Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
988 dated events and 11 storylines match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 401–600 of 999, 200 to a page.Back to highlights
Entries
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1910s
-
James Finch Royster leaves the university for the University of Texas
Royster, who had been teaching the journalism course Edward Kidder Graham created, left Chapel Hill for the University of Texas, one of the faculty Graham could not keep during his year as acting president.
-
The Bureau of Extension begins correspondence courses for credit
Under Louis R. Wilson, the university's new Bureau of Extension began organizing correspondence courses for credit during the 1914-15 term. It had already widened its free advice for teachers to help town officials with water systems and streets.
-
Trustees create a chair of applied economics and rural sociology for Eugene C. Branson
Graham won approval to hire Branson at the top faculty salary of $2,500 and promised him a large office in the Peabody Building; Branson said he would come that fall and proposed starting a study of Orange County right away.
-
Edwin Greenlaw heads UNC's English department
Appointed chairman of the English department in June 1914, Greenlaw built it from eight faculty members to 37 by 1925, when he left for Johns Hopkins.
-
E. C. Branson takes up rural economics and sociology and starts the North Carolina Club
Eugene Cunningham Branson arrived in Chapel Hill in September 1914 as Graham's new professor of rural economics and sociology. He at once gathered the students' county clubs into the North Carolina Club to study conditions back home.
-
The university assigns each freshman a faculty adviser
President Graham began a system of faculty advisers to help new students settle into university life, and fall 1914 was its first year. Albert Coates's adviser was Oliver Towles of romance languages.
-
Collier Cobb develops Cobb Terrace, Chapel Hill's earliest planned development
On gullied land he had bought, geology professor Collier Cobb brought in earth, laid out terraced lots and built eleven houses, several of them Aladdin mail-order kit houses, as rental housing for young professors. The development of just over 20 lots was complete by 1927.
-
Durham Hosiery Mills builds a house on West Main Street for its Carrboro superintendent
Some time between 1915 and 1925 the company built a one-and-a-half-story house with a tall hipped roof and Tuscan porch columns at 103 West Main Street for the head of its Carrboro mills; it was long thought the best house in town. Ralph Ward of Mill No. 4 lived there first and Floyd M. Durham of Mill No. 7 later, and Marvin J. Dawson bought it at the 1939 company sale.
-
Edwin Greenlaw becomes managing editor of Studies in Philology
Greenlaw took over the university's journal Studies in Philology in 1915 and reorganized it as a quarterly.
-
Some 250 high school debaters come to Chapel Hill for state finals
About 250 high school students came to the campus for the final rounds of the university's statewide debating union, one of Graham's means of tying the university to towns across the state. Topics included woman suffrage and public ownership of railroads.
-
The old Cedar Grove one-teacher schoolhouse is moved to serve Black children
When Cedar Grove's white pupils moved to the new high school, the one-teacher schoolhouse was hauled to Baxter Thompson's land and used as a school for Black children.
-
A. W. Clarke becomes Orange County's superintendent of roads
A 1915 act ended township road administration in Orange and put every county road under a superintendent. Clarke accepted $65 a month from March through November and $3 a day for winter work.
-
The county board buys the Annie Hughes Academy to house a Cedar Grove high school
Answering a petition from Cedar Grove residents, the board offered on May 3, 1915 to buy the old Cedar Grove Academy from Annie Hughes and on May 15 paid her $1,500 for it, deeding her the lot of the one-teacher school it closed. The new Cedar Grove High School took grades one through eleven.
-
The county board re-elects Superintendent Lockhart and funds an assistant for him
The Board of Education returned Samuel P. Lockhart to office and set aside $400 to pay Mary O. Graham as his assistant.
-
The school board names Lula Cassidy rural supervisor and county canning agent
A week after electing Mary O. Graham supervisor, the board chose Lula Cassidy as rural supervisor and canning agent. In 1916 it put her in charge of a county-wide school commencement in Hillsboro.
-
The county board orders two privies built at every school
Meeting in August 1915, the board bought desks and equipment and voted to put two privies at each county school, paying half the cost and leaving the community to pay the rest.
-
Chapel Hill's white graded school and high school move into a new West Franklin Street building
Paid for by a $35,000 bond, a new Chapel Hill Graded School building designed by Hook and Rogers was finished on West Franklin Street in spring 1916. It housed white elementary and high school students, and Chapel Hill High School counts 1916 as its founding year, though its classes predate the building.
-
Hackney's school on Merritt Mill Road is bought for a public training school
Louis Hackney had opened his school for Black students on Merritt Mill Road in 1912. In 1916 the property was bought for a public training school for Black students, after Black residents raised $3,000 toward the purchase.
-
Segregated schooling and the rise of Lincoln and Central High schools
In 1916 the Chapel Hill school district bought Louis Hackney's school and renamed it Orange County Training School, later Lincoln High. Hillsborough's Black high school opened in 1936 and became Central High in 1948. Desegregation closed Lincoln as a high school in 1966, discarding its name and colors, and after 1968 walkouts Central's students moved to Orange High.
-
The county road superintendent is equipped to work convicts on the roads
In 1916 the board authorized the road superintendent to buy the equipment he needed to put convicts to work. Prisoners were used on county road projects until the state took over most sentenced prisoners in 1931.
-
State and university educators set up a teacher-training program for Orange County
State superintendent J. Y. Joyner, rural schools chief L. C. Brogden and UNC's L. A. Williams met the county board and won approval for a 1916-17 plan of general teachers' meetings in November and March and group meetings at centers across the county, run by the UNC School of Education. Teachers were paid to attend, with a per diem and mileage for Saturday sessions.
-
Cedar Grove voters approve a special school tax district
The board allowed Cedar Grove to call an election on a special school tax in July 1917, and the returns reported in September showed 34 votes for and 16 against. The board then set pay for each Cedar Grove high school teacher at $50 a month.
-
Claytor's first report counts 42 one-teacher schools in Orange County
Claytor's 1917 report to the state listed 42 one-teacher schools, 19 white and 23 Black, with 2,569 white and 1,259 Black pupils. Nineteen Black schools had only benches and no desks.
-
Dr. C. S. Mangum teaches a daily first aid class at the 1917 UNC Summer School
Dr. C. S. Mangum taught first aid every day through the six weeks of the 1917 Summer School to a large class of Chapel Hill people and summer visitors, with two local Red Cross members helping with bandaging. The course closed with practical and written examinations sent from Washington.
-
Hillsborough children aged six to sixteen learn to knit for soldiers in a Red Cross class
Henrietta P. Collins and Mrs. J. Cheshire Webb taught girls and boys from six to sixteen to knit wash cloths for soldiers, using knitting cotton that Daniel Miller and Co. of Baltimore donated through Lillie Bivins. The room was full at every meeting, and the better knitters moved on to wool; by October about fifty children were knitting for the chapter.
