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Local figure

Pat Cusick

Pat Cusick, a UNC student representing the small Student Peace Union, began a lone picket of the segregated College Cafe on Franklin Street in April 1963. With John Dunne he started the 1964 Holy Week fast in front of the Franklin Street post office, and he served an active prison sentence before leaving the state by court order.

Source: UNC Libraries: I Raised My Hand to Volunteer, Integration Sit-Ins

1 work about Pat Cusick is indexed here, as is one work by Cusick.

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Life and Orange County connections

Storylines this person is part of, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineChapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–19651960–1965 · 101 events · Nine Lincoln High students began Chapel Hill's sit-ins at Colonial Drug on February 28, 1960. Through 1963 and 1964 Black residents and UNC students picketed, marched and sat in, and held a Holy Week fast at the post office, but the aldermen narrowly rejected a public accommodations ordinance and many businesses stayed segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In April 1965 John Ehle's The Free Men traced the 1963-1964 campaign through three of its leaders, John Dunne, Pat Cusick and Quinton Baker, and the new interracial Chapel Hill-Carrboro Council on Human Relations named a steering committee on housing, education and employment, its leader saying he foresaw no protests like those of 1964. In May James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, speaking in Chapel Hill for the first time since January 1964, told about 300 people in Memorial Hall that the movement would turn toward the economic upgrading of Black communities and political organizing.

