Kennon Cheek

Life and Orange County connections

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1. About 1920 Kennon Cheek joins the janitorial staff of Venable Hall Cheek began working for the university as a boy, helping his father Rubin Cheek, a stonemason born in slavery in Warren County, lay the stone walls around the campus. Around 1920 he joined the janitorial staff of Venable Hall.Search the index · UNC Names in Brick and Stone: Cheek Clark Building
2. 1924 Kennon Cheek helps negotiate the land swap that brought Hackney's school to Northside Cheek's daughter Marian Cheek Jackson said he was instrumental in negotiating the 1924 land swap that moved Hackney's Educational and Industrial School from South Merritt Mill Road into the Northside community. People: Marian Cheek JacksonSearch the index · UNC Names in Brick and Stone: Cheek Clark Building
3. by June 26, 1925 Black citizens of Chapel Hill organize a Community Fair Association to support the Orange County Training School About thirty Black citizens met in the Training School auditorium, organized the Community Fair Association to help the school and through it the county's farmers, and elected Johnson Merritt and Charles Craig presidents. Committees were named to raise money for the auditorium platform, floors, the farm shop and library, light fixtures and water spigots, to report by Labor Day. People: Kennon Cheek, Louis H. Hackney, Charles C. CraigThe Chapel Hill Weekly, June 26, 1925, p. 3
4. by April 26, 1929 Black Chapel Hill committee organizes to pay its share of the nurse's salary Leading Black citizens formed a committee, with Kennon Cheek as president, to raise their $300 share of the $1,200 salary of the nurse who worked among Black residents; the town and the Community Club each gave $450. They planned a benefit concert of spirituals at the Rock Hill Baptist Church on West Franklin Street. People: Kennon Cheek, Louis H. HackneyThe Chapel Hill Weekly, April 26, 1929, p. 1
5. by November 29, 1929 Black residents of Chapel Hill canvass the town to support their health nurse Black citizens organized a health week, to open with sermons in their churches on December 1, and divided the town into sections to raise $300, their share of a Black public health nurse's support, with a closing rally to hand the money to Mrs. H. D. Carter of the Community Club's health department. Kennon Cheek chaired the canvassing committee of John W. Johnson, F. J. Edwards, Walter Hackney and Sarah Caldwell. People: Kennon CheekThe Chapel Hill Weekly, November 29, 1929, p. 1
6. April 14, 1930 Black janitors organize the UNC Janitors' Association Facing a threatened 10 percent pay cut, janitors Kennon Cheek, Frank Hairston, Elliot Washington and Melvin Rich organized the Janitors' Association, with Cheek as its first president. Its early gains included a week's paid vacation and showers in the janitors' bathrooms. People: Kennon CheekNames in Brick and Stone: Histories from UNC's Built Landscape: Cheek Clark Building
7. April 28, 1930 The university's Black janitors back John J. Parker's Supreme Court nomination The association of the university's forty-six Black dormitory janitors, with Kennon Cheek as president, wired Senator Lee S. Overman on the night of Monday, April 28, 1930, a resolution backing the confirmation of John J. Parker, President Hoover's nominee for the Supreme Court, a UNC alumnus and federal appeals judge whom many of them had served as a student. The Senate rejected the nomination amid opposition over his segregationist statements as a 1920 candidate for governor. People: Kennon Cheek, Lee S. OvermanHoward E. Covington Jr., Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase (2018), p. 414 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, May 2, 1930, p. 3
8. by December 5, 1930 Christmas seal fund pays $300 toward the nurse for Black residents Opening the 1930 seal sale, the committee reported that the previous year's sale had netted $362 and that $300 had gone toward the salary of the public health nurse serving Chapel Hill's Black residents. The town, the Red Cross and Black residents paid the rest, and Black residents planned a concert and a football game to raise their share. People: Kennon CheekThe Chapel Hill Weekly, December 5, 1930, p. 1
9. By January 29, 1932 Kennon Cheek moves that the Janitors' Association give to the student loan fund Frank Porter Graham came to an association meeting to tell the janitors that the Depression would cut their wages but that everyone would come through together. Cheek then moved that the Janitors' Association give five dollars to the fund set up to keep students in school, the first campus organization to contribute to it. The Chapel Hill Weekly of January 29, 1932, reported the $5 as one of the first responses to the community drive for the students' loan fund. People: Frank Porter GrahamSearch the index · UNC Names in Brick and Stone: Cheek Clark Building · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, January 29, 1932, p. 1
10. 1935 St. Joseph CME builds its first church on West Rosemary Street The Weekly reported on June 9, 1933 that the mortgage on Cotton Chapel, the congregation's church in the northwest part of the village, had been foreclosed and the building sold, and that the pastor, Rev. J. S. Miller, was appealing for help to buy a new site and build anew. Henry Baldwin, Margaret Burnette and Kennon Cheek mortgaged their homes for the down payment on the Rosemary Street lot, which Black leaders had judged too small for a new high school. A frame church went up under Miller and was dedicated as St. Joseph Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. In September 1935 the Weekly reported that Black Methodists had almost completed a new church on West Rosemary Street near the town line, and by 1937 it was naming St. Joseph's C. M. E. church. People: Kennon CheekThe Marian Cheek Jackson Center: Saint Joseph CME Church historical sketch, 118th anniversary journal (2016) · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, June 9, 1933, p. 5; Chapel Hill Weekly, September 6, 1935, p. 4; Chapel Hill Weekly, March 12, 1937, p. 5
11. April 1940 The Janitors' Association puts out the first issue of its newsletter The Voice of the Janitors' Association set out the group's aims and history and listed officers elected on April 2, 1940. It also reported banquets held at the Orange County Training School and gifts to that school and to Sedalia. People: Kennon CheekSixty Years of Struggle: A Documented History of Housekeepers at U.N.C. (1996), scan p. 13 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, April 19, 1940, p. 5
12. December 19, 1940 Kennon Cheek dies at work in Venable Hall Cheek, born in Chapel Hill about 1890, built his house in Northside on land bought from the university's holdings, and diabetes and overwork wore him down in the late 1930s. The UNC histories place his death at that house in 1940, but the Weekly reported that he died suddenly of a heart attack on the morning of December 19, 1940, while at work in Venable Hall. He was president of the University Janitors Association and a leader in Chapel Hill's Black community.Search the index · UNC Names in Brick and Stone: Cheek Clark Building · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, December 20, 1940, p. 5; Chapel Hill Weekly, July 19, 1940, p. 1