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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1960s
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The Underwood family buys Murphey School at public auction
The school property was sold at public auction in 1963 to the Underwood family.
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The Torian family deeds a lot beside Ridge Road School to Emma Torian Jones and Rev. Walter Jones
Maggie Torian and her children conveyed 0.79 acre west of the school, on Coleman Loop Road, to her daughter Emma and Emma's husband, Rev. Walter Warren Jones, who built a frame house there. Walter and Maggie Torian, Black farmers, had owned the land the school stood on and supplied its water.
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Orange County Board of Education closes Caldwell School
In 1961 the county board weighed a proposal to close White Cross School at once and Caldwell School later. In March 1963, in the consolidation that came with the new Orange High School, it voted to close the white-only Caldwell School, built in 1925, and from that fall its pupils went to Aycock and Cameron Park. The county could not sell the building until 1973.
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Floyd McKissick and Malcolm X appear together at UNC's Memorial Hall
A day after their meeting in Durham, Durham attorney Floyd McKissick and Malcolm X appeared at UNC in a meeting moved from Howell Hall to Memorial Hall when about 1,600 people came. McKissick said he believed the Muslim movement had grown out of the frustration of Black Americans.
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Research Triangle Planning Commission projects Chapel Hill school growth to
John Scott of the Research Triangle Planning Commission told the Chapel Hill School Board that district enrollment could reach 8,000 pupils by 1980, more than double the current number, and cited a 1960 township population of 25,000. The commission delivered its full report on school needs to 1980 by late July.
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Teacher Hassie Vanhook Gattis retires after 34 years
Hassie Vanhook Brooks Gattis retired in 1963 after 34 years of teaching Black children in northern Orange County, at the Sartin, Grover, Poplar Grove and Carr schools and, from about 1955, at Cedar Grove. The News of Orange County marked her retirement in June.
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Central High principal A. L. Stanback dies
Albert Leon Stanback, who came to Central as a coach and mathematics teacher and led it for more than twenty years, died after a short illness. His funeral was held in the school's auditorium. Under him the school grew to about 1,200 students.
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Four of Orange County's 2,001 Black pupils attend white schools
The county school system enrolled 2,001 Black students in 1964-65. Four went to formerly white schools; the rest attended Central High, Efland-Cheeks or Cedar Grove.
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Orange High and Orange Junior High win accreditation from the state and the Southern Association
Between about 1964 and 1969 Orange High School and Orange Junior High were accredited by the state and by the Southern Association, so every county pupil in grades 7 through 12 attended a regionally accredited school. A push to accredit the elementary schools was put off by integration.
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The old school buildings and the Caesar Cone house on West Franklin are razed for a bank and University Square East
Chapel Hill's old elementary and high school buildings on West Franklin came down, along with the house known as the Caesar Cone house. Central Carolina Bank & Trust and the University Square East shopping center went up in their place.
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Gloria Williams asks the school board to readmit boycotting Lincoln High students
At the Chapel Hill school board meeting, Mrs. Gloria Williams, speaking for parents of students who had joined the Chapel Hill Freedom Committee's boycott of Lincoln High School, asked that all of them be readmitted. The board upheld the expulsion of two senior leaders, Henry Sanford and James Brittain, after Superintendent Howard Thompson said he would resign if they returned.
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More than 25,000 Orange County residents take Sabin oral polio vaccine on one Sunday
The Durham-Orange County Medical Foundation ran a Sunday oral polio vaccine campaign at eight public school feeding stations in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Cedar Grove and Efland. A total of 25,679 people took the vaccine on a sugar cube, about 56 percent of the county, with Glenwood School alone serving 5,063; a second dose was set for May 17.
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Sixty-six Black parents petition the county board to stop running schools by race
Led by the retired Cedar Grove teacher Hassie Vanhook Gattis, 66 parents signed a petition asking the Orange County board to stop operating its schools on a racial basis. It charged that the board had kept a dual system since the 1954 Brown ruling in disregard of the law.
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A state act limits Orange County school board elections to voters outside the Chapel Hill school unit
A 1965 act (H.S. 695) provided that only county voters living outside the enlarged Chapel Hill school administrative unit could vote in elections for the Orange County Board of Education.
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Albert Coates starts the Institute of Civic Education in the University's Extension Division
With no place offered by the Institute of Government or the law school, Coates set up an Institute of Civic Education under Extension Division director Charles Milner, paid for by the Richardson Foundation and a $50,000 yearly state appropriation approved by Governor Terry Sanford. In the summer of 1965 it brought high school civics and government teachers to Chapel Hill for short courses in state history and government.
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Central Elementary School is built north of West Hillsborough
Planned as a segregated school for Black pupils next to Central High School, the flat-roofed brick and concrete building designed by Archie Royal Davis was finished a few years before desegregation and then served an integrated student body. Additions followed in 1975 and during the 1990s.
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Fire destroys the home economics building at Aycock School
The home economics building at Aycock School in Cedar Grove burned, with the loss put at $15,000 to $20,000 and fully insured through the state. The county board had approved the building in 1948.
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Karen Parker becomes the first Black woman to earn an undergraduate degree at UNC
Karen L. Parker, who transferred from the Woman's College in Greensboro in 1963 as UNC's first Black woman undergraduate, graduated in journalism in 1965. She was the first African American woman to receive an undergraduate degree from the University, and as a student she joined Chapel Hill sit-ins and was arrested in December 1963.
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Only 7 percent of the county's Black pupils attend an integrated school
At the start of the 1965-66 school year, about 7 percent of the Orange County system's Black students were enrolled in an integrated school.
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Orange County schools start the federal Title I program
Frank Giles, named first assistant to the superintendent and office manager, took charge of the federal Title I program, whose $166,801.40 budget came on top of the county school budget.
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The Historic Hillsborough Commission buys the Burwell School
The commission bought the house from the Spurgeon children and began restoring it to look as it had after the 1848 enlargement.
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The former Military Academy dining hall is turned into a church
The one-story board-and-batten building beside Barracks Road, thought to be a surviving piece of the long frame service building that stood behind the barracks, became a church building in 1965.
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The county board asks the commissioners to back a desegregation plan and Black members on school boards
Facing federal compliance rules, the board met the county commissioners and asked for two Black members on the Board of Education, integration of schools, buses and staff, Black members on district committees and signature of the federal compliance form.
