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Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis. Browse all 77 storylines. Every entry names its source. See all 667 sources.

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The Chapel Hill Weekly: Chapel Hill's weekly paper from 1923, founded by Louis Graves.Open the sourceAll sources

Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 201–296 of 296, 200 to a page.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

  2. 1950s
  3. Chapel Hill UNC Press publishes Mangum's study of tenant farmer law

    The University of North Carolina Press published The Legal Status of the Tenant Farmer in the Southeast by Charles S. Mangum Jr. of Chapel Hill, a 22-chapter treatise on farm tenancy law that closed with proposed reforms.

  4. Law, policy or court · Hillsborough Orange County commissioners turn to professional appraisers for a property revaluation

    In August 1952 the commissioners heard a representative of the Southern Mapping and Engineering Company and told county accountant and tax supervisor Ira Ward to draft a contract. By January 1953 they had decided with Ward that values would be set at current market value as of January 1, 1953, with a board of assessors overseeing the appraisers.

  5. Property or economic transaction · 1217 East Franklin Street (Durham road), Chapel Hill Dr. L. L. Vine buys the Nathan Veterinary Hospital and renames it

    Dr. S. A. Nathan and Dr. L. L. Vine dissolved their partnership, and Vine, who had worked with Nathan for some years, took over the animal hospital on the Durham road as the Vine Veterinary Hospital.

  6. Founding or opening · 118 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Ben Schreiber turns the Harry's Grill building into the Youth Center, a children's clothing store

    Ben Schreiber and his wife closed their restaurant, Harry's Grill, and opened the Youth Center, a clothing store for infants and children, in the same building next to the Carolina Theatre.

  7. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill North Carolina Memorial Hospital opens

    North Carolina Memorial Hospital opened to patients on Tuesday, September 2, 1952, without a formal ceremony, as the core of the new University Medical Center. Its opening allowed the UNC School of Medicine to grow from a two-year program into a four-year school.

  8. Founding or opening · 1215 East Franklin Street (Durham road on Strowd Hill), Chapel Hill The Hong Kong, an American-Chinese restaurant, opens in the former Curve Inn

    The Hong Kong, advertised as an American-Chinese restaurant, held its grand opening on the site of the former Curve Inn on the Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard.

  9. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill UNC cancels two football games after a player and three students get polio

    The University of North Carolina called off its football games with Georgia on October 4 and N.C. State on October 11, 1952, because a player and three other students had been stricken with polio.

  10. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill WCHL begins broadcasting

    WCHL, Chapel Hill's new commercial radio station, went on the air in January 1953 at 1360 on the dial with 1,000 watts, broadcasting from sunrise to sunset from a site on the Durham highway. General manager Sandy McClamroch ran it with partners Roy E. Fullen and Lonnie Dark; its first broadcast was set for January 18.

  11. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen

    Robinson led the five candidates with 571 votes and Wager followed with 560; Kenneth Putnam took the third seat. The Weekly noted Robinson was the second Black person elected to public office in Chapel Hill, the first since Reconstruction, and it was Wager's first run for office.

  12. Naming or commemoration · Morehead building, Chapel Hill Edmund Strudwick's portrait of C. T. Council is given to the School of Pharmacy

    University President Gordon Gray presented a portrait of Durham's C. T. Council, painted by Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough, to the UNC School of Pharmacy, where Dean E. A. Brecht accepted it at a luncheon in the Morehead building.

  13. Construction or physical change · North Roberson Street, Chapel Hill Rock Hill Baptist, renamed First Baptist, holds its first services on North Roberson Street

    The Black Baptist congregation organized in 1865 had worshipped for decades as Rock Hill Baptist Church on the south side of West Franklin Street. Under its pastor, the Rev. J. R. Manley, it raised $10,001 in the first months of 1952 and began a colonial-style brick church on North Roberson Street between Franklin and Rosemary streets. The first services in the $100,000 building were held on Sunday, September 27, 1953, opening three weeks of dedication services; with the move the congregation took the name First Baptist Church. By early 1954 the old Franklin Street lot stood vacant.

