Chronology

Wilson Caldwell resigns from the university and founds a school for Black children

In 1869 Wilson Caldwell, who had worked at the university as an enslaved servant and janitor, resigned and started a school for children of color in Chapel Hill.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 143 events

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

Eben and Ruby Merritt open a gas station on the Pittsboro Road

Eben and Ruby Merritt began running an Esso gas station on the Pittsboro Road south of Chapel Hill in 1929 and kept it for nearly fifty years. It is the business that became Merritt's Store and Grill.

People: Eben G. Merritt

Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill

Robert Seymour becomes the first pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church

Robert Seymour came to Chapel Hill in 1959 as the first minister of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, organized the year before. He led it until 1988.

Part of Binkley Baptist and the Community Church of Chapel Hill · 38 events

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.

Part of The Hargraves Center and Chapel Hill’s Negro Community Center · 16 events

Subject: Hargraves Community Center

The Woods family takes over the King Street hardware store that becomes Dual Supply

Wesley Woods, who had worked in the West King Street store when it was a Western Auto, bought the business and renamed it Dual Supply. His family ran it from 1973.

Robin and Bob Britt buy Merritt's store from the Merritt family

Robin and Bob Britt bought the South Columbia Street store from the Merritts in 1991. Robin Britt's BLT for her husband's lunch grew into the sandwich trade that made Merritt's Store and Grill a Chapel Hill landmark.

Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill

Carrboro formed the New Horizons task force for the Rogers Road area

Carrboro created the New Horizons task force to serve residents of the Rogers Road area it was annexing. The town's Rogers Road sidewalk and bus stop project, begun in 2018, grew out of the task force's work.

Tom Stevens becomes mayor of Hillsborough

Tom Stevens became Hillsborough's mayor in 2005 and held the office for seven terms.

Cal Horton retires after sixteen years as Chapel Hill's town manager

Horton retired in 2006 after the longest tenure of any Chapel Hill town manager. At his request, money raised in his honor went to a town award for employees who have given at least ten years of exceptional service, now the Cal Horton Service Award.

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.

Part of Latino migration to Carrboro and Chapel Hill · 30 events

The Robert and Pearl Seymour Center opens on Homestead Road

The Chapel Hill senior center that Robert Seymour founded opened in a new building on Homestead Road in 2007 and was named for him and his wife, Pearl.

Radius Pizzeria opens in the old savings and loan building on North Churton Street

Mick and Kate Carroll opened Radius Pizzeria, later Radius Pizzeria & Pub, at 112 North Churton Street in downtown Hillsborough.

Damon Seils joins Carrboro's governing board after a special election

Seils won a seat on Carrboro's board in a special election in April 2013. He was re-elected and served on the board until he became mayor in December 2021.

Lydia Lavelle takes office as Carrboro mayor, the first openly lesbian mayor in North Carolina

Lydia Lavelle, who ran unopposed for mayor in the fall 2013 election, was sworn in on December 3, 2013 as North Carolina's first openly lesbian mayor. Aldermen Randee Haven-O'Donnell, Sammy Slade and Jacquelyn Gist were sworn in for new terms at the same meeting.

People: Lydia Lavelle · Jacquelyn Gist · Randee Haven-O'Donnell · Sammy Slade

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.

Frank Heath tells the Carrboro Board of Aldermen that the Cat's Cradle has outgrown its building

At the second public hearing on a proposed arts and innovation center and hotel at East Main Street, Heath said the Cat's Cradle and the ArtsCenter were both too big for their buildings and that expansion had become urgent. He called it a dilemma for a small town with two successful arts organizations.

