keynote speaker. Black Ink charged that the dean's welcome, given seated and about the floor-waxing under way, offended the guests, many of whom did not return for the second day.
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Chapel Hill High's enrollment reaches about 1,400
Chapel Hill High School's enrollment reached about 1,400 in the fall of 1976, crowding the cafeteria, parking lot and lockers; the senior class alone numbered about 315 the year before.
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Orange Grove residents form the Cane Creek Conservation Authority
Farm families around Cane Creek organized the Cane Creek Conservation Authority to stop the dam and elected 23-year-old dairy farmer Bobby Kirk president; the group had about 100 active members and said 12 dairy farms would be affected. It argued that the reservoir would end farming in the area, that owners had not been consulted, and that Jordan Lake and other sources were alternatives.
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A Western Sizzlin' steakhouse opens at 324 West Rosemary Street and draws neighborhood pickets
The Western Sizzlin' Steakhouse opened on a Friday at 324 West Rosemary Street. Two days later about ten residents of the nearby Amity Court area picketed it in the rain over century-old trees felled for it and the traffic it brought.
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Durham Technical Institute holds night classes at Chapel Hill High and Lincoln Center
Durham Technical Institute, working with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, held Tuesday and Thursday night classes at Chapel Hill High School and Lincoln Center: an adult high school diploma program, a high school equivalency (GED) program, and vocational and interest courses such as auto mechanics, woodworking, sewing, cake decorating, typing, shorthand and real estate. The school paper reported high enrollment.
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Mama Dip's Kitchen opens
Mildred "Mama Dip" Council opened Mama Dip's Kitchen in November 1976 in a small, failing 18-seat restaurant on Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, starting with $40 for food and $24 for change. The restaurant moved to a new building in 1999 and closed in July 2025 after 49 years.
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UNC Student Health Service physicians hear from the gay association after complaints from gay students
After several gay students complained about their treatment at the Student Health Service, its physicians, nurses and psychiatrists invited the Carolina Gay Association's president to speak with them over a lunch hour. He reported the staff largely receptive.
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UNC students elect the university's first Black Homecoming Queen
With strong support from Black students, a Black junior was elected Homecoming Queen, the first Black woman to hold the title at the university, in a race with two Black candidates. A second Black student won the crown in November 1977 after a vote marred by complaints about how the polls were run.
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Carrboro amends the Carr Mill permit to allow offices on the second floor
The town amended the mill's conditional use permit in December 1976 so the developers could rent the second floor as offices. In return they paid to widen the access road and build sidewalks to the new parking lot.
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A land gift from John N. Couch endows a botany professorship
In 1977 John N. Couch gave the university land to be sold for the support of botany. The proceeds established the John N. Couch Professorship in Botany in 1984.
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A new United States Post Office is completed on East King Street in Hillsborough
The post office at 144 East King Street, a one-story Colonial Revival building, was finished in 1977. It was the first of the new government buildings that went up on the blocks south and east of the courthouse in the late twentieth century.
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Anson Dorrance coaches the UNC men's soccer team
Dorrance, a 1974 UNC graduate, coached the Tar Heel men from 1977 through the 1988 season and won 172 games with them.
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Brick Odum Village apartments replace Victory Village married-student housing
The surplus military frame units that the university had set up on Manning Drive after the war as Victory Village lasted until about 1977, when brick married-student apartments called Odum Village took their place.
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Carrboro Civic Club's public library closes
The Carrboro Civic Club, which had run a volunteer public library since 1950 with some help from the town and Hyconeechee Regional Library, told the town in 1976 that it could no longer administer it, and the library had closed by 1977. An attempt in 1974 to turn the library over to town government had failed, and Hyconeechee's bookmobile served Carrboro until 1995.
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David Bacon opens the Pyewacket, a vegetarian restaurant on West Franklin Street
The Pyewacket opened in 1977 as a vegetarian café on West Franklin Street, run by David Bacon. By 1980 it had moved across the street into the Courtyard at 431 West Franklin, the former Farmers Dairy building, and added seafood, a bar and live jazz.
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Dickson Phillips receives the Thomas Jefferson Award
The University of North Carolina faculty gave Phillips its Thomas Jefferson Award, its highest faculty honor, the year before he left the law school for the federal appeals court.
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Dooley wins a third ACC title, then leaves for Virginia Tech
Carolina won the 1977 Atlantic Coast Conference title, Dooley's third, finished 17th in the AP poll and played in the Liberty Bowl, with Dee Hardison a first-team All-America. In 1978 Dooley left to become head coach and athletic director at Virginia Tech.
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Faculty women found the Association for Women Faculty
The group served as a support network and forum on women's issues at the university. It later created the Mary Turner Lane award.
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Hillsborough annexes Hillsborough Heights
The African American neighborhood of Hillsborough Heights, north of West Hillsborough, was annexed in 1977, one year after West Hillsborough.
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Katherine Kennedy Carmichael retires from the university
Carmichael retired in 1977, thirty-one years after she became dean of women.