  14. Law, policy or court · Glen Lennox, Chapel Hill The Planning Board approves Muirhead's street layout around Glen Lennox

    The Chapel Hill Planning Board approved new streets on the fringes of Glen Lennox, including Ayr Street, which Muirhead named, extending the colony's central road across the highway so children could reach the new Glenwood School more safely.

  15. Construction or physical change · 102 Lloyd Street, Carrboro Carrboro adds a fire station to its town hall on Lloyd Street

    With a new Ford fire truck delivered in February 1954, Carrboro finished a fire house addition to the Town Hall on Lloyd Street. In April the firemen posed in front of the new annex with all four trucks the department had owned.

  16. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery, Durham Road, Chapel Hill Chapel Hill's aldermen adopt an ordinance setting separate sections for Black burials in the new town cemetery

    The ordinance for the new Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery on the Durham road reserved some sections for Black burials and others for other races, as the old cemetery had done. The Rev. Charles Jones of the Community Church called it illiberal in a September sermon, and the citizens' committee had urged the town to rid itself of the new Black cemetery north of town.

  17. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Sophie Livas is installed as Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star chapter in Chapel Hill

    Sophie Livas was installed as Worthy Matron of University Chapter 264, Order of the Eastern Star, succeeding Elizabeth Montgomery.

  18. Law, policy or court · Countywide Brown v. Board places local school segregation under constitutional challenge

    On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated public schools unconstitutional, putting Orange County's separate schools for Black and white children under legal challenge. Four days later Chapel Hill Mayor Edwin Lanier urged gradual adjustment, and school board chairman Carl Smith predicted little trouble in complying but expected high schools to be affected most.

  19. Closing or ending · 115 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The Marathon Restaurant leaves its East Franklin Street building

    The Marathon, a sandwich shop and restaurant in the building later numbered 115 East Franklin Street since the 1930s, gave up the building in the week before June 4, 1954. The College Cafe's owners had bought it from the J. T. Durham estate.

  20. Disaster or outbreak · Durham Road (East Franklin Street), Chapel Hill A windstorm damages the Frozen Kustard drive-in across from Brady's on the Durham road

    An evening thunderstorm with winds put at 80 miles an hour struck the Durham road east of Chapel Hill. It tore two signs off the Frozen Kustard drive-in, damaged its roof and knocked down its phone booth; the wind blew Brady McLennan back through his restaurant door.

  21. Construction or physical change · 115 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The College Cafe moves across Franklin Street into the former Marathon building

    Max Yarbrough and Jesse West moved their College Cafe from the Robbins building across Franklin Street into the former Marathon Restaurant, which they had bought and rebuilt. It reopened next door to Rose's store with new equipment and seats for 40.

  22. Construction or physical change · 115 South Columbia Street, Chapel Hill The University tears down Archer House to make room for the Ackland Art Museum

    Demolition of the 47-year-old Archer House on South Columbia Street began in August 1954 and was still under way in late September. Its lot and the Roberson lot next door became the site of the Ackland museum.

  23. Founding or opening · East Franklin Street two doors from the post office, Chapel Hill Harry Macklin comes back to Chapel Hill to reopen Harry's Grill in the old Campus Cafe

    Harry Macklin, who had run Harry's Grill until 1944, bought the Campus Cafe two doors from the post office and reopened it as a new Harry's Grill and delicatessen. The town board granted him a beer and wine permit.

  24. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Bayard Wootten sells her Chapel Hill studio and returns to New Bern

    Bayard Wootten sold the Wootten-Moulton Studio to her longtime manager T. C. Moore, who kept it running, and left Chapel Hill for her old home town of New Bern.

  25. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill aldermen elect Oliver K. Cornwell mayor

    After Mayor Edwin S. Lanier won the Democratic nomination for county commissioner, the Board of Aldermen chose one of its own members, Oliver K. Cornwell, as mayor and elected Rogers Wade to his seat.

  26. Property or economic transaction · 419 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill A. D. Yates's Yates Motor Company takes over the Caston Motor Company's Dodge-Plymouth business

    The Caston Motor Company, Dodge and Plymouth dealer at 419 West Franklin Street since 1946, gave way to the Yates Motor Company at the same address and telephone number in late May 1955. By October A. D. Yates was named as owner of the firm.

