Storyline · 1978–1994
The Carolina Gay Association held its first Gay Awareness Week in March 1978, and the week of films, talks and workshops became a yearly event with a Blue Jeans Day. Its notices on the cube were defaced in the early years. Speakers over the years included Jeff Levi, Tom Duane and Mandy Carter. In 1994 the week took the name Celebration Week.
The Carolina Gay Association held its first Gay Awareness Week from March 13 to 19, 1978, with films, talks and workshops in the Carolina Union open to the public. Late in February its painted notice for the week on the campus cube had been defaced with a slogan calling sodomy a felony and urging arrests, and Lambda later said the cube listing was defaced during each of the early weeks. The second week, October 23 to 29, 1978, brought talks and dialogues on gay rights, religion, race and bisexuality and ended with workshops, a Halloween party and a picnic in Battle Park. Lambda recalled in 1985 that during the second week members slept beside the painted cube to protect their announcement, and fraternity men carrying bats confronted two women and a man from the association there; long student honor court hearings followed, and one student was found not guilty.
At the third week, October 29 to November 4, 1979, 60 people heard an Air Force captain describe his recent court-martial and dismissal, and a dance at the Newman Catholic Student Center drew about 100. A Daily Tar Heel ad asking gay students to wear blue jeans on Friday drew a "Heterosexual Pride Day" ad the next week. The 1982 week, March 22 to 27, declared Friday, March 26, Blue Jeans Day for gay students who wished to identify themselves, and members told the Daily Tar Heel the group was mainly educational rather than political. In 1983 Blue Jeans Day asked supporters of gay rights to wear jeans, and the paper carried letters in response. The April 1984 week, Gay Visions of a New World, brought psychologist Lou Sawyer on lesbian issues, John Stanley of Black and White Men Together on racism among gay people and the Rev. June Norris of St. John's Metropolitan Community Church on gays and religion. Moved to the fall, the week of November 26 to 30, 1984 brought Elizabeth Gurley of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, Tom Chorlton of the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Democratic Clubs and a session on coming out in the Black community, and its Blue Jeans Day dance drew nearly 150.
The Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association held its ninth Lesbian and Gay Awareness Week in April 1986, with a workshop, Blacks and Gays: Breaking Down Barriers, and a concert by the Common Woman Chorus. With the tenth in 1987, Carolina Union committees staged Martin Sherman's play Bent in Memorial Hall. The eleventh, March 26 to April 6, 1988, had 21 co-sponsors and about 900 people in all, with talks by Ben Schatz of National Gay Rights Advocates and Jeff Levi of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The April 1989 week brought a keynote by New York City Council candidate Tom Duane, a reading by the poets Jonathan Williams and Thomas Meyer and a concert by Deidre McCalla; a Black leader from the state coalition told the group it was seen as a white organization. Lambda and the Daily Tar Heel called it the eleventh annual week too; counting from 1978 it was the twelfth. Activist Mandy Carter led a discussion of the 1990 U.S. Senate race in March 1990 and joined a panel on racial segregation in the gay and lesbian community in April 1991, a week that also announced a kiss-in in the Pit. Letters to the paper argued afterward over whether Blue Jeans Day had tricked students into a show of support. In 1994, under B-GLAD, the week took the name Celebration Week, which it kept through at least 2004.
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 the 6 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.
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.
Lisa Giencke's 2010 conservation report on Battle Park, the university's natural area in Chapel Hill managed with the North Carolina Botanical Garden, with contributions from Alan Weakley, Peter White, Stephen Keith, Dave Vandermast and Elinor Benami. It deals with botany, natural areas and nature conservation, with partial funding from an Institute of Museum and Library Sciences grant.
A 2010 trail guide to Battle Park, the 93 acre Piedmont woodland at Chapel Hill, published by the North Carolina Botanical Garden of the University of North Carolina. The folded sheet carries a map of more than two and a half miles of pedestrian trails together with notes on the park's history. Four unnumbered pages with a color illustration, 22 x 36 cm.
An earlier edition of the North Carolina Botanical Garden's guide to Battle Park in Chapel Hill, printed in 2006, when the trail network was described as more than two miles through 93 acres of forest. The folded sheet gives a trail map with color illustrations and historical notes on the park. Five unnumbered pages, 22 x 36 cm folded to 22 x 9 cm.
