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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–27.Back to highlights
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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1860s
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Quakers open a freedmen's school in Chapel Hill
In 1866 Philadelphia Friends opened a school for Black children in Chapel Hill; by early 1867 it had been running more than half a year with 248 pupils, in a rented house while the freedpeople built a school and house of worship on a fifty-dollar lot the Friends had bought. The school, which came to stand on the land near West Franklin Street and Merritt Mill Road that Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought in 1866, merged into Orange County Training School in 1917.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1910s
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Hackney's school on Merritt Mill Road is bought for a public training school
Louis Hackney had opened his school for Black students on Merritt Mill Road in 1912. In 1916 the property was bought for a public training school for Black students, after Black residents raised $3,000 toward the purchase.
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Robert and Mollie Malone open Orange County Training School on the old Hackney campus
Principal Robert E. Malone, his wife Mollie Holmes Malone as domestic science teacher, and two other teachers began classes in academic, industrial and farm subjects at the county's new training school for Black students. Black residents had raised $3,000 toward the board's 1916 purchase of the Hackney campus on Merritt Mill Road.
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Orange County Training School enrolls 215 students
Two years after it opened on the former Hackney campus in Chapel Hill, the county's training school for Black students had 215 enrolled.
- 1920s
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Orange County Training School burns
On June 12, 1922, a kitchen fire started by boarders in the neighboring Flanner-Carr House destroyed the Orange County Training School building, the Flanner-Carr House and several outbuildings. Classes met in scattered places until a Rosenwald-funded brick school opened in Northside in 1924.
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Kennon Cheek helps negotiate the land swap that brought Hackney's school to Northside
Cheek's daughter Marian Cheek Jackson said he was instrumental in negotiating the 1924 land swap that moved Hackney's Educational and Industrial School from South Merritt Mill Road into the Northside community.
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Orange County Training School opens a Rosenwald campus
The Orange County Training School's new brick building for Black students rose on land given by Henry Strowd at the north end of Church Street in Northside, Chapel Hill. Its cornerstone was laid on Labor Day 1924 and it opened late that year; the Rosenwald Fund gave $1,500 of its $23,112 cost, Black residents $500.
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The county board moves $30,000 in building money to Efland and sets the order of its new schools
The board shifted $15,000 each from the White Cross and Caldwell building funds to Efland, reasoning that Efland had the greater need, a local tax with an eight-month term, and a paved road for school trucks. It then fixed the building order as Efland, White Cross, Orange County Training School, Orange Grove and Caldwell.
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Annual benefit football games fund Chapel Hill's Black public health nurse
From 1927 a yearly football game played by Black teams on Fetzer Field, sponsored by the University YMCA, raised money for the public health nurse serving Chapel Hill's Black community, a project run by the Community Club. The 1941 game involved the Orange County Training School and raised $275 net.
- 1930s
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A new Chapel Hill High School opens on Columbia Street
Chapel Hill's new high school for white students, beside the Pittsboro road on what is now South Columbia Street, opened to classes on October 5, 1936, three weeks late. Built for $106,000 with Public Works Administration aid to plans by Atwood and Weeks, it came in the same federal program that built an addition at the Orange County Training School.
- 1940s
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Wartime day nursery opens for the children of Black working mothers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro
A federally funded day nursery for Black children opened at the Orange County Training School, caring for thirty children aged two to six from 7:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. while their mothers worked. Parents paid for food, and by October 1944 two nursery schools were running, one in the Masonic building on the edge of Carrboro and one on Brooks Street.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Orange County Training School is renamed Lincoln High School
In March 1949 the Parent-Teachers Association of the Orange County Training School, Chapel Hill's school for Black students, voted to rename it Lincoln High School and sent the request to the superintendent and school board. By May 13, 1949, the Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the name had been changed.
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Principal C. A. McDougle opens Lincoln High School's year under its new name
The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that Lincoln High School, the town's school for Black students, would open at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, September 12, 1949, as announced by Principal C. A. McDougle. The faculty list printed with the notice includes elementary teacher Mrs. Lucille R. McDougle and high school teacher Reginald D. Smith.