  27. Founding or opening · Main Street, Carrboro Mrs. Marvin Ivey reopens Ivey's Cafe in Carrboro after her husband's death

    Ivey's Cafe, run for 29 years by Marvin C. Ivey and his wife, closed for eight months after his death the spring before. Mrs. Ivey reopened it herself in May 1955.

  28. Health or relief action · Chapel Hill; Hillsboro Orange County first and second graders get their second Salk shots

    The district health department gave second Salk vaccine doses to children who had their first shot in the spring: in Chapel Hill on July 21 and 22 for pupils of the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Glenwood, Northside, White Cross and Little Red Schoolhouse schools, and in Hillsboro on July 27, with school buses sent to county schools. Turnout at Hillsboro was low, with only 65 children by 11 a.m.

  29. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill First Black undergraduates enter UNC

    LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon, all of Durham, became UNC's first Black undergraduates when they began classes on September 19, 1955. A three-judge federal court in Greensboro had ordered the university on September 10 to process their applications, and they registered in the General College.

  30. Law, policy or court · Porthole Alley (Old Fraternity Row), Chapel Hill Aldermen rezone part of the Porthole lot so the restaurant can expand

    Over the objections of University officials, the Chapel Hill aldermen rezoned 6,400 square feet of the Porthole restaurant's lot from residential to business use so that owner M. M. Timmons could enlarge the restaurant. It had been a nonconforming use on land zoned residential near the campus.

  31. Construction or physical change · 101 Ledge Lane, Chapel Hill Milton Julian's Matsumoto-designed house on Ledge Lane is finished

    The modernist house George Matsumoto designed for clothier Milton Julian and his family, which neighbors had gone to court to stop, stood finished by November 1956, when it was one of ten homes on the School Art Guild's tour of Chapel Hill homes.

  32. Founding or opening · 149 1/2 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The Tempo Room, a basement beer and sandwich lounge, opens on East Franklin Street

    The Tempo Room opened at noon in the basement space next to Town and Campus that had held the Baby Shop, selling beer and sandwiches in a room designed by Hank Gifford for about 75 people. J. D. Wright ran it.

  33. Construction or physical change · 700 Morgan Creek Road, Chapel Hill Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife build a Webb and Stewart house on Morgan Creek Road

    A split-level modern house designed by James Webb and Don Stewart was built for Dr. John T. Sessions and his wife in Morgan Creek Hills. It was on the School Art Guild tour of homes in the fall of 1958.

  34. Construction or physical change · Highland Woods (now 1020 Highland Woods Road), Chapel Hill Pediatrician Judson Van Wyk builds a house in the Highland Woods cooperative

    Dr. Judson J. Van Wyk, a pediatrician and a member of the faculty cooperative that bought the Highland Woods tract, planned in December 1956 to start building on his lot there. By September 1957 the town had issued permits for nine Highland Woods houses designed by architect James M. Webb.

  35. Property or economic transaction · McDade House, 113 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill University Baptist Church acquires the McDade House lot next to its church

    University Baptist Church voted to buy John Scott Trotter's properties beside its church at Franklin and Columbia streets for $250,000, among them the Cafe Mouza building, which was the old brick McDade House, and the Hill House. The church's later expansion plans on the lot led to the house's removal in 1997.

  36. Appointment, election or service · Northside School, Chapel Hill Frances Hargraves teaches Chapel Hill's new special education classes at Northside School

    The Chapel Hill schools had begun special education classes, one at Chapel Hill Elementary School and one taught by Frances Hargraves at Northside School. The Junior Service League paid a $200 scholarship for her training.

  37. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Roland Giduz and Adelaide Walters are elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen

    In a heavy turnout that also re-elected Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell and approved a $500,000 bond issue, voters re-elected aldermen Hubert Robinson and Paul Wager and chose two new members, Adelaide Walters and Roland Giduz. As low man among the winners, Giduz drew a two-year term.

