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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

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.

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6 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–6.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Recent decades · 1976–2026

  2. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Students campaign for a freestanding Black Cultural Center

    After Sonja Haynes Stone died in 1991, students, faculty and Black athletes at UNC pressed for a freestanding Black Cultural Center named for her. Following marches in September 1992, Chancellor Paul Hardin endorsed a freestanding building on October 15, 1992, and the trustees approved a site in 1993.

  3. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill The Black Cultural Center holds a reception for alumnus Randall Kenan

    UNC's Black Cultural Center held a reception for Kenan, a 1985 graduate, on the publication of his story collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead; the Bull's Head Bookshop held an autograph party for the book the same day.

  4. Chapel Hill Jesse Jackson comes to Chapel Hill during the Black Cultural Center sit-in

    Jesse Jackson came to Chapel Hill while students occupied South Building for a free-standing Black Cultural Center, met first with Chancellor Hardin and urged him to call a special trustees' meeting, which Hardin refused. Sixteen students and a Chapel Hill resident were arrested that day.

  5. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill UNC Trustees approve a freestanding Black Cultural Center on the Coker site

    On July 23, 1993, the UNC Board of Trustees approved building a freestanding Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center on the Coker Woods site between Coker Hall and the Bell Tower. Supporters had wanted the Wilson-Dey site on the main quad, and student leaders accepted the Coker site that November.

  6. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill The Sonja Haynes Stone Center celebrates its grand opening

    After more than a decade of organizing, the freestanding Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History opened in Coker Woods with a four-day celebration. A Friday candlelight procession from the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery preceded Saturday's dedication by Chancellor James Moeser before more than 500 guests.

  7. Publication, speech or performance · Sonja Haynes Stone Center, UNC campus Ralph Frasier speaks at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center

    Ralph Frasier, one of UNC's first three Black undergraduates, gave a free public talk in the Hitchcock Room of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. He had left the university in 1958 without a degree.

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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 1, 2026.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026