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Three Black students desegregate Aycock School in Cedar Grove
Under the county's Freedom of Choice plan, three Black families asked for their children to be transferred to the white Aycock School, and on May 20, 1965 the three students were assigned and began attending. United States Marshals escorted at least one of them.
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Cedar Grove families answer the county's freedom-of-choice forms
The county sent 401 school-choice forms to Cedar Grove School families at the end of the 1964-65 year. Fifty-two made no choice, three asked for all-white Aycock Elementary and four for Orange Junior High.
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The board names the first principals of Stanford Junior High and Central Elementary
Paul Raspberry was chosen to lead the new Stanford Junior High, and Tarleton Davis was picked to open Central Elementary as its first principal.
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The county board adopts a school desegregation plan
After most of a year spent trying to reach a plan acceptable under federal rules, the Orange County Board of Education adopted a desegregation plan on September 7, 1965.
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Integrated Chapel Hill High opens on High School Road
A new Chapel Hill High School campus opened on High School Road in 1966 as the town's first racially integrated high school, taking in the white student body from the Franklin Street school together with Lincoln High's students. Under freedom of choice the board had planned for white students to occupy the building a year before Black students joined, but Black students applied together for 1966 so that the school would not first be seen as belonging to the white students.
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Lincoln High School closes during integration
Lincoln High on Merritt Mill Road, the Black high school led since 1946 by principal C. A. McDougle, stopped operating as a secondary school in 1966 and its students were reassigned to the new Chapel Hill High, completing the desegregation of the district's schools. McDougle became an assistant principal there and Lincoln's championship football coach William D. Peerman was made an assistant coach after a contested board vote; Lincoln's name, colors, mascot and much of its memorabilia were not carried over.
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Northside Elementary closed as the school system integrated
The Caldwell Street school closed soon after the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools began mandatory integration in 1966, and the building was turned into office space.
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Cedar Grove's advisory council asks for a painted lunchroom and a paved playground
Oscar Beasley and Arthur Wells of the Cedar Grove Advisory Council asked the board to paint the lunchroom, hang doors on the girls' restroom and give the school a hard-surfaced playground. The board granted part of the request.
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Time magazine names Hardison one of the country's outstanding college teachers
Time magazine featured Hardison, then teaching English at Chapel Hill, as one of the country's outstanding college instructors.
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Hortense McClinton joins the UNC School of Social Work as the university's first Black faculty member
McClinton turned down a grant-funded UNC offer in 1964 and accepted a better-funded position in the School of Social Work in July 1966. She was the only Black faculty member at UNC for three years.
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Chapel Hill High School graduates its first desegregated class
The class of 1967 was the first to finish at the merged Chapel Hill High School. The school board then debated the fate of the empty Lincoln building through 1969 and 1970, and voted to keep it for school use after sustained objection from Black residents to selling it.
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Health care across language and immigration
From the student-run SHAC clinic of 1967 to UNC’s interpreter services, the CAMPOS program and the Center for Latino Health of 2008, care for the county’s newcomers has grown with its languages, and the health department was serving clients in almost 20 languages by 2014. El Futuro’s bilingual mental health work in Carrboro and the refugee wellness program of 2015 carry it on.
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Orange County voters approve $3 million in school bonds for the county and Chapel Hill units
In 1967 voters approved a $3,000,000 school building bond, with $1,000,000 for the Orange County schools and $2,000,000 for the Chapel Hill schools. It was the third school bond passed during Superintendent Carr's tenure.
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UNC names a new south campus residence hall for Hinton James
The university built a ten-story residence hall on south campus in 1967 and named it for Hinton James, the first student to reach Chapel Hill in 1795. The hall houses 964 students in eight-person suites.
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Central High School becomes A. L. Stanback School
After Central High's last high school class graduated in 1968 and its older students moved to Orange High School, the school was renamed for its longtime principal A. L. Stanback and became an elementary school.
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Central High students march and Orange County schools integrate
In 1968 Black students at Central High School in Hillsborough walked out and marched to protest a plan for phased desegregation. After Central's last class graduated that spring, its high school students moved to Orange High, ending the county's dual school system in 1968–69.
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Stanford Junior High School is built near Hillsborough with two classroom buildings and a gymnasium
Under Superintendent G. Paul Carr the county finished Stanford Junior High, a main classroom building for about 800 pupils, a second for about 225 and a gymnasium, on the 100-acre tract it shares with Orange High.
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The undergraduate library named for R. B. House opens
The building put up in 1964 was occupied by the university in 1968 as the Robert B. House Undergraduate Library, named for the former chancellor.
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Principal George Pierce and Arthur Wells ask for basketball goals and better lighting
Cedar Grove principal George Pierce and advisory council chairman Arthur Wells asked the board for basketball goals, better lighting, doors for the boys' restrooms and supplies for the lunchroom.
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The county board presents a plan to end its dual school system to federal civil rights officials
After the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare told Orange County to give up freedom of choice and balance its schools by race, the board met with Walter Warfield of the Office for Civil Rights' education branch to present its plan for ending separate Black and white schools. The plan took effect in 1969-70.
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Belton Edwards, a Black member, joins the county Board of Education
When A. B. Coleman resigned from the board in May 1968, Belton Edwards, whom Pender identifies as Black, took his place. The board had asked the county commissioners in 1965 for two Black members.
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Alethea Burt retires from teaching at Central High School
Alethea Burt, who had led Ridge Road School until it closed in 1951 and then moved with her pupils to teach the elementary grades at Central High School in Hillsboro, retired at the end of the 1968-69 year.
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Blyden Jackson joins UNC's English department and becomes its first tenured Black professor
Blyden Jackson joined the UNC-Chapel Hill English department in 1969 and became the university's first tenured Black faculty member. He established the study of African American literature at Carolina and later served as assistant dean of the Graduate School, working to recruit Black faculty and students.
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George F. Williams becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
After G. Paul Carr resigned, the board called George F. Williams, superintendent of the Brunswick County schools, to lead the Orange County system in 1969. He served eight years as the county's eleventh superintendent.
