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1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

2. 1966
   Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Stuart Matthews serves on the steering committee of the UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society

   The federal court's findings in Dickson v. Sitterson list Matthews as a member of the steering committee of Students for a Democratic Society, one of the recognized campus organizations whose officers brought the suit. The Daily Tar Heel adds that Matthews and Gary Waller invited Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak under SDS sponsorship on January 3, 1966.

3. January 1966
   Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Students for a Democratic Society invites Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak at UNC

   The UNC chapter of Students for a Democratic Society invited Frank Wilkinson, who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment when questioned in California about Communist activities, and the Communist theoretician Herbert Aptheker to speak on campus. After the trustees barred both men, Student Government under Paul Dickson, the Daily Tar Heel, the Carolina Forum, the YMCA and YWCA, the Di-Phi and the Carolina Political Union joined SDS in renewing the invitations.

4. February 1, 1966
   Protest or organizing · UNC, Chapel Hill Dickson, Nicholson and McCrary invite Herbert Aptheker to speak on campus

   Three of the students who later sued invited Aptheker to speak at Chapel Hill on March 9, 1966 under the sponsorship of Student Government, the Carolina Forum and the Daily Tar Heel. Aptheker accepted two days later.

5. February 7, 1966
   Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Gary Waller joins a student panel on the Speaker Ban in Memorial Hall

   The Daily Tar Heel reported that student body president Paul Dickson presided over a noon meeting of students and faculty in Memorial Hall, with a panel of four that included Waller, Carolina Conservative Club president Wilson Clark and the SDS faculty advisers Joseph Straley and Lewis Lipsitz. The meeting adopted a resolution about four and a half hours before the trustees' executive committee voted 8 to 3 to bar Herbert Aptheker from speaking.

6. February 7, 1966
   Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill UNC trustees' executive committee bars Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker from the Chapel Hill campus

   Meeting in Governor Dan K. Moore's office in Raleigh, the executive committee of the UNC board of trustees voted 8 to 3 to deny university facilities to Aptheker and Wilkinson and suspended all other invitations covered by the speaker ban law until the full board adopted rules. Earlier that day more than 800 students and faculty at a Memorial Hall meeting had backed Aptheker's right to speak.

7. February 11, 1966
   Publication, speech or performance · UNC, Chapel Hill Nicholson criticizes SDS over the Aptheker invitation while backing the principle

   The Carolina Forum chairman called the Students for a Democratic Society invitation to Herbert Aptheker ill-timed and planned for sensationalism, and said the Forum had joined the invitation only in support of the principle of free speech.

8. February 28, 1966
   Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Stuart Matthews and Gary Waller write to Chancellor Sitterson inviting Herbert Aptheker

   On the day the full board of trustees adopted new speaker regulations, Matthews and Waller wrote to Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson for the UNC Chapel Hill chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, asking that Herbert Aptheker be allowed to speak on campus about the war in Vietnam on March 9. The letter set out his publications, speaking engagements and his Supreme Court passport case.

9. March 1, 1966
   Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Eight student groups re-invite Frank Wilkinson under the trustees' new speaker rules

   The day after the full board of trustees adopted speaker regulations on February 28, Paul Dickson and leaders of the Carolina Forum, the YMCA, the YWCA, the Daily Tar Heel, the Di-Phi, Students for a Democratic Society and the Carolina Political Union formally told Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson that Wilkinson was invited for March 2 and Aptheker for March 9. Wilkinson spoke to the Duke Bar Association in Durham that day.

10. March 2, 1966
    Publication, speech or performance · Hillel House, Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill Barred from Carroll Hall, Frank Wilkinson speaks to about 350 people at the Hillel House

    That evening campus security officer Arthur Beaumont, acting on the chancellor's orders, kept Wilkinson, Paul Dickson and about 200 students out of Carroll Hall, and the group moved to the Hillel House on Cameron Avenue, where almost 350 people heard Wilkinson speak on HUAC. He told them a test case with several plaintiffs would be prepared at once.

11. March 2, 1966
    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Barred from campus by the Speaker Ban, Frank Wilkinson addressed UNC students from the Chapel Hill side of the wall

    After Acting Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson refused him campus speaking privileges, Frank Wilkinson spoke for about 10 minutes from the Franklin Street sidewalk while about 1,200 students and faculty stood across the low stone wall on McCorkle Place. Student body president Paul Dickson introduced him and predicted a court case.

12. March 9, 1966
    Publication, speech or performance · Community Church, Purefoy Road, Chapel Hill Herbert Aptheker gives his evening talk at the Community Church

    Kept off campus, Aptheker gave his evening talk to about 350 people at the interdenominational Community Church on Purefoy Road. Paul Dickson then announced a Free Speech Defense Fund to pay for a lawsuit.

13. March 9, 1966
    Publication, speech or performance · McCorkle Place wall at Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Herbert Aptheker speaks to students across the McCorkle Place wall

    At noon Paul Dickson led Aptheker, invited by SDS and the Committee for Free Inquiry, onto McCorkle Place near the Confederate monument, where campus police chief Arthur Beaumont halted Dickson's introduction and warned of arrest. Aptheker crossed the low stone wall to the Franklin Street sidewalk and spoke to a crowd estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 on the campus side.

14. March 14, 1966
    Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Student leaders ask the chancellor to let Wilkinson and Aptheker speak on campus

    Paul Dickson and the heads of Carolina Forum, the YMCA, the YWCA, Di-Phi, the Carolina Political Union and SDS wrote to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson asking that Wilkinson speak on March 23 and Aptheker on March 25, or on later dates.

15. March 31, 1966
    Law, policy or court · U.S. District Court, Greensboro Students and the two speakers file Dickson v. Sitterson against the Speaker Ban

    Minutes after Sitterson refused the students' request, Paul Dickson and eleven other student leaders, joined by Wilkinson and Aptheker as plaintiffs, sued Sitterson, President William C. Friday and the trustees in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Attorney McNeill Smith took the case without fee.

16. February 19, 1968
    Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill A federal court struck down the Speaker Ban law in Dickson v. Sitterson

    A three-judge federal court in Greensboro ruled North Carolina's Speaker Ban law unconstitutional because it was too vague. The suit had been filed in March 1966 by UNC student leaders and the two barred speakers, Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker, and UNC's leaders hoped the ruling ended the long controversy.

17. May 15, 1968
    Publication, speech or performance · Howell Hall, UNC Frank Wilkinson speaks on the UNC campus in Howell Hall

    Three months after the ruling, Wilkinson gave his first permitted talk on the UNC campus, speaking on HUAC in Howell Hall at the invitation of the Carolina Political Union to about 35 people.

18. Recent decades · 1976–2026

19. September 23, 1987
    Publication, speech or performance · Manning Hall, UNC Frank Wilkinson returns to speak in Manning Hall

    Wilkinson, then 74, spoke in Manning Hall on FBI surveillance and U.S. policy in Central America at an event sponsored by the Carolina Committee on Central America.

20. March 22, 1991
    Publication, speech or performance · Greenlaw Hall, UNC Herbert Aptheker returns to speak at UNC in Greenlaw Hall

    Twenty-five years after he was kept off campus, Aptheker spoke to students and faculty in Greenlaw Hall in a visit arranged by anthropology professor Don Nonini.

21. October 12, 2011
    Naming or commemoration · McCorkle Place wall at Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Speaker Ban marker dedicated at the McCorkle Place wall

    On University Day a bronze marker naming the twelve student plaintiffs was dedicated at the wall where Wilkinson and Aptheker spoke, a gift of Anne Dickson Fogleman and Robert Dickson.

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