-
The legislature passes a $3 million bond issue that funds university buildings
In the last hours of the 1917 session the house passed a $3 million bond issue, with only 14 of 120 votes against, for state institutions and public schools, giving the university $100,000 a year for five years for new buildings and repairs. Baptist leaders denounced the haste and the aid to state colleges.
-
Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents vote to form a Red Cross chapter at the Graded School
Dr. Louis H. Webb, charged with organizing chapters in his medical district, called a Monday night meeting of Chapel Hill and Carrboro people at the Graded School building on May 28, 1917, which voted almost unanimously for a full chapter rather than an auxiliary. Seventy-one people enrolled at the chapter's first meeting, which elected George Howe chairman and Alice Noble vice-chairman.
-
The county board pays for a school for Black children at Jordan's Grove
On July 9, 1917 the county board agreed to pay J. L. Wilson $119 to build a school for Black children "at Jordan's Grove and Grover," near Caldwell. The frame field school ran until 1951; the 1993 survey found it the only Black field school left in the county, badly deteriorated.
-
R. H. Claytor becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
R. H. Claytor took office as county school superintendent in September 1917 and served until July 1947. Merging the small rural schools was one of his first goals.
-
Eugene C. Branson urges county teachers to back the food conservation drive
At a court house meeting of teachers and school committeemen called by J. C. Webb, Branson explained why food conservation mattered, and Mrs. Isaac Manning described her work in the south end of the county. Forty-two teachers attended, and the meeting laid the plan to register every woman at her school house on October 27.
-
Orange County women sign the food pledge at their school houses
On Saturday, October 27, 1917, committees at every school house in the county registered the women of the district and asked each to sign the Food Administration pledge. A house-to-house canvass of every housewife followed from October 29 to November 4.
-
Robert and Mollie Malone open Orange County Training School on the old Hackney campus
Principal Robert E. Malone, his wife Mollie Holmes Malone as domestic science teacher, and two other teachers began classes in academic, industrial and farm subjects at the county's new training school for Black students. Black residents had raised $3,000 toward the board's 1916 purchase of the Hackney campus on Merritt Mill Road.
-
Ida Lloyd becomes the first clerk in the county superintendent's office
Ida Lloyd was hired as office assistant to the county superintendent in 1918, the first to hold the post, and worked under R. H. Claytor, Glenn Proffit and G. P. Carr for about forty-two years.
-
The trustees approve a three-year wartime engineering degree
Before the SATC arrived, the trustees approved an accelerated engineering course leading to a bachelor's degree in three years, with military training and military French. Students were deferred while enrolled and then went on to army or navy service.
-
Trustees name the first five Kenan professors
The trustees adopted President Edward Kidder Graham's recommendations for the new Kenan professorships, funded under the will of Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham. Venable was named Kenan Professor of Chemistry, with H. V. Wilson, Edwin Greenlaw, William MacNider and William Cain.
-
Chapel Hill school children organize a Junior Red Cross auxiliary
The Chapel Hill School Auxiliary to the Red Cross was organized in January 1918 with 132 members. The girls sewed refugee garments and hospital supplies, 130 children planted home gardens, and the boys built shipping boxes for the Red Cross in the school basement.
-
Orange County's new Board of Health orders churches, schools and theatres closed and forbids all meetings
After the state Council of Defense warned county chairmen of the spread of Spanish influenza, they formed a County Board of Health, which on October 7 ordered the closing of all churches, schools and theatres and forbade meetings of every kind, the disease having already broken out in the community. Red Cross members carried most of the relief work that followed.
-
Black residents keep an influenza soup kitchen at the Black school
During the 1918 epidemic in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Black residents ran a soup kitchen at the Black school and looked after the sick in their settlement, work the Chapel Hill Red Cross history singled out.
-
Chase takes charge of the college and then the faculty after two deaths
Chase was appointed acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts after President Edward Kidder Graham died in October 1918, and chairman of the faculty after Marvin H. Stacy died in January 1919.
-
Eno Mill opens an influenza diet kitchen at West Hill school
When influenza reached the Eno Mill district, the mill opened and paid for a diet kitchen at the West Hill school for about seven weeks, run by home demonstration agent Elizabeth Cornelius. It fed as many as 150 people a day, and the mill hired nurses for the sick.
-
Influenza epidemic strikes Chapel Hill
Spanish influenza swept the University in early October 1918, putting the campus and its student soldiers under a three-week quarantine. By October 23 about 300 students had been ill and three had died, and President Edward Kidder Graham died of influenza and pneumonia on October 26.
-
Edwin Greenlaw becomes dean of the Graduate School
Greenlaw became the third dean of UNC's Graduate School and led it until he left for Johns Hopkins in 1925.
-
The Chapel Hill Red Cross signs 550 members in its 1918 Christmas Roll Call
J. S. Holmes chaired the chapter's Christmas Roll Call of 1918, which secured 550 members. The school's Junior Red Cross auxiliary enrolled 310 in the same roll call, with every grade of the graded school at full membership.
-
Acting dean of students A. H. Patterson reports on drinking at the spring dances
When complaints about drinking at the revived spring dances reached President Chase, Patterson, whom Chase had made acting dean of students, blamed most of it on visiting alumni and said there was little he could do about the newer dances.
-
Chase keeps E. C. Branson at Chapel Hill with a Kenan professorship
When the University of Virginia tried to hire the rural sociologist to rebuild his program in Charlottesville, Chase made Branson a Kenan professor with $1,000 more in pay, and he stayed.
-
Dudley D. Carroll leads UNC's School of Commerce
Carroll came to UNC as professor of economics in 1918 and became dean of the School of Commerce, which he helped plan, holding the post for thirty-one years.
-
Edgar Wallace Knight joins the UNC faculty
Knight, who had taught education at Trinity College, joined the University of North Carolina faculty in 1919, and Chapel Hill remained his home from then on.
-
Eugene C. Branson proposes calling the planned social science school the School of Public Welfare
Branson had urged a school of social science on Graham in 1916. In 1919, worried that "social science" sounded like socialism to North Carolinians, he proposed the name School of Public Welfare, which John Sprunt Hill endorsed, and suggested Hill endow it.
-
George Howe becomes dean of the College of Liberal Arts
Howe, professor of Latin since 1903, took over the College of Liberal Arts in 1919 to handle academic affairs while the new dean of students handled discipline.
-
Orange County Training School enrolls 215 students
Two years after it opened on the former Hackney campus in Chapel Hill, the county's training school for Black students had 215 enrolled.
-
Phillips Hall opens, named for three Phillips family teachers
Phillips Hall opened on the Chapel Hill campus in 1919, honoring three members of the Phillips family who taught at the university in the nineteenth century: James Phillips, his son Charles Phillips and his grandson William Battle Phillips.