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 12 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Pat Cusick organizes a student peace group that becomes UNC's Student Peace Union chapter On December 3, 1962 Pat Cusick announced the formation of Students for Peace, a UNC group that had adopted the Student Peace Union's statement of purpose. Later that month the group won approval as the UNC chapter of the national Student Peace Union, with Cusick as its leader. Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · The Daily Tar Heel, December 4, 1962, p. 1 (Peace Union For Students Formed Here)
  2. Student Peace Union marchers protest the Armed Forces Day theme at the Chapel Hill post office Led by chairman Pat Cusick, Student Peace Union members and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom marched silently alongside the Air Force ROTC drill team to the post office to protest the day's theme, Power for Peace. Spectators called out 'Communists', but no incidents occurred. Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · The Daily Tar Heel, May 19, 1963, p. 1
  3. The Committee for Open Business holds workshops in nonviolent civil disobedience The Committee for Open Business ran a series of workshops in nonviolent civil disobedience in July 1963, and Pat Cusick reported good attendance and morale at the sixth session on July 18, the day before the Merchants Bureau sit-in. An NAACP field worker from North Carolina College, who came at the committee's request, helped organize the workshops and trained members in nonviolent methods until he left on August 9. People: Pat Cusick Place: Chapel HillThe Chapel Hill Conscience, July 31, 1963, p. 5
  4. Police carry out demonstrators sitting in at the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Merchants Association office Members of the Committee for Open Business sat in and sang in the Merchants Association office on West Franklin Street to press merchants to desegregate. Police carried out 27 on trespass warrants signed by director Joe Augustine, and 34 were arrested that day in all. People: Harold Foster, Pat Cusick Place: Chapel Hill-Carrboro Merchants Association office, West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill · Also named: Joe AugustineThe Chapel Hill Weekly, July 21, 1963, p. 3 · Also: The News of Orange County (Hillsborough), August 15, 1963, p. 3
  5. Pat Cusick is ordered out of his rented house after hosting a Black NAACP field worker According to the Conscience, Committee for Open Business leader Pat Cusick was told before Chapel Hill's justice of the peace to leave his house by August 12, after he let a Black NAACP field worker working with the committee stay there for two days. The landlord, the university's superintendent of buildings and grounds, cited overdue rent and a mess, while the Conscience said the reason was the guest's race. People: Pat Cusick Place: Chapel HillThe Chapel Hill Conscience, August 24, 1963, p. 1
  6. Pat Cusick leads a CURED march down West Franklin Street Sixty-eight members of Citizens United for Racial Equality and Dignity, led by Pat Cusick, marched from St. Joseph's Church on West Rosemary Street down West Franklin Street to the Carolina Grill on a Friday night, singing a few songs. A street march to the post office was planned for the next day. Place: Chapel Hill · Also mentions: Carolina Grill, West Rosemary StreetSearch the index · The Chapel Hill Weekly, August 25, 1963, p. 3 (CURED Marches On West Franklin)
  7. Chapel Hill fills a bus for the March on Washington The Student Peace Union, with Pat Cusick as local coordinator, organized a bus from Chapel Hill to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In late August Cusick reported every seat taken, with the bus due to leave about midnight August 27-28 and reach Washington the next morning. Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · The Daily Tar Heel, August 22, 1963, p. 7 (CH Marchers Going To DC)
  8. Orange Superior Court convicts Pat Cusick and three others for the Merchants Association sit-in A jury in Orange Superior Court at Hillsborough convicted Pat Cusick and three other demonstrators of trespass for the July sit-in at the Merchants Association office. Cusick chose 30 days on the roads over paying the fine and fasted 17 days in protest at being placed in a segregated prison camp. People: Floyd B. McKissick Place: HillsboroughSearch the index · The Chapel Hill Weekly, December 15, 1963, p. 1
  9. The Holy Week fast ends on Easter Sunday and the Rev. LaVert Taylor is hospitalized The five fasters finished their eight-day water-only fast in front of the post office on Easter Sunday. The Rev. LaVert Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was admitted to Memorial Hospital with an upset stomach afterward; James Foushee had been treated there during the fast and released. People: Pat Cusick, John Dunne Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: LaVert Taylor, James Foushee · Also mentions: Memorial HospitalThe Daily Tar Heel, April 4, 1964, p. 1
  10. Judge Mallard sentences fasters Pat Cusick and John Dunne to a year in jail In Orange County Superior Court at Hillsborough, Judge Raymond B. Mallard gave Pat Cusick a year in jail on April 23 and John Dunne twelve months on April 24 for the February street-blocking demonstrations, among a dozen active sentences and about 100 suspended ones that stripped the Chapel Hill movement of its leaders four weeks after the fast. People: Pat Cusick, John Dunne Place: Hillsborough · Also named: Raymond B. MallardThe Daily Tar Heel, April 24, 1964, p. 1
  11. Pat Cusick, John Dunne and Rosemary Ezra are paroled from their one-year sentences Chapel Hill demonstration leaders Pat Cusick, John Dunne and Rosemary Ezra were paroled after serving a quarter of the one-year sentences given them for misdemeanors in the 1963-64 protests. Cusick left Burke County Prison Camp on August 11 and went to a job in Boston, according to his Chapel Hill friends. People: Pat Cusick, John Dunne Place: Burke County Prison Camp (Cusick); Chapel Hill · Also named: Rosemary EzraThe News of Orange County (Hillsborough), August 13, 1964, p. 1
  12. Harper and Row publishes John Ehle's The Free Men, an account of the Chapel Hill protests Ehle's nonfiction book traced the 1963–1964 civil rights campaign in Chapel Hill through three of its leaders, John Dunne, Pat Cusick and Quinton Baker, from the first pickets at a cafe to mass arrests and long prison sentences. People: John Ehle, Pat Cusick, John Dunne, Quinton Baker Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · DigitalNC: The Carolina Times, March 27, 1965, page 9 (John Ehle's Book, The Free Men, to Be Published by Harper and Row)

People named in the same events

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By Pat Cusick

Oral history interview with Pat Cusick, June 19, 1989: interview L-0043, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Cusick, Pat · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Pat Cusick, a civil rights worker in Chapel Hill during the 1960s, was interviewed by Pamela Dean in June 1989. He explains how his schooling and military service changed his thinking about race, his frustration with campus liberalism at UNC, and his turn to civil disobedience as a student organizer in the town. Topics include civil rights workers, college student political activity and race relations in Chapel Hill. About two and a half hours; electronic edition issued by the UNC library in 2008 through Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

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