Chapel Hill protests over U.S. policy in Central America, 1981–1989

During an El Salvador Awareness Week in February 1981, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and volunteers handed out about 4,000 leaflets on Franklin Street and gathered about 500 postcards to President Reagan and 280 petition signatures against military aid to El Salvador's junta. On March 24 more than 150 students and townspeople marched with candles and stood silently in front of the Franklin Street post office in a vigil sponsored by the Carolina Committee on Central America, which had begun a two-day fast after a memorial mass for the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero, part of a national hunger strike against U.S. military aid. On February 21, 1982, after the Rev. Henry Atkins, an Episcopal chaplain who had spent a week with Salvadoran refugees in Honduras, spoke at the Community Church of Chapel Hill, about 40 adults and students and 10 children marched across the campus to the post office chanting "U.S. out of El Salvador" and held a candlelight vigil. About 50 people stood there at noon on March 24 to mark the second anniversary of Romero's killing, and Father John McManamon, a Jesuit priest studying at UNC, read Romero's letter to President Carter. On March 22, 1983 about 30 people gathered in the Pit for speeches on Romero and Martin Luther King Jr. sponsored by the Carolina Committee for Justice in Central America.

From May 1983 a group called Concerned Citizens for Sanctuary worked to have a local church give sanctuary to Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees facing deportation; by late November about half a dozen churches had shown interest, but none had agreed, citing the lack of living space and the law against harboring undocumented immigrants. On November 5 the Carolina Coalition for Justice in Central America, eight student and citizen groups from across the state, held an all-day conference in Murphey Hall attended by almost 100 people, where Town Council member Joe Straley showed slides from his October trip to Nicaragua and Honduras and participants discussed an emergency response network to oppose U.S. intervention. On January 24, 1984 the Chapel Hill Emergency Response Network held a teach-in at which about 300 people in Carroll Hall heard UNC political scientist Lars Schoultz debate Ambassador-at-large Otto Reich on the Kissinger Commission's report on Central America; the mostly student audience applauded Schoultz and at times hissed Reich.

On the evening of November 19, 1984 about 80 students, professors and townspeople stood silently with candles in front of the Franklin Street Post Office against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and Central America, in a vigil of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the Carolina Interfaith Taskforce on Central America. At noon that day members of the UNC chapter of Students for America, three in battle fatigues with plastic Uzis, staged a mock abduction in the Pit of a woman speaking against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, to protest the Campus Governing Council's plan for campus protests if the United States invaded Nicaragua. Chapter chairman Dave Fazio and the group's national executive director, Ralph Reed, said the council spoke only for 'campus liberals'.

On March 19, 1985 about 20 members of the Carolina Committee on Central America held a noon rally in the Pit before about 60 onlookers, with signs reading "U.S. Out Of Central America," and urged students to sign a pledge of resistance and join a ceremony at Fort Bragg that Saturday. On June 12 about 150 protesters who feared a new Vietnam in Nicaragua marched on U.S. Representative Bill Cobey's district office on Airport Road, singing songs against the Contras and pressing him to vote against the proposed aid package. On election day, November 5, the Carolina Interfaith Taskforce on Central America and more than 150 volunteers set up tables outside the polls in 17 precincts for Proposition Paz, an unofficial referendum, since an official ballot question would have needed an act of the General Assembly; 2,084 people voted on seven resolutions on U.S. policy in Central America, among them aid to the Contras, the trade embargo against Nicaragua and the deportation of refugees, and all seven passed.

On January 29, 1986 Adolfo Calero, commander in chief of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, spoke to about 800 people in Memorial Hall at the invitation of the Carolina Union Forum Committee, while about 120 protesters from the Carolina Committee on Central America and the taskforce, in dark clothes, white armbands and face paint, marched in chanting and stood with their backs to the stage through the speech. On February 24 about 60 students gathered in the Pit as members of the Campus Awareness Network and the Carolina Committee spoke against President Reagan's plan to send $100 million to the Contras, before a trip to lobby in Washington, while about 12 students stood by with signs supporting the aid; congressional candidate Kirsten Nyrop told the crowd she had protested the Vietnam War as a UNC student and welcomed the tradition continuing. On March 4 members of the taskforce, working with Witness for Peace's national "Crosses of Sorrow and Hope" program in 77 cities, set up crosses along Chapel Hill roads, among them N.C. 54, bearing the names of Nicaraguan civilians killed by Contra forces; the Daily Tar Heel reported them as partly a protest against the $100 million request. On March 23 about 60 people carrying candles and crosses walked from St. Thomas More Church on Gimghoul Road to the Chapel of the Cross on Franklin Street in a vigil for Romero and others killed in Central America's political violence, and planted five crosses at the church, each bearing the name of a Nicaraguan civilian killed since Congress voted $27 million in non-lethal aid to the Contras in June 1985.

On February 24, 1987 more than 30 people stood in a silent noon vigil across the Pit to open a 24-hour fast by the Carolina Committee against U.S. policy in Nicaragua, which ended with a rally there the next day; the committee said it raised $700 to $1,000 for a day-care and health center in rural Nicaragua. On March 19, 1988 about 200 students and area residents rallied at Morehead Planetarium and marched up Franklin Street and back to protest President Reagan's dispatch of 2,000 Fort Bragg troops to Honduras, some going on to the Smith Center during the NCAA tournament games; the War Resisters League, the taskforce, the Carolina Committee, Witness for Peace and a Durham committee took part after failing to get a permit to protest at Fort Bragg. On October 4, 1989 about 20 members of the UNC College Republicans met Arnoldo Ramos, a representative of El Salvador's FMLN and FDR opposition fronts, with signs outside his Institute of Latin American Studies talk in the Student Union; chairwoman Sharon Sentelle said they were voicing disapproval of what she called a terrorist party, while audience members and Institute staff said the signs called him a communist pig.