-
The University carries out a building program under President Chase
William M. Kendal of McKim, Mead and White planned an expansion for 3,000 students, proposing twenty-one new buildings. By December 1928 the University had built nine dormitories (eight for men, one for women) and Saunders, Murphey, Manning and Venable halls, with Bingham Hall and the library nearly done, and had remodeled the old campus buildings. Faculty above the rank of instructor grew from 66 to 158 over the decade.
-
The county board decides to turn every one-teacher school into a two-teacher school
In January 1919 the board resolved to convert all of its one-teacher schools to two teachers, the same meeting at which it bought water coolers and erasers for the classrooms and raised the superintendent's pay.
-
UNC faculty adopt a three-quarter academic year
Under Chase's guidance the faculty dropped the old two-term year for three quarters at its February 1919 meeting, keeping a lesson of the wartime SATC schedule. Students back in January could finish two-thirds of a year's work in six months.
-
The county board commits $20,000 to a new Hillsboro school as a memorial to the county's war dead
The board first offered Hillsboro $5,000 for a new school plant if the town raised $2,500, then settled on $20,000, and asked that the building honor the men of the county killed in the First World War. It offered Carrboro $2,500 on condition that voters there pass a $20,000 bond issue.
-
The county board sets out to close small weak schools and merge them with nearby ones
After visiting Orange Grove, which it kept as a three-teacher school, the board stated its aim of shutting small and inefficient schools and consolidating them with neighbors. The policy guided its building and busing decisions through the 1920s and 1930s.
-
Edgar Wallace Knight becomes assistant superintendent of Orange County schools
In April 1919, the year he joined the UNC faculty, Knight was hired as assistant to county superintendent R. H. Claytor; the board agreed to pay him $40 a month, though later biographies describe the post as unpaid. He was still styled assistant superintendent of schools in 1923.
-
Harry W. Chase is elected president of the university
The trustees elected Chase president of the University of North Carolina in June 1919. He had taught at Chapel Hill since September 1910 and had been chairman of the faculty since that January.
- 1920s
-
A Red Cross-funded summer institute trains social workers at the University
Before he left Emory, Howard Odum persuaded the American Red Cross to pay the summer faculty of a training institute on campus for social workers, teachers, nurses, ministers, probation officers and Red Cross, YMCA and YWCA staff. Chase let a woman instructor assist but not lead a course.
-
Billy Strayhorn stays with his grandparents in Hillsborough and starts school
From about age five Strayhorn came from Ohio with his mother and siblings to his grandparents' house at the corner of Margaret Lane and Hillsborough Avenue, attended his first year of school in the town, and took to the piano his grandparents kept. He returned for breaks and summers into his early teens.
-
Black families west of Hillsborough build the Gravely Hill Rosenwald School
Black families west of Hillsborough helped pay for and build Gravely Hill School, a two-teacher Rosenwald school, in the Rosenwald Fund's 1920-21 budget year. It cost $3,200: $700 from Black residents, $2,000 in public money and $500 from the Fund.
-
Carr School gets its second classroom
The county board added a second room to Carr School in northwest Orange County, making it a two-room school twelve years after the first room was built.
-
Eno Methodist Church adds rear classrooms used for West Hillsborough school classes
A side-gabled addition built about 1920 gave the church its T plan and held classrooms where early West Hillsborough school classes met, before the West End School was built on Bellevue Avenue.
-
Howard W. Odum comes to Chapel Hill to lead UNC's School of Public Welfare and sociology department
Odum, a Georgia-born sociologist who had been dean of liberal arts at Emory, arrived in Chapel Hill in 1920 to direct the School of Public Welfare and the Department of Sociology. He taught at UNC for the rest of his life.
-
Ida Lloyd becomes the first office assistant in the county superintendent's office
The board hired Miss Ida Lloyd as Superintendent Claytor's first office assistant at $40 a month.
-
Merchant Luther Sturdivant builds a house in Partridge Field
Sturdivant and his wife, longtime principal of the Carrboro Graded School, expected the empty tract called Partridge Field to become the town's new fashionable neighborhood. Knute Mann and builder John Squires soon built nearby, but by about 1940 only three more houses had followed and families were moving to the Hillsborough Road area instead.
-
The Old Oxford Road schoolhouse closes as children are bused to town
Around 1920 pupils from the area began riding buses to the elementary school in Chapel Hill, and the two-room school John Edward Clark had built was made into a house.
-
William C. Coker directs a university bureau for school grounds
Coker set up and ran the UNC Extension Division's Bureau of Design and Improvement of School Grounds, which sent plans and a field assistant to schools around the state; 33 towns were helped in 1920-21. In 1921 the bureau began advising on home and factory grounds as well.
-
The Farmers' State Alliance auctions off its old academy headquarters
The Farmers' State Alliance had found the old Barracks property a burden since about 1901. On June 21, 1920 it was cut into lots and sold at auction, and John W. Hill got the parcel with the commandant's house.
-
Horace Williams holds the Kenan professorship of philosophy
Williams was named a Kenan professor at the June 1920 commencement, announced by President Chase together with W. C. Coker and Louis R. Wilson. He held the Kenan chair of philosophy until 1935 and taught as professor emeritus afterwards.
-
Connor returns to Chapel Hill as Kenan professor of history and government
Connor left his state archival work for the university in 1921 and taught at Chapel Hill until 1934, when he was named the first Archivist of the United States.
-
Cool Springs gets a two-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children
Cool Springs got a two-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children in the Rosenwald Fund's 1921-22 budget year, one of four Orange County schools the Fund helped build. It cost $3,200: $1,800 raised by the Black community, $600 in public money and $800 from the Fund.
-
James Finch Royster returns as Kenan Professor of English Philology
After seven years in Texas, Royster accepted the Kenan Professorship of English Philology, which he held until his death. Covington says President Chase recruited him back from Austin.
-
Louis Round Wilson's survey finds thin library collections in Orange County's white schools
A questionnaire of Orange County's 48 white schools for 1921–22, including the Chapel Hill and Hillsboro graded schools, found seven with no library and 3,692 volumes for 1,586 pupils, slightly more than two books per pupil. Ten of the 25 teachers who answered said the books were used "not very much"; Wilson published the results in January 1923.
-
Tuskegee principal Robert Russa Moton speaks in Gerrard Hall
Moton, Booker T. Washington's successor at Tuskegee Institute, told his campus audience that he accepted social separation of the races and promised good relations so long as whites gave Black people education and industrial fairness.
-
Carrboro's new school building goes up
Carrboro's new brick school building was under construction in the summer of 1921 and was expected to be ready for the September term. The old schoolhouse was advertised for sale at the end of the year.
