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Local figure

Preston Dobbins

Preston Dobbins was a UNC student who in 1967 moved to replace the campus NAACP chapter with the Black Student Movement and was elected its first chairman. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in April 1968, he led a march through downtown Chapel Hill. During the 1969 food workers' strike, which BSM members backed, he led students through Lenoir Hall on March 3 overturning tables and chairs.

Source: The Daily Tar Heel, April 6, 1968

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

Search works on UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 Research sources View background reading ↓

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 3 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Black students march through downtown Chapel Hill the day after Martin Luther King Jr. is killed Led by Preston Dobbins of the Black Student Movement, Black students marched through the downtown stores in sympathy for King and in protest of his assassination. The march ended with the burning of several Confederate flags on Franklin Street and outside the Kappa Alpha house. People: Preston DobbinsSearch the index · DigitalNC: The Daily Tar Heel, April 6, 1968, page 1
  2. Black Student Movement calls on Black students and university workers to stay away in mourning for King The Black Student Movement handed sheets to Black university employees asking them to stay home on April 9 in mourning for Martin Luther King Jr., saying the university had done too little to honor him. Chancellor Sitterson let non-academic employees who wished it take a half day off. People: J. Carlyle Sitterson, Preston DobbinsSearch the index · DigitalNC: The Daily Tar Heel, April 9, 1968, page 1
  3. UNC food workers' strike On February 23, 1969 food service workers at UNC's Lenoir Hall left their counters and sat down at the cafeteria tables, and by the next morning nearly 100 dining hall employees had refused to report for work. The strike ended on March 21 when the University agreed to raise the hourly minimum from $1.60 to $1.80, pay roughly $180,000 in back wages, and appoint a Black supervisor. People: Mary Smith, Elizabeth Brooks, J. Carlyle Sitterson, Robert W. Scott, Julius L. Chambers, Preston DobbinsUNC Libraries: Foodworkers' Strike, I Raised My Hand To Volunteer

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 them all.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.

  • Lenoir Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here

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Named with them in the chronology

People named in the same dated entries as Preston Dobbins, 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 UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996

These works give background on UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996, the wider story this person is part of (25 works in all). Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.

Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, March 21-22, 1991: interview L-0064-6, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Pollitt, Daniel H. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Sixth Pollitt interview, recorded March 21 and 22, 1991, by Ann McColl, about an hour long. Its single subject is the 1969 strike by food service workers at UNC, which Pollitt supported. He sets the strike in its local and national context, the labor and civil rights currents of the late 1960s, then follows how it unfolded among the workers, their union backers, the faculty and the university administration. Published online in 2008 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

I raised my hand to volunteer: students protest in 1960s Chapel Hill : an exhibit of the Manuscripts Department in the Wilson Library

Hollingsworth, Biff · 2007

Catalog of an exhibit mounted by the Manuscripts Department of Wilson Library from January 23 to May 31, 2007, on student protest in Chapel Hill during the 1960s. Topics include civil rights demonstrations, the Speaker Ban Law, the Black Student Movement, restaurant strikes and Vietnam War protests at the university. Compiled by Biff Hollingsworth, 59 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, published by the university library.

NC Cardinal UNC Duke Library of Congress CH Historical Society

Oral history interview with Ashley Davis, April 12, 1974: interview E-0062, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Davis, Ashley · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Ashley Davis, who entered UNC in 1968 and joined the Black Student Movement, recalls the 1969 strike by the university's cafeteria workers and the BSM's decision to stand with them when the workers asked. Recorded April 12, 1974, by Russell Rymer for the Southern Oral History Program, the hour-and-a-half interview touches on Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson, the Southern Student Organizing Committee and race relations among students on campus. Published online in 2007 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

Oral history interview with Elizabeth Brooks, October 2, 1974: interview E-0058, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Brooks, Elizabeth · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Elizabeth Brooks, a cafeteria worker at UNC and a leader of the 1969 food workers' strike, speaks in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded October 2, 1974, by Beverly Jones. Born in Caswell County, Brooks had made her home in Hillsborough since 1949 and raised nine children before her first paid job, at the university. She describes the strike, the Black Student Movement's support for the workers, and the response of Governor Robert W. Scott. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.

NC Cardinal UNC

It Wasn't Slavery Time Anymore: Foodworkers' Strike at Chapel Hill, Spring 1969

Williams, J. Derek · 1979

J. Derek Williams's 1979 study of the 1969 strike by cafeteria workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, examining a chapter in the university's labor and Black history. A typescript of 270 leaves with a bibliography.

UNC

20th anniversary of the historic UNC housekeepers' agreement.

2016 · The Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

Commemorative booklet from the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History marking twenty years since the UNC housekeepers' agreement. Sixteen unnumbered pages with illustrations, facsimiles and portraits, published at Chapel Hill in 2016. Topics include the UNC Housekeepers Association, labor unions among housekeepers, and discrimination in employment at the university.

UNC
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Oral history interview with Bob Scott, April 4, 1990 interview L-0193, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Scott, Robert Walter · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill

Robert W. Scott (1929-2009), North Carolina's governor between 1969 and 1973 and son of Governor Kerr Scott, interviewed by William Link on April 4, 1990 for the Southern Oral History Program. Scott discusses his student years at North Carolina State College in the early 1950s and his dealings with university president William Friday, including the food workers' strike at Chapel Hill, college integration, and the consolidation of the state's universities into the UNC System during his term. One hour thirty-seven minutes. Electronic edition 2007.

NC Cardinal UNC

We are all housekeepers

1996 · UNC Housekeepers Association

The newsletter of the UNC Housekeepers Association, dated 1996 and published in Chapel Hill by the association itself. Its subject is the living wage movement in the town, the campaign housekeeping staff at the university waged over pay and treatment. A serial.

UNC

Women behind the lines.

1990

Documentary running twenty-six minutes on the 1969 food service workers' strike at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told through the women who carried it, among them Elizabeth Brooks and Mary Smith. Wages, discrimination in employment and the Black Student Movement on campus are among its subjects. Released in 1990 in color with black and white segments.

UNC

The coming of consciousness : UNC food workers' strikes, 1969

Meroney, Millicent · 1986

Millicent Meroney's 1986 Duke honors paper on the 1969 strikes by food service workers at the University of North Carolina, an episode in the town's race relations and its civil rights history. Eighty leaves of typescript with a bibliography, covering labor unions in food service, the strikes and lockouts themselves, and university employees at Chapel Hill.

Duke

Dwane Powell Cartoon, August 14, 1993

Powell, Dwane · 1993 · The News and Observer

Editorial cartoon drawn by Dwane Powell for The News and Observer on 14 August 1993, bringing together UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor Paul Hardin, the Nike company and education. From Powell's syndicate copies and clippings, folder 1993-29.

DPLA

Dwane Powell Cartoon, November 16, 1993

Powell, Dwane · 1993 · The News and Observer

Paul Hardin, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, figures in this Dwane Powell cartoon on education, published in The News and Observer on 16 November 1993. Folder 1993-42 of Powell's syndicate copies and clippings.

DPLA

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  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Preston Dobbins Library card An advanced search of the state’s shared databases already scoped to Orange County’s places and this subject; edit it freely, and sign in through your North Carolina library to read
  • 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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