Chronology

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.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

People: Harold Foster · Hilliard Caldwell

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

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.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

People: Harold Foster · Hilliard Caldwell

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

The Chapel Hill CORE Committee rejects a second truce and resumes picketing as 27 ministers back the protests

After a week-long pause the students' 12-member executive committee, led by Harold Foster, declined the Human Relations Committee's request for a second truce and resumed afternoon picketing at Colonial Drug and Long Meadow Dairy. Twenty-seven Chapel Hill ministers issued a statement commending the peaceful, non-violent picketing.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

People: Harold Foster · Dudley Dewitt Carroll

Chapel Hill aldermen refuse Chief Blake's picketing-control ordinance

The Board of Aldermen unanimously declined to pass an ordinance against blocking sidewalks that Police Chief William W. Blake had requested as a safety measure, saying its passage would be misread as interference with the peaceful picketing at Colonial Drug.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Church and student groups picket Chapel Hill's Varsity Theatre

Local church groups and student organizations picketed the Varsity Theatre after Black patrons were refused entry. Later that year the management agreed to admit Black UNC students with ID, and the town's theaters were fully desegregated by early 1962.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Subject: Varsity Theatre (the first Carolina Theatre)

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 · 35 events

Student pickets begin marching outside the segregated College Cafe

The Student Peace Union and the NAACP put pickets in front of the segregated College Cafe on East Franklin Street, saying they would keep on until it integrated. The picketing led to the forming of the Committee for Open Business that May.

Subject: College Cafe

Floyd McKissick and Malcolm X appear together at UNC's Memorial Hall

A day after their meeting in Durham, Durham attorney Floyd McKissick and Malcolm X appeared at UNC in a meeting moved from Howell Hall to Memorial Hall when about 1,600 people came. McKissick said he believed the Muslim movement had grown out of the frustration of Black Americans.

Subject: Memorial Hall

NAACP chapter pickets North Carolina Memorial Hospital over segregated rooms and wards

The UNC chapter of the NAACP organized a picket in April 1963 to protest that private rooms and certain wards for Black patients at the hospital were still segregated, although outpatient clinics, recovery rooms, pediatrics and the cafeteria had been integrated. Hospital officials opposed the demonstration.

Part of Segregation and access to medical care · 14 events

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

Aldermen hear Daniel Pollitt's opinion that Chapel Hill may pass a public accommodations law, then shelve it

At a Town Hall hearing attended by more than 200 people, Mayor Sandy McClamroch read an opinion by Pollitt that Chapel Hill had the authority to enact a public accommodations ordinance and that similar laws elsewhere had withstood court tests. The Board of Aldermen then voted 4 to 2 to postpone the ordinance indefinitely.

Part of The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 · 16 events

People: Sandy McClamroch

Police carry out demonstrators sitting in at the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Merchants Association office

Members of the Committee for Open Business sat in and sang in the Merchants Association office on West Franklin Street to press merchants to desegregate. Police carried out 27 on trespass warrants signed by director Joe Augustine, and 34 were arrested that day in all.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

People: Harold Foster · Pat Cusick

George Esser proposes an ordinance barring discrimination by new Chapel Hill businesses

After the aldermen declined a public accommodations law in June, Esser suggested as a private citizen an ordinance that would bar racial discrimination by businesses opening in the future, applied like zoning rules. The Board of Aldermen began considering it in August while the Committee for Open Business kept up its marches.

Part of The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 · 16 events

Karen Parker is arrested at a sit-in at Leo's restaurant

Parker, UNC's first Black woman undergraduate and a CORE member, went with other demonstrators to Leo's, a segregated restaurant in downtown Chapel Hill, where they were arrested and taken to jail. She described it in her diary entry of December 18.

Part of The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 · 16 events

Sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile are doused with ammonia

Around New Year's Day 1964, sit-in demonstrators at the Rock Pile, Carlton Mize's segregated grocery on the Durham Road, were doused with ammonia and bleach water. Seven were treated for burns, among them NAACP youth leader Quinton Baker; four were arrested, and thirteen more were arrested at a second sit-in there the next day, when five more needed treatment.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Subject: The Rock Pile

Chapel Hill aldermen vote down a public accommodations ordinance

The Board of Aldermen rejected, 4 to 2, an ordinance that would have required all town businesses to serve Black customers, and set up a nine-member committee on race relations instead. Integration leaders promised more demonstrations.