- 1950s
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Lincoln High School opens on Merritt Mill Road
In 1951 Lincoln High School, Chapel Hill's high school for Black students, moved from the old Orange County Training School building on Caldwell Street to a new building on Merritt Mill Road, and the old building became Northside Elementary. Lincoln used the Merritt Mill Road campus until 1966; the building is now the school district's Lincoln Center.
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Hilliard Caldwell leads the Chapel Hill chapter of the New Farmers of America
The Lincoln High School paper reported a prosperous 1954 to 1955 year for the chapter under Caldwell, its president, and printed his own account of the chapter's work.
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Hilliard Caldwell writes the Negro Community news column for the Chapel Hill News Leader
Caldwell was named as correspondent at the head of the column, which carried news of Black Chapel Hill and asked Lincoln High School graduates to send in their college addresses for the next week's issue.
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Hubert Robinson is named Man of the Year
After Robinson was re-elected alderman with the highest vote on the ticket, a group of Black citizens representing churches, fraternal organizations and civic clubs named him Man of the Year and gave a reception in his honor at the Lincoln High School gymtorium on June 11.
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Lincoln High prepares to open with sixteen teachers and about four hundred pupils
In the Chapel Hill News Leader's back to school report, Principal C. A. McDougle said Lincoln High School would have sixteen teachers and that enrollment would probably reach 400, against 381 on the first day of the previous year. Two of the teachers were new that year.
- 1960s
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Lincoln High students picket Colonial Drug and sit in at the Bus Station Cafe
The day after the sit-in, nearly 100 Black high school students picketed Colonial Drug after manager John Carswell roped off its booths, while others filled the counter at the Bus Station Cafe until proprietor Leo Eliadis closed it and were served standing at the Long Meadow Dairy Bar.
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The Chapel Hill sit-in movement forms an executive committee and retains counsel
At a Tuesday night meeting the Lincoln High demonstrators and their adult supporters organized, set up an executive committee to coordinate the lunch-counter protests and acquired legal counsel.
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Lincoln High's football team wins an undefeated state championship
Coach William D. Peerman's Lincoln High Tigers won the state 2-A football championship for Black high schools on November 22, 1961, beating previously unbeaten Ridgeview High of Hickory 22-0 to finish 12-0. The season was unbeaten but not unscored upon: Harnett High scored six points in the eastern title game.
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James Brittian is expelled from Lincoln High School after a civil rights march
Brittian, a student at the segregated Lincoln High School, was expelled for taking part in a civil rights protest march. He then became chairman of the Student Commission, a branch of the Chapel Hill Freedom Commission.
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Gloria Williams asks the school board to readmit boycotting Lincoln High students
At the Chapel Hill school board meeting, Mrs. Gloria Williams, speaking for parents of students who had joined the Chapel Hill Freedom Committee's boycott of Lincoln High School, asked that all of them be readmitted. The board upheld the expulsion of two senior leaders, Henry Sanford and James Brittain, after Superintendent Howard Thompson said he would resign if they returned.
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Integrated Chapel Hill High opens on High School Road
A new Chapel Hill High School campus opened on High School Road in 1966 as the town's first racially integrated high school, taking in the white student body from the Franklin Street school together with Lincoln High's students. Under freedom of choice the board had planned for white students to occupy the building a year before Black students joined, but Black students applied together for 1966 so that the school would not first be seen as belonging to the white students.
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Lincoln High School closes during integration
Lincoln High on Merritt Mill Road, the Black high school led since 1946 by principal C. A. McDougle, stopped operating as a secondary school in 1966 and its students were reassigned to the new Chapel Hill High, completing the desegregation of the district's schools. McDougle became an assistant principal there and Lincoln's championship football coach William D. Peerman was made an assistant coach after a contested board vote; Lincoln's name, colors, mascot and much of its memorabilia were not carried over.
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Chapel Hill High School graduates its first desegregated class
The class of 1967 was the first to finish at the merged Chapel Hill High School. The school board then debated the fate of the empty Lincoln building through 1969 and 1970, and voted to keep it for school use after sustained objection from Black residents to selling it.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
- 2010s
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A new Northside Elementary opened on the old Training School grounds
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools opened a new Northside Elementary on the former Orange County Training School site. In 2012 neighbors had rallied to make sure the new school kept the Northside name.
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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 1, 2026.