-
Edgar Wallace Knight serves on the Chapel Hill School Board
Knight was a member of the Chapel Hill School Board for thirty years.
-
James Finch Royster becomes dean of the College of Liberal Arts
Royster became dean of the College of Liberal Arts in 1922 and introduced the major-minor system, sectioning of students by ability, and an advisory system that later grew into the General College.
-
Trustees create a School of Engineering
The trustees joined the departments of civil and electrical engineering into a school of engineering, one of several steps Chase took in 1922 toward a full university.
-
Orange County Training School burns
On June 12, 1922, a kitchen fire started by boarders in the neighboring Flanner-Carr House destroyed the Orange County Training School building, the Flanner-Carr House and several outbuildings. Classes met in scattered places until a Rosenwald-funded brick school opened in Northside in 1924.
-
The county board agrees to build a new school at Cedar Grove
On August 11, 1922, under superintendent Claytor, the county board agreed to build a modern school at Cedar Grove once state building-fund money came. The building was accepted in January 1924 and named Aycock School. Carrboro's new school, planned under the same program, was already going up in 1921.
-
Hillsboro finishes its new $100,000 school building
The town's new brick school on West Tryon Street was reported ready within a week in September 1922, though a shortage of desks held up the opening. By early 1923 it housed grades one through eleven for the consolidated Hillsboro schools under principal J. A. Abernethy.
-
Albert Coates joins the law faculty at Chapel Hill
Coates, a university graduate with a Harvard law degree, joined the law faculty in 1923. The schools he ran for police officers and sheriffs grew into the Institute of Government.
-
Lettie Glass serves as acting superintendent of the Chapel Hill schools
Lettie Glass ran the Chapel Hill schools as acting superintendent while Fred W. Morrison was away, and again in 1923-1924. She is the only woman in the book's list of superintendents.
-
Murphey School is built in brick on the Durham-Hillsboro road
Murphey School, a hip-roofed brick consolidated school for white children named for Archibald D. Murphey, was built in 1923 on the Durham-Hillsboro road (Old NC 10). H. C. Linthicum drew the plans and W. H. Woods of Durham built it for $8,995. The school closed in 1959; the road nearby is spelled Murphy School Road.
-
Orange County begins merging its one- and two-teacher schools into larger ones
Claytor started the county's first round of consolidation in 1923, folding small schools into larger ones and seeking local tax elections, with a budget request of $92,100. Efland, Aycock and Hillsborough were to carry grades one through eleven and the rest grades one through seven.
-
Parts of the old academy land are subdivided as Oak Ridge and the Murray property
Portions of the Alliance tract were laid out as the Oak Ridge Development in 1923 and as the Murray property in 1924. Together they make up the west end of West Hillsborough.
-
The county school board builds a teachers' home at Murphey School from the unfinished Mount Hope School
Instead of finishing a new Mount Hope School that was to be merged into Murphey, the county board had the partly built schoolhouse taken apart and its materials carried to the Murphey site for a seven-room teachers' home. W. H. Woods built it for $800 in labor, paid with money from the sale of the old University School; the frame bungalow is the only teacherage left standing in Orange County.
-
The faculty turns down church-paid Bible teachers at the university
Answering the churches, the faculty committee on educational policy, in a report drafted with Chase, refused to place instructors on campus who owed their posts and pay to a denomination, and warned that such a program would cut into the work of the church colleges. It offered instead Bible courses taught from a literary and historical standpoint by faculty the university chose.
-
Hillsboro's first public schoolhouse is gone and its lot is set aside for an athletic field
Once the new consolidated school opened, the grounds where the old Hillsboro schoolhouse had stood were to become the new school's athletic field, according to a February 1923 report.
-
Aycock School is built at Cedar Grove and named for the governor
The county built the original eight-room Aycock School at Cedar Grove on land bought from Carl C. McDade and named it for former governor Charles B. Aycock.
-
Efland gets a three-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children
Efland's three-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children went up in 1924-25 (Rosenwald budget year 1924-25) at a cost of $4,810: $900 from the Rosenwald Fund, $200 from Black residents and $3,710 in public money. The county board put the $501 from its August 4, 1924 sale of the old Efland school toward it and inspected the building while it was under way that October.
-
Kennon Cheek helps negotiate the land swap that brought Hackney's school to Northside
Cheek's daughter Marian Cheek Jackson said he was instrumental in negotiating the 1924 land swap that moved Hackney's Educational and Industrial School from South Merritt Mill Road into the Northside community.
-
Orange County Training School opens a Rosenwald campus
The Orange County Training School's new brick building for Black students rose on land given by Henry Strowd at the north end of Church Street in Northside, Chapel Hill. Its cornerstone was laid on Labor Day 1924 and it opened late that year; the Rosenwald Fund gave $1,500 of its $23,112 cost, Black residents $500.
-
The 1924 Sanborn map shows a school for Black children on West Orange Street
The 1924 Sanborn map records a 'colored school' on the West Orange Street lot where a Prince Hall Masonic lodge was later built.
-
UNC opens a residence hall named for Charles B. Aycock
The university occupied Aycock Residence Hall on the Lower Quad in 1924. The name stood until the trustees removed it in July 2020, citing his racist views and actions.
-
The county board moves $30,000 in building money to Efland and sets the order of its new schools
The board shifted $15,000 each from the White Cross and Caldwell building funds to Efland, reasoning that Efland had the greater need, a local tax with an eight-month term, and a paved road for school trucks. It then fixed the building order as Efland, White Cross, Orange County Training School, Orange Grove and Caldwell.
-
A new consolidated school for white children is built at Efland
The board let the Efland contract to A. R. Davis for $21,388, with steam heat by Dermott of Durham, placed the school east of the highway and made the contractor replace inferior brick. The board inspected and accepted the building in March 1925, and John Efland paid $1,135 for the old white schoolhouse.
-
A new consolidated school is built at Orange Grove
The board let the Orange Grove contract to A. R. Davis for $13,600 and set the school about half a mile from the old one on the road to Hillsboro. It inspected and accepted the building in March 1925.
-
A new consolidated school is built at White Cross on the Saxapahaw road
After neighbors rejected a site at the crossroads near Leuco Lloyd's, the board placed the new White Cross school on the north side of the Chapel Hill and Saxapahaw road and let the contract to A. R. Davis for $14,436. It accepted the building in March 1925 and sold the old White Cross schoolhouse to F. J. Eubanks for $250.
-
The county board orders its first school buses
The board ordered ten trucks, six GMC, two Reo and two Chevrolet, with bus bodies from the Carolina Body Company of Greensboro, to carry children to the new consolidated schools. At an August hearing in the courthouse some residents urged the commissioners not to sign the notes for the buses, but no action was taken against them.