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Orange County Schools open kindergarten classes and extend them to every five-year-old
Kindergarten began in the county schools with the 1969-70 reorganization, housed at Central Elementary and Efland-Cheeks. By the end of Superintendent Williams's term in 1977 it had grown from a partial program to one serving all five-year-olds.
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Orange County Schools regroup pupils by grade across the Hillsborough schools to complete integration
For 1969-70 the county put all its pupils outside the Efland area into Hillsborough schools, each serving set grades: kindergarten at Central Elementary, grades 1-2 at Cameron Park, 3-4 at Central, 5-6 at the old Orange Junior High, 7-9 at a new Orange Junior High and 10-12 at Orange High. Efland-Cheeks took kindergarten through third grade and Efland Elementary grades 4-6, and Aycock, Cedar Grove and West Hillsborough dropped out as separate schools.
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Orange High School is enlarged with new buildings
Six years after it opened as the county's consolidated high school, Orange High near Hillsborough added buildings in 1969 under the new superintendent George F. Williams.
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West End Graded School closes
The West Hillsborough elementary school closed in 1969, perhaps because the new Central Elementary School took its pupils once schools were integrated. The main building later burned, leaving only the rear wings.
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Cedar Grove's advisory council petitions to keep the school open
As the county prepared to integrate its schools, the Cedar Grove Advisory Council brought the board a petition asking that Cedar Grove School run fully through 1969-70 and that the integration plan be reconsidered. The council said the community did not intend to give up its school.
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Cedar Grove School closes under the county's integration plan
The county board announced in May 1969 that Cedar Grove School would not operate in 1969-70. The school closed at the end of the 1968-69 year despite the community's appeals, and its pupils moved to schools in Efland and Hillsborough.
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Superintendent Carr's final report recommends studying a merger of the county and Chapel Hill school units
In his closing report to the State Superintendent in 1969, G. Paul Carr asked the board to have outside educators study combining the county and Chapel Hill units. He also urged a supplementary school tax, written board policies, kindergartens for all children, a return to six-grade elementary schools and special education at the high school.
- 1970s
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Berryhill Hall is completed and named for W. Reece Berryhill
The University completed a medical school building in Chapel Hill in 1970 and named it for W. Reece Berryhill, who had been dean of the School of Medicine since 1941.
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Fred Battle directs the Hargraves Center
Fred Battle, a Lincoln High graduate of 1962, directed Chapel Hill's Hargraves Center, the former Negro Community Center on Roberson Street, from 1970 to 1987.
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Roberta Jackson joins UNC's School of Education as its first Black tenure-track faculty member
Roberta Jackson joined the UNC School of Education in 1970, a year after her husband Blyden Jackson joined the English department, as the school's first Black tenure-track faculty member. She earned tenure in 1974 and became the first tenured Black woman in the university's Division of Academic Affairs.
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The former Murphey School becomes a nightclub
From some time in the early 1970s until the mid-1980s the old school was run as a nightclub. It stood empty from 1986.
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The old St. Mary's School reopens as a private college preparatory school
The St. Mary's School building, closed since 1943, reopened in 1970 as a private college preparatory school.
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UNC student strike of
After the Kent State shootings and the invasion of Cambodia, UNC students began a class boycott on May 5, 1970, and more than 4,000 people marched through downtown Chapel Hill the next day. Classes were not cancelled; the faculty instead voted to let striking students take grades on work completed or finish courses later.
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Burwell School is listed in the National Register
On September 15, 1970 the National Park Service listed Burwell School in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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UNC dedicates Greenlaw Hall
The university dedicated Greenlaw Hall in Edwin Greenlaw's honor on October 4, 1970. Construction had begun in 1966.
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Orange High School gets a gymnasium
The Orange High gymnasium, the fourth building on the campus plan, is dated 1971 under Superintendent George F. Williams.
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Orange and Alamance agree on Orange children attending Alamance schools
Worried that growing numbers of western Orange children rode Alamance buses to Mebane schools, the board released to Alamance all children living within a mile of the county line and let those farther out stay if they chose. It also allowed out-of-county attendance if families paid tuition and provided transportation.
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Student Donnie Riddle is stabbed to death at Orange High School
Donnie Riddle was killed in the Orange High bus parking lot while trying to shield the assistant principal from three former students who had dropped out. The school stayed closed until February 7, when enough officers were on hand to keep out anyone without business there.
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Hortense McClinton begins teaching a course on institutional racism
In 1972 McClinton launched a course on institutional racism in the UNC School of Social Work.
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Marinda Dunnigan McPherson is recorded singing songs she learned from her family
McKellar Israel recorded McPherson in the fall of 1972 and the fall of 1973, singing children's games, play party songs and spirituals she learned from family members, among them songs she first recalled hearing her grandmother Marinda Hart sing about 1920. Israel also interviewed her and her husband David McPherson about community events and history.
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UNC abolishes the office of dean of women
The university ended the dean of women's office in 1972, after twenty-six years under Katherine Kennedy Carmichael. She stayed on as associate dean of students for supportive services.
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The county school board sells the closed Caldwell School property
After the school board asked its attorney in November 1971 to move toward a sale, it accepted $5,143.52 from the sale of the Caldwell School property. Pender later wrote that the building was demolished and the land went back to its owner.
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The county board buys land on Orange Grove Road for the new Grady Brown School
The board decided to buy up to twenty acres on Orange Grove Road for a new elementary school, the Grady Brown School. Its 1974 budget request put $1,900,270 toward the building.
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The county board names Orange High's new football stadium for coach Glenn Auman
The board named the new football stadium for Glenn Auman, who had coached for many years and taught high school classes.
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Orange County builds Grady A. Brown Elementary School
The county put up Grady A. Brown Elementary, a centrally heated and air-conditioned K-5 building of about 67,800 square feet on a 20-acre site near Hillsborough, designed by Croft Inc. under Superintendent George F. Williams.
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The ArtSchool is founded
Jacques Menache, who had earned an MFA at UNC the year before, opened the ArtSchool in Carrboro in August 1974 to offer art classes. By 1978 the Carrboro ArtSchool also ran a gallery theatre, and the organization later became The ArtsCenter, which moved to Roberson Street in 2023.
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A. L. Stanback School becomes a middle school
The former Central High School, used as A. L. Stanback elementary school since 1968, became a middle school in 1975 and served until the late 1980s, when it closed for several years.