  38. Award or honor · Lincoln High School, Chapel Hill Hubert Robinson is named Man of the Year

    After Robinson was re-elected alderman with the highest vote on the ticket, a group of Black citizens representing churches, fraternal organizations and civic clubs named him Man of the Year and gave a reception in his honor at the Lincoln High School gymtorium on June 11.

  39. Founding or opening · 3819 South Columbia Street, Chapel Hill Watts Restaurant holds its grand opening on the Pittsboro highway south of Chapel Hill

    The new Watts Restaurant, a concrete-block building a mile south of town on the Pittsboro highway with counter, booths and private dining rooms, advertised its gala opening in mid-August 1957 after first advertising as Chapel Hill's newest restaurant in early July.

  40. Founding or opening · 1500 Fordham Boulevard, Chapel Hill Wes and Nancy Thompson hold a grand opening of the South 501 Restaurant under their ownership

    Under the new ownership and management of Wes and Nancy Thompson, the South 501 Restaurant on the Durham highway bypass, across from the Valley Drive-In, announced its grand opening, with steaks, curb service and a tap room.

  41. Founding or opening · 122 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill J. K. Ellis reopens his East Franklin Street grill as the Village Cafeteria

    After a summer of renovation, J. K. Ellis reopened his Village Grill as the Village Cafeteria, the last step in turning the old four-lane bowling alley he had bought in the mid-1940s into a full restaurant.

  42. Founding or opening · 206 West Main Street, Carrboro La Pizza holds its grand opening on Carrboro's West Main Street

    La Pizza opened on Friday, November 8, 1957, selling only pizza, in eight kinds and two sizes, under candlelight with checkered tablecloths. Chuck Gerke ran it as operator.

  43. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Elementary School Chapel Hill Elementary pupils play carols with professional musicians at the school Christmas program

    At the Chapel Hill Elementary School Christmas programs on December 17, 1957, directed musically by Adeline McCall, supervisor of music in the Chapel Hill schools, children playing psalteries, violins and bells accompanied the carols with two harpists, violinist Dorothy Alden and flutist Dorothy Hickok. The programs also staged the play Alias Santa Claus.

  44. Construction or physical change · 207 East Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill The University's telephone system plans to double its East Rosemary Street exchange

    The University-owned Chapel Hill telephone system announced a $300,000 addition that would double the size of its exchange building on East Rosemary Street, along with better party-line service. Bids for the addition were opened in March.

  45. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Public Library opens

    Chapel Hill's first public library held its formal opening on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House on West Franklin Street, with about 4,500 books, 2,000 of them lent by state and regional libraries. It moved to its own building at 523 East Franklin Street in 1967 and to Pritchard Park in 1994.

  46. Founding or opening · 305 West Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill The Oh Boy Drive-In opens at West Rosemary and Church streets

    The Oh Boy Drive-In, run by the Boy family of Durham, was nearing completion at the corner of West Rosemary and Church streets in early July 1959. It was hiring in early August and serving cars by late August.

  47. Closing or ending · 309 East Main Street, Carrboro The Chapel Hill News Leader suspends publication

    The semiweekly Chapel Hill News Leader announced in its January 29, 1959 issue that it was stopping publication. The paper had gone into receivership.

  48. Property or economic transaction · 110 East Main Street, Carrboro Dwight Ray and Seaton Lloyd sell the Lloyd-Ray Hardware Store after 37 years

    The partners sold the Carrboro hardware store they had opened in April 1922, long a gathering place for local politics.

  49. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Public Library, Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Public Library shows Bayard Wootten photographs after her death

    Weeks after Bayard Wootten died in New Bern, the Chapel Hill Public Library displayed her 1930s photographs of western North Carolina, made to illustrate two UNC Press books, Backwoods America and Cabins in the Laurel.

  50. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Sandy McClamroch is elected to the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen

    McClamroch, one of five candidates for three seats, was elected on May 5, 1959 with F. E. Strowd and Roland Giduz, and was sworn in with Mayor Oliver K. Cornwell the following Monday night. Campaigning, he had called for coordinating town and university planning and for bringing the university's payments for town services above the table.