-
The county board sells four rural schools closed by consolidation
Consolidation had emptied the Fairfield, Fairview, South View and Sunnyside schoolhouses, and the superintendent was ordered to sell them. Fairfield went to the trustees of Fairfield Presbyterian Church for $200 and Sunnyside to Ivan Lloyd for $115.
-
A UNC study counts forty-seven rural schools and ninety teachers in Orange County
Nita Andrews's 1925 master's study of the county schools found forty-seven rural schools with ninety teachers, about half of them holding only elementary certificates, and five school trucks that cost $1,680.70 a year to run plus $783 for drivers.
-
Alfred Lawrence helps found the Chapel Hill School of Religion
Lawrence took part in organizing the Chapel Hill School of Religion in 1925-26; funded by the town's churches, it opened its first non-credit courses in the fall of 1926. His papers hold material on it from 1925 and 1926.
-
Orange County still runs twenty-one one-teacher white schools
Although buses and cars were making consolidation possible, Orange County still had twenty-one one-teacher schools for white children in 1925, and several for Black children.
-
The new chemistry building, Venable Hall, is dedicated
The university dedicated its new chemistry building in 1925 and named it Venable Hall while Venable was still teaching there.
-
The state House defeats the Poole antievolution resolution
After two days of debate, the House voted 70 to 41 against Henry Connor's compromise bill and then 67 to 46 against the minority report on David Scott Poole's resolution, which would have declared it harmful for any tax-paid teacher to teach human descent from lower life as fact. Former speaker Walter Murphy's speech was credited with settling the outcome.
-
Harmony School patrons protest a merger with Aycock School
A delegation from Harmony School went before the board to object to consolidating their school with the new Aycock School at Cedar Grove. The board told them no such step was planned, though Harmony was merged into Aycock six years later.
-
Orange County joins neighboring counties in summer schools for its Black and white teachers
The board agreed to pay a share of a summer session for Black teachers held jointly with Durham and Person counties, and to send its white teachers to a session shared with Person. Pender, then a young teacher, attended the white teachers' session.
-
The old Caldwell schoolhouse is sold as a new consolidated school is built
When the county built a new consolidated Caldwell School in 1925, the board sold the old one-teacher schoolhouse and its site to R. E. Clements for $160 on May 4, 1925.
-
The county board merges Little River Township's schools into a new Caldwell School
Little River patrons voted in March 1925 for a new school at Caldwell, the board let the building contract to B. F. Blanchard for $12,956.20, and C. S. Miller gave seven acres just beyond Caldwell for the site. In June the board consolidated every school in the township except Schley into Caldwell, which opened with 124 pupils.
-
Edwin Greenlaw leaves the Graduate School deanship for Johns Hopkins
Greenlaw left after five years as dean, during which graduate enrollment had tripled to 346 students in eighteen departments. The Alumni Review said he was being driven from the state by tight budgets. James F. Royster followed him as dean.
-
A Superior Court judge rules against the county school board in the Efland School site dispute
The county board of education had gone to court against Thomas Forrest and James O. Webb over the acre-and-a-fraction Efland School site. At a hearing in Graham the judge ruled against the board, which told its lawyers to appeal to the state Supreme Court.
-
Alfred Lawrence publicly opposes fundamentalist attacks on teaching evolution
The Chapel of the Cross rector took a public stand against fundamentalist efforts to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools, introducing a diocesan resolution against limits on freedom of thought, teaching and research.
-
Former students place a memorial tablet to the Nash sisters and Sarah Kollock in the Presbyterian church
Students of the girls' school kept by Sally and Maria Nash and their relative Sarah Kollock put up a tablet in their memory on the wall of the Hillsborough Presbyterian sanctuary.
-
Mary Hyman becomes supervisor of the Orange County schools and brings in standardized testing
Mary Hyman of New Bern came to Orange County in 1926 as school supervisor. She pushed teaching by projects and units and was the first to give standardized I.Q. and achievement tests in the county schools, using the scores in promotion; after parent complaints she was not reelected when her five-year term ended in 1931.
-
Damascus School burns over the Christmas holidays
A committee from the Damascus community told the board in January 1927 that their school had burned during the holidays and asked for a one-teacher school to replace it. The board voted to build and equip a new building for no more than $800.
-
A revived Poole antievolution bill dies in committee
Representative David Scott Poole brought his measure back in the 1927 General Assembly, and it died in committee. A university law student presented the institution's side, telling legislators the young cared more about where they were going than where they came from.
-
The county board auctions seven more schoolhouses closed by consolidation
Early in 1927 the board sold the Pleasant Green, Orange Chapel, Oaks, Union Grove and Meredith schools, most for between $60 and $150, and turned down the bids for New Bethel and Poplar Grove.
-
The county board hires a rural school supervisor at the urging of Edgar W. Knight
After Edgar W. Knight explained the value of a rural supervisor, the board authorized one at $2,400 a year plus $600 for travel, provided the state paid half. Mary Hyman held the post by 1929 and was kept on in 1931 over some local opposition, but the board did not rehire her after her 1932 report.
-
The university hosts a national conference on education in the South
More than thirty college and university presidents, a dozen state superintendents, librarians, governors and others met at Chapel Hill. The gathering tied the university to leading educators nationwide and supported its new emphasis on training high school teachers, principals and superintendents.
-
Odum's institute wins a $240,000 Rockefeller grant
The Institute for Research in Social Science secured $240,000 from a Rockefeller foundation for studies of social and child welfare, crime and justice, taxation, industry and cooperatives.
-
Sophia MacNider, who kept a boarding house and preparatory school on Franklin Street, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Sophia MacNider (1846-1929), who ran a boarding house and a preparatory school in her Franklin Street home, was buried in the cemetery.
-
The university names Bingham Hall for Robert Bingham
In 1929 the university named Bingham Hall on its Chapel Hill campus for Robert Bingham, class of 1857, an alumnus who often spoke at campus events and helped reopen the university in 1875.
-
The county board funds a two-room Morris Grove School, with Black families paying part
The school board approved a gable-roofed, two-room frame school at Morris Grove in Chapel Hill Township. Black residents gave $250 toward it and supplied the lumber, and Louis Webb and Labon Hogan built it; the building survives, long vacant.
-
Trustees approve a library school paid for by a $100,000 Carnegie grant
At commencement Chase won the trustees' permission to set up a school to train librarians in the new library, with its first five years funded by a $100,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation.
-
Chase seeks money for a school of public affairs to train state and local officials
Chase asked Governor Gardner to help find about $30,000 a year in private money for a school to train city and county officials, public health and public safety officers and others, saying none existed in the South. Albert Coates's Institute of Government soon took up the same mission.