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Central Elementary School in Hillsborough gets a large addition
Ten years after the first building went up, the county added about 18,700 square feet to Central Elementary under Superintendent George F. Williams, bringing the school to roughly 44,600 square feet.
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Orange County Schools reorganize into K-5 elementary schools with a middle school and junior high
In 1975-76 the county dropped the two-grade elementary centers of 1969, returning to elementary schools of kindergarten through fifth grade, with grades 6-7 in a middle school and 8-9 in a junior high.
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UNC Lineberger Cancer Center is established
UNC established a cancer research center in 1975 under founding director Joseph Pagano. Later named for the Lineberger family of Belmont, who helped fund its 1984 building, it earned NCI comprehensive status in 1990 and is North Carolina's only public one.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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The school board sells the empty Cedar Grove School to Orange County for ten dollars
After the building had stood vacant for nearly a decade, the Orange County Board of Education conveyed the former school and its eight acres to the county for $10.
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Katherine Kennedy Carmichael retires from the university
Carmichael retired in 1977, thirty-one years after she became dean of women.
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Michael Simmons becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
Dr. Michael Simmons, superintendent in Dillon, South Carolina, since 1974, took charge of the Orange County schools in 1977. He resigned in 1983 to lead the Johnson City, Tennessee, schools.
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Stanford Junior High School gets a small addition
A 4,300-square-foot addition was made to Stanford Junior High in 1977 under Superintendent George F. Williams.
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The Burwell School opens to visitors
The restored house has been open to visitors every year since 1977.
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The Bingham School site at the Oaks joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the site of the Bingham School at the Oaks on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. It went on the list for further study, pending an architectural assessment.
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Cameron Park School is enlarged again under Superintendent Michael Simmons
A further addition to Cameron Park Elementary in Hillsborough went up in 1978, the third stage of the building, which by the early 1980s housed kindergarten through fifth grade.
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Efland-Cheeks pupils use the old Cedar Grove School while their school is enlarged
Under county ownership the former Cedar Grove School served several purposes, among them holding Efland-Cheeks School students until an addition to their own building was finished in 1978.
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The Bingham School site is listed in the National Register
The Bingham School was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, one of six rural Orange County listings the 1993 county survey recorded.
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Orange High School's Cultural Arts Building is fitted with a heat pump system
A note to the Orange High plant table records a heat pump system in 1979 for the school's Cultural Arts Building, work that falls in Michael Simmons's term as superintendent.
- 1980s
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An office building for the Orange County Board of Education goes up on East King Street
A one-story brick Colonial Revival building with recessed side wings was built around 1980 at 200 East King Street as the Orange County Board of Education office.
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The 1922 Hillsborough Township School building closes as a school
After Orange High School took the upper grades, the old school on West Tryon Street ran as an elementary school until 1980. It later housed the public library and then the Richard E. Whitted Human Services Center.
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Orange County gets a grant to build a park behind the old Cedar Grove School
A $30,000 grant let the county develop recreation land behind the school, where it built a baseball field and a children's play area.
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Shanklin's Press prints Irene Oliver Pender's History of Orange County Schools
Shanklin's Press of Hillsborough, the Black-owned print shop run by the family of Thomas Shanklin, published Irene Oliver Pender's A History of Orange County Schools: 1752-1983. The shop began in the family home in the 1960s and later moved to Cornelius Street.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro coalition organizes for the 20th anniversary March on Washington
Fred Battle chaired the Chapel Hill-Carrboro 20th Anniversary Coalition, which first met on May 29, 1983, and raised money to send buses from Chapel Hill to the August 27 march for jobs, peace and freedom in Washington. A UNC campus group worked as part of the local coalition.
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Dannie G. Lunsford becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
Dr. Dannie G. Lunsford, who had come to the county in 1971 as principal at Efland and risen through the instruction office to associate superintendent, succeeded Michael Simmons as superintendent in July 1983.
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Elfreda A. Chatman joins the faculty of UNC's School of Information and Library Science
After a year at Louisiana State University, Chatman taught at UNC's School of Information and Library Science for more than a decade before moving to Florida State University.
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Fred Battle serves on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
Fred Battle served on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board of education from 1985 to 1989.
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C. D. Spangler Jr. serves as president of the UNC System
Spangler, a Charlotte businessman and 1954 graduate of the university, succeeded William Friday in 1986 and led the sixteen-campus system for eleven years from its offices in Chapel Hill, fighting to keep tuition low and reforming intercollegiate athletics.
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Carmichael Residence Hall is dedicated
The university dedicated a new six-storey residence hall for 486 students, named for Katherine Kennedy Carmichael.
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Orange County Public Library receives a $50,000 bequest from Rebecca B. Wall
The library received $50,000 from the estate of Rebecca B. Wall, a retired Veterans Administration hospital librarian and former Orange County Board of Education member who died on April 2, 1986. The fund had grown to more than $100,000 by 2010, when the library dedicated its Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection at the new Main Library.
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R. B. House dies in Chapel Hill
House died at his home in Chapel Hill and was buried in the local cemetery. He had retired as chancellor in 1957 and taught in the university's English department until 1962.
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Hilliard Caldwell tells a Chapel Hill forum that local schools still fail Black students
Speaking as home school coordinator for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools at a Human Rights Week forum, Caldwell said the community spent millions on education without adequate results and that few Black students reached the honor rolls. His cousin Ed Caldwell, a school board member, spoke as well.
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Cameron Park School is enlarged again in the late
Following its 1978 addition, Cameron Park School on St. Mary's Road in Hillsborough received further additions on its north and south sides in the late 1980s.
- 1990s
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools form a Blue Ribbon Task Force after Black parents press on the achievement gap
Black parents demanded more resources for disadvantaged students, and the district responded with a Blue Ribbon Task Force. The article judges that it changed little: the gap between Black and White test scores, tracked since the 1980s, narrowed only slightly.
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Randee Haven-O'Donnell is named Soil and Water Conservation Teacher of the Year
Haven-O'Donnell, who taught in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, was named Orange County and North Carolina Soil and Water Conservation Teacher of the Year.
