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Key local figure

David Caldwell Jr.

Caldwell moved to Chapel Hill's Rogers Road neighborhood in the third grade in the 1960s, when his family sought a place it could own. A retired Orange County deputy sheriff, he is project director and community organizer for the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association.

Source: Marian Cheek Jackson Center, From the Rock Wall: David Caldwell, Jr.

Orange County Indexed has not yet linked an indexed work directly to David Caldwell Jr. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about David Caldwell Jr.’s life and work.

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 5 dated events in the chronology →

  1. David Caldwell's family bought a home on Rogers Road David Caldwell, later a RENA leader, said his family moved from Merritt Mill Road to Rogers Road when Black families got the chance to buy homes there. He recalled a farming neighborhood of about thirteen houses, with dirt roads and cornfields. People: David Caldwell Jr.From the Rock Wall: David Caldwell on the history of environmental racism in the Rogers Road community
  2. Four governing boards hold a unified public hearing on a new landfill next to the Eubanks Road site The Orange County commissioners, Chapel Hill council, Carrboro aldermen and Hillsborough commissioners took comment on site 17 and three alternatives. Neighbours including David Caldwell, Kathy Schinley and Cornelius Kirschner spoke against it, B.B. Olive presented a 39-signature petition, and Frank Emory, representing Duke University, said the poorest residents lived nearest site 17. People: David Caldwell Jr.Town of Chapel Hill: Summary of a Unified Public Hearing on Landfill Matters, June 19, 1996
  3. David Caldwell retires as a sheriff's lieutenant to organize in Rogers Road full time Caldwell joined the sheriff's department in 1985 after returning to the area and retired as a lieutenant in 2008 to work full time on community and social justice work. He became project director and community organizer for the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association.Search the index · RENA Community Center: Staff
  4. Neighbors form the Rogers Road Community Unity Board The Community Unity Board brought together leaders from every sub-neighborhood of Rogers-Eubanks, among them Historic Rogers Road, Billabong, TallyHo, Meadow Run, Phoenix Place and Sandberg, for continuing talks about the area's future. RENA and the Jackson Center reconvened it in 2015 for the planning work the three governments had asked for. People: Robert CampbellSearch the index · Orange County: Rogers Road, Mapping our Community's Future, May 2016
  5. RENA and the Jackson Center published the Rogers Road community plan commissioned by the three governments In July 2015 Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro asked the Marian Cheek Jackson Center and RENA to run a community-first planning process as sewer design advanced. The resulting report, built from nine Unity Board sessions and two rounds of interviews, set four priorities for the neighborhood and became the reference document for the later zoning districts and Greene Tract resolutions. People: Robert Campbell, David Caldwell Jr.Orange County: Rogers Road, Mapping our Community's Future

Places in this person’s story

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 1 with a known location.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.

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People named in the same events

People named in the same dated entries as David Caldwell Jr., those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Background on Historic Rogers Road neighborhood

Background reading on Historic Rogers Road neighborhood. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss David Caldwell Jr.. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.

Rogers Road

Pearce, Emily Eidenier · 2009

Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.

Research sources

Sources and research tools for this person. For ready-made searches of other catalogs, see Search further. Research guide: Trace a family through historical records.

Background

Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for David Caldwell Jr. Library card Search NC LIVE for this subject and Orange County. You can change the search terms. Sign in through your North Carolina library to access the materials.
  • Ancestry Library Edition In the libraryOrange County Public Library Census, birth, death and marriage records, and more, free on the public computers at OCPL libraries

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