  51. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Mayor Cornwell presses the state to widen the highways into Chapel Hill

    Sworn in for a new term with aldermen F. E. Strowd and Sandy McClamroch, Mayor Cornwell wrote to the state's director of highways urging four-lane roads toward Durham and Raleigh and calling U.S. 15-501 and N.C. 54 major entrances to the university.

  52. Founding or opening · Eastgate Shopping Center, 1800 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Chapel Hill's ABC liquor store opens in Eastgate Shopping Center

    The county ABC system's Chapel Hill store opened in Eastgate Shopping Center and sold between $2,000 and $3,000 of liquor a day in its first two days, about half again the daily average at the Hillsboro store, which had opened April 10.

  53. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill school board refuses Stanley Vickers a transfer to all-white Carrboro Elementary and adopts a first-grade proximity policy

    The Chapel Hill City Board of Education denied ten-year-old Stanley Vickers a transfer from all-Black Northside Elementary to the nearer all-white Carrboro Elementary School, and at the same meeting adopted a policy of limited integration at the first-grade level starting with the 1960-61 year. UNC law dean Henry Brandis, who had twice moved to approve the transfer, resigned from the board in protest and called the action both morally and legally indefensible.

  54. Law, policy or court · White Cross White Cross voters turn down a merger with the Chapel Hill schools a second time

    White Cross voters defeated a merger of their school into the Chapel Hill city district, 116 to 110, a year after Carrboro had joined it; a first vote had failed in May 1958. A third vote failed in the spring of 1960, and the county closed the school in 1961. The county board sold the White Cross property to Edmiston Realty Company for $14,900 in 1967.

  55. Chapel Hill Brandis returns for the Vickers hearing, then leaves the Chapel Hill school board

    Brandis withdrew his August 3 resignation so he could sit at the board's hearing on Stanley Vickers's transfer request on August 31. He resigned again after that meeting, and the board named a committee to find his successor.

  56. Founding or opening · South Hamilton Road, Glen Lennox, Chapel Hill Chapel Hill opens its Glen Lennox fire station

    The town's second fire station, on South Hamilton Road in Glen Lennox, opened without ceremony when two pumper trucks moved in from the main station on Columbia Street. The aldermen had let contracts in February for the building, designed by Archie Davis of Durham and paid for from 1957 bonds.

  57. Law, policy or court · Orange County Orange County commissioners give a cool reception to a Research Triangle planning request

    At a special meeting, Orange County commissioners gave only a lukewarm reception to a request to help fund a land development survey for the Research Triangle area and took no action pending firm figures. The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the county expected to gain mostly new residents and school costs from the park rather than industry, and commissioners discussed zoning the area northeast of Chapel Hill toward the Durham County line.

  58. 1960s
  59. Founding or opening · 104 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Ted Danziger opens the Zoom-Zoom, a carryout restaurant on West Franklin Street

    Ted Danziger opened Zigger's Zoom-Zoom, a carryout and home delivery restaurant managed by Hal Sieber, a block from his Rathskeller. Its menu ran from rotisserie chicken to lasagna in casseroles.

  60. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill The Chapel Hill sit-in movement forms an executive committee and retains counsel

    At a Tuesday night meeting the Lincoln High demonstrators and their adult supporters organized, set up an executive committee to coordinate the lunch-counter protests and acquired legal counsel.

  61. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill The Chapel Hill CORE Committee rejects a second truce and resumes picketing as 27 ministers back the protests

    After a week-long pause the students' 12-member executive committee, led by Harold Foster, declined the Human Relations Committee's request for a second truce and resumed afternoon picketing at Colonial Drug and Long Meadow Dairy. Twenty-seven Chapel Hill ministers issued a statement commending the peaceful, non-violent picketing.

  62. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill aldermen refuse Chief Blake's picketing-control ordinance

    The Board of Aldermen unanimously declined to pass an ordinance against blocking sidewalks that Police Chief William W. Blake had requested as a safety measure, saying its passage would be misread as interference with the peaceful picketing at Colonial Drug.