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Martini's, a Northern Italian restaurant, opens at 206 West Main Street in Carrboro
Martini's served Northern Italian food, with a bar and an outdoor patio, in the West Main Street building that had housed La Pizza. In 1989 it said it had been serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro for 12 years.
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Michael Simmons becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
Dr. Michael Simmons, superintendent in Dillon, South Carolina, since 1974, took charge of the Orange County schools in 1977. He resigned in 1983 to lead the Johnson City, Tennessee, schools.
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Planning begins for Carrboro’s farmers’ market
UNC organizing and town funding efforts supported a formal market.
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St. Joseph CME sold Henry W. Baldwin's Broad Street land to Carrboro for a park
Henry W. Baldwin, a Black landowner in the Lloyd/Broad neighborhood, left his estate to St. Joseph CME Church. During the pastorate of Dr. L. Kenneth Bennett the church sold a tract on Broad Street to the Town of Carrboro for a park, which was named Baldwin Park in his honor.
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Stanford Junior High School gets a small addition
A 4,300-square-foot addition was made to Stanford Junior High in 1977 under Superintendent George F. Williams.
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Students start the School of Public Health's minority health conference
Begun in 1977 and planned and run by students, the conference aimed to build pride and organizing skills among the minority students the school expected to become health leaders, in the words of recruiter William Small.
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The Burwell School opens to visitors
The restored house has been open to visitors every year since 1977.
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The Carolina Gay Association gets an office in Carolina Union Room 216B
Student government assigned Carolina Union Room 216B to the Carolina Gay Association as its office, though it would not pay for a telephone line, and members donated the office supplies. The room was still the group's office in 1993.
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The university approves a women's studies program with Mary Turner Lane as director
An ad hoc committee named in March 1974 recommended the program, which became a major within interdisciplinary studies. Lane served as half-time director and built the first course, Women's Studies 50, with Joan Scott.
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Two Black UNC students receive Klan threats
According to Black Ink, two Black students, both BSM members, received threats in the Klan's name in letters, phone calls and racial slurs written on their dormitory doors, one letter promising beatings and worse. The paper called it one of the most direct Klan threats in the state that year.
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Wiley and Erika Shearin buy the Faucette House and name it The Elms
Maude Faucette sold the house and about thirty acres to Dr. Wiley Shearin and his wife Erika, who shared the house with her, called it The Elms and added a one-story east wing in the 1970s.
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Pine Knolls residents ask the town to rebuild their condemned community center
Residents of Pine Knolls, where most people were Black, asked the town for $10,000 to renovate the condemned Green House community center or $15,000 to $20,000 for a new one, and began raising half the cost. Assistant Town Manager Gene Shipman said a neighborhood center was not in the town's interest while it planned a citywide recreation center.
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UNC's Housing Department invites the Carolina Gay Association to help train new resident assistants
The Housing Department asked the association to take part in its spring training workshop for new resident assistants, the first time the group was invited to help train RAs on homosexuality. About 180 Housing Department staff were added to Lambda's mailing list that winter.
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BSM leaders tell Chancellor Taylor they will fight the court ruling on minority seats
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on January 5 that the BSM could keep receiving student fees but struck down the guaranteed minority seats on the Campus Governing Council and the Honor Court's promise of a half-minority jury. At a meeting with Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor and state lawyers, BSM chair Jackie Lucas said the organization would do whatever it took to keep Minority Court and the council seats; the university had asked for a rehearing on January 24.
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Chapel Hill High's Afro-American Club holds Black History Week
Chapel Hill High School's Afro-American Club marked Black History Week with morning editorials and dedications to Black leaders, a lunchtime debate on the ideas of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, bulletin-board collages on the Black experience, a discussion of the television series Roots, and talks by Freddie Parker, professor of Black history at North Carolina Central University, and Durham lawyer Ben Bullock.
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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.
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OWASA commenced operations, taking over the water and sewer systems of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the university
The three separately owned systems serving the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Carrboro were transferred to the Orange Water and Sewer Authority, which began serving the whole Carrboro and Chapel Hill community as a single public utility that day.
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Afro-American Studies wins a Rockefeller grant for a Black press institute
The African and Afro-American Studies Curriculum received a Rockefeller Foundation grant for a Southeastern Regional Black Press Institute, a 1977 series of conferences, workshops and seminars to train future leaders of Black newspapers. Sonja Haynes Stone and Bernadine Moses directed it, and the curriculum proposed a center of Black press archives at the university.
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Chapel Hill High halves its gas use during the winter fuel shortage
During the natural gas shortage of the cold winter of 1977, Chapel Hill High School lowered its thermostats from above 70 degrees to about 60 during school hours and 45 at other times and cut hot water in the gym and cafeteria, halving its gas use; principal O. Finley Rush said a proposed four-day school week had not been needed. Junior Follies was postponed because the Carrboro auditorium had no heat.