Part of The Cat’s Cradle and the “Chapel Hill sound” of the 1990s · 30 events

People: Lydia Lavelle

Subject: Cat’s Cradle · The ArtsCenter

Cedar Grove Community Center opens with a self-service library station

Orange County dedicated the renovated Cedar Grove Community Center, once home to the Cedar Grove Negro School, in June 2016, with a self-serve library station beside the building. The $180,000 kiosk offered automated borrowing in northern Orange County without a staffed branch; the county's FY 2021–22 budget ended support for it, citing poor performance and low patron use.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools · Orange County Public Library

Chapel Hill is selected for a Building Integrated Communities partnership

The Latino Migration Project chose Chapel Hill, along with Siler City, for two years of community planning support to help the town work with foreign-born residents. Town manager Roger Stancil said the town already had policies meant to make the community inclusive.

Quintana Stewart becomes Orange County's health director

After a nationwide search, the Orange County Board of Health chose Stewart, then assistant health director at the Forsyth County Department of Public Health. She started on December 18, 2017, succeeding Colleen Bridger, who had left in February 2017 for a post in San Antonio.

Carrboro broke ground on the Rogers Road sidewalk and bus stop project

A $1.37 million project put a five-foot sidewalk from the west side of Rogers Road to Meadow Run Court, together with a new bus pad and shelter. Ground was broken in late June 2018 and construction began that fall. The project traced back to a New Horizons task force created in 2005.

Danita Mason-Hogans presents Chapel Hill's civil rights timeline to the town council

The Historic Civil Rights Commemorations Task Force, created by Mayor Pam Hemminger in the fall of 2017, gave the council a timeline of people, places and events in the town's civil rights struggle. Mason-Hogans, one of its leaders, told the council that who tells the history matters as much as the history itself.

People: Pam Hemminger

Carrboro created a zoning overlay district to protect the Lloyd-Broad neighborhood

At residents' request the Board of Aldermen set square-footage and parking limits and a cap of four unrelated occupants per household for the historically African American neighborhood, which had seen more student rentals and larger replacement houses. New building had to comply at once and existing houses were given three years.

People: Lydia Lavelle

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.

Part of Chapel Hill Nine sit-in, 1960

Chapel Hill adopts a Building Integrated Communities action plan

Following the 2018 community assessment, the town produced a 34-point plan covering public transportation, relations with law enforcement, resident leadership, housing access and communication in other languages. The town went on to translate documents into Spanish, Mandarin, Karen and Burmese and to add interpretation at meetings.

Chapel Hill adopts a Language Access Plan covering Karen and Burmese

The Chapel Hill Town Council unanimously adopted a Language Access Plan in November 2019, following the 2018 Building Integrated Communities process in which immigrant and refugee residents named language access as a key need. The plan covered the town's leading non-English languages, Burmese, Karen, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.

The Chapel Hill Nine marker site is dedicated on the 59th anniversary of the sit-in

The town dedicated the marker site at 5 p.m. in front of the West End Wine Bar, where Colonial Drug had stood, and a march to First Baptist Church followed for a community celebration. Mason-Hogans, a main proponent of the marker, spoke about the task force's work.

Part of Chapel Hill Nine sit-in, 1960

Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill

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.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Carrboro's Board of Aldermen votes to rename itself the Town Council

After 50 years as the Board of Aldermen, a name the General Assembly approved in 1969, Carrboro's governing board passed a resolution changing its title to Town Council as part of making the town code gender neutral. It had tentatively approved the change after a public hearing on November 12. Randee Haven-O'Donnell said members who had sat on the board had felt the pinch of being called aldermen.

Cat's Cradle plays its last shows before the pandemic shutdown

Destroyer played the main room at 300 East Main Street on March 11, 2020, and Songs From the Road Band played the Back Room on March 13, the club's last shows before COVID-19 closed it. Heath said he began rescheduling on the night of March 11, when the NBA suspended its season, and the March 14 shows were cancelled.

Part of COVID-19 in Orange County, 2020–2022 · 32 events

Subject: Cat’s Cradle

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.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro declare a COVID-19 state of emergency

Orange County government and the Towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro declared states of emergency to prepare for COVID-19, allowing emergency procedures and funding. The county declaration, extended more than a dozen times, stayed in force until May 1, 2022.