-
The new University Library, later Wilson Library, is dedicated
UNC dedicated its new University Library, designed by Arthur Cleveland Nash, on October 19, 1929, weeks after students began using the building that fall. It served as the main campus library for decades, was named for librarian Louis Round Wilson in 1956, and after a 1984 to 1987 renovation became the home of UNC's special collections.
-
Marie Clay Clinton of Charlotte becomes interim superintendent of the Efland Home
Marie Clay Clinton, a Charlotte widow active in the federation's work but not a trained teacher or social worker, was named interim superintendent in December 1929. Her assistant Bertha Vincent, a Scotia Seminary graduate, taught the classes, and both women served as house mothers.
- 1930s
-
Orange County consolidates most of its small white schools
After a county survey by the Board of Education and Superintendent Claytor, most small white schools were merged by 1930, with buses provided. As late as 1925 the county still had 21 one-teacher white schools and several one-teacher Black schools.
-
The Martin School is consolidated into Pleasant Grove Union School
The Martin School, attended almost entirely by Indian children, was merged in 1930 with several other small schools to form Pleasant Grove Union School. The change was unpopular in the community because the school would no longer be exclusively Indian, though it brought better facilities and was in time accepted.
-
The county board approves H. F. Pickett as principal of Murphey School
The Orange County board approved H. F. Pickett as principal of Murphey School, which taught grades one through seven with three or four teachers, one of them doubling as principal. He is the first principal the record names.
-
The county board merges Chestnut Ridge, Jordan's Grove, Smith Level and Grover into larger schools
Over objections from families who wanted to keep neighborhood schools, the board sent the pupils of Chestnut Ridge to Gravelly Hill, those of Grover and Jordan's Grove to Aycock, and those of Smith Level to Carrboro. It then adopted a school budget of $180,849.25 for 1930-31.
-
St. Mary's School burns and the county builds a new one
Fire destroyed St. Mary's School on November 3, 1930. With $2,500 from the county commissioners on top of $1,800 already set aside, the board let J. H. Liner of Cedar Grove build a new school for 84 children for $4,638.30 and received it on January 5, 1931.
-
Albert Coates establishes the Institute of Government
UNC law professor Albert Coates began building the Institute of Government in 1931, with police schools that September and a Carolina Inn planning meeting in December, and the Institute was formally organized and named in May 1932. Working with his wife, Gladys Hall Coates, he ran it as a private enterprise until it became part of the University in 1942; it is now the UNC School of Government.
-
Graham Memorial is completed as the university's student union
The building named for Edward Kidder Graham was completed in 1931 and served as the student union, holding the Horace Williams Library, a barber shop, a bowling alley, a game room and offices for student publications.
-
Breeze School is merged into Aycock and later becomes a tobacco pack house
On June 15, 1931 the county Board of Education merged Harmony and Breeze schools near Caldwell into Aycock School. By 1938 the Breeze building was being used to store tobacco.
-
The county board merges nine more rural schools into larger ones
At a special meeting on reorganizing the schools, the board sent Merritts to Chapel Hill, Damascus to Carrboro, Tom's Creek and Rock Hill to Orange Grove, Union and Rehobeth to Efland, and Harmony with others to Aycock, leaving few one-teacher schools for white children.
-
Coates opens his first statewide school for law officers in Manning Hall
About fifty police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, clerks and judges, growing to seventy-five or more, met for three days under the police chiefs' association, the first meeting of city, county, state and federal officers under one roof. Governor Gardner called it the most promising movement the university had begun.
-
Coates and his law students open local police schools around the state
Less than a month after the Chapel Hill meeting, the first local police school opened in a Raleigh courtroom with Coates's students in tow, followed by schools in High Point, Greensboro, Wilmington, Asheville and Winston-Salem.
-
The Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower is dedicated at UNC
The bell tower given by John Motley Morehead III and Rufus Lenoir Patterson II was dedicated to the university on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1931, with Governor O. Max Gardner giving the dedication address. Morehead had proposed a tower to President Harry Woodburn Chase in the 1920s and been turned down on three sites.
-
Adeline McCall plays piano in a Folk Music Institute laboratory concert
The university's Institute of Folk Music held its second laboratory concert at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 1931, in Hill Music Hall, with Lamar Stringfield on flute, Adeline McCall on piano and Thor Johnson on viola. The program included a composition by Herbert Hazelman, an Asheville freshman.
-
Officials at the Carolina Inn back Coates's plan for schools of public officers
Forty-five judges, lawyers and lawmen invited by Judge W. A. Devin heard Coates propose an association of government officers served by a staff that would write guidebooks and train officials. They told him to go ahead, and Coates later called this the first meeting of the Institute of Government.
-
Ridge Road School is built for Black children north of Hillsborough
In 1932 the county board had a two-room frame school for Black children built on Walter and Maggie Torian's land off Ridge Road (now Coleman Loop Road), just west of NC 86 north of Hillsborough. R. J. Forrest built it with lumber from the community. It replaced an earlier Ridge Road school and was not a Rosenwald school, though the 1993 survey had taken it for one.
-
Susan Grey Akers becomes UNC's first woman full professor
When Louis Round Wilson left the new School of Library Science, Akers was made its acting director and promoted to full professor, the first woman at UNC-Chapel Hill to hold that rank.
-
The county board bars hiring teachers related to a school's committeemen
The board ruled that every elementary teacher must hold at least a Primary C or Grammar Grade C certificate when elected, and that no one could teach in the county if a wife, child, brother or sister sat on the school committee.
-
The county board agrees to pay for five new or enlarged schools for Black children
Despite the Depression, the Orange County board agreed to fund buildings or additions at Merritts, Ridge Road, Sunnyside, White Oak Grove and Sartin, schools of one to three rooms for Black children. Each community had to supply its own lumber; Ridge Road was first allotted $500.
-
UNC names W. C. Jackson dean of a new School of Public Administration
Graham and Odum announced Jackson, history chair at the Woman's College in Greensboro, as dean of the school Odum had planned for three years with a small state allocation. Graham urged Coates to fold the Institute into it and made him one of its trustees, but Coates kept apart; short of state money, the school was dissolved after Jackson returned to Greensboro as chancellor.
-
Albert Coates convenes the Institute of Government's first statewide school for public officials
About six hundred officials and citizens from nearly every county came to Chapel Hill for a two-day meeting Coates had promoted all summer. Frank Graham opened the Friday evening session in Gerrard Hall and Harvard law dean Roscoe Pound gave the closing address on Saturday, when the organizing committee approved hiring Coates as director with a staff.
-
A community library begins at the Carrboro school
In 1933 Nellie Roberson gave the Carrboro school 145 books as the nucleus of a library for grown people as well as children. Built up by teachers, pupils and parents, it was formally dedicated in May 1937 and lent adult books to Carrboro residents.