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Chapel Hill High's Cultural Arts Building nears completion
The Cultural Arts Building at Chapel Hill High School, with rooms for art, band, choral music and drama and an 850-seat auditorium, was being finished in February 1977, its completion pushed from late February to the end of March by frozen ground and cold weather. A student parking lot beside it had opened in December 1976, and the spring musical in May was billed as the first production in the new building.
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The Black Presence Committee of Chapel Hill honors Pauli Murray
The Black Presence Committee of Chapel Hill and Vicinity gave Pauli Murray, a Chapel Hill native who had been refused admission to UNC's law school in the 1930s, a certificate of recognition praising her determination, faith and courage, around the time of her February 13 sermon at the Chapel of the Cross.
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The Church of Reconciliation worships for the first time in its own building
Almost eight years after receiving its land, the congregation built three units on the site and held its first service there on March 6, 1977.
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The Bingham School site at the Oaks joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the site of the Bingham School at the Oaks on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. It went on the list for further study, pending an architectural assessment.
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Stokely Carmichael speaks at UNC for Pan-Africanism
Stokely Carmichael, the former SNCC leader now with the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, spoke at UNC on two days, calling for the liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism and urging Black people to organize themselves.
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The BSM hosts the first tri-state conference of Black students at UNC
Black students from predominantly Black and white campuses in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia met at UNC for a Black Student Movement conference, the first such gathering ever held on the campus. Called because of the appeals court ruling against UNC's minority guarantees, it offered speakers and workshops on communications, law, research and publicity, with Sonja Haynes Stone among the opening speakers.
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Alice Walker and Benny Andrews appear at UNC with Black Student Movement backing
Novelist Alice Walker gave a writing seminar and a reading, and painter Benny Andrews spoke on his work, as guests of the Fine Arts Festival paid for in part by the Black Student Movement as a start to its own Black Arts Festival. Black Ink reported that only about 50 people came.
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A Chapel Hill High senior becomes the school's first woman Morehead Scholar
A Chapel Hill High School senior was named a Morehead Scholar at UNC, with tuition, room, board and spending money, the first time the scholarship had gone to a woman graduate of the school.
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Chapel Hill High fields its first women's soccer team
Chapel Hill High School formed its first women's soccer team in the spring of 1977, coached by biology teacher Diane Weinholtz, after a year in which girls had played only as a club; nearly forty girls tried out, and the first home game was set for April 22.
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Chapel Hill High forms a student relations committee after a racial incident
After an incident on February 18, 1977, that a student letter tied to racial tension, Chapel Hill High administrators met with students in class groups on March 18, and a hand-picked student relations committee with teacher advisers Lois Lipscomb, Diane Shaw, Joyce Clayton and Jackie Menser began meeting on racial friction, racially identifiable classes, poor communication between students and faculty, and too much unstructured time. According to the school paper, students criticized the March sessions as lectures, and the committee expected to meet with principal O. Finley Rush.
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The Chapel Hill YMCA raises most of the money for a building on Airport Road
The Chapel Hill YMCA, whose offices were under the downtown Presbyterian church, had raised more than $1 million toward a $1.2 million building on Airport Road near Estes Drive, with a gym, outdoor track, picnic area with a lake and a swimming pool for which about $200,000 remained to be raised. Groundbreaking was set for March 15, 1977, and completion for the summer of 1978.
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The Carolina Gay Association hosts the second Southeastern Gay Conference
The second Southeastern Gay Conference met in Chapel Hill with speakers including Karla Jay, Jean O'Leary, Barbara Gittings and Bob Basker and workshops on subjects from the military to aging, and passed resolutions asking President Carter to protect gay rights and backing the Dade County gay rights ordinance. Lambda counted coverage on three television newscasts, six radio newscasts and eight newspapers.
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Black students crowd a council budget hearing and win the BSM's full request
Backed by more than a hundred members carrying placards, BSM chair Byron Horton protested cuts to Black Ink and the Black Drama Group, and the Campus Governing Council gave the BSM exactly the $10,495 the placards demanded for 1977-78. The finance committee had proposed $3,500 for Black Ink, less than the year before, and nothing for the drama group.
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The Campus Governing Council defeats an attempt to cut the Carolina Gay Association's funding
The student Campus Governing Council voted down an attempt to cut the Carolina Gay Association's student-fee funding, leaving the association a budget of $800 for the year.
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White Avery dormitory residents throw water bags and slurs at BSM members
About midnight after the budget hearing, white residents of Avery dormitory threw bags of water and racial obscenities at three groups of Black Student Movement members walking past. The BSM under chair Byron Horton sought charges, but in October the student attorney general said there was not enough evidence, statements taken by campus police having been ruled unusable. Black Ink charged the attack was racially motivated; the police investigator called it coincidental.
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Ebony Images, the first Black yearbook at UNC, comes out
A committee of Black students published Ebony Images, a 36-page mini-yearbook of the 1976-77 year in Black campus life, after years of complaints that the Yackety Yack left Black students out. It was the first such book on the campus, and a larger second edition was planned for 1977-78.
