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Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–42.Back to highlights
- Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
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Trustees fix the university at Chapel Hill and list its Orange County land donors
Meeting on December 5, 1792, the trustees voted unanimously to place the university at New Hope Chapel Hill and recorded nine donors of Orange County land, among them Matthew McCauley (150 acres) and William McCauley (100 acres). Each donor could have one student educated free of tuition.
Part of The founding of the University and Chapel Hill, 1789–1795 · 48 events
People: Mark Morgan · Christopher Barbee · Colonel John Hogan · William McCauley
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Black workers and campus labor
Enslaved men built and served the university from its first buildings, Wilson Caldwell led its labor force after Reconstruction, and the janitors organized an association in 1930 that became a CIO local in 1942. The university named the laundry for Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark in 1998, dedicated the Unsung Founders Memorial in 2005 and published the names of 119 enslaved workers in 2018.
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Enslaved men owned by contractor James Patterson paint the roof of Old East
James Patterson, the slaveholding contractor who built Old East between 1793 and 1795, reported in a 1795 letter that several of his own enslaved workers had painted the building's roof. Their names were not recorded.
Part of The founding of the University and Chapel Hill, 1789–1795 · 48 events
People: James Patterson
Subject: Old East
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UNC opens to students
The University formally opened at Chapel Hill on a cold, rainy January 15, 1795, with Governor Richard Dobbs Spaight and trustees present, but no students had yet arrived. Hinton James came on February 12, and by March two professors taught 41 students; UNC was the only public university to graduate students in the eighteenth century.
People: Hinton James · David Ker
- Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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Named enslaved workers build the third story of Old East
Bills from William Nichols's 1822 to 1824 enlargement of Old East list enslaved carpenters, bricklayers and laborers including Bob, Henry, Nelson, Allman, Tony, Luke, Isaac and Ned Peek, with their pay due to their owners. One bill from John C. White came to about $395.
People: William Nichols
Subject: Old East
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James, an enslaved college servant, escapes from Chapel Hill
Samuel M. Stewart advertised a $20 reward in the Hillsborough Recorder for James, who had worked four years as a college servant at the university. Stewart thought he was headed for Norfolk or Richmond to reach the free states or Africa through the Colonization Society.
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Professor James Phillips hires David Barham from his owner as a college servant
In 1830 Professor James Phillips hired David Barham from William Barham to work as a college servant. A university account book page from the same year shows students paying a two-dollar fee to compensate the slaveholders whose people were hired as servants.
People: James Phillips
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Enslaved plasterers, masons and laborers work on South Building's new roof
Thomas Waitt's bill for 1837 work on South Building, including its tin roof, lists wages for enslaved plasterers and masons Stewart, Chester, Peter, Calvin and Evans and laborers including Lewis, Tom, Redin, Abraham and Jordan.
People: Thomas Waitt
Subject: South Building
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Brothers Albert and Osborne, enslaved by Dabney Cosby, plaster the lengthened Old East
The additions to Old East and Old West, contracted in December 1844 and finished in 1848, used the labor of Albert and Osborne, brothers enslaved by Dabney Cosby, who plastered the lengthened Old East in 1845 and 1846. Cosby praised Albert's plastering as first-rate work.
People: Albert · Osborne · Dabney Cosby · Alexander Jackson Davis
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First Baptist Church organizes independently
The minute books of the church now called University Baptist record a unanimous vote on September 3, 1865 to let the colored patrons withdraw and organize a church of their own, and note that sixty-one colored members were dismissed that month for the purpose. The new congregation, later First Baptist Church of Chapel Hill, met at first in the old Quaker schoolhouse on Franklin Street under Rev. Eddie H. Cole.
Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 143 events
Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill · University Baptist Church
- Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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The university closes and reopens
Reconstruction Republicans took control of the trustees in 1868 and dismissed the old faculty; Solomon Pool's presidency drew almost no students, and the university closed in February 1871. The legislature revived it in March 1875, Cornelia Phillips Spencer rang the bell, and it reopened in September under a rebuilt faculty.
People: Solomon Pool · Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Kemp Plummer Battle
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The University of North Carolina closes
Under President Solomon Pool and the Reconstruction board of trustees, the university shut down on February 1, 1871, after years of few students, little money and public opposition. It reopened on Monday, September 6, 1875.
People: Solomon Pool
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UNC reopens
The university resumed classes on Monday, September 6, 1875, after more than four years closed, with Charles Phillips as chairman of the faculty, and held a public celebration on September 15. Kemp P. Battle, then secretary of the trustees, was elected president in 1876.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
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The university holds its first summer session, a state normal school for teachers
In the summer of 1877 the university hosted a statewide Summer Normal School, set up by the General Assembly in March 1877 to train white teachers for the common schools. President Kemp Battle and the Board of Education admitted white women to its classes, though state money could not be spent on them.
Subject: University Summer School
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UNC establishes its School of Medicine
UNC began a medical program in 1879.
Subject: UNC School of Medicine
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The university confers an honorary doctorate of laws on Zebulon Vance
The University of North Carolina awarded Vance an honorary LL.D. in 1890, listing him as a student who had entered in 1851.
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Venable and student William R. Kenan Jr. demonstrate calcium carbide in Person Hall
Chemistry professor Francis P. Venable and student William R. Kenan Jr. demonstrated the industrial uses of calcium carbide, the source of acetylene gas, in Person Hall.