Battle Park in Chapel Hill mapped for walkers in 2004, with relief shown by contours on a single sheet of 20 by 34 centimeters. Attributed to the North Carolina Botanical Garden. It guides visitors along the park's footpaths and records the state of the trail network at that date.
An inspection report from the North Carolina Department of Insurance, issued at Raleigh in 1935, on two buildings at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The report condemns Gerrard Hall for structural damage and directs that the gymnasium known as the Tin Can be cleared of equipment unrelated to athletics and used only for the purposes its original plans set out.
Gerrard Hall, an ivy-covered building on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, on a 1915 Albertype Co. postcard.
Eight photographs of Gerrard Hall on the UNC campus, dated 1890. Views include three men near the hall, one with a tennis racket, students around the building, a delivery truck at its side, and a view toward South Building and the YMCA. From the UNC Campus binder, Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Scott Madry's recollections of the student tech crew at Memorial Hall, the University of North Carolina's auditorium in Chapel Hill, presented under the banner of the Carolina Union, the campus student union. Published in Chapel Hill in 2021.
Catharine Carter photographed the rebuilding of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina between 2002 and 2005, and twelve of the images were issued in 2005 as limited edition lithographic prints, numbered and signed by her, in a portfolio with text and illustrations.
Patrick S. Wooten's 1992 guide to the memorial tablets in Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, identifying the people commemorated there. Subjects include university biography, alumni and Confederate rosters, so the volume doubles as a name list for anyone tracing individuals honored on the walls. One volume in various foliations with illustrations.
Robert W. Winston's 1939 address on Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina and the memorial tablets set in its walls, given when tablets honoring Colonel Robert Bingham, Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham and Senator Matt W. Ransom were accepted. Printed at Chapel Hill, it records how those tablets came to be placed in the hall.
Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), lawyer, poet and Episcopal priest, raised in Durham. Its six parts follow a Southern childhood, the move to New York, the 1938 application to the University of North Carolina that was refused because Murray was Black (the chapter is titled 'Members of your race are not admitted'), law school and the coining of the phrase Jane Crow, the Cold War years, the push toward 'an NAACP for women', and a late-life ordination. 494 pages with portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2018).
Papers of Lightning Brown, a Chapel Hill activist for gay rights who was also the first openly gay person in North Carolina to run for public office. Most of the 1,500 items concern the 1984 elections: letters to and from public officials, articles and studies reflecting his work in the Democratic Party, on national legislation and on gay rights.
Records of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Center at UNC, 1975 to 2014, about 900 items in 2 linear feet, in the University Archives at UNC, collection 40433. Student groups represented include the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association, B-GLAD, and the Women's Forum of the Association of Women Students, with student housing at Chapel Hill also covered.
William Ruthrauff Amberson, born 1894, left papers spanning 1919 to 1968 with a small run from 1971. The papers concern the University of Tennessee at Memphis and southern farm politics: the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, the Delta Cooperative Farm and Providence Plantation in Mississippi, the Socialist Party, and figures such as Norman Thomas, Howard Kester and Pauli Murray. Part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 3862.
Roughly 2,000 items in 6.5 linear feet kept as the papers of Michael R. Nelson, born 1963, dated from about 1890 to 2012, collection 70140 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. Topics include politics and government in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Orange County, campaign paraphernalia, and gay activists and politicians in North Carolina, naming Joseph A. Herzenberg, 1941 to 2007.
Twenty linear feet of papers from Joseph A. Herzenberg, 1941 to 2007, about 2,500 items dated 1883 to 2006 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5367. Diaries are among the formats. The work describes a historian and political activist in Chapel Hill, campaign paraphernalia and Democratic Party politics, and gay activists and gay politicians in North Carolina.
Papers of John Seelye (1931 to 2015), literary scholar and Penguin Classics editor, who taught American literature at Berkeley, Connecticut, UNC Chapel Hill, Dartmouth and Florida. The 26,100 items (46.7 linear feet) run from 1862 to 2015, mostly 1955 to 2007, in series of correspondence and contracts, academic files, research files, writings and personal papers, with Melville and Mark Twain among his subjects.
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. “Gay and Lesbian Awareness Week at UNC, 1978–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/awareness-week-storyline-1978/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
