The Black Student Movement held its first Black History Week at UNC on February 8 to 10, 1972, with a Gospel Choir concert in Great Hall and a talk by C. G. Newsome, the new chaplain to Black students, films on liberation movements, and a closing talk by Dr. Grady Davis of Fayetteville State University; attendance was small. The 1975 week opened on February 9 in Upendo Lounge with a talk on Pan-Africanism by Bambose Shango of the All African People's Revolutionary Party and included the BSM Ebony Readers, a panel on Black social workers that included Mayor Howard Lee, and a documentary on the BSM made by former BSM president Willie Mebane. In February 1977 Chapel Hill High School's Afro-American Club marked the week with morning editorials, a lunchtime debate on the ideas of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, a discussion of the television series Roots and talks by Freddie Parker of North Carolina Central University and Durham lawyer Ben Bullock. On February 12, 1981 the Hargraves Community Center held its third annual Black History Month program, with dancing by its Soul Strutters. Roots author Alex Haley gave the Black History Month lecture to a full Memorial Hall on February 25, 1982, urging listeners to learn their family histories from their elders, and on February 23, 1985 several hundred students and alumni came to the BSM's Discovery program of seminars, with N.C. Supreme Court Justice Henry Frye speaking at the Black Alumni Reunion banquet.
Reading on the places and people in this storyline
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.
Oral history interview with Barbara Lorie, February 26, 2001 interview K-0211, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
Lorie, Barbara · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Barbara Lorie, interviewed by Melissa Froemming for the Southern Oral History Program on February 26, 2001, recalls her career as a teacher and civil rights worker in Chapel Hill. After a year at Durham Academy she was hired by principal May Marshbanks to teach literature at the newly integrated Chapel Hill High School, where she tried unconventional classroom methods to bridge racial divisions among students. The interview runs one hour fifteen minutes. Electronic edition 2007, Documenting the American South.
Oral history interview with Burnis Hackney, February 5, 2001: interview K-0547, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Hackney, Burnis · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Burnis Hackney entered Chapel Hill High School, newly integrated, in 1966, one of the first Black students there after Lincoln High School closed. In this Southern Oral History Program interview, recorded February 5, 2001, by Bob Gilgor, Hackney weighs his conviction that integration was right against what was lost when Lincoln's traditions were set aside, and how the merger played out for students. About an hour and a half. Published online in 2006 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Oral history interview with Gloria Register Jeter, December 23, 2000: interview K-0549, Southern Oral History Program (#4007)
Jeter, Gloria Register · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Gloria Register Jeter (born 1952) attended both segregated and integrated public schools of Chapel Hill and offers a critical view of how desegregation was carried out, in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded December 23, 2000, by Bob Gilgor. Jeter argues that the merger of Lincoln High School into Chapel Hill High School cost the Black community its school traditions and institutions, and describes the student protests that followed. Published online in 2006 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Oral history interview with Joanne Peerman, February 24, 2001: interview K-0557, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Peerman, Joanne · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Joanne Peerman, a Chapel Hill native and the daughter of a well-known coach, was in one of the first classes to integrate Chapel Hill High School. In this Southern Oral History Program interview, recorded by Bob Gilgor in February 2001, she describes her schooling under segregation and after it, the last years of Lincoln High School, and the civil rights demonstrations that accompanied school integration. About an hour and a half; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2006, through Documenting the American South.
Experience, image, knowledge, power--an approach from many angles : the Literacy Through Photography program
Ungemah, Lori Diane · 1997
Lori Diane Ungemah's 1997 undergraduate honors thesis in cultural studies at the University of North Carolina, on the Literacy Through Photography program. The work concerns the Hargraves Center and African American neighborhoods in Chapel Hill, which places the program among the town's Black communities. The essay was also submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies.
Chapel Hill - Carrboro : report of a survey conducted by a group participating in a workshop on neighborhood centers.
1966 · Institute of Government, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Report of a survey of Chapel Hill and Carrboro made in 1966 by a group at a workshop on neighborhood centers, sponsored jointly by the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers and the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina. Subjects include the Hargraves Community Center and the Northside neighborhood, and the topic is community center planning and social conditions in the town. Forty-six leaves.
The Negro Community Center of Chapel Hill, North Carolina : a study of the processes of community organization
Mason, Mittie Frank · 1943
Mittie Frank Mason's 1943 study of the Negro Community Center in Chapel Hill, treating the center as a case in community organization and describing social conditions for Black residents of the town. It runs 107 leaves with illustrations and a map at 29 cm and closes with a bibliography.
Black Community Center: photographs (Chapel Hill Historical Society)
1940
Two 1940 photographs of Chapel Hill's Black community center: the outside of the building with two people on the porch, and an interior room where Black band members lived. From the Chapel Hill Life: General binder of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
About Memorial Hall · named in one of this story’s entries
The Carolina Union Proudly Presents: Memories of the Tech Crew of Memorial Hall
Madry, Scott · 2021
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.
The transformation of Memorial Hall, 2002-2005 : the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : limited edition prints from the photographic documentary
Carter, Catharine · 2005 · The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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.
