Orange County Indexed · Worked research guide
Central High School during the 1958 fire and rebuilding
A school's history includes its buildings, the people who used them, and the decisions that shaped their education. The index's site pages and storylines can help you assemble a sequence of events and locate the sources needed to test it.
Features used in this guide: Places · The chronology
Instead of trying to write the school's whole history at once, ask: How did Central High School in Hillsborough continue teaching after its main building burned in February 1958? A focused question makes it easier to decide which records to read.
Open the site page for Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough. Follow the storyline Central High School's crowding, fire and rebuilding, 1956–1960. Check the town, campus, and period whenever you encounter another Central School. A shared school name does not establish that the records concern the same institution.
Search both Hillsborough and the historical spelling Hillsboro. Try Central School as well as Central High School; the newspaper uses both. Use the broader topic page on Orange County's Black high schools to understand the school's place within segregated education.
The storyline points to newspaper reports and historic preservation documents. Begin with these entries, then follow their source links. Keep the event date separate from the issue date of the newspaper reporting it.
These citations are to The News of Orange County, a weekly. The table is a route into the evidence. Read the linked newspaper pages before using the entries as the basis for a published account.
| Event date | Entry to investigate | Newspaper citation |
|---|---|---|
| 14 February 1958 | Fire destroys the main building | 20 February 1958, page 1 |
| 3 March 1958 | Students move into the new twelve-room classroom building | 6 March 1958, page 1 |
| 1 June 1959 | School board accepts the new building from its contractors, subject to a final check | 4 June 1959, page 1 |
Open the newspaper page and read the relevant article in the page image. Searchable text can misread names, numerals, and column breaks. Record the article heading, issue date, page, and the passage supporting each part of your account. Follow any continuation onto another page.
Separate what the paper reports from what it quotes a principal, parent, or board member saying. A newspaper's account of a board decision is useful contemporary evidence; board minutes can help establish the formal wording of that decision.
Read the entries before the fire too. The storyline describes a twelve-classroom addition and a gymtorium planned before the disaster. The 20 February 1958 report says the addition was nearly finished when the fire struck, and that when classes resumed, eight of its rooms would be used while other classes met in the lunchroom, the agriculture shop, the band room, a church, and the library. Check which building was already under construction, which replaced the burned main building, and when each was used. Treat the campus as several buildings rather than assuming every reference to a new building means the same structure.
Compare the reports with architectural surveys for the buildings and with school board records for decisions. Yearbooks, photographs, and accounts by former students or staff may help explain school life; the site page lists Central's yearbook, The Blue Flame, for 1957, 1958, and 1959 on DigitalNC. Ask holding institutions what survives; a listing in the index or a finding aid does not mean the material is available online.
If a later survey gives a broad construction range and a newspaper gives a precise acceptance date, record what each date describes. The 2014 Hillsborough district documentation says the new two-story classroom building was finished in 1959–60, while the newspaper reports the board accepting the new building on 1 June 1959. Acceptance by a board, completion of construction, and the first day of classes are different events.
A preliminary conclusion from the storyline's cited sequence is: Central High's main building burned on 14 February 1958. The News of Orange County reported on 20 February that classes would resume the following Monday in part of a nearly finished twelve-room building and in borrowed rooms, and on 6 March that students had begun occupying the new twelve-room building on Monday, 3 March. The school board accepted the new Central School building from its contractors on 1 June 1959, subject to a final check by the architect and the state. The classroom building used immediately after the fire and the replacement main building should be distinguished.
Verify that account against the linked reports. It explains the sequence of buildings and decisions; answering how students experienced the disruption would require evidence from students, staff, or others who were there.
Take the question and three newspaper citations to OCPL's Local History Liaison. Ask about yearbooks, photographs, and school board records for 1957 to 1959. If you have a family photograph or recollection, note who supplied it, when it was recorded, and how its date was determined.