-
Black children attend 27 schools while white children are gathered into 12
By 1933 consolidation had brought Orange County's white children into twelve schools, while Black children still attended twenty-seven, most of them one- and two-room buildings.
-
White Cross School is built as a consolidated brick school
White Cross School, built in 1933, is a brick school with four large classrooms split by an auditorium in the middle. The form names it one of the county's two best examples of the larger central schools that replaced one- and two-room schools during consolidation.
-
White Cross School burns and the board orders a new building
The board learned in April 1933 that the White Cross school building had been destroyed by fire and authorized a new one for $10,859. At the same meeting it set aside $3,325 for two new rooms at Efland.
-
Free health examination clinic for children entering school in Chapel Hill
The Parent Teachers' Association arranged a free clinic at the school building to examine all children due to enter school that fall, with physicians from Duke Hospital and Chapel Hill dentists, and urged vaccination against smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid.
-
Edgar Wallace Knight is named a Kenan professor
The university recognized Knight's teaching and scholarship with a Kenan professorship in 1934.
-
Murphey School enrolls 182 pupils
In the 1934-35 school year Murphey School had 182 pupils. It was one of nine county schools, with Hillsboro, Orange Grove, St. Mary's, Caldwell, Efland, Aycock, Carrboro and White Cross, apart from the Chapel Hill city schools.
-
Ridge Road School counts 80 pupils enrolled and 51 attending
In the 1934-35 term Ridge Road School, a two-room school for Black children north of Hillsboro, had 80 pupils on its roll, 51 of whom attended regularly.
-
The Texas community asks the Bureau of Indian Affairs for an Indian school
Clayton Jeffries, Charles Will Jeffries and others retained a lawyer, drew up a list of Indian families, made contact with the Indian community in Person County that already had a state sponsored school, and wrote to Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier seeking a federal school for their children. A bureau agent visited and reported the families to be Indian, and the bureau's letters called the settlement an Indian community, but no assistance was ever given.
-
Certified teacher J. A. Lassiter becomes matron of the Efland Home
J. A. Lassiter, a certified teacher, replaced Sadie F. Powell as matron in May 1934, and her husband took over the farm. That year the girls canned, sewed clothes and bedding, and made cornhusk mattresses, baskets and rag rugs, and the cottage's porch was painted and its floors oiled.
-
Architect H. D. Carter becomes supervisor of Orange County relief projects
Chapel Hill architect H. D. Carter replaced J. A. Page as supervisor of Orange County's Federal Emergency Relief Administration projects, which included painting and repairing schools. The next year he designed Public Works Administration buildings and additions for nine county schools.
-
A house marked as the PWA's Little River Teacherage stands on Warner Lane
The frame house at 116 Warner Lane carries a Public Works Administration sign naming it the Little River Teacherage, project N.C. 1127-F. Warner Lane and its houses are not on the 1924 Sanborn map; the house is on the 1943 map.
-
Alethea Burt moves to Hillsboro and takes charge of Ridge Road School's upper grades
Alethea Arrington Burt, a Hampton Institute graduate, came from Currituck County to Hillsboro in 1935, the year her husband Moses became the county's Black farm agent. She taught fifth through seventh grades and served as principal of the two-room school until it closed in 1951.
-
Hilda C. Allen becomes superintendent of the Efland Home after a poor state report
Following a critical June 1935 state inspection and complaints about the home's management, the board's executive committee met in Durham in July and soon hired Hilda C. Allen as superintendent, keeping Lula Henderson as matron.
-
Superintendent Hilda Allen sends the girls' Efland Quartette to sing in local churches
To raise money and show the home's progress, Hilda Allen taught the girls spirituals and arranged for the Efland Quartette to sing at churches around the area during her superintendency.
-
Parents turn back a plan to merge the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools
A large crowd of parents appeared before the board to fight a plan that would have folded the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools into one. The opposition was strong enough that the board dropped the plan, which returned in 1963 as Orange High School.
-
Black families from five northern Orange schools ask for a brick consolidated school
Parents from five schools for Black children, Cedar Grove, Carr, Harmony, Sartins and White Oak, asked the board for a new brick building to replace them. The board promised to look into it; a site near Vincent's Store for a Cedar Grove school for Black children was bought in 1946.
-
The county board hires builders for White Oak Grove, Sartin, Piney Mountain and New Branch schools
After architect H. D. Carter ran the bidding, the board chose the contractors Forrest and Roberts to build a two-room White Oak Grove School and add second rooms to Sartin and Piney Mountain schools, all for Black children, and W. H. Woods to build a one-room New Branch School.
-
A WPA-funded auditorium wing is added to Murphey School
A 30-by-80-foot brick auditorium with a Doric portico was built onto the west end of the school with federal WPA money, together with a water tank, a new sewer and plumbing system, and repairs to the teacherage, for $16,365. George W. Kane was the general contractor, and the county board inspected and accepted the auditorium on June 1, 1936.
-
A federal WPA grant pays for ten Orange County school building projects
A federal grant of $155,454 to the county school board in 1936 paid for new buildings at West Hillsboro School, Hillsboro Negro School and Chapel Hill High School, and for additions and updated equipment at Murphey, Carrboro, Aycock, St. Mary's, Orange Grove, Chapel Hill Negro School and Hillsboro schools.
-
A state survey finds only one brick building among Orange County's 28 schools for Black children
The state's administrative survey of Orange County school units, compiled from 1934-35 figures, counted 28 schools for Black pupils, all but one of them frame, and rated 19 in bad condition. White pupils by then attended ten consolidated schools, and all but one of their twelve buildings were brick.
-
Former summer school and education dean N. W. Walker dies
Walker had headed the university's summer school and its school of education until he retired with a heart ailment in the summer of 1934. After his death his house at 517 East Rosemary Street was sold to education professor Guy B. Phillips, and Albert and Gladys Coates stayed on in the cottage behind it.
-
Hillsboro High School gets an addition built with PWA money
An addition to the Hillsboro high school was under construction in May 1936 as part of the county's $346,000 school building program, paid for partly by a federal Public Works Administration grant.
-
Orange County builds a brick school for Black students in Hillsboro
Under a PWA-aided building program the county built an eight-room brick school for Black children in Hillsboro in 1935-36, with an auditorium, steam heat and plumbing. High school grades are first reported there for 1938-39, as the Hillsborough High School for Negroes; it became Central High School.
-
St. Mary's School gets a WPA brick auditorium
St. Mary's School, a Colonial Revival brick school built in 1931 near Murphey School to replace a log schoolhouse, received a Neoclassical brick auditorium in 1936 through the same WPA program, plainer than the one at Murphey.
-
The old West Franklin Street high school becomes Chapel Hill's elementary school
When the new high school on South Columbia Street was finished, the 1916 building on West Franklin was turned over to the elementary grades.