Part of The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 · 16 events

People: Adelaide Walters

Institute of Government delivers its report on Chapel Hill's power to pass a public accommodations law

A report prepared by George Esser at the aldermen's request, gathering cases from all fifty states on a town's power to pass a public accommodations law, was completed and handed to Town Manager Robert Peck for the aldermen days before their vote. Esser said it showed the probable attitude of North Carolina courts toward a town using its general welfare power for that purpose.

Part of The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 · 16 events

Subject: Institute of Government

Thirty-nine demonstrators are arrested sitting on the steps of Brady's Restaurant

On a Sunday night, 39 demonstrators, seven of them white, were arrested after sitting three deep on the front steps of the segregated Brady's Restaurant and blocking the door. The night before, 53 had been arrested in sit-downs in front of Brady's and the Rock Pile.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Subject: The Rock Pile

A Klan rally gathers at the post office fast and a UNC student is struck

On the fast's seventh day a Ku Klux Klan rally drew onlookers to the Franklin Street post office, where textile worker Milford Cordell Hill of Gold Hill struck UNC senior Louis S. Calhoun Jr. and knocked off his glasses; police officers who saw it swore out complaints.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza

The Holy Week fast ends on Easter Sunday and the Rev. LaVert Taylor is hospitalized

The five fasters finished their eight-day water-only fast in front of the post office on Easter Sunday. The Rev. LaVert Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was admitted to Memorial Hospital with an upset stomach afterward; James Foushee had been treated there during the fast and released.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

People: Pat Cusick

Subject: UNC Medical Center (N.C. Memorial Hospital)

The Committee of Concerned Citizens raises about $400 for injured demonstrators and the hospitalized faster

Committee members served bread and cheese for donations twice a day in the basement of the First Baptist Church, raising about $400 to cover the hospital bills of demonstrators hurt in sit-ins and of the Rev. LaVert Taylor after the fast.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill

Judge Mallard sentences fasters Pat Cusick and John Dunne to a year in jail

In Orange County Superior Court at Hillsborough, Judge Raymond B. Mallard gave Pat Cusick a year in jail on April 23 and John Dunne twelve months on April 24 for the February street-blocking demonstrations, among a dozen active sentences and about 100 suspended ones that stripped the Chapel Hill movement of its leaders four weeks after the fast.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

People: Pat Cusick

Chapel Hill Recorder's Court fines the man who struck a student at the post office fast

Judge William S. Stewart fined Milford Cordell Hill $50 and costs for striking Louis S. Calhoun Jr. at the scene of the fast on March 28, on complaints sworn out by the police officers who saw it.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Austin Watts and his staff attack civil rights testers at Watts Restaurant

The night after the Civil Rights Act was signed, a mixed group of testers seeking service at Watts Restaurant was turned away and, the testers said, attacked with fists and clubs, and owner Austin Watts was charged with striking Pete Leak. Watts was convicted of assault in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on July 21 and fined the costs of court.

Clarence's Bar and Grill turns away an integrated group the day after the Civil Rights Act

Five white people and one Black person asked for service at Clarence's Bar and Grill on West Franklin Street. Owner Clarence Gray refused them, saying he thought one of them was drunk. Testers visited other Chapel Hill restaurants that weekend as well.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

Harper and Row publishes John Ehle's The Free Men, an account of the Chapel Hill protests

Ehle's nonfiction book traced the 1963–1964 civil rights campaign in Chapel Hill through three of its leaders, John Dunne, Pat Cusick and Quinton Baker, from the first pickets at a cafe to mass arrests and long prison sentences.

People: Pat Cusick

The Town of Chapel Hill unveils the Chapel Hill Nine marker at the Colonial Drug site

On the sixtieth anniversary of the sit-in the town dedicated sculptor Stephen Hayes's stone-based marker at 450 West Franklin Street, naming the nine students; four of them, Dave Mason Jr., James Merritt, Douglas Perry and Albert Williams, attended the unveiling.

Part of Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–1964 · 35 events

People: David Mason Jr. · James Merritt · Douglas Perry · Albert Williams