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BSM seniors stage A Legacy of Struggle, a history of Black students at UNC
A group of seniors presented A Legacy of Struggle, a BSM-sponsored program of narration, dance, drama and slides on how Black students came into the university and what they had done since, researched for the occasion with J. Lee Greene as an adviser. A dance for the seniors followed.
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Carr Mill Shopping Village opens in Carrboro's renovated mill
Carr Mill Shopping Village, a shopping center built inside Carrboro's renovated former textile mill, was scheduled to open on May 1, 1977, with ten retail stores, a Harris Teeter supermarket and a Revco drug store. By that September it advertised about 25 businesses; the complex is now known as Carr Mill Mall.
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J. Lee Greene receives an Amoco Distinguished Teaching Award
J. Lee Greene, assistant professor of English and a UNC graduate who taught American and contemporary Black American literature, received an Amoco Distinguished Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching, chosen from student and faculty nominations.
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Triangle Area Gay Scientists forms at a meeting in Chapel Hill
Eleven people from fields such as chemistry, entomology, environmental engineering and neurobiology met in Chapel Hill and started the Triangle Area Gay Scientists, a social group for gay and lesbian scientists, mathematicians and engineers. A year later it had 35 people on its mailing list and about 30 at meetings, and was thought to be the only group of its kind in the country.
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Court of Appeals lets OWASA survey Cane Creek land over owners' objections
Landowners including the estate of Nancy Armstrong had refused OWASA's surveyors access to the dam site. After a trial court ordered access on April 28, 1977, the N.C. Court of Appeals held that the authority could enter and survey before starting eminent domain proceedings.
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Hayden B. Renwick becomes special assistant to the chancellor for minority enrollment
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor made Assistant Dean Hayden B. Renwick his special assistant for 1977-78, to advise him on raising minority enrollment as the federal government pressed the UNC system for more Black students. Renwick called the federal goal of a 150 percent increase too much but said a larger Black enrollment could be reached.
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The rebuilding of Chase and Upendo Lounge's move upstairs are put off a year
The university had settled on moving Upendo Lounge to about 2,000 square feet on the second floor of Chase, with renovation to begin after the May 1977 commencement and the new lounge to open that October. When construction bids came in well over budget the work was put off to the spring and summer of 1978, leaving Upendo where it was.
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Black students hold a silent University Day protest over Bakke and the HEW plan
Black Student Movement members held a silent demonstration at University Day against the university's rejection of the federal desegregation proposal and over the Bakke case. Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor said it was done with great dignity; one Black faculty member later said it needed more preparation with the press.
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Bill Thorpe leads the voting for the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
In his second run for office, Bill Thorpe led the field from the early returns and won one of four seats on the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen, with Bev Kawalec, Marilyn Boulton and Gerry Cohen.
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Bob Drakeford is elected mayor of Carrboro
Robert "Bob" Drakeford, a Carrboro alderman since 1975 and a Carrboro Community Coalition candidate, won the mayor's race on November 8, 1977, with 57 percent of the vote over John Boone. He was the town's first Black mayor and served until 1983.
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Braxton Foushee leads the voting for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
Braxton Foushee of the Carrboro Community Coalition won a seat on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen with 1,052 votes, 36 more than the next winner, Doug Sharer, on the night Bob Drakeford became the town's first Black mayor. Foushee said voters wanted the bus system expanded.
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Ted Parrish wins a seat on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
Ted Parrish, a key organizer of the Pine Knolls Tutorial Program, won one of three open seats on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education, one of four Black candidates elected locally that day.
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Herbert Edwards lectures on Black religion at Morehead Planetarium
Herbert Edwards, associate professor of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School, told a Morehead Planetarium audience that Black religion was the only religion in American history that did not condone injustice. The Black Student Movement and the Campus Y co-sponsored his talk.
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Filmmakers show a documentary on lesbian mothers at the UNC Law School
More than 130 people saw In the Best Interests of the Children, a film about lesbian mothers and child custody, at the UNC Law School. Two of its makers, Elizabeth Stevens and Frances Reid of the Iris Feminist Collective, answered questions afterward.
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Teachers and students file sex-discrimination charges over the lockers in Woollen Gym
Grievances signed by 23 students, faculty and staff charged that the physical education department broke Title IX by giving men 85 percent of the lockers in Woollen Gym, though women physical education students outnumbered men. Pamela Dean adds that earlier talk of a similar suit led the Morehead trustees to open their scholarships to women.
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Chief District Judge Peele halts Carrboro fire-lane towing
In a class-action suit by four Carrboro residents, three of them UNC students, Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele issued a temporary restraining order barring the town from enforcing its ordinance allowing cars to be towed from marked fire lanes on private property.
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Julius Chambers tells a Memorial Hall audience the UNC system still fails Black citizens
Charlotte lawyer Julius Chambers, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who had resigned from the UNC Board of Governors in September, spoke to about 100 people in Memorial Hall on desegregation, affirmative action and the Bakke case. He charged that the administration would not give up past policies, and he questioned how few Black faculty and staff were hired and tenured.
