Storyline · 1931–1939
In 1939 the county's adult education council counted 530 white and 1,106 Black adults in Orange who could not read and write, and night classes had been working to reach them since 1931. They grew from a two-week course in Chapel Hill in July 1931, taught by Eva Edgerton of the High Point night schools, whose students started the Carrboro Night School for Adults. In the year to December 1939 the council held classes for 637 adult students in Carrboro, the McFarland community and around Hillsborough. By November 1939 Black adults met weekly at Rock Hill Baptist Church, taught by volunteers from the Orange County Training School, though the congregation had no money to heat the building.
From July 1 to 15, 1931 the University extension division and the state Commission on Adult Illiteracy held a two-week course in Chapel Hill on teaching adults to read, taught by Eva Edgerton of the High Point night schools. Twelve women and two men completed it to work among the state's estimated 236,000 adult illiterates. Students of that course began the Carrboro Night School for Adults that summer, and the Community Club took it up. The night school at the Carrboro school reopened on Monday, October 26, under Mrs. Grumman, and on January 18, 1932 it held closing exercises for its second session, giving Bibles for perfect attendance. In the year to December 1939 the Orange County Council for Adult Education, chaired by A. W. Honeycutt, held classes for 637 adult students. It counted 530 white and 1,106 Black adults in the county who could not read and write, and its night classes ran in Carrboro, in the McFarland community on the Durham road and around Hillsborough. By November 1939 Black men and women were meeting every Monday evening for a class in Rock Hill Baptist Church, taught by volunteer teachers from the Orange County Training School. The congregation had no money to heat the building, and the Weekly appealed for a ton of coal.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
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, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
William E. Rosenstengel's report on what Carrboro Elementary School needed in classrooms, library and site layout, with a plan. Dated 1956, though May 1965 is also given. Part of North Carolina Memory.
Croft and Hammond, architects of Asheboro, prepared this 1956 presentation of Carrboro Elementary School: ten unnumbered leaves of illustrations and plans at 22 by 28 centimeters. Topics include the school itself and elementary school buildings in Carrboro as pictorial works, which makes it a source for the design of the building as it was put up.
Contract documents prepared in 1935 by the architects and engineers Atwood and Weeks, with H. D. Carter, for a Public Works Administration school-building program in Orange County, PWA project NC 1005, issued by the county Board of Education in Hillsboro. The title lists seven schools, five for white pupils, Aycock, Carrboro, Murphey, Orange Grove and St. Mary's, and two for Black pupils, at Chapel Hill and Hillsboro, in the period's own labels. 49 leaves plus 20 unnumbered.
Plumbing contract documents for a 1935 school construction program of the Orange County Board of Education, a Public Works Administration project numbered NC 1005, covering seven schools: Aycock, Carrboro, Murphey, Orange Grove and St. Mary's, designated for white pupils, and the Chapel Hill and Hillsboro schools, designated for Black pupils. Prepared by Atwood and Weeks, architects and engineers, with H. D. Carter, 39 leaves.
Laura Hearne Marcus compares two Orange County Baptist congregations in this 1951 study: Carrboro Baptist Church and Rock Hill Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, one white and one African American. Structure, membership and the function of each church are her subjects, with attention to the buildings themselves. One hundred thirty-nine leaves closing with a bibliography.
Class of students posed outside the Rock Hill Baptist Church building in 1890, in a print and its negative. Part of the churches series in the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Head and shoulders portrait of the Rev. Lewis H. Hackney of Rock Hill Baptist Church. Undated. From the churches series of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Biography of William C. Friday, president of the University of North Carolina system, by historian William A. Link, published by UNC Press in 1995 with the subtitle power, purpose, and American higher education. It covers Friday's career and the history of the university at Chapel Hill and statewide. Part of the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection.
Charles Phillips Russell's biography of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825-1908), the Chapel Hill writer remembered for ringing the bell of South Building when the university reopened in 1875 after its closure during Reconstruction. It doubles as a history of Chapel Hill and the university. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 293 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1949).
Daniel W. Barefoot arranges first-hand recollections of the University of North Carolina by decade, from the 'infant university' of the 1790s through the Civil War years when promise turned to despair, the rebuilding of the 1870s, the 'frosh' life of the 1880s, wartime fame in the 1940s, the controversies of the 1960s and the bicentennial of the 1990s. Thomas Wolfe's student years appear among the voices. Published by John F. Blair of Winston-Salem in 2008, 257 pages.
Albert Coates's own account of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, which he founded, subtitled 'out of a classroom in Chapel Hill' and published in 1981. The 303 pages trace the institute's history and its role in educating North Carolina's public officials.
Sarah Watson Emery's 1963 book on the University of North Carolina, concerned with communism on the Chapel Hill campus and with academic freedom in 1960 and 1961. Published by Prospect House in Dallas, 240 pages with illustrations.
Robert Watson Winston's biography of Henry Horace Williams (1858-1940), who taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina for half a century, subtitled gadfly of Chapel Hill. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1942, 309 pages with frontispiece and portraits; this copy is autographed. Topics include educators in Chapel Hill and the university's history.
Reviewed in Social Forces (1943).
Geeta Kapur's history of race at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from the enslaved labor that built the campus through desegregation and the Black student protests that followed. Twelve chapters, with a foreword by William Barber II, move from the founding era and the Great Depression controversies to the state's response to integration and the turmoil of later decades; North Carolina Central University also figures. Published 2021 by Blair in Durham.
William J. Billingsley's history of the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 North Carolina statute that barred known Communists from speaking on state campuses, and the fight over it at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The subtitle sets the scope: race, politics and the public university in sixties North Carolina. It treats academic freedom, anti-communist movements and free speech in the state. University of Georgia Press, 1999, 308 pages with eight pages of plates.
Reviewed in Academe (2000), The American Historical Review (2001), The Journal of Southern History (2001), Journal of American History (2001), The Journal of Politics (2001).
Julian M. Pleasants and Augustus M. Burns III on the 1950 Democratic Senate primary in North Carolina, in which Frank Porter Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina, lost to Willis Smith after a campaign marked by race-baiting. Primaries, elections and race relations in the state are its subjects. Published by UNC Press in 1990, 356 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1991), The American Historical Review (1991), Journal of American History (1991), The Journal of Southern History (1992).
Maurice M. Bursey's biography of Francis Preston Venable (1856 to 1934), chemist and president of the University of North Carolina, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1989. It also covers the history of the university's chemistry department. Illustrated, 111 pages, with bibliographies.
Reviewed in Isis (1992).
Hope Summerell Chamberlain's life and letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), published in 1926, which doubles as a picture of Chapel Hill and the university in the nineteenth century. It runs 325 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s history of how the University of North Carolina took shape under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham (1876 to 1918) and Harry Woodburn Chase (1883 to 1955), published by the University Library in 2018. The 528-page account covers campus history in the early twentieth century and includes portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2020).
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Adult literacy classes in Orange County, 1931–1939.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/adult-literacy-orange-storyline-1931/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