People: Penny Rich · Lydia Lavelle

Orange County requires face coverings

Orange County and its towns extended the local state of emergency through August 31, 2020 and required face coverings from 5 p.m. on June 12 when people could not keep six feet apart.

People: Jenn Weaver

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.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Family and community march to remember James Cates on the 50th anniversary

A candlelit march went from Hargraves Community Center to St. Joseph CME Church and down Franklin Street to Peace and Justice Plaza, where the Town of Chapel Hill invited residents to leave flowers and messages for the Cates family. Mayor Pam Hemminger pledged to work with the family and UNC to investigate the killing.

People: Danita Mason-Hogans · James L. Cates Jr. · Pam Hemminger

Subject: Hargraves Community Center

Stewart receives the Chapel Hill-Carrboro chamber's citizenship and service award

The Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce gave Stewart its Duke Energy Citizenship and Service Award in 2021, during the county's COVID-19 vaccination campaign. She later received the Ron Levine Public Health Legacy Award in 2022 and a National Association of Counties award in 2025.

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.

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.

People: Lydia Lavelle

Health department vaccinates its first recipients at drive-through clinics

By early January 2021 the Orange County Health Department had vaccinated about 1,000 Phase 1a personnel at drive-through clinics in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill and opened sign-ups for residents 75 and older, more than 4,200 of whom registered.

People: Quintana Stewart

Hillsborough renames Thomas Ruffin Street as Lydia Lane

The Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to rename the street for Lydia, the enslaved woman shot by John Mann in the case Thomas Ruffin decided. All twelve households on the street had petitioned for a new name and had first proposed Hope Lane; Commissioner Mark Bell suggested using Lydia's name, and Commissioner Kathleen Ferguson made the motion to approve.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Gaps in vaccination among Black and Hispanic residents reported

Chapelboro reported that Black residents were 12.4 percent of Orange County's population but 9 percent of those vaccinated, and Hispanic residents 8.6 percent and 5.5 percent. The county was working with church leaders and advocates in a Human Services Consulting Group and had held clinics at the Hargraves Community Center and in Cedar Grove.

People: Renée Price

Subject: Hargraves Community Center

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.

People: Joal Hall Broun

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

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.

Subject: Orange County Public Library · McDougle School

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.

People: Benjamin Craig · Jacquelyn Gist

Orange County reinstates an indoor mask mandate

As the delta variant spread, Orange County and the Towns of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough required masks inside buildings and businesses from 5 p.m. on August 11, 2021.

People: Lydia Lavelle · Quintana Stewart · Jenn Weaver

Orange County Public Library ends overdue fines

Orange County commissioners approved a fine-free model for the county library, and overdue fines ended the next day. Library staff had found that fines fell hardest on residents facing economic hardship; charges for lost or damaged items continued. The recommendation came out of a strategic planning team organized by assistant library director Erin Sapienza.

People: Renée Price · Erin Sapienza

Subject: Orange County Public Library

Chapel Hill Public Library webinar marks the 51st anniversary of the Cates killing

The Chapel Hill Public Library hosted a webinar in which family and friends, including state Senator Valerie Foushee, a first cousin of Cates, reflected on his life and on the failures that followed his death.

People: Valerie Foushee

Subject: Chapel Hill Public Library

Carrboro honors Jacquelyn Gist after 32 years on its governing board

Gist, who lost her seat in the 2021 municipal election, was honored by the council for more than three decades of service. Kept away by COVID-19 concerns, she sent a recorded statement saying she had spent 32 years working so that everyone who came to Carrboro would feel the same sense of place and home she had found there.

Carrboro honors Lydia Lavelle as Damon Seils is sworn in as mayor

At the council's meeting the town honored Lavelle for her four terms as mayor, and state senator Valerie Foushee administered the oath of office to her successor, Damon Seils. Randee Haven-O'Donnell, Barbara Foushee and Danny Nowell began council terms at the same meeting.