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The Institute's former Franklin Street building is dedicated in the names of Albert and Gladys Coates
The building the Coateses had given years and money to put up for the Institute, used after 1956 as the Consolidated University's headquarters and later by other programs, was dedicated in their name. Coates had earlier asked the School of Social Work not to name one of its new buildings for him.
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UNC students back equal rights for gay people in a Campus Y poll
In a Campus Y and Common Cause questionnaire, UNC students agreed by 1,454 to 503 that homosexuals should have the same rights as heterosexuals. The same poll asked students how they would divide student fees among campus groups.
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Caldwell and Cedar Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporated
The Caldwell Volunteer Fire Department was incorporated on December 6, 1977 and the Cedar Grove Volunteer Fire Department a week later, on December 13, extending local fire protection across the northern townships.
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OWASA asks the state for power to condemn Cane Creek land
OWASA petitioned the N.C. Environmental Management Commission for a certificate authorizing eminent domain for the Cane Creek reservoir, which would need about 700 acres of mostly woodland and prime farmland. The commission held a seven-day hearing between April and June 1978.
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A UNC senior becomes the first Black woman named a Rhodes Scholar
A UNC senior and track athlete, who four years earlier had become the first Black woman to enter UNC as a Morehead Scholar, became the first Black woman to win a Rhodes Scholarship and UNC's 23rd Rhodes Scholar. At the press conference announcing the award she spoke of a cloud of racism over the university, pointing to Dean Renwick's unanswered admissions charges.
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Andy Griffith speaks at University Day in Memorial Hall
Griffith gave the University Day speech in Memorial Hall and recalled fighting back tears as he approached the building where he had first performed.
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Bill Dow and Laura Heise found the North Carolina Agricultural Marketing Project
Physician and farmer Bill Dow and Laura Heise founded the North Carolina Agricultural Marketing Project, modelled on the farmers' markets Dow had helped start in Tennessee. The project led directly to the Carrboro Farmers' Market.
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Black Ink wins its first journalism award
Black Ink, the Black Student Movement's newspaper, won third place for best college magazine in the Society of Professional Journalists' Southern Region, its first journalism award.
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Cameron Park School is enlarged again under Superintendent Michael Simmons
A further addition to Cameron Park Elementary in Hillsborough went up in 1978, the third stage of the building, which by the early 1980s housed kindergarten through fifth grade.
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Carr Mill's property tax bill rises from about $4,900 to nearly $30,000 after rehabilitation
Assessed at $304,700 before the work, the mill property paid $4,875 in taxes in 1975. Revalued at $1,538,500 after rehabilitation, it paid $29,847 in 1978. Sales in the complex that year came to about $10.5 million.
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Carrboro Farmers’ Market is established
After organizing and planning in 1977, the Carrboro Farmers' Market began business in 1978, once the town amended its permit in February 1978 to allow the market at Carr Mill.
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Clements Funeral Service moves into the old Presbyterian manse on North Churton Street
Clements Funeral Service took over the house at 148 North Churton Street, which had served as a Presbyterian manse and a doctor's office, and built a chapel beside it in 1980.
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Efland-Cheeks pupils use the old Cedar Grove School while their school is enlarged
Under county ownership the former Cedar Grove School served several purposes, among them holding Efland-Cheeks School students until an addition to their own building was finished in 1978.
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James J. Freeland moves the Gatewood House from Yanceyville to Daniel Boone Village
Continuing his habit of relocating old buildings to his South Churton Street development, Freeland brought the Gatewood House from Yanceyville in Caswell County to Daniel Boone Village in 1978.
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Lee Smith teaches creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill
Novelist Lee Smith taught creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill as a lecturer from 1978 to 1981, before joining NC State.
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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.
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RFD, a country journal for gay men, moves its office to Efland
RFD moved from Wolf Creek, Oregon, to a rural route address at Efland, aiming for a more rural voice and to bring the South into gay life, and had put out two issues from there by early 1979. By October 1980 its address was in Bakersville, in the North Carolina mountains.
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Roy Williams serves as an assistant coach under Dean Smith at UNC
Williams spent ten seasons on Dean Smith's UNC men's basketball staff before leaving to become head coach at Kansas.
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Student Congress requires the BSM to send membership applications to white as well as Black students
About 1978 Student Congress required the Black Student Movement to send membership applications to both Black and white students as a condition tied to its funding, as white students challenged the group's support.
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The Hillsborough Chamber of Commerce holds its first Candlelight Tour
The Chamber of Commerce organized the first Candlelight Tour of Hillsborough's historic houses as heritage tourism grew in importance to the town.
