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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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A new consolidated school is built at White Cross on the Saxapahaw road
After neighbors rejected a site at the crossroads near Leuco Lloyd's, the board placed the new White Cross school on the north side of the Chapel Hill and Saxapahaw road and let the contract to A. R. Davis for $14,436. It accepted the building in March 1925 and sold the old White Cross schoolhouse to F. J. Eubanks for $250.
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White Cross School is built as a consolidated brick school
White Cross School, built in 1933, is a brick school with four large classrooms split by an auditorium in the middle. The form names it one of the county's two best examples of the larger central schools that replaced one- and two-room schools during consolidation.
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White Cross School burns and the board orders a new building
The board learned in April 1933 that the White Cross school building had been destroyed by fire and authorized a new one for $10,859. At the same meeting it set aside $3,325 for two new rooms at Efland.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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White Cross voters turn down a merger with the Chapel Hill schools a second time
White Cross voters defeated a merger of their school into the Chapel Hill city district, 116 to 110, a year after Carrboro had joined it; a first vote had failed in May 1958. A third vote failed in the spring of 1960, and the county closed the school in 1961. The county board sold the White Cross property to Edmiston Realty Company for $14,900 in 1967.
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Black parents at White Cross ask to send their children to White Cross School
The parents of 23 Black children living near White Cross applied to move them from the Hillsboro Negro elementary school, a long daily bus ride away, to the white school in their own community. Most of the children had gone to school in Chapel Hill until White Cross voters again turned down a merger with the Chapel Hill district in 1960.
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The county school board refuses the White Cross transfer requests
The Orange County Board of Education turned down the Black families' request, saying no reassignment had been asked for within ten days of the parents being notified of their children's school.
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Floyd McKissick represents the White Cross children at a school board hearing
At a hearing on the transfers, the children were represented by Durham attorney Floyd McKissick; the county board denied them again, reading a statement it had prepared before the hearing began.
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The school board's lawyer advises closing White Cross School rather than fight the case
A. H. Graham, attorney for the county board, told it the transfer fight could not be won and recommended shutting White Cross School instead.
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The county board votes to close White Cross School and send its white pupils to Hillsborough
Rather than admit the Black children, the Orange County school board decided to close White Cross School at the end of the school year and move its 75 white pupils to Cameron Park School in West Hillsboro, a step it tied to its ten-year building program.
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Orange County Board of Education closes Caldwell School
In 1961 the county board weighed a proposal to close White Cross School at once and Caldwell School later. In March 1963, in the consolidation that came with the new Orange High School, it voted to close the white-only Caldwell School, built in 1925, and from that fall its pupils went to Aycock and Cameron Park. The county could not sell the building until 1973.
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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.