-
West End Graded School is built on the old Cadwallader Jones homesite
A larger one-story brick Colonial Revival school for grades one through six, six classrooms and an auditorium, was built in 1936 to replace the two-story frame West End School on Bellevue Avenue, which became a community club building. It stood on the highest ground in West Hillsborough, inside a low stone wall, where the Cadwallader Jones house had stood.
-
The county school board buys land for a new Black school in Hillsboro
The Orange County Board of Education bought the Hillsboro colored school site from Louis Wilson and George Mayo, paying $1,100 to each. The new school for Black students went up there that year.
-
The county board applies for home economics and agriculture teachers at Hillsboro School
The board voted in April 1936 to apply for teachers of agriculture and home economics at the Hillsboro School, while seeking federal funds for new buildings and additions.
-
The school library at Hillsborough High School for Negroes also served as the public library for Black residents
Hillsborough's new school for Black students, a Public Works Administration building of eight classrooms and an auditorium, was put up in 1936 and ready in July on land bought from Louis Wilson and George Mayo, and its library served the local Black community as a public library. Albert L. Stanback became principal in 1942 and had the school renamed Central High School in 1943.
-
A new Chapel Hill High School opens on Columbia Street
Chapel Hill's new high school for white students, beside the Pittsboro road on what is now South Columbia Street, opened to classes on October 5, 1936, three weeks late. Built for $106,000 with Public Works Administration aid to plans by Atwood and Weeks, it came in the same federal program that built an addition at the Orange County Training School.
-
A puppet Hansel and Gretel is staged in Adeline McCall's music series for children
The Music Club and the Parent-Teacher Association presented Hansel and Gretel, a puppet show with music, at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 9, 1936, in Hill Music Hall. It was the fifth in a series of music events for children under Adeline McCall's direction, and elementary school children sang songs from Humperdinck's opera.
-
The Historic American Buildings Survey records the academy barracks
By the Depression the empty Barracks of the old military academy sheltered homeless families. In 1937 the Historic American Buildings Survey measured and photographed it, a year before it was torn down.
-
The Institute of Government opens its first ten-day school for police officers
Sixty-one lawmen, about a quarter of them police chiefs, attended, taught in part by instructors lent by the FBI's new National Police Academy. J. Edgar Hoover then gave agent Edward Scheidt, a former Coates student, a year's paid leave to write Institute guidebooks on arrest, search and seizure, and crime detection.
-
Hilda Allen resigns as superintendent, leaving Lula Henderson in charge of the Efland Home
Saying she could not handle all her duties, Hilda C. Allen resigned in early May 1937 after making real gains in the home's conditions, and matron Lula Henderson took charge.
-
The first of the new women's dormitories, later Alderman Residence Hall, opens
Built in 1937 with Public Works Administration money, the university's new women's dormitory, later named for Edwin Alderman for his support of women's education, was occupied by September 1937. Two more women's dormitories, later Kenan and McIver, opened in September 1939.
-
Louis H. Hackney dies in Chapel Hill
Louis H. Hackney, pastor, principal of the Quaker school from 1898 to 1912 and founder of Hackney's Educational and Industrial School, died in Chapel Hill on December 19, 1937. He was buried in the segregated Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
-
The Hillsborough Military Academy's brick barracks are torn down
The academy's three-story brick barracks, later used by the Farm Life School, were dismantled in 1938. Only the Commandant's House and a frame dining hall survive, with parts of the barracks foundation in the woods south of the hall.
-
UNC rejects Pauli Murray's graduate application
Pauli Murray, who grew up in Durham and lived in New York, applied to UNC's graduate school in 1938 to study with Howard Odum and Guy B. Johnson. On December 14, two days after the Supreme Court's Gaines ruling, Dean W. W. Pierson rejected her because of her race, and her appeals to President Frank Porter Graham became national news.
-
Alexander Residence Hall is built and named for Eben Alexander
A men's dormitory built at the university in 1939 with funds from the New Deal's Public Works Administration was named for Eben Alexander, the former professor of Greek and first dean of the faculty.
-
A lent library truck carries books to schools and crossroads stores across Orange County
For May, June and July 1939 a bookmobile with a revolving shelved turret was lent to the county, run by Lucile McDade and her assistant Louise Carroll, who stopped at schools and crossroads stores. The county board of education and the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro paid its operating costs, and the WPA and the Hillsboro library lent the books.
-
The county board agrees to build an agriculture building at Aycock School
Aycock principal Mrs. V. L. Warren and the school committee asked the board for a two-room brick building for agriculture classes, and the board agreed to provide it.
-
North Carolina's first Boys State meets on the UNC campus
The Institute ran the week-long civics program for the state American Legion, modeled on one begun in Illinois in 1935. About 135 high school boys spent up to three hours a day in class on government besides sports, heard Governor Hoey and other officials, and elected Douglass Hunt their governor.
-
A memorial tablet for Robert Bingham is installed in Memorial Hall
A memorial tablet in Robert Bingham's name was installed in the university's Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill on October 12, 1939.
-
Albert Coates completes the Institute of Government's Franklin Street building
Albert Coates built the Institute's Franklin Street headquarters with private gifts and a Jefferson Standard Life loan, and it opened in November 1939. The University took title only on June 30, 1945, after the legislature paid off the mortgage. The building later carried the Coates name.
- 1940s
-
Henry P. Brandis Jr. joins the UNC law faculty
After two state tax posts, Brandis, the Institute of Government's first full-time staff member, joined the university's law school faculty in 1940. He became its dean in 1949 and a Graham Kenan Professor of Law in 1965, and retired in 1972.
-
UNC establishes a School of Public Health
UNC's Division of Public Health, created within the School of Medicine in 1936 under Dr. Milton Rosenau, separated from the medical school in 1940 and became the School of Public Health, with Rosenau as its first dean. The school is now the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.
-
Horace Williams dies and is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Williams died at eighty-two and was buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. He left all of his property to the university in trust, the income to pay for fellowships in philosophy.
-
Connor returns to the UNC faculty as Craige professor
After resigning as Archivist of the United States in 1941, Connor came back to Chapel Hill to hold the newly established Craige Professorship of Jurisprudence and History until he retired in 1949.
-
The university hosts 108 South American students in its Winter-Summer School
In 1941 the university received 108 students from seven South American countries for English courses and regular classes in a program Leavitt directed. The General Assembly met in special joint session in Chapel Hill in their honor.
-
W. Reece Berryhill becomes dean of the UNC School of Medicine
Berryhill, who had been physician-in-chief at the University infirmary and director of the student health service in Chapel Hill since 1933, became professor of medicine and dean of the School of Medicine in 1941. He led the school's expansion from a two-year to a four-year program.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