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The Lester Asheim Scholarship Fund is endowed at UNC's library school
The School of Information and Library Science endowed a scholarship fund in Asheim's name with $30,000; the school later listed it as a doctoral scholarship.
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Students campaign for a freestanding Black Cultural Center
After Sonja Haynes Stone died in 1991, students, faculty and Black athletes at UNC pressed for a freestanding Black Cultural Center named for her. Following marches in September 1992, Chancellor Paul Hardin endorsed a freestanding building on October 15, 1992, and the trustees approved a site in 1993.
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The William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education is dedicated
UNC dedicated its continuing education center, named for William and Ida Friday, on April 12, 1991. Friday described it as "the citizens' classroom."
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UNC renames its admissions building Jackson Hall for Blyden and Roberta Jackson
The university renamed the former Navy Hall and Monogram Club building on Country Club Road, home of the admissions office since 1972, as Blyden and Roberta Jackson Hall. The Jacksons had retired from teaching in 1981.
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Chinese School at Chapel Hill is founded
The Chinese School at Chapel Hill, which teaches Chinese language and culture, was founded in 1993 in a community that had grown around UNC since graduate students from mainland China began arriving in the early 1980s. The IRS recognized it as a tax-exempt organization in December 1999.
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The state places rural Orange County houses, churches, schools and districts on the Study List
On July 8, 1993, after the survey of the rural county, the National Register Advisory Committee placed 23 rural Orange County properties on the state Study List: eighteen farmhouses and log houses, the Carr Methodist and Harmony churches, White Cross School, and the Cedar Grove and Oaks Rural historic districts.
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The Hughes Academy schoolhouse is moved from near Lake Orange to Hillsborough
The small two-room frame schoolhouse of the Hughes Academy, built around 1862 near Lake Orange in northern Orange County, was moved in 1994 to the grounds at 200 East King Street in Hillsborough and restored.
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Perry Deane Young speaks at Chapel Hill High School after gay-authored books are pulled from a reading list
After four gay- and lesbian-authored books were pulled from an English teacher’s multicultural reading list at Chapel Hill High School, Young and author Susan Johnson spoke at an evening program there and joined a panel. The Orange Lesbian and Gay Association and Many Voices, One Community sponsored it.
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Charles and Lucile McDougle Middle School is dedicated
The middle school that opened in the fall of 1994 was officially named the Charles and Lucile McDougle Middle School and dedicated on November 6, 1994. The school's history says McDougle was a teacher, principal and central office administrator in a career of more than forty years, and that Lucile McDougle taught for more than forty years.
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A new A. L. Stanback Middle School opens south of Hillsborough
Orange County opened a new A. L. Stanback Middle School just south of town, carrying the name of the old Central High principal to a new building.
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Elson Floyd serves as UNC's first executive vice chancellor
Chancellor Michael Hooker hired Floyd in 1995 for the newly created post of executive vice chancellor, overseeing auxiliary services, facilities, business and finance, human resources, information technology, student affairs and university advancement. He left in 1998 to become president of Western Michigan University.
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Carrboro Branch Library opens at McDougle School
The Carrboro Branch of the Orange County Public Library opened in McDougle Middle School in May 1995, sharing space with the school library and open after school hours and on Sundays. Books circulated from May 1 and the ribbon was cut on May 21, with the Friends of the Carrboro Library having raised $2,000 toward its $46,000 budget.
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Michael Hooker is inaugurated as chancellor at Chapel Hill
Hooker, who took office on July 1, 1995, was inaugurated on University Day. A Hugh Morton photograph records university president C. D. Spangler at the ceremony in Chapel Hill.
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Hillsborough Elementary School opens in the old Central High buildings as the county's first year-round school
After standing closed for several years, the former Central High campus on North Nash Street reopened in 1996 as Hillsborough Elementary School, the first year-round school in Orange County.
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Frances Hargraves carries the Olympic torch down Franklin Street
The 1996 Olympic torch relay passed through Chapel Hill and Carrboro on its way to Atlanta. Frances Hargraves, 82, a retired special education teacher chosen as one of five Chapel Hill Community Heroes, took the flame from Chuck Stone at Columbia Street and carried it down Franklin Street.
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East Chapel Hill High School opens
East Chapel Hill High School opened on August 20, 1996, to relieve crowding at Chapel Hill High School, with construction still under way around it. It enrolled grades nine through eleven that first year, most of them transfers from Chapel Hill High, and held an opening celebration on November 17.
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McDougle Elementary School opens on the shared McDougle campus
McDougle Elementary School, named like the middle school for Charles and Lucille McDougle, opened on August 20, 1996 and shares its campus with McDougle Middle School.
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The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation becomes a tax-exempt nonprofit
IRS records list the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, based in Mebane, as a tax-exempt nonprofit since August 1996. The group had taken that name in 1994 and in January 1996 filed to contest the state Commission of Indian Affairs' denial of its petition for recognition.
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Valerie Foushee is elected to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
Foushee was elected to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro city schools board in 1997 and served until 2004, pressing for equity in the schools. It was the first of the local offices she held over 25 years in local and state government.
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William C. Friday receives the National Humanities Medal
President Clinton and Hillary Clinton presented Friday with one of the first National Humanities Medals. The NEH cited him as president emeritus of the University of North Carolina, which he led from 1956 to 1986, and executive director of the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trusts.
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Elson Floyd receives a C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award
Floyd, then executive vice chancellor, received UNC's Massey Award for service to the University, weeks before leaving for the presidency of Western Michigan University.
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The Old Tavern and White Oak Grove School join the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the log Old Tavern at 419 Hillsborough Street, Chapel Hill, and the White Oak Grove School for Black children near Cedar Grove on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
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The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board adopts its school assignment and reassignment policy
Policy 4150 set the rules the district followed when it redrew attendance lines. As revised on April 2, 2009, its priorities for reassignment were walk zones, full use of buildings and equity, meaning balanced family income and achievement among schools and short travel times.
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Hickory Grove School near Carrboro joins the Study List
On April 8, 1999 the committee approved Hickory Grove School, listed on the agenda under Carrboro, with the day's other central and southeastern public requests. Staff had recommended all of them except a Chatham County house.
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Chancellor Michael Hooker dies in office
Hooker was chief administrative officer at Chapel Hill from July 1, 1995 until his death on June 29, 1999. He was found to have lymphoma in January 1999 and took medical leave from April, when William O. McCoy served as acting chancellor.
