By October 1, 1981 HUD had approved a $1 million Community Development Block Grant for Orange County, the second year of a three-year, $2.62 million commitment to the North Fairview community near Hillsborough, which the county commissioners had targeted. County finance officer Kathryn Battern said the second year's money would buy and clear land for a park, and the program aimed to pave the area's dirt roads and bring 30 substandard homes up to standard.
In 1982, applying for block grants now administered by the state, Carrboro asked for the maximum $750,000 for five projects, among them revitalizing east Carrboro, expanding Cleora Steding Corp. and 30 to 40 units of housing for the elderly. Chapel Hill applied for housing rehabilitation, weatherization of public housing, a home-ownership project and a sewer line on Barclay Road and Justice Street; requests across the state ran to $155 million, triple the money available. By January 24, 1983 the N.C. Department of Natural Resources and Community Development had rejected Chapel Hill's $750,000 application because the Chapel Hill Housing Authority had failed to spend 35 percent of its 1981-82 grant. Town Manager David Taylor's report of February 10 blamed a caseload that had nearly doubled, from 19 to 36, delays dating to 1979 and the end of a federal rehabilitation program; he said the authority had caught up by December 31, 1982 and that only $250,000 had really been at stake.
By September 2, 1983 the state had awarded Chapel Hill $519,600 of the $750,000 it sought, for new sewer lines and street paving in the University Heights area plus $86,800 for a local option, and Carrboro $98,437 of $223,125. Carrboro lent $75,000 of its grant that fall to the owner of the Jade Palace restaurant and the Norina Instrument Company on East Main Street to expand both businesses, with $255,000 in private money and a pledge of eight jobs at each for low- and moderate-income workers; the rest was set for town improvements and loan administration. Three other grants totaling $210,000, including $10,000 to Balloons & Tunes, had gone to Carrboro businesses in the past year.
On March 12, 1984 the Chapel Hill Town Council held its first hearing on an expected $350,000 entitlement grant from HUD, part of more than $1 million over three years under a program that replaced the competitive small cities grants. Requests included repairs in Chase Park and Elliot Woods and a program on sex and drug education in public housing, and a Planning Board member's idea of using the money for a student dormitory drew sharp objection from the Chamber of Commerce president. In Carrboro the Board of Aldermen opened public hearings on March 13 on a $750,000 project to revitalize housing in the Lloyd Street and Broad Street area, and on April 9, with the aldermen's approval, the town sent the state its application: $313,322 to rebuild Broad, Fowler and Cobb streets and Starlite Drive with curbs, gutters and sidewalks, $140,600 in low-interest loans to residents and $11,000 to tear down dilapidated buildings.
Further reading
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are the most widely held histories of the theme it is filed under, so they may not discuss it. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Kinship and Neighborhood in a Southern Community
Kenzer, Robert C. · 1987 · University of Tennessee Press
Robert C. Kenzer's study of kinship and neighborhood in Orange County between 1849 and 1881, the decades before and after the Civil War, tracing family ties and neighborhood networks through the county's records. Published by the University of Tennessee Press in 1987, 251 pages with illustrations, maps, portraits and a bibliography. Topics include kinship, neighborhoods and social conditions in the county in the nineteenth century.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1988), Journal of American History (1988), The American Historical Review (1989), The Journal of Southern History (1989), Civil War history (1989), Journal of Social History (1989).
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.
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.
The Copperline chronicles: a history of the Kings Mill-Morgan Creek neighborhoods
2020
Neighborhood history of the Kings Mill and Morgan Creek area of Chapel Hill, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2020. The project started in June 2014 when neighbors were asked over the community email list to share memories of life there, and replies came from current residents and from former residents raised there who had since scattered across the country. 268 pages with illustrations, color maps and portraits.
African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties
Bolduc, Jean · 2016
Jean Bolduc's 2016 collection of interviews with African American residents of Durham and Orange counties, presented as short biographies. The subjects are Floyd McKissick (1922-1991), the first African American admitted to UNC's law school, Walter Jackson, Brenda Stephens, Nate Davis, poet Jaki Shelton Green, Jackie Wagstaff, Diane Wright and Michelle Johnson, with a closing chapter on the Ku Klux Klan. 125 pages with illustrations.
"Whites only" : a pastor's retrospective on signs of the new South
Seymour, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1925-2020 · 2011 · Chapel Hill Press
Robert E. Seymour, a Baptist pastor in Chapel Hill associated with Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, looks back on segregation and race relations in the South from the pulpit. A clergyman's memoir covering church history in the town, Baptists in North Carolina and the segregation of African Americans. Published by Chapel Hill Press in 2011, 204 pages.
Show 6 more
Cedar Grove, 1939 : revisiting Marion Post's photos of a Black rural neighborhood
Bennett, Evan P. · 2025 · Historical Research Office, Office of Archives and History
Evan P. Bennett returns to the photographs Marion Post Wolcott made in 1939 in Cedar Grove, a Black farming neighborhood in northern Orange County that she documented for the federal resettlement program. Published in 2025 by the Historical Research Office in Raleigh, pages 384 to 406, with illustrations and portraits. Topics include rural African Americans in the Cedar Grove township and photographers in the state.
Making Carrboro home : user alteration of company space
Lachenman, Sara Regan · 2005
Sara Regan Lachenman's 2005 thesis on how the people living in Carrboro's company built housing altered it to suit themselves. It takes up domestic architecture, working class housing and the social side of the textile industry in the town, with 158 pages of text and illustrations.
James J. Freeland
Freeland, Maxine · 1999
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
Portrait of a southern community, 1849-1881 : family, kinship, and neighborhood in Orange County, North Carolina
Kenzer, Robert C., 1955- · 1982
Robert C. Kenzer's study of family, kinship and neighborhood in Orange County between 1849 and 1881, covering the county's households from the late antebellum years through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Completed in 1982 in 248 leaves with maps. Topics include kinship, neighborhoods, race relations and social conditions in the county during the nineteenth century.
Council on the Status of Women, Public Relations File, Orange County Commission for Women
Messenheimer, Judith M. · 1989
Public relations material on the Orange County Commission for Women, 1989 to 1992, from the files of the North Carolina Council on the Status of Women, 26 images, with Judith M. Messenheimer named as creator. Issues include child care, teenage pregnancy, abortion, older women, low-income housing, taxation, AFDC, and women's education and employment.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Kings Mill-Morgan Creek Neighborhood Collection (Chapel Hill Historical Society)
2003
Material on the Kings Mill and Morgan Creek neighborhood of Chapel Hill, 2003 to 2019, gathered from residents and the neighborhood association while The Copperline Chronicles (Chapel Hill Historical Society, 2020) was being prepared. Three boxes, collection CHHS.017.
