Key local figure
Kemp Plummer Battle led the reorganization that reopened the university in 1875 and was its president from 1876 to 1891, then returned to the faculty as Alumni Professor of History and wrote a two-volume history of the university. A signer of the 1861 secession ordinance, he enslaved dozens of people on his wife's Edgecombe farms and in Raleigh.
Source: UNC Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward: Battle Hall (report with appendix)
Library of Congress name authority: Battle, Kemp P. (Kemp Plummer), 1831-1919 ↗
35 indexed records are connected with this person.
Narrow the indexed records. Each link opens the search already limited to this person. Counts are indexed records, not copies on a shelf.
Works in the index that concern this person directly, or were written by them. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it; background reading with wider context sits further down.
Kemp Plummer Battle's memoir, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 296 pages with plates and portraits. Battle, a lawyer, state treasurer and president of the university from 1876 to 1891, recall…
… A printed notice announcing a public meeting at Gerrard Hall on the University of North Carolina campus at 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 6, 1940, with a speech by Kemp Battle, held under the auspices of the Chapel Hill branch of the Committee to Defend America by Aid to the Allies.
Kemp P. Battle's University Day address of 1883, delivered as president of the University of North Carolina on the day marking the laying of the Old East cornerstone. Battle goes building by building through the campus,…
Relief shown by hachures. Shows towns, roads, railroads, residences, schools, churches, mills, mines, natural features, roads, and railroads including the North Carolina Rail Road and Chapel Hill Railroad. Includes phot…
… Battle's report to the trustees, dated January 15, 1878, on the condition of the University of North Carolina and on the 1877 session of its normal school, held in Chapel Hill to train teachers.
… Battle, Solomon Lea and Sarah Williams Kittrell Goree, and reach from social life in Chapel Hill and the nineteenth century university to yellow fever in Texas.
Robert V. N. Brown published the North Carolina Anvil, and his papers, about 6,800 items in ten linear feet from 1958 to 1999, belong to the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5312. The headings follow ne…
Photo by Bayard Wootten A 'Natural Finish' Card Made by Graycraft Card Co. Danville Va CH-3 Return address: "Aviation Cadet T.C. poole 313 Lewis Hall U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School Chapel Hill, N.C." Message on back of car…
Kemp Battle Nye, born 1916, left approximately 1,800 items spanning the 1930s through the 2000s, nine linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 05801. Headings follow him through the Universit…
Articles gathered in memory of Kemp Plummer Battle, 1831 to 1919, a president of the University of North Carolina, with the title supplied by a cataloger. Headings cover college presidents at Chapel Hill, the biography …
Papers concerning a Montgomery Ward catalog competition, dated 1915 and again 1962 to 1966, carrying the name of Kemp P. Battle, 1831 to 1919. The headings cover writings by college students at Chapel Hill and the intel…
Message on back of card: "From K.P.B. All well! … Real photo view of Francis Venable, Edwin Alderman, Edward Kidder Graham, and Kemp Plummer Battle at Graham's inauguration as President of the University of North…
Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. View the full chronology →
The university resumed classes on Monday, September 6, 1875, after more than four years closed, with Charles Phillips as chairman of the faculty, and held a public celebration on September 15. Kemp P. Battle, then secretary of the trustees, was elected president in 1876.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Returning to Chapel Hill in 1876 to become university president, Battle bought the family house from his father, added a one-story wing on each side and named it Senlac. The house stands on Battle Lane.
In the summer of 1877 the university hosted a statewide Summer Normal School, set up by the General Assembly in March 1877 to train white teachers for the common schools. President Kemp Battle and the Board of Education admitted white women to its classes, though state money could not be spent on them.
Ordered deacon at Tarboro on 21 April 1878, Cheshire was assigned by Bishop Thomas Atkinson to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the request of university president Kemp P. Battle. He served his diaconate there under Robert Sutton, rector of the Pittsboro parish.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
The legislature rechartered the stalled iron-mine line as the State University Railroad, shifting its purpose to a rail link for the university, with UNC president Kemp P. Battle working alongside Hoke to raise funds.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Five undergraduates founded a secret society after hearing university president Kemp Battle tell the Dromgoole story. They first called it the Order of Dromgoole and later shortened the name to Gimghoul.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Elected president when Kemp Plummer Battle resigned in 1891, Winston led the university for five years, during which enrollment tripled to almost six hundred. In 1896 he left Chapel Hill to become the first president of the University of Texas.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
In 1912 the university named a new residence hall on McCorkle Place for Battle, its president from 1876 to 1891. It was one section of a three-part dormitory whose other sections honored J. Johnston Pettigrew and Zebulon B. Vance.
Faculty of the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, whose offices are in Battle Hall, petitioned to remove Kemp Plummer Battle's name, citing his enslaving of people, his support for secession and his promotion of white supremacy. The university's Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward endorsed the request.
Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this person; they may not discuss the Orange County person directly.
We have not added outside sources for this person yet. The index still lists the related works below. If you know a useful source, tell us.
More to discover
The Friends connects people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