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The Interior Department certifies the Carr Mill rehabilitation for federal tax benefits
Federal preservation officials reviewed the first two phases of the Carr Mill work and, after receiving more photographs in February 1978, certified them as a historic rehabilitation under the Tax Reform Act of 1976. The partners could then write off qualifying rehabilitation costs over five years, about $1.9 million for the whole project once the third phase was also certified in 1979. Federal officials later held up the window repairs and replica sash as a model for industrial buildings.
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UNC and HEW settle on a desegregation plan for the university system
After a long dispute with the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the UNC system agreed to a desegregation plan that called for strengthening programs at the five historically Black state universities and giving them priority for new degree programs. Black Ink called the plan mediocre, and that fall the Board of Governors still placed the new veterinary school at N.C. State rather than N.C. A&T.
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UNC hires Willie Scroggs to coach men's lacrosse
Athletic director Bill Cobey recruited Scroggs, the top assistant at Johns Hopkins, to build the Tar Heel program. His teams went 120 and 37 over 12 seasons and reached the NCAA tournament every year from 1980 through 1990.
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Walter Spearman receives the Thomas Jefferson Award
Spearman received the Thomas Jefferson Award in 1978, near the end of a teaching career in which students admired his defense of freedom of speech and of the press.
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Yonni Chapman leads the North Carolina Memorial Hospital Employees Forum
Chapman, a hematology laboratory technician at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill from 1975 to 1985, served as president of the hospital's Employees Forum from 1978 to 1980 and helped unite coworkers against racial discrimination and unsafe working conditions.
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J. Lee Greene's student production Down Home opens in Memorial Hall
Down Home, a staging of Black history through dance, music and drama made by English professor J. Lee Greene with students of his Black literature course, played to a large student and town audience in Memorial Hall despite bad weather. An encore was set for January 31.
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The Bingham School site is listed in the National Register
The Bingham School was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, one of six rural Orange County listings the 1993 county survey recorded.
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Protesters at the Carolina Inn press Governor Hunt to pardon the Wilmington Ten
About 100 people, most of them white, demonstrated outside the North Carolina Press Institute banquet at the Carolina Inn days after Governor Jim Hunt commuted, rather than pardoned, the Wilmington Ten's sentences. The Wilmington Ten defense committee, the Young Socialists and the BSM Central Committee sponsored it; there was some shoving and a window was broken, and BSM chair Byron Horton regretted that so few Black students came.
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Jim Phillips defeats a Black candidate by 104 votes in the student body president runoff
In the runoff for UNC student body president, Jim Phillips beat a Black candidate, a former student body vice president, by 104 votes after the Black candidate nearly tripled his first-round total of 890. Black Ink noted he was one of only three Black candidates ever to reach a presidential runoff.
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Carr Mill's second-floor offices are finished, with Memorial Hospital's dialysis unit among the tenants
The second phase, offices on the mill's upper floor, was completed in February 1978. Tenants who had asked for space included North Carolina Memorial Hospital, which moved its kidney dialysis laboratory there and proposed moving three administrative divisions out of the crowded hospital, a state Vocational Rehabilitation area office and a Southern Bell regional office.
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Carrboro amends the Carr Mill permit to allow a weekend farmers' market in its parking lot
At the town's request and with the developers' consent, Carrboro amended the permit to let a farmers' market use the mill's second parking lot on weekends. A permanent open-air shelter was built with a $25,000 state matching grant, with the town supplying the site.
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The Black Student Movement marks its tenth anniversary with a week of events
The BSM opened its tenth-anniversary week with a march down Franklin Street and through campus that also served as a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., followed by a Black faculty and staff night, a club night in Upendo Lounge and a cultural night in Memorial Hall with the Opeyo Dancers, the Gospel Choir and the Ebony Readers. The week ended with an awards banquet in Kenan Field House on March 17 and a picnic on March 18.
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The Carolina Gay Association holds its first Gay Awareness Week
The Carolina Gay Association held its first Gay Awareness Week, a week of films, talks and workshops in the Carolina Union open to the public. Lambda set it against a Daily Tar Heel poll in which most of the 398 students surveyed opposed student funding for the association, and the defacement of its notice on the Cube.
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Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee appear in Memorial Hall
The actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, known for their dramatic readings of Black prose and poetry, appeared in Memorial Hall during the BSM's tenth-anniversary week. Black Ink later counted them among the guests of the anniversary celebration.
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Winston-Salem alderman Larry Little speaks at the BSM's tenth-anniversary banquet
Larry Little, a former Black Panther Party leader newly elected to the Winston-Salem Board of Aldermen, gave the keynote at the BSM awards banquet in Kenan Field House. The BSM honored Dean Hayden B. Renwick as outstanding Black administrator and Professor J. Lee Greene as outstanding faculty member.
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A thinly attended Kool and the Gang concert leaves the BSM in debt to student government
The BSM borrowed from student government to co-sponsor a Kool and the Gang concert with the Carolina Union in Memorial Hall; the hall was less than half full, and the BSM was left owing nearly $5,000. It paid the loan down in monthly installments through dues and fund-raisers over 1978-79, and by fall 1979 Black Ink credited chair Allen Johnson with repaying the $3,000 balance.
