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Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–32.Back to highlights
- Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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Trustee William Polk hires out five enslaved men to build Old West
Jourdan, Jim, Stephen, Charles and Joe, men enslaved by William Polk, worked on the construction of Old West, then called New College. By a settlement of May 22, 1823, the university had paid Polk $600 for their labor.
Part of Black workers and campus labor · 56 events
Subject: Old West
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James Strudwick Smith buys Harriet, aged fifteen, as Mary Ruffin Smith's maid
James Strudwick Smith bought Harriet, fifteen years old by the deed, from William Kell of Orange County to be his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith's maid. The family then lived in Hillsborough and enslaved about thirty people at a time.
Part of Slavery in Orange County · 189 events
People: James Strudwick Smith
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William Horn Battle moves his family to Chapel Hill and buys a house beside the campus
Judge William H. Battle moved his family from Raleigh to Chapel Hill in 1843 so his sons could attend the university. He bought a house near the campus and enlarged it, adding quarters for the people the family enslaved.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: Senlac (Battle house)
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Harriet, enslaved by the Smith family in Hillsborough, gives birth to Cornelia after Sidney Smith rapes her
Harriet, bought by James Strudwick Smith in 1834 as a maid for his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith, was raped by his son Sidney and gave birth to Cornelia in 1844, while the family's home was in Hillsborough. Cornelia's granddaughter Pauli Murray told the story in Proud Shoes.
Part of Slavery in Orange County · 189 events
People: James Strudwick Smith · Mary Ruffin Smith · Pauli Murray · Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald
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James Strudwick Smith sells Harriet, Julius and Cornelia to Mary Ruffin Smith
Shielding his property from creditors, James Strudwick Smith passed most of the family's holdings to his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith, including Harriet and her children Julius and Cornelia, whom he sold to her in 1845. Cornelia had been born in 1844 after Sidney Smith raped Harriet.
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The Smiths leave Hillsborough for Price Creek Plantation near Chapel Hill
After Cornelia's birth the Smiths sold their Hillsborough house and moved to the more remote Price Creek Plantation, about 1,500 acres southwest of Chapel Hill, where building of the main house, Oakland, began in 1845. Harriet and her children moved with them.
People: James Strudwick Smith
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Enslaved workers build and tend the Battle household in Chapel Hill
Letters between Lucy and William H. Battle in March 1845 describe enslaved men at their Chapel Hill house: Ben planted shrubs and flowers, Harry worked on the outbuildings and was hired out, and Billy was also at work. The well-house, servants' houses, barn and bath house were built almost entirely by enslaved labor.
Part of Slavery in Orange County · 189 events
People: David L. Swain
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Albert joins his brother Osborne to plaster the halls at the university
Cosby sent Albert from Smithfield in Virginia to Chapel Hill, where Osborne was already at work on the additions to Old East and Old West. Albert carried a letter to university president David L. Swain saying he came to help his brother plaster the halls and would judge the sand to be used together with Osborne.
Part of Black workers and campus labor · 56 events
People: Dabney Cosby · David L. Swain
- Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Kemp Plummer Battle buys his father's Chapel Hill house and names it Senlac
Returning to Chapel Hill in 1876 to become university president, Battle bought the family house from his father, added a one-story wing on each side and named it Senlac. The house stands on Battle Lane.
People: William Horn Battle
Subject: Senlac (Battle house)
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The university offers Mary Ruffin Smith's Jones Grove tract for sale in lots
A committee of Kemp P. Battle, John Manning and A. H. Merritt advertised for sale, in lots, the 1,500-acre Jones Grove tract just over the line in Chatham County that Mary Ruffin Smith had left the university. The sales took years and brought about $15,000, part of it later lent to start Chapel Hill's first electric plant.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle · John Manning
- Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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John Wilson begins designing UNC's Confederate monument
After the monument committee weighed competing designs, it chose Canadian sculptor John Wilson's design for the Confederate soldier statue planned for the UNC campus. Wilson began the work in 1910, using sixteen-year-old Harold Langlois of Boston as his model.
Part of Construction and dedication of Silent Sam, 1913
People: Francis Preston Venable
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Orange County's new Board of Health orders churches, schools and theatres closed and forbids all meetings
After the state Council of Defense warned county chairmen of the spread of Spanish influenza, they formed a County Board of Health, which on October 7 ordered the closing of all churches, schools and theatres and forbade meetings of every kind, the disease having already broken out in the community. Red Cross members carried most of the relief work that followed.
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Acting president Marvin Hendrix Stacy dies of influenza
Stacy, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and chairman of the faculty with a president's powers since Graham's death, died on Tuesday morning after several days' serious illness, the second university head lost to the pandemic in three months. The pandemic led the university to appoint its first university physician, Eric Alonzo Abernethy.
People: Marvin Hendrix Stacy · Eric A. Abernethy
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President Frank Porter Graham refuses to cancel Langston Hughes's Chapel Hill reading
After Contempo printed Hughes's "Christ in Alabama" and his Scottsboro essay, Graham and town officials received a flood of letters calling Hughes sacrilegious and demanding the engagement be canceled. Graham did not interfere, and the reading went on as planned.
People: Frank Porter Graham
- Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Dean Brandis handles the applications of Pauli Murray and three other Black students to the law school
After the trustees left admissions to each professional school's dean, Brandis wrote Chancellor R. B. House about four Black applicants, Pauli Murray, J. Kenneth Lee, Harvey E. Beech and William C. Chance Jr., and on June 6 told Murray the school offered no graduate law courses. The UNC Libraries exhibit reads these letters as showing the law school resisting integration.