People: Francis Preston Venable
Subject: Person Hall
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Edwin Alderman serves as president of the university
Alderman was named president in 1896 and held the office until 1900, when he left to lead Tulane University. His inauguration, first set for University Day 1896, was put off into 1897 because of that year's heated political campaigns.
- Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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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.
People: Edward Kidder Graham · H. V. Wilson · Robert Worth Bingham · Edwin Greenlaw · William de Berniere MacNider
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Frederick Koch reads A Christmas Carol in Gerrard Hall
Koch brought his annual reading of Dickens's A Christmas Carol to UNC when he arrived in 1918. The Raleigh News and Observer described a 1919 reading in Gerrard Hall, with carols by university singing groups in the two intermissions. His reading in Memorial Hall on December 10, 1943 was his 39th annual reading of the Carol, a series he had begun at the University of North Dakota.
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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Guy B. Johnson begins work at the Institute for Research in Social Science
Guy B. Johnson and his wife Guion Griffis Johnson began working at UNC's new Institute for Research in Social Science in 1924. He was one of its original research assistants.
People: Guion Griffis Johnson
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Kay Kyser takes over the UNC campus band from Hal Kemp
Kay Kyser, a UNC student and cheerleader who could not read music, took over leadership of the campus dance band in 1926 when Hal Kemp graduated. The new band held its first rehearsal in Gerrard Hall.
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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William R. Kenan Jr. gives $275,000 for a football stadium
Kenan announced a gift of 275,000 dollars to build Kenan Memorial Stadium in honor of his parents, William Rand and Mary Hargrave Kenan. Construction began in November 1926.
Subject: Kenan Stadium
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The university gives Robert W. Winston an honorary Doctor of Laws
UNC conferred an honorary LL.D. on Robert Watson Winston, class of 1879, in 1929, while he was living and writing in Chapel Hill after his return as a freshman.
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The university gives Charles H. Herty an honorary Doctor of Laws
UNC conferred an honorary LL.D. on Charles Holmes Herty in 1933, seventeen years after he left its chemistry faculty to work in industrial chemistry.
- Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Kay Kyser retires from show business and settles in Chapel Hill
Kay Kyser left radio and television and returned with his wife Georgia to Chapel Hill, where he lived on East Franklin Street for the rest of his life.
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UNC's new dental school building opens with separate facilities for Black and white patients
The School of Dentistry's new building opened with what a university memo called separate, complete facilities for white and Black patients. Publicity photographs showed separate waiting rooms for each race.
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The university gives J. Spencer Love an honorary doctor of laws
J. Spencer Love was among the five people the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gave honorary degrees in 1953, a year whose list also included the poet Robert Frost.
People: Robert Frost
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The first televised ACC regular season game is played at Woollen Gym
Television producer C. D. Chesley brought his cameras into Woollen Gym for Carolina's fourteenth meeting with Clemson, the first regular season ACC game ever televised. McGuire's team won 79-55.
Subject: Woollen Gymnasium
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Karen Parker is arrested at a sit-in at Leo's restaurant
Parker, UNC's first Black woman undergraduate and a CORE member, went with other demonstrators to Leo's, a segregated restaurant in downtown Chapel Hill, where they were arrested and taken to jail. She described it in her diary entry of December 18.
Part of The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 · 25 events
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Realtors steer Howard and Lillian Lee away from white subdivisions
After moving to Chapel Hill for graduate study, Howard and Lillian Lee searched for about six months while realtors hesitated to show them houses in white subdivisions. They bought in Colony Woods, then received threatening calls and had a cross burned on their lawn.
People: Howard N. Lee
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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.
People: Karen Lynn Parker
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Charlie Scott enters UNC as its first Black scholarship athlete
Charlie Scott, a basketball player from Harlem, enrolled at the University of North Carolina in the fall of 1966 as the first Black athlete on scholarship there.
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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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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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The William Rand Kenan Jr. Laboratories of Chemistry are dedicated
The university dedicated the William Rand Kenan Jr. Laboratories of Chemistry, and the chemistry faculty marked the occasion with two days of short courses on their current research.
- Recent decades · 1976–2026
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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.
Part of Black student activism at UNC · 24 events
People: Sonja Haynes Stone
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Charles Kuralt is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Kuralt died on July 4, 1997 and was buried on the UNC campus in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. About 1,600 people attended a memorial service in Memorial Hall, where Hugh Morton and William C. Friday spoke.
People: William C. Friday
Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Memorial Hall
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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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Rebecca Clark's name is added to the Peace and Justice Plaza plaque
Clark, Yonni Chapman, the Rev. Charles M. Jones and Dan Pollitt were honored after their deaths for their work for civil rights, social justice and equality in Chapel Hill. Their names were added to the plaque at Peace and Justice Plaza, in front of the historic post office on Franklin Street.
People: Yonni Chapman · Charles M. Jones · Daniel H. Pollitt
Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza
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William J. Barber II speaks at a rally at Silent Sam on its 100th anniversary
On the Confederate monument's 100th anniversary, William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP, spoke at a rally at its foot organized by the Real Silent Sam Committee, saying the statue had never been silent.
Part of Silent Sam · 20 events
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University Archives publishes the names of 119 enslaved people who built and worked at the university
Drawing on research by archivists, historians and students in Jim Leloudis's fall 2017 History 398 class, the archives listed 119 enslaved people who built and labored at the university from 1795 to 1865, including November Caldwell and David Barham.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 4, 2026.