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A Daily Tar Heel poll finds most students oppose funding the Carolina Gay Association
A Daily Tar Heel survey reported that almost 58 percent of 398 UNC students polled wanted the Campus Governing Council to give the Carolina Gay Association no money, as student budget hearings neared and letters for and against the group ran in the paper.
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Vandals deface the Carolina Gay Association's cube notice for Gay Awareness Week
The association's painted notice of its Gay Awareness Week on the campus cube was defaced with a slogan calling sodomy a felony and urging arrests. Lambda later said the cube listing was defaced during each of the early Gay Awareness Weeks.
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Vernon Jordan gives UNC's first Martin Luther King Memorial Lecture
Vernon Jordan, president of the National Urban League, spoke in Memorial Hall as the first annual Martin Luther King Memorial Lecturer and argued that reverse discrimination was not a real issue while white men still held most jobs.
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Jeff MacNelly wins a second Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
Jeff MacNelly, a former Daily Tar Heel sports editor and Chapel Hill Weekly cartoonist, won his second Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning while at The Richmond News Leader.
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The TALF-CGA Community Education Project begins sending outreach materials to other gay groups
The joint community education project of the Triangle Area Lesbian Feminists and the Carolina Gay Association began offering other gay groups 12 packets of materials its speakers had prepared for talks to classes and other audiences. By that fall orders had come from as far as the University of New Hampshire.
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Tar Heel Days organizers drop all student groups from a panel after the gay association asks to join
When the Carolina Gay Association's chair tried to get the group a place on a panel at Tar Heel Days, the summer orientation for incoming freshmen, all student organizations were dropped from the forum. The association planned an information table on four Tar Heel Days in June and July instead.
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The Southeastern Black Press Institute holds its first summer journalism seminar
The Southeastern Black Press Institute, a demonstration project of UNC's Afro-American Studies Curriculum headed by Sonja H. Stone, brought 11 high school students from the Southeast to Chapel Hill for four weeks of classes in news writing, the Black press and photography. The first seminar cost about $9,000 and held a gospel festival on July 30 saluting the Black press and the Black church.
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St. Mary's Chapel is listed in the National Register
St. Mary's Chapel, the brick Gothic Revival Episcopal chapel on St. Mary's Road northeast of Hillsborough, built in 1859 for a congregation dating to the late 1750s, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 1978.
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Black journalism students demand Black faculty and a Black press course in the journalism school
The Journalism Organization for Black Students published demands that the UNC School of Journalism hire Black faculty, add a course on the Black press in America, publicize minority scholarships and job openings, and improve advising. The school then had no Black faculty, and its search for a photojournalism teacher that spring had drawn no Black applicants.
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The North Carolina Health Manpower Development Program wins a federal grant for minority pre-health students
The Chapel Hill-based North Carolina Health Manpower Development Program, a consortium formed in 1971, received a $423,816 federal grant for a Health Careers Academic Advancement Program to prepare minority undergraduates at UNC and five other campuses for health professional schools, running to summer 1981. Its director, E. Lavonia Allison, was to direct the new program.
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Dean Hayden Renwick charges that UNC is turning away qualified Black applicants
In a column in the Chapel Hill Newspaper, Associate Dean Hayden B. Renwick published figures showing UNC accepted 427 of 554 Black applicants in 1974 but only 424 of 706 in 1978, and charged that the admissions office was rejecting qualified Black students. Vice Chancellor Donald A. Boulton answered that Black enrollment had risen; the BSM, the Carolina Indian Circle and the North Carolina Black Student Coalition backed Renwick.
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Fourteen Black campus groups form the Black Campus Cabinet
Sixteen representatives of fourteen Black student organizations, among them the Black Greek chapters, the United Christian Fellowship, the Minority Health Careers Club, Minorities in the Electronic Media and the BSM's cultural groups, formed the first Black Campus Cabinet to pool resources and coordinate a calendar. BSM chair Allen Johnson presided.
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Neighbors oppose the university's request to rezone the former Baity land
At a Board of Aldermen hearing, Elizabeth C. Baity and nearby residents opposed putting 36 acres of the land she had sold the university in 1974 under University A zoning, amid rumors of a sports coliseum. George Watts Hill Jr. asked the aldermen to take time to study University A zoning, and they sent the request to the planning board.
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A Chapel Hill benefit dinner raises $700 to fight Seattle's Initiative 13
A benefit dinner at the Newman Center attended by 68 people raised $700 for the Seattle Gay Rights Fund's fight against Initiative 13, a November ballot measure to repeal Seattle's ban on housing and job discrimination based on sexual preference. A Southern Season donated much of the food.
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The North Carolina Black Student Coalition takes up Black admissions at a Carolina Union press conference
At a press conference in the Carolina Union, coalition president Byron Horton said qualified Black students were being refused across the state, citing Dean Renwick's figures, and announced research teams to check every UNC campus against the HEW desegregation goals. He said the coalition, formed in December 1977 and speaking for 14 schools and about 18,000 students, had intervened for the defense in Bostic v. Byrd, a reverse-discrimination suit against the UNC Law School, and would press for Black Studies programs on all campuses.