Part of Desegregating the University of North Carolina, 1951–1955 · 18 events
People: Pauli Murray · R. B. House · J. Kenneth Lee · Harvey E. Beech
Subject: UNC School of Law
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Chapel Hill freedom movement
Nine Lincoln High students began Chapel Hill's sit-ins at Colonial Drug on February 28, 1960. Through 1963 and 1964 Black residents and UNC students picketed, marched and sat in, and held a Holy Week fast at the post office, but the aldermen narrowly rejected a public accommodations ordinance and many businesses stayed segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Floyd McKissick sends organizers to Chapel Hill and defends arrested demonstrators
As head of CORE's Durham office, McKissick sent organizer Quinton Baker to Chapel Hill in 1963 to teach nonviolence and demonstration tactics, and he acted as attorney for many demonstrators arrested there. Letters to him in 1964 include one written from the Orange County jail.
Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 44 events
People: John Dunne · Quinton Baker
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The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations
Marches, sit-ins and arrests over segregated businesses from 1963 into 1964, the aldermen's refusal of a public accommodations ordinance, the Holy Week fast, and the Watts Restaurant protests and the Klopfer speedy-trial case that grew out of them.
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Speaker Ban controversy
The General Assembly passed the Speaker Ban on June 26, 1963, barring known Communists and people who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment from speaking on state campuses. In March 1966 Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker spoke to UNC students from the Franklin Street side of the wall, and a federal court struck the law down on February 19, 1968.
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Stuart Matthews and Gary Waller write to Chancellor Sitterson inviting Herbert Aptheker
On the day the full board of trustees adopted new speaker regulations, Matthews and Waller wrote to Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson for the UNC Chapel Hill chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, asking that Herbert Aptheker be allowed to speak on campus about the war in Vietnam on March 9. The letter set out his publications, speaking engagements and his Supreme Court passport case.
Part of Wall speeches at the campus line, 1966 · 19 events
People: Gary Waller · J. Carlyle Sitterson · Herbert Aptheker
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Gary Waller becomes chairman of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society
A UNC Libraries exhibit states that Waller, a graduate student in the Department of Sociology, was vice chairman of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became chairman when Jim McCorkel resigned on February 2, 1966 to spend more time on his graduate studies.
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Student leaders ask the chancellor to let Wilkinson and Aptheker speak on campus
Paul Dickson and the heads of Carolina Forum, the YMCA, the YWCA, Di-Phi, the Carolina Political Union and SDS wrote to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson asking that Wilkinson speak on March 23 and Aptheker on March 25, or on later dates.
Part of Speaker Ban controversy, 1963–1968 · 31 events
People: J. Carlyle Sitterson · Paul Dickson III · George E. Nicholson III · Robert S. Powell Jr. · James A. Medford · Eunice H. Milton · John E. Greenbacker Jr. · Eric Van Loon · Gary Waller · Stuart Matthews
Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · University YMCA
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UNC food workers' strike
On February 23, 1969 food service workers at UNC's Lenoir Hall left their counters and sat down at the cafeteria tables, and by the next morning nearly 100 dining hall employees had refused to report for work. The strike ended on March 21 when the University agreed to raise the hourly minimum from $1.60 to $1.80, pay roughly $180,000 in back wages, and appoint a Black supervisor.
Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 13 events
People: Mary Smith · Elizabeth Brooks · J. Carlyle Sitterson · Robert W. Scott · Julius L. Chambers · Preston Dobbins
Subject: Lenoir Hall
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UNC hands campus dining to the SAGA Food Service contract
Two months after settling the spring strike the University signed a contract with SAGA Food Services on May 19, 1969, ending its own management of campus dining. SAGA laid off many temporary and part-time workers within weeks, which set up the second strike that autumn.
Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 13 events
Subject: Lenoir Hall
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UNC foodworkers strike a second time
About 250 of UNC's 275 cafeteria workers, organized as the UNC Non-Academic Employees Union, struck SAGA Food Services on November 7, 1969 over pay, job reclassification, and the firing of workers for union activity. They voted on November 21 to affiliate with AFSCME, and the strike was settled in December after Ralph Abernathy visited the strikers and Black students from across the state threatened to converge on the campus.
Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 13 events
People: J. Carlyle Sitterson · Mary Smith · Elizabeth Brooks
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Protesters stop Klan leader David Duke from speaking in Memorial Hall
Black students filled the pit of Memorial Hall and kept Ku Klux Klan representative David Duke, invited by the Union Forum, from giving his speech. Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor called the disruption a transgression of one of the university's highest traditions.
Subject: Memorial Hall
- Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Pauli Murray celebrates her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross
Murray, newly ordained an Episcopal priest, celebrated her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the invitation of the rector Peter James Lee, who cited her family's connection to the parish. Her grandmother Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald had been baptized in the same chapel on December 20, 1854.
People: Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
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Pauli Murray declines an honorary degree from UNC
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor wrote to Murray on February 10, 1978 offering her an honorary Doctor of Laws at the commencement of May 14, 1978. Murray declined, citing the University's dispute with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare over dismantling segregation and her refusal to share the platform with Governor Jim Hunt.
People: N. Ferebee Taylor
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Ellie Kinnaird is elected to the North Carolina Senate
Kinnaird left the Carrboro mayor's office for the state Senate, where she sat from 1997 until 2013 representing a district that included Orange County. She had earned a law degree from North Carolina Central University while serving as mayor.
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UNC retires the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award after Yonni Chapman's campaign
Chancellor James Moeser retired the Bell Award, given yearly since 1994 to a woman for outstanding contributions to the university, after graduate student Yonni Chapman led a campaign against it over Spencer's white supremacist and sexist views.
People: James Moeser · Cornelia Phillips Spencer
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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.
