Chronology

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1. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

2. 1866
   Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal secure land for a Black school

   In 1866 Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought a plot of land near what is now the corner of West Franklin Street and Merritt Mill Road and gave part of it to the Philadelphia Quakers for a school for freedpeople and the rest for the church that became St. Paul AME. In the spring of 1867 the Friends reported that the freedmen were putting up a school and house of worship on a fifty-dollar lot.

3. January 5, 1893
   Life event · Carrboro Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten was born on Lloyd Street in what became Carrboro

   Elizabeth Nevills, later known as Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, was born near the railroad tracks on what is now Lloyd Street in Carrboro. As a child she wrote “Freight Train,” which Folkways released on record in 1958 and which carried her into the folk revival.

4. Recent decades · 1976–2026

5. 1976–1980
   Appointment, election or service · Carrboro Richard Knight Jr. becomes Carrboro's first Black town manager

   Carrboro hired Richard Knight Jr. as its first Black town manager, and he served from 1976 to 1980. He left to become deputy city manager of Gainesville, Florida, and later became the first Black city manager of Dallas.

6. June 20, 2017
   Construction or physical change · Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood Ground was broken on the sewer extension to the historic Rogers Road area

   Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, OWASA and RENA held a groundbreaking at the RENA Community Center on Edgar Street after the sanitary sewer design was finished and a contractor hired. Construction was to begin in July 2017 and run 10 to 12 months.

7. April 9, 2024
   Law, policy or court · Carrboro Carrboro adopts a townwide Language Access Plan

   The Town Council adopted a Language Access Plan naming six community languages (Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Karen, Burmese and Arabic), with Spanish the most spoken. The plan was developed with UNC's Building Integrated Communities program and the Refugee Community Partnership.

8. November 18, 2025
   Law, policy or court · Carrboro Carrboro Town Council reaffirms support for immigrant communities and its 4th Amendment status

   The Town Council passed a resolution by council members Eliazar Posada-Orozco and Cristóbal Palmer condemning discriminatory actions by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and reaffirming Carrboro's status as a 4th Amendment town. The council had voted unanimously for that designation on May 20, 2025.

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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 4, 2026.