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Searched the full chronology of 6,368 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–7.Back to highlights
Entries
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Floyd McKissick sends organizers to Chapel Hill and defends arrested demonstrators
As head of CORE's Durham office, McKissick sent organizer Quinton Baker to Chapel Hill in 1963 to teach nonviolence and demonstration tactics, and he acted as attorney for many demonstrators arrested there. Letters to him in 1964 include one written from the Orange County jail.
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John Dunne gives up his Morehead scholarship to work in the Chapel Hill movement
By December 1963 John Dunne had stopped pretending to finish school, gave up his Morehead scholarship and devoted his time to the Freedom Movement in Chapel Hill. He joined the Congress of Racial Equality and led protests at segregated restaurants.
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Sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile are doused with ammonia
Around New Year's Day 1964, sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile, Carlton Mize's segregated grocery on the Durham Road, were doused with ammonia and bleach water. Seven were treated for burns, among them NAACP youth leader Quinton Baker; four were arrested, and thirteen more were arrested at a second sit-in there the next day, when five more needed treatment.
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The Holy Week fast began on the Franklin Street post office lawn
At sunrise on Palm Sunday, Freedom Committee members John Dunne, Pat Cusick, James Foushee and the Rev. LeVert Taylor began an eight-day, water-only fast on the grounds of the Chapel Hill post office, planned to last through Easter. The fast was aimed at the Board of Aldermen, and a fifth faster joined within two days.
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The Holy Week fast ends on Easter Sunday and the Rev. LaVert Taylor is hospitalized
The five fasters finished their eight-day water-only fast in front of the post office on Easter Sunday. The Rev. LaVert Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was admitted to Memorial Hospital with an upset stomach afterward; James Foushee had been treated there during the fast and released.
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Judge Mallard sentences fasters Pat Cusick and John Dunne to a year in jail
In Orange County Superior Court at Hillsborough, Judge Raymond B. Mallard gave Pat Cusick a year in jail on April 23 and John Dunne twelve months on April 24 for the February street-blocking demonstrations, among a dozen active sentences and about 100 suspended ones that stripped the Chapel Hill movement of its leaders four weeks after the fast.
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Harper and Row publishes John Ehle's The Free Men, an account of the Chapel Hill protests
Ehle's nonfiction book traced the 1963–1964 civil rights campaign in Chapel Hill through three of its leaders, John Dunne, Pat Cusick and Quinton Baker, from the first pickets at a cafe to mass arrests and long prison sentences.
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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 2, 2026.