- 2000s
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Central Elementary School gets a second large addition
Around 2000 another large addition was built across the center of Central Elementary School's front on Hayes Street in Hillsborough, following the 1975 addition by John James Croft.
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Stella Nickerson serves as interim principal of Frank Porter Graham Elementary
After eighteen or nineteen years as a classroom teacher at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School and ten years as an assistant principal, Stella Nickerson served as interim principal in the 2000-2001 school year.
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James Moeser serves as ninth chancellor at Chapel Hill
Moeser, a music scholar who had led the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, became chancellor on August 15, 2000. His years included the Carolina First campaign, which raised 2.38 billion dollars; he announced in September 2007 that he would step down on June 30, 2008.
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Orange County and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools put the McDougle branch library under contract
A contract between Orange County and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Board of Education made the public library in the McDougle schools a branch of the Orange County Public Library, with a county-employed branch librarian. The schools provided space and utilities, the county paid for furnishings, insurance, janitorial service and staff stipends, and branch hours were not to overlap school hours.
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Emma Torian Jones gives her home lot beside Ridge Road School to Jones Grove Church
Emma Torian Jones donated the lot west of the school, where she and her husband had lived since the 1960s, to Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church; the house was later torn down, returning the ground to woods. The Torian heirs had also deeded the school parcel to the church.
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North Carolina Children's and Women's Hospitals open
UNC Hospitals opened freestanding women's and children's hospitals in 2001. The Women's Hospital houses labor and delivery, operating rooms and ambulatory clinics, and the Children's Hospital holds a 58-bed newborn intensive care nursery.
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Harvey Beech receives the General Alumni Association's Distinguished Service Medal
The General Alumni Association awarded Beech its Distinguished Service Medal in 2002. The citation, read at the Annual Alumni Luncheon, called him the inspiration behind the Black Alumni Reunion and noted the scholarship endowment he set up at the university.
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Frances Hargraves dies at her Caldwell Street home
Frances Neal Hargraves, a retired Chapel Hill-Carrboro teacher and community volunteer, died at her home on Caldwell Street. Her funeral at St. Paul AME Church, where she had taught Sunday school for 53 years, filled the church and its annex, and the church planned a memorial garden in her name.
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Chancellor Moeser announces the Carolina Covenant
The Carolina Covenant promised children of low-income families a chance to graduate from UNC without debt, working 10 to 12 hours a week in a campus work-study job, with grants and scholarships meeting the rest of their need.
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Mel and Zora Rashkis Elementary School is dedicated
Hundreds of students, parents and residents attended the dedication of the district's newest elementary school, which opened that August. The school board named it for Mel and Zora Rashkis for their work with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools since they moved to the area in 1962.
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Randee Haven-O'Donnell is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
After serving on the Carrboro Planning Board and other town advisory boards, Haven-O'Donnell won a seat on the Board of Aldermen in 2005, the first of five consecutive terms. She had moved to Carrboro in 1978 and taught in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
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Hannah Gill founds the Latino Migration Project at UNC
Gill started the Latino Migration Project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to improve public understanding of Latin American migration to North Carolina. The project describes itself as an initiative of INSITE Latin America and the Caribbean.
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UNC holds the first Chuck Stone workshop for high school students
The journalism school's Chuck Stone Program for Diversity in Education and Media held its first workshop for rising high school seniors in 2007, honoring the professor who had retired two years earlier.
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Carrboro High School opens
Carrboro High School on Rock Haven Road was dedicated with a ribbon-cutting on August 23, 2007, and began classes on August 27 with more than 600 students under principal Jeff Thomas. The Carrboro Citizen called it the town's first high school.
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Three alumni recreate the walk attributed to Hinton James and finish at the Old Well
Nick Becketti, Bryan Jones and Whitney Reeds set out from the coast near Wilmington in the summer of 2008 to repeat the roughly 170-mile walk attributed to Hinton James. The university says the two-week trip ended at the Old Well in Chapel Hill.
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Valerie Foushee finishes her UNC degree
Foushee had left the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after two years and returned later to finish, graduating in 2008 with a degree in political science and African and Afro-American studies. She was by then an Orange County commissioner.
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Jay Miller buys the empty Murphey School and begins restoring it
Jay Miller bought the school, vacant since 1986, in March 2008 and began restoring it with the State Historic Preservation Office for use as a retreat center for nonprofit groups and a rental site for events.
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Burma Art Therapy Project begins in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools
The Art Therapy Institute began a school-based art therapy program for adolescent refugees from Burma in partnership with Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and the refugee community in Orange County. A later UNC evaluation estimated that about 400 Burmese families lived in the county.
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Murphey School is listed in the National Register
On August 20, 2009 the National Park Service listed Murphey School near Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
- 2010s
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Local schools and health providers report Burmese, Karen and Chin families moving to Orange County from elsewhere
Although direct refugee arrivals fell to 86 in fiscal year 2010-2011, local schools and health care agencies reported significant in-migration of Burmese, Karen and Chin residents from other counties and states.
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Ralph Frasier speaks at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center
Ralph Frasier, one of UNC's first three Black undergraduates, gave a free public talk in the Hitchcock Room of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. He had left the university in 1958 without a degree.
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Asian Americans are the largest racial minority in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools and in Chapel Hill
By 2012 Asian Americans outnumbered every other minority group in the school district and in the town of Chapel Hill. In 2012-13 they were 15 percent of district students and 31 percent at Seawell Elementary, where many Chinese immigrant families had settled.
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The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board decides to build a new Northside Elementary on the old school's site
The board announced a new elementary school on the grounds of the Northside school that had closed in 1966, to carry the Northside name. Black families in the Northside neighborhood, whose children had been bused to other schools for decades, welcomed it as a return of their school.
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School Board converts Frank Porter Graham Elementary into a Spanish dual-language magnet school
After a district report named serving students with limited English and closing the achievement gap as the main purposes of dual language, and after forums that included sessions for Spanish-speaking and Karen and Burmese families, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board approved converting Frank Porter Graham Elementary into a Spanish-English magnet school. It reopened as the district's first dual-language magnet on August 26, 2013, with more than 500 students.
