Storyline · 1979–1990
Carrboro annexed Barrington Hills and the Tar Heel Manor apartments in December 1979 and won a property owner's suit against the annexation in 1980. Saying the 1980 census, taken as students left town, had missed residents, the town sued the Census Bureau and hired a firm to recount. A special census in September 1981, authorized by the General Assembly, counted 8,264 people, while Chapel Hill declined to seek a recount of its own. In 1990 Carrboro challenged the preliminary census again, saying nearly 1,000 residents had been missed.
In December 1979 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen annexed a section of town that took in the Barrington Hills subdivision and the Tar Heel Manor apartments, where many University students lived. Barrington Hills residents opposed it, former conservative aldermen said it hurt the town's industrial sites, and on February 26, 1980 Town Attorney Michael Brough gave the board a new annexation plan for the area. A property owner sued early in 1980 to challenge the annexation of the roughly 220 acres. Carrboro won, but because state law held the annexation until the suit was settled, the area's roughly 800 residents became Carrboro residents only in November 1980, and the town offered tax refunds to those who asked.
The 1980 census counted 77,055 people in Orange County, and Carrboro disputed its own figure. After the Census Bureau refused a recount, the aldermen voted by September 24 to sue, arguing that the count was taken in April and May as students were leaving town. Mayor Robert Drakeford said the town's population was closer to 12,000, that the undercount could cost $2 million to $5 million in state and federal funds, and that Carrboro was the smallest town to sue the bureau; the town asked students who had not filled out census forms to join as co-plaintiffs. About December 1980 the town joined 14 other state and local governments in challenging the preliminary count in the U.S. Middle District Court in Greensboro. A firm it hired had found almost 11,000 people, and Drakeford said the undercount, worst in apartment complexes such as Estes Park, could cost Carrboro a million dollars in federal revenue sharing over ten years.
On April 14, 1981 the aldermen hired Health Research Associates for $7,350, and on April 25 the firm began canvassing residents to build evidence for the suit. On July 13 the Chapel Hill Town Council voted not to ask the state for a municipal recount despite doubts about its own 1980 count of 32,421 people, against town and state estimates of 37,267 and 36,539, choosing to wait on Carrboro's. On September 10 Carrboro began a recount authorized by the General Assembly, hoping to show more than 10,000 people. The figures would be used only for state-shared revenue, and the state had to adopt them by October 15; town census takers went door to door through September 14 and then returned to homes where no one had answered. On October 7 Drakeford announced that the special census had counted 8,264 residents, with a vacancy rate of 5.4 percent against the Census Bureau's 1.8 percent. The $8,500 count could bring about $30,000 a year more in state-shared revenue once certified, and the Daily Tar Heel called it the largest special census in North Carolina history.
By October 2, 1990 Carrboro had filed a challenge to the preliminary 1990 census, saying nearly 1,000 residents, many of them students, had been missed. The Orange County commissioners filed one estimating that the count missed about 530 residents outside the towns, and Chapel Hill, which filed no formal challenge, asked the Census Bureau to review its figures for Carmichael and Granville Towers, where Mayor Jonathan Howes estimated about 500 students had been missed.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
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.
Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
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.
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.
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).
Ruth Blackwelder's study of political and intellectual leadership in Orange County and North Carolina from 1752 to 1861, published in Charlotte by W. Loftin in 1961. Topics include state politics and government, intellectual life before the Civil War, and county genealogy. It runs 216 pages with illustrations and a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s biography of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the law professor who founded the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina and led it through its early years. Topics include Coates as a law teacher and the institute's history as a center for the study of public administration in Chapel Hill. Published in 2010 by the University Library at Chapel Hill, 322 pages with 32 pages of plates.
Warren Ashby's biography of Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972), president of the University of North Carolina from 1930 to 1949 and later a United States senator. Published by Blair in 1981, x and 386 pages with sixteen leaves of plates and a bibliography.
Reviewed in The American Historical Review (1981), Journal of American History (1981).
Hugh Talmage Lefler and Paul W. Wager's history of Orange County across its first two centuries, 1752 to 1952, prepared for the county's bicentennial. It covers government and politics, biography and the county's families, and doubles as a genealogical reference. Published in Chapel Hill by the Orange Printshop in 1953, 389 pages with illustrations and an index; this copy is a later reprint.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).
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).
The papers of Willie Person Mangum, 1792 to 1861, a lawyer, judge and United States senator from the part of Orange County that later became Durham County. Five volumes of correspondence published by the State Department of Archives and History beginning in 1950, arranged by date from 1807 to 1894, with illustrations, portraits and folding maps. A source for antebellum North Carolina and national politics, the Whig Party and the Mangum family.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1951), Journal of American History (1951), The Journal of Southern History (1953), Journal of American History (1953), The Journal of Southern History (1954), The Journal of Southern History (1955), The Journal of Southern History (1957), Journal of American History (1957), The American Historical Review (1957).
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
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. “Carrboro's annexations and census fights, 1979–1990.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/carrboro-census-fight-storyline-1979/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
