Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.
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.
After Chancellor Sitterson closed Lenoir Hall on March 5 during the foodworkers' strike, Governor Bob Scott ordered it reopened, sent at least 50 state patrolmen to Chapel Hill and mobilized a National Guard unit in Durham. The dining hall opened the next morning with more than 40 riot-equipped troopers and about 25 Chapel Hill police at its entrances while as many as 300 people picketed.
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.
On the strike's 24th day two union officials and a striking worker were arrested at Lenoir Dining Hall in the morning. Later that day Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson said the University would subsidize any workers SAGA did not rehire, after efforts to revive negotiations had stalled on the rehiring question.
About 25 police charged a group of pickets and sympathizers at the north end of Lenoir Hall when they did not disperse. Nine people were arrested, including AFSCME official Gene Gore and graduate student John Wheeler, and four were treated at Memorial Hospital. The next day Mayor Howard Lee announced that town police were being withdrawn from the strike scene.
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 1, 2026.
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026
