Graham Street neighbors and the Elliot’s Nest disco, 1980

In January 1980 residents of South Graham Street, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Chapel Hill, petitioned the town and the state over noise, litter and parking from patrons of the Elliot's Nest disco. The state refused the club a beer and wine permit and it closed, and the council banned night parking on the street. In March the state ABC Board denied the permit, a ruling expected to close the club for good.

The events, date by date

Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.

January 14, 1980 Graham Street residents petition the town over the Elliot's Nest disco Residents of South Graham Street, a predominantly Black neighborhood, petitioned the Chapel Hill Town Council on January 14, 1980, to ban night parking on their street, citing noise, litter and rudeness from patrons of the Elliot's Nest disco at 112 South Graham Street; the council accepted the petition and sent it to the town manager. Residents told the Daily Tar Heel that club patrons had misused the nearby Second Baptist Church and that a motorcyclist had shouted racial slurs on the street at night, and they also petitioned the state ABC office. Place: South Graham Street, Chapel Hill · Also mentions: Elliot's NestThe Daily Tar Heel, January 16, 1980, p. 3

January 23, 1980 Elliot's Nest closes after the state denies its beer and wine permit After South Graham Street residents petitioned the state Alcoholic Beverage Control office, its assistant administrator refused Elliot's Nest a permanent permit to sell beer and wine, and the owner closed the Graham Street nightclub on January 23, 1980, to await an appeal hearing set for February 15. At a town committee meeting on January 21 the Rev. James A. Brown of Second Baptist Church called the club a misplaced business and said the trouble was a race problem. Place: Elliot's Nest, 112 South Graham Street, Chapel Hill · Also named: James A. Brown · Also mentions: South Graham StreetThe Daily Tar Heel, January 28, 1980, p. 3

January 28, 1980 The Town Council bans night parking on South Graham Street On January 28, 1980, the Chapel Hill Town Council voted 6-0 to prohibit parking from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on South Graham Street, South Roberson Street and Cameron Avenue between them, as the Graham Street residents had petitioned and the town manager recommended. Jonathan Howes questioned the need now that Elliot's Nest had closed, and Joe Straley asked how it could be enforced near the Second Baptist Church. People: Jonathan Howes, Joe Straley Place: South Graham Street, South Roberson Street and Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill · Also mentions: Elliot's Nest, Cameron AvenueThe Daily Tar Heel, January 30, 1980, p. 3

February 15, 1980 South Graham Street neighbors oppose Elliot's Nest