Part of Carrboro’s LGBTQ municipal firsts · 15 events

People: Valerie Foushee · Randee Haven-O'Donnell · Barbara Foushee · Damon Seils

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.

People: Quintana Stewart

Orange County's COVID-19 state of emergency expires

The county's COVID-19 emergency declaration, in force since March 13, 2020 and extended more than a dozen times, expired at 5 p.m. on May 1, 2022, making it the longest-running state of emergency in county history.

People: Quintana Stewart

Chapel Hill names the Hargraves Center gym for Nate Davis

The Town Council unanimously approved naming the Northside Gym at the Hargraves Community Center for Davis, the center's director for more than three decades, and its indoor court for Fred Battle, director from 1970 to 1987.

People: Fred Battle

Subject: Hargraves Community Center

Hillsborough tribute remembers John Blackfeather Jeffries

The Occaneechi Band, the arts group Spirit Freedom and the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau held a tribute to Jeffries at the Passmore Center in Hillsborough. Speakers included former mayor Tom Stevens and tribal chair Tony Hayes.

People: Tom Stevens

Soil collection ceremony at the Orange County courthouse honors Cyrus Guy and four other 1869 lynching victims

The Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition held a soil collection ceremony for Washington Morrow, Wright Malone, Daniel Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow and Cyrus Guy, all lynched in 1869. One jar for each man was to go to the Equal Justice Initiative's memorial collection in Montgomery, Alabama, and a second jar was to stay in Orange County.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 36 events

People: Daniel Morrow · Jefferson Morrow · Washington Morrow · Wright Malone · Thomas Jefferson Morrow

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Sammy Slade announces he will not seek reelection to the Carrboro Town Council

As candidate filing opened, Slade said he would step back after fourteen years, writing that he had believed local action was where representation could happen most authentically but that local government, operating within the same system, was no longer where he could help mitigate climate change.

EMPOWERment broke ground on PEACH apartments at the former Pine Knolls Community Center

The nonprofit began building 10 debt-free apartments for households earning 30 percent or less of area median income at 107 Johnson Street, where Ted Parrish had run the independent Pine Knolls Community Center. It had raised $3.5 million for the project.

Part of Preserving affordable housing · 34 events

Barbara Foushee is sworn in as Carrboro's first Black woman mayor

Barbara Foushee, a council member since 2017, won the November 2023 mayoral election unopposed and took office as the first Black woman mayor of Carrboro and its second Black mayor after Robert Drakeford. She was re-elected in November 2025.

People: Barbara Foushee

Carrboro backs a study of turning the old University Railroad line into a greenway

The Town Council unanimously approved an agreement to study converting the 11-mile rail corridor, which still carries coal to UNC's cogeneration plant, into a multi-use trail once the plant stops using coal.

Buckhorn Flea Market closes on Buckhorn Road

The Buckhorn Flea Market on Buckhorn Road in western Orange County, known to many Spanish speakers as La Pulga de Mebane, closed after about four decades when a trucking company bought the land. Its 300 to 500 weekend vendors were largely Latino immigrants, and the Mebane City Council voted on July 1 to annex and rezone the property for a truck terminal.

Radius Pizzeria & Pub closes after more than eleven years

Owners Kate and Mick Carroll closed Radius Pizzeria & Pub at 112 North Churton Street on December 29, 2024, saying they wanted more time with their family.

Randee Haven-O'Donnell announces she will not seek reelection to the Carrboro Town Council

Ending twenty years on the town's governing board, Haven-O'Donnell said she was encouraging new voices and would turn to organizing and advocacy on reproductive rights, tenants' rights, stormwater, water quality and PFAS pollution. Chapelboro noted that during her service the council approved the South Green development, a community safety task force and greenway projects.

Dual Supply puts up a going-out-of-business sign

Dual Supply, the downtown hardware store at 115 West King Street, began a closing sale set to run until the shop closed at the end of September 2026.

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.

Subject: Burwell School