  63. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill aldermen pay the town's share of the Research Triangle planning commission budget

    The Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen appropriated $1,545, six percent of the $25,750 budget of the Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission for 1960-61. The commission also asked the Orange County commissioners for four percent, or $1,030.

  64. Founding or opening · 808 Christopher Road, Chapel Hill Young and Wilkins open the Better Homes and Gardens Idea Home on Christopher Road

    The 1960 Better Homes and Gardens Idea Home, built by David Curl for the Chapel Hill realtors Young and Wilkins, opened for public tours at 808 Christopher Road, across the bypass from Glen Lennox. It was the only Idea Home shown in North Carolina that year and stayed open through October 2.

  65. Founding or opening · West Franklin Street (later 423 West Franklin Street), Chapel Hill Leo Eliadis closes his bus station grill and opens Leo's Restaurant on West Franklin Street

    After a Duke student sat in the Black section of the Chapel Hill bus station grill in June 1961 and was arrested at Leo Eliadis's request, Eliadis shut the grill. By early September he had opened Leo's Restaurant on West Franklin Street.

  66. Protest or organizing · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross Black parents at White Cross ask to send their children to White Cross School

    The parents of 23 Black children living near White Cross applied to move them from the Hillsboro Negro elementary school, a long daily bus ride away, to the white school in their own community. Most of the children had gone to school in Chapel Hill until White Cross voters again turned down a merger with the Chapel Hill district in 1960.

  67. Law, policy or court · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross The county school board refuses the White Cross transfer requests

    The Orange County Board of Education turned down the Black families' request, saying no reassignment had been asked for within ten days of the parents being notified of their children's school.

  68. Construction or physical change · Behind Swain Hall, East Cameron Avenue, to the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, Chapel Hill UNC moves the Mitchell family graves from the campus to the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

    Four graves of Elisha Mitchell's infant sons and grandsons, in the old Mitchell garden near the center of campus, were exhumed under archaeologist Joffre Coe to make room for the expansion of the university's television and communications work. They were reburied in the Horace Williams plot in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery with the Rev. Vance Barron officiating.

  69. Law, policy or court · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross Floyd McKissick represents the White Cross children at a school board hearing

    At a hearing on the transfers, the children were represented by Durham attorney Floyd McKissick; the county board denied them again, reading a statement it had prepared before the hearing began.

  70. Law, policy or court · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross The school board's lawyer advises closing White Cross School rather than fight the case

    A. H. Graham, attorney for the county board, told it the transfer fight could not be won and recommended shutting White Cross School instead.

  71. Founding or opening · 301 West Main Street, Carrboro Carrboro shows off its new town hall in the old Carrboro School

    Several hundred people toured the renovated school at an open house. It now held the mayor's and clerk's offices, an auditorium, the public library, the police and fire departments with a jail, and National Guard quarters; the town had begun moving in that winter.

  72. Closing or ending · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross The county board votes to close White Cross School and send its white pupils to Hillsborough

    Rather than admit the Black children, the Orange County school board decided to close White Cross School at the end of the school year and move its 75 white pupils to Cameron Park School in West Hillsboro, a step it tied to its ten-year building program.

  73. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill McClamroch is sworn in as mayor and Joe Page is named to his aldermen seat

    McClamroch and three re-elected aldermen, Adelaide Walters, Paul Wager and Hubert Robinson, were sworn in at the Monday night meeting of the Board of Aldermen by Recorder's Court Judge William Stewart. The board named businessman Joe Page to the unexpired two year aldermen's term McClamroch left on becoming mayor, and elected Mrs. Walters mayor pro tem.

  74. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Sandy McClamroch is elected mayor of Chapel Hill without opposition

    McClamroch ran unopposed for mayor in the May 1961 town election. Before the vote he took questions from residents at a public meeting at the Negro Community Center sponsored by the Chapel Hill Fellowship for School Integration and the Civic Club, and on a WUNC radio panel, saying he wanted to improve the town's public relations and would discuss merging Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

  75. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill A.D. Clark Pool opens

    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.