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William C. Friday dies at his Chapel Hill home
Friday, president of the University of North Carolina from 1956 to 1986 and a longtime Chapel Hill resident, died in his sleep at home on October 12, 2012, at 92.
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The school board votes 5-2 for the attendance plan that fills the new Northside Elementary
After two months of public hearings on four draft plans, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board chose Plan 2.1, which spread at-risk students most evenly among the elementary schools and reassigned about 1,045 children. Most came from the two schools nearest Northside, including crowded Seawell Elementary, and the whole Section 74A area north of town was moved.
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A new Northside Elementary opened on the old Training School grounds
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools opened a new Northside Elementary on the former Orange County Training School site. In 2012 neighbors had rallied to make sure the new school kept the Northside name.
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Lee Charter School, the first charter school proposed for Chapel Hill, fails to open
The school, meant to serve minority and low-income students and narrow the achievement gap, had been set to open in fall 2012 and was put off a year while it looked for land and space. It then broke with its parent company and never opened, and most Section 74A families sent their children to Northside.
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Carrboro aldermen declare the town a welcoming community for immigrant children
The Board of Aldermen unanimously passed a resolution declaring Carrboro a welcoming community for minors fleeing violence and affirming immigrant children's right to attend public school regardless of immigration status. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice and the ACLU of North Carolina helped develop it.
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Joal Broun is sworn in to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
The district said Broun, a former Carrboro alderman then directing the state's lobbying compliance division, was sworn in to fill the seat left by Michelle Brownstein's resignation. She had also served on the Orange Water and Sewer Authority board and the Orange County Dispute Settlement Center.
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UNC names scholarships for its first Black undergraduates and other "firsts"
At University Day, UNC named existing grants and fellowships for 21 people who were firsts in its history, among them John L. Brandon, Ralph K. Frasier and LeRoy B. Frasier Jr., its first Black undergraduates.
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The survey proposes adding the Military Academy dining hall and grounds to the Commandant's House listing
The report recommended the academy's surviving frame dining hall on Barracks Road, left out of the Commandant's House nomination, for the Study List as an expansion of that listing, with about 21.5 acres over three parcels. The land keeps the barracks foundation, old tree lines and a daffodil-lined path, and the Office of State Archaeology judged it likely to hold remains of the school. The National Register Advisory Committee added the dining hall and site to the Study List on October 12, 2017.
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The Rocks in Chapel Hill and Cedar Grove School join the Study List
Among nine central and southeastern public requests approved on October 12, 2017 were William C. Coker's house, The Rocks, in Chapel Hill and the Cedar Grove School north of Hillsborough. The same meeting placed the Hillsborough survey's Ja-Max Motor Lodge and Military Academy dining hall site on the list.
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Burwell School Historic Site marks the bicentennial of Elizabeth Keckly
Through 2018 the Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough marked the 200th anniversary of Keckly's birth with an exhibition that included an original copy of her memoir and a replica of a purple velvet dress she made, sewn by local seamstress Karen DeSombre.
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New Hope Elementary starts a Spanish dual-language program in Orange County Schools
After a year and a half of planning, New Hope Elementary opened a 50-50 Spanish-English dual-language program for 48 kindergarten students at the start of the 2018-19 school year, taught on alternating days in English and Spanish. The principal described it as a way for Latino students to take pride in their heritage and keep the Spanish they use with their families.
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Chapel Hill's council accepts the task force plan for a Chapel Hill Nine marker
The council voted unanimously to accept the recommendations for a marker in front of 450 West Franklin Street, where Colonial Drug stood, and sent the plans to the town manager. Mason-Hogans, a task force member, said the marker and the learning around it mattered for young people.
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Joal Broun is elected chair of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
The board elected Broun chair by unanimous vote after chair Margaret Samuels resigned during a recall push over the Glenwood Elementary dual language magnet decision. Mary Ann Wolf took the vice chair seat Broun had held.
- 2020s
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Tressie McMillan Cottom joins the faculty of UNC’s School of Information and Library Science
Sociologist and author Tressie McMillan Cottom joined the UNC School of Information and Library Science as an associate professor and became a senior faculty researcher in the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life.
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The Town of Chapel Hill unveils the Chapel Hill Nine marker at the Colonial Drug site
On the sixtieth anniversary of the sit-in the town dedicated sculptor Stephen Hayes's stone-based marker at 450 West Franklin Street, naming the nine students; four of them, Dave Mason Jr., James Merritt, Douglas Perry and Albert Williams, attended the unveiling.
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COVID-19 transforms Orange County
Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro declared states of emergency on March 13, 2020, and the county and its three towns ordered residents to stay home from March 27. UNC moved undergraduate classes online in August 2020 after campus clusters. The county emergency, extended more than a dozen times, expired on May 1, 2022.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools launches Food for Students meal distribution
CHCCS, the Town of Chapel Hill, PORCH and volunteers began handing out free meals to students as schools closed, starting from about 20 sites. By December 21, 2020 the program had distributed more than 900,000 meals from 37 sites.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and Orange County Schools close under a statewide order
Governor Roy Cooper closed all North Carolina public schools for at least two weeks from Monday, March 16, 2020, shutting both Orange County districts. CHCCS then began online classes for grades 6-12 and sent learning packets home for grades K-5 at the end of March while serving meals to students.
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Orange County Public Library closes its buildings and sets out a free book shelf
With its buildings closed, the library kept the Hillsborough and Carrboro book drops and phone reference running, stopped charging late fees, and from March 18 set out a free book and DVD shelf outside the Main Library in Hillsborough.
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COVID-19 in Orange County
From the first cases in March 2020 to the last emergency measures in 2022: closures, remote school, the health department's response, mutual aid, and the pandemic's unequal weight.
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Cedar Grove School is listed in the National Register
On April 23, 2020 the National Park Service listed Cedar Grove School near Cedar Grove in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Drive-through food distribution at Chapel Hill Public Library serves 576 households
PORCH, the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina and the Town of Chapel Hill ran a drive-through food distribution in the Chapel Hill Public Library's lower parking lot, serving 576 households, or 2,391 people, with about 40 volunteers.