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The Paul Green Theatre opens with Native Son
Paul Green's stage version of Richard Wright's Native Son was the first production in UNC's new Paul Green Theatre, with a Black student, a former student body vice president, playing Bigger Thomas.
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The BSM's radio program Ebony Spotlight goes on the air on WXYC
The BSM started Ebony Spotlight, a ten-minute public affairs program on the student station WXYC aired Mondays and Wednesdays, with campus news, profiles of Black students, a calendar of BSM events and spots for student talent.
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Miss North Carolina Central crowns Miss BSM at the BSM Coronation Ball
At the BSM's Coronation Ball in Great Hall, the reigning Miss North Carolina Central University crowned the new Miss BSM and spoke on the leadership role of campus queens, a former BSM chair received the Outstanding Black Senior award, and the Gospel Choir, Ebony Readers and Opeyo Dancers performed.
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Hillsborough's new wastewater treatment plant goes into service
The town's tertiary treatment plant on the south side of the Eno east of town, rated at 1.5 million gallons a day, began operating, ending the overloads behind earlier violations of the river's water standards.
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The Carolina Gay Association holds its second Gay Awareness Week
The Carolina Gay Association held its second Gay Awareness Week of films, talks and dialogues in the Carolina Union on gay rights, religion, race and bisexuality, ending with a weekend of workshops, a Halloween party and a picnic in Battle Park. The first had been held that March.
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A legal aid lawyer challenges WUNC-FM over its lack of Black staff
Benjamin A. Currence, a staff attorney with the North Central Legal Assistance Program, said WUNC radio's license renewal papers showed no Black full-time employees and proposed an advisory committee including faculty and BSM officers. He said that without a negotiated agreement he would ask the FCC to deny the station's license renewal before the November 1 deadline.
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CGA on the Radio begins on WXYC
The Carolina Gay Association's 'CGA On the Radio' began on student station WXYC, 89.3 FM, as a weekly five-minute news and feature program.
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Plans are announced for a Chapel Hill branch of the Orange County court clerk's office
Clerk of Superior Court Frank Frederick and Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele announced plans for a Chapel Hill branch of the clerk's office, to open in January and handle traffic tickets and other misdemeanors docketed for district court in Chapel Hill.
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Bernice Reagon sings at an Afro-American Studies open house in Upendo Lounge
The Afro-American Studies curriculum held an open house in Upendo Lounge at which the folk singer and oral historian Bernice Reagon sang and explained Black songs and the Opeyo Dancers performed. Director Sonja Stone's program announced plans for its tenth anniversary in spring 1979, including a dinner honoring its first director, James Brewer.
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Carolyn Stroman joins the Afro-American Studies faculty to teach the Black press
Afro-American Studies added Carolyn Stroman to its faculty to teach the junior and senior seminars and Afro-American Studies-Journalism 58, The Black Press. That semester the curriculum also had two majors interning with Carrboro's mayor and town manager.
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The Black Faculty-Staff Caucus asks Chancellor Taylor to meet on Black admissions
Following the controversy over the admission of Black undergraduates, the Black Faculty-Staff Caucus wrote Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor asking for a meeting to make sure fair standards were applied equally to all applicants.
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The BSM's Soul Disco Train fund-raiser fills Great Hall
The BSM's Soul Disco Train, a takeoff on television's Soul Train co-sponsored by WXYC, drew the largest crowd of any Black student event in recent years and grossed over $400, enough for the BSM to make its $625 loan payment to student government on November 25.
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Zeta Phi Beta starts an undergraduate chapter at UNC
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority started an undergraduate chapter at UNC, sponsored by its graduate chapter, joining Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta on campus. Its first four members gave a step show in Great Hall on November 18, 1978.
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The state Supreme Court refuses the Eno park landowners' appeal
By denying discretionary review of a Court of Appeals ruling for the state, the North Carolina Supreme Court ended the injunction against Eno River State Park planning. Work on the master plan resumed the next month.
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Edwin M. Yoder Jr. wins the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing
Yoder won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing while editorial page editor of the Washington Star, where he worked from 1975 to 1981.
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Families leaving St. Matthew's found All Saints Anglican Church in west Hillsborough
Two prominent families broke with St. Matthew's over the ordination of women and the revised Prayer Book and started their own church.
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Four Corners Restaurant, named for Dean Smith's stalling offense, replaces the Rendezvous
The new East Franklin restaurant took its name from the four-corners keep-away offense of UNC basketball coach Dean Smith.
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Fraternity men with bats confront students guarding the Gay Awareness Week cube
During the association's second Gay Awareness Week, members slept beside the painted cube to protect their announcement, and a group of fraternity men carrying bats confronted two women and a man from the association there. Long student honor court hearings followed, and one student was found not guilty.
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