  76. Chapel Hill R. D. Smith is named to a new Chapel Hill Planning Board

    After the whole Planning Board resigned in June 1961 in protest at the aldermen's handling of its recommendations, the aldermen named five members of a new board, among them R. D. Smith, the vocational agriculture teacher at Lincoln High School. The county commissioners named the other five.

  77. Construction or physical change · 207 East Main Street, Carrboro Workmen begin tearing down Dave Neville's old store at Main Street and the railroad

    Dismantling began on the frame store at Main Street and the University Railroad tracks, known over the years as Dave Neville's general store, Partin's grocery and the Carrboro Feed and Seed Store. Owner Harvey Bennett took it down at the town board's informal request, since Carrboro's fire code barred prolonging the life of frame buildings downtown.

  78. Founding or opening · 209 East Main Street, Carrboro The Railway Express Agency moves its office to East Main Street in Carrboro

    The Chapel Hill express office moved into new quarters at 209 East Main Street in Carrboro, with room for customers to park. Its old building on North Columbia Street was coming down for the new Orange Savings and Loan office.

  79. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill University National Bank of Chapel Hill becomes part of Central Carolina Bank

    The University National Bank of Chapel Hill merged into the Durham Bank and Trust Company, which took the new name Central Carolina Bank and Trust Company. Both Chapel Hill offices reopened under the new name, with O. Gordon Perry as manager for Chapel Hill.

  80. Competition or sporting achievement · Chapel Hill Lincoln High's football team wins an undefeated state championship

    Coach William D. Peerman's Lincoln High Tigers won the state 2-A football championship for Black high schools on November 22, 1961, beating previously unbeaten Ridgeview High of Hickory 22-0 to finish 12-0. The season was unbeaten but not unscored upon: Harnett High scored six points in the eastern title game.

  81. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Ruth Faison Shaw holds a finger-painting show in Chapel Hill

    The Chapel Hill Weekly ran a page of photographs of a finger-painting show by Shaw, showing her at work and a display in a garden.

  82. Appointment, election or service · Orange County Carl Smith leads the Democratic primary for Orange County commissioner

    Carl Smith of Chapel Hill topped the six-man Democratic primary for three county commissioner seats with 3,783 votes, ahead of Gordon Cleveland and Donald McDade; nomination usually amounted to election in the county.

  83. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Human Relations Committee asks for a Black nurse on the district health staff

    At a Chapel Hill Human Relations Committee meeting, Esther Atwater said the district health department needed a Black nurse on its staff. Chairman Dr. William Joyner said he would take the request to District Health Officer Dr. O. D. Garvin.

  84. Health or relief action · 621 Hillsborough Road (old NC 86), Carrboro The Orange County Council on Alcoholism opens its headquarters in an addition to Calvin Burch's cabinet shop

    The council's rehabilitation committee moved into a new office built onto Calvin Burch's cabinet shop on old NC 86, rented as a round-the-clock place for counseling and advice. Burch chaired the committee, which reported 54 cases in its first year there.

  85. Construction or physical change · University Presbyterian Church, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The Presbyterians dedicate a new sanctuary where the burned church stood

    Four years after the 1958 fire, the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church held its first service in a new $460,000 sanctuary on the old East Franklin Street site on November 11, 1962 and dedicated it a week later, the last part of a church and educational building complex.

  86. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Planning Board reviews the Research Triangle Planning Area land use plan

    The Chapel Hill Planning Board held a special meeting to review the Research Triangle Planning Commission's land use plan for the planning area, which projected population and density to 1980. The Chapel Hill Weekly described the plan as a major guide for future zoning changes and school locations.

  87. Calvander Mrs. Troy Andrews asks the county commissioners to pave SR 1111 near Calvander

    Mrs. Troy Andrews brought the Orange County commissioners a petition from residents asking them to pave SR 1111, a two-mile road between Calvander and the Union Church road. The commissioners agreed to send the petition on to state highway officials.

  88. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Planning Board favors a large village in response to the Triangle commission's development plan

    Reviewing the Research Triangle Planning Commission staff's General Development Plan for Chapel Hill to 1980, the Planning Board went on record preferring that the town grow as a large village rather than a small city. The plan also addressed subdivision layout, a collector road system and a proposed lake on Bolin Creek north of town.