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Orange County Schools votes to open the school year online
The Orange County Schools board voted unanimously to begin the 2020-21 year with remote-only classes for at least the first four weeks, on the recommendation of Superintendent Monique Felder.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools extends online-only classes into
The CHCCS board unanimously accepted interim Superintendent Jim Causby's recommendation to keep classes virtual through at least January 15, 2021. On December 18, 2020 the board kept remote learning in place through at least February.
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UNC reopening produces a COVID-19 outbreak
UNC-Chapel Hill began in-person classes on August 10, 2020, reported four COVID-19 clusters in residence halls, private student housing and a fraternity within days, and on August 17 announced that undergraduate classes would move online from August 19. Campus test positivity rose from 2.8 percent to 13.6 percent in one week.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom wins a MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Foundation named McMillan Cottom a 2020 fellow for her work as a sociologist, writer and public scholar on race, gender, education and digital technology, including her books Lower Ed and Thick. She was an associate professor at UNC’s School of Information and Library Science.
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African, African American, and Diaspora Studies faculty ask the university to take Battle's name off Battle Hall
Faculty of the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, whose offices are in Battle Hall, petitioned to remove Kemp Plummer Battle's name, citing his enslaving of people, his support for secession and his promotion of white supremacy. The university's Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward endorsed the request.
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Sartin School, a 1930s school for Black children, is taken apart and removed
The frame Sartin School, built as a one-room school by R. J. Forrest in 1932 and given a second room in 1935, was dismantled and carried off its site in 2021, leaving Ridge Road among the very few such schools still standing in the county.
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Orange County commissioners proclaim Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett Day
The Board of County Commissioners unanimously proclaimed Wednesday, January 20, 2021 Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett Day, honoring the county native who grew up in Cedar Grove and attended Orange County Schools; she accepted by Zoom.
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Orange County Schools students return to classrooms
Kindergarten and first-grade students returned for hybrid in-person classes on January 25, 2021. Students in grades 2-12 followed in two rotating cohorts on March 8 and March 15, a month earlier than planned, after Senate Bill 37 required districts to offer in-person instruction.
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Carrboro proclaims Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett Day
Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle proclaimed January 26, 2021 Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett Day, after Hillsborough and Orange County had honored the Orange High graduate for her COVID-19 vaccine work.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools students return for hybrid classes
The CHCCS board voted unanimously on March 4, 2021 to begin hybrid in-person instruction on March 22, nearly a month before the April 19 start it had approved in February. Students attended in cohorts two days a week, and roughly half could remain fully remote.
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Orange County Public Library reopens its Main Library building
After more than a year of closure and appointment-only curbside pickup, the Main Library reopened with distancing measures under the county's plan to reopen facilities through July 2021. In Carrboro the branch at McDougle School closed on June 13 and the Cybrary opened for browsing on August 6.
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Joal Broun is sworn in as a district court judge
Secretary of State Elaine Marshall administered the oath to Broun, who left her post as the department's lobbying compliance division director and gave up her school board seat to take the judgeship.
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Carrboro unveils a truth plaque naming Green Cordal and Benjamin Craig
The Town of Carrboro unveiled its second truth plaque at the former freedmen's school site on North Merritt Mill Road, next to St. Paul AME Church. The text reads that Green Cordal and Benjamin Craig, freed from bondage, purchased this land for a Freedman School and church, and that with funds from the Society of Friends they built a schoolhouse that served hundreds of free Black children and adults.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board honors Stanley Vickers and his family on the 60th anniversary of his court victory
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board passed a resolution recognizing the Vickers family's work to integrate the schools. Vickers, then in his 70s, attended and recalled eating lunch and going to gym alone as one of the first Black students at the junior high.
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UNC renames Aycock Residence Hall for Hortense McClinton
On the chancellor's recommendation the trustees voted to put McClinton's name on the residence hall that had carried Governor Charles B. Aycock's name until it was removed in July 2020. The Carr Building became the Henry Owl Building the same day.
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Orange County lifts its indoor mask mandate
Orange County and its three towns ended the indoor mask requirement on March 7, 2022. UNC-Chapel Hill lifted its campus mandate the same day, and Orange County Schools planned to make masks optional on March 10.
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Danita Mason-Hogans receives a national fellowship for a critical oral history of Chapel Hill and UNC
The Oral History Association named her one of eleven year-long fellows funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Her project is a critical oral history of Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina.
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Hortense McClinton Residence Hall is dedicated
UNC dedicated Hortense McClinton Residence Hall and the Henry Owl Building in a ceremony, and the School of Social Work held a dinner for McClinton, then 103, that launched a legacy scholarship in her name.
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A Blue Cross NC Foundation grant expands Building Integrated Communities
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation awarded $1.55 million to the program, with further money to community partners, naming Gill as principal investigator. Chapel Hill received a separate three-year grant of $375,000 from the same foundation for its own immigrant and refugee work.
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The ArtsCenter moves to Roberson Street
The ArtsCenter opened its new home at 400 Roberson Street in downtown Carrboro with a parade and ribbon-cutting on August 26, 2023, after moving from 300 East Main Street. The renovated former office building, nearly 18,000 square feet, added a larger ceramics studio, maker spaces, a black-box theater and a youth education center.
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Ridge Road School is listed in the National Register
On December 12, 2023 the National Park Service listed Ridge Road School near Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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A $10 million gift creates the O.B. Hardison Scholarship at UNC
Stephen Israel, a 1966 graduate whose life was changed by Hardison's courses, gave $10 million for undergraduate humanities scholarships named for his former professor.
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Drakeford Library Complex opens
Orange County's Southern Branch Library opened in February 2025 in the $42 million Drakeford Library Complex at 203 South Greensboro Street in Carrboro, replacing the Carrboro Cybrary, which had closed on January 31, 2025. The building, named for Robert Drakeford, Carrboro's first Black mayor, also houses town recreation offices and WCOM Radio.
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Hilliard Caldwell dies at 88
Caldwell, who advised the Lincoln High School students who held Chapel Hill's first sit-in in 1960 and later served on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, died on September 6, 2025. The town issued a statement remembering his service and courage.
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The Burwell School is renamed the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School
The Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough took the name the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School in late August 2026, honoring the woman the Burwells held in slavery in the house from 1835. Site director Elizabeth Hays said the aim was to hold the site's histories together.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