A guide to the tablets of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Wooten, Patrick S. · 1992
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.
Memorial Hall : its tablets and memories : acceptance of tablets memorializing Col. Robert Bingham, Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham and Senator Matt W. Ransom
Winston, Robert W. (Robert Watson), 1860-1944 · 1939
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.
Wider background: Black Life & Civil Rights · the most widely held histories of the theme this storyline is filed under; they may not discuss it
To Free A Family
Nathans, Sydney · 2012 · Harvard University Press
Sydney Nathans's biography of Mary Walker, an enslaved woman from Orange County who escaped to the North in the mid nineteenth century and spent the following decades in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working to free the family she had left behind. Chapter titles trace her flight, her years among Northern friends, a rescue plot, a long silence, and the reunion that gives the book its close. Published 2012 by Harvard University Press, 330 pages with 20 pages of plates, illustrations and maps.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (2012), Civil War Book Review (2012).
Game Changers
Chansky, Art · 2016
Art Chansky's 2016 account of Dean Smith, Charlie Scott and the years that changed Chapel Hill as a Southern college town. Scott was the first Black scholarship player in the Carolina basketball program. Topics include civil rights, racism in sports and the university's twentieth-century history.
The Free Men
Ehle, Jr., John Marsden · 1965
John Ehle's account of the civil rights demonstrations in Chapel Hill in 1963 and 1964 and the young people who led them, first published by Harper & Row in 1965. This reprint from Lewisville, North Carolina adds an afterword by Wayne King. Civil rights and race relations in Chapel Hill are its subjects. 340 pages with illustrations and portraits.
To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation’s Oldest University
Kapur, Geeta · 2021
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.
Frank Porter Graham and the 1950 Senate Race in North Carolina
Pleasants, Julian M.; Burns, Augustus M., III · 1990 · UNC Press
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).
Ribbons of Color Along the Eno River
2021
Collected first-hand and second-hand stories from the Eno River valley as told from the standpoint of African Americans and Native people who have lived along the river in Orange and Durham counties, from prehistory to the present day. Issued by the Eno River Association in Durham as volume 10, number 2 of the Eno Journal, 2021, 106 pages with illustrations.
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The Impact of Slavery on the Education of Blacks in Orange County, North Carolina 1619-1970
Moore, Rosetta Austin · 2015
Rosetta Austin Moore's survey of Black education in Orange County from the colonial era to 1970, in a revised edition published in 2015 through Lulu in Morrisville. After chapters on slavery nationally and on schooling for enslaved people in North Carolina, the book turns to the county: its formation, the growth of its schools, the arrival of free public schooling for all, and the schools and African American educators of the twentieth century. 265 pages with maps, portraits and facsimiles.
A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland
Nathans, Sydney · 2017
Sydney Nathans's history of a Black community in Hale County, Alabama, whose founders were enslaved people sent there before the Civil War from the Cameron family's plantations in Orange County, North Carolina. Instead of following the Great Migration out of the South, this group stayed, moved from bondage to owning the land they had worked, and held onto it across generations. Published 2017, 342 pages with plates and maps; this is the e-book edition.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (2017), Journal of Social History (2017), London review of books (2017), The Journal of the Civil War Era (2018), The Journal of Southern History (2018), Environmental History (2018), The Alabama review (2019), The Oral History Review (2019), The Register - Kentucky Historical Society/The register of the Kentucky Historical Society (2020).
African Americans of Durham and Orange counties : an oral history
Bolduc, Jean · 2016 · The History Press
Jean Bolduc's collection of oral history interviews with Black residents of Durham and Orange counties, published by The History Press in 2016, 125 pages with photographs and portraits. The narrators are the poet Jaki Shelton Green, civil rights lawyer Floyd McKissick, Walter Jackson, Nate Davis, Brenda Stephens, Diane Wright, Jackie Wagstaff and Michelle Johnson, and a closing chapter deals with the Ku Klux Klan. The interviews document Black life and race relations in the two counties across the twentieth century.
Sitting In and Speaking Out: Student Movements in the American South, 1960-1970
Turner, Jeffrey A. · 2010 · The University of Georgia Press
Jeffrey A. Turner's study of student activism on Southern campuses between 1960 and 1970, arguing that the region's own movement has been overshadowed by attention to national groups such as SDS. Nine chapters move from the 1960 sit-ins through white students and desegregation, the rise of student power, Black Power on Black and white campuses, and the war's effect on the region. Chapel Hill is among the campuses treated. Published 2010, 366 pages, online edition.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (2011), Journal of American History (2012).
Rogers Road
Pearce, Emily Eidenier · 2009
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
A Traitor and a Scoundrel: Benjamin Hedrick and the Cost of Dissent
Smith, Michael Thomas · 2003 · University of Delaware Press ; London : Associated University Presses
Michael Thomas Smith's biography of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, the University of North Carolina chemistry professor dismissed in 1856 after he declared support for the antislavery presidential candidate John C. Fremont. Published by University of Delaware Press in 2003, 216 pages with illustrations. Topics include abolitionists and dissenters in North Carolina, the antislavery movement in the state, and the university's biography before 1962.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2005).