  89. Closing or ending · Caldwell Orange County Board of Education closes Caldwell School

    In spring 1961 the county board weighed its attorney's proposal to close White Cross and Caldwell schools. In March 1963, in the consolidation that came with the new Orange High School, it eliminated the Caldwell district and closed Caldwell School, a school for white pupils built in 1925; that May Caldwell pupils were moved into the Aycock district, and other parts of the old district joined Cameron Park. A sale of the building fell through in 1963 because the board could not give clear title, and it was not sold until the 1970s.

  90. Construction or physical change · Hillsborough Orange County completes a new Agricultural Building in Hillsborough

    The county's new Agricultural Building, designed by Archie Davis, passed final inspection and the county's agricultural offices moved in. A dedication and open house were set for April 1.

  91. Protest or organizing · 115 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Student pickets begin marching outside the segregated College Cafe

    The Student Peace Union and the NAACP put pickets in front of the segregated College Cafe on East Franklin Street, saying they would keep on until it integrated. The picketing led to the forming of the Committee for Open Business that May.

  92. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill-Carrboro Merchants Association office, West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Police carry out demonstrators sitting in at the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Merchants Association office

    Members of the Committee for Open Business sat in and sang in the Merchants Association office on West Franklin Street to press merchants to desegregate. Police carried out 27 on trespass warrants signed by director Joe Augustine, and 34 were arrested that day in all.

  93. Disaster or outbreak · Rathskeller, Amber Alley, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Fire breaks out in the Rathskeller and spreads through its East Franklin Street building

    A fire of unknown origin started in the wall behind a stove in the Rathskeller on a Thursday evening and crept through the walls of the building. Ted Danziger put the damage to the restaurant and his Old World Gift Center at about $70,000, and water stood ankle deep in Amber Alley.

  94. Chapel Hill Pat Cusick leads a CURED march down West Franklin Street

    Sixty-eight members of Citizens United for Racial Equality and Dignity, led by Pat Cusick, marched from St. Joseph's Church on West Rosemary Street down West Franklin Street to the Carolina Grill on a Friday night, singing a few songs. A street march to the post office was planned for the next day.

  95. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill George Esser proposes an ordinance barring discrimination by new Chapel Hill businesses

    After the aldermen declined a public accommodations law in June, Esser suggested as a private citizen an ordinance that would bar racial discrimination by businesses opening in the future, applied like zoning rules. The Board of Aldermen began considering it in August while the Committee for Open Business kept up its marches.

  96. Disaster or outbreak · Rock Pile, Chapel Hill-Durham Road (1501 East Franklin Street), Chapel Hill A tobacco truck crashes into Carlton Mize's Rock Pile store

    A tractor-trailer carrying 25,000 pounds of tobacco went out of control and crashed into the side of the Rock Pile, Carlton Mize's grocery on the Chapel Hill-Durham Road. No one was hurt, but the west wall was crushed and the front windows shattered.

  97. Property or economic transaction · 137 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The Bank of Chapel Hill merges into North Carolina National Bank

    At the close of business on September 27, 1963, the Bank of Chapel Hill, founded in 1899, became part of North Carolina National Bank. Its office at 137 East Franklin Street made Chapel Hill the twelfth city in the NCNB system.

  98. Construction or physical change · 100 North Greensboro Street, Carrboro Carrboro Baptist Church remodels its sanctuary

    Work on an extensive remodeling of the sanctuary began after the first Sunday in October 1963, alongside a new educational building. By September 1964 the renovation was finished and the church invited the community to see the new facilities.

  99. Hillsborough Orange Superior Court convicts Pat Cusick and three others for the Merchants Association sit-in

    A jury in Orange Superior Court at Hillsborough convicted Pat Cusick, Hope Van Riper, Charliese Pearl Cotton and Christine Glover of trespass for the July sit-in at the Merchants Association office. Cusick chose 30 days on the roads over paying the fine and fasted 17 days in protest at being placed in a segregated prison camp.

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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 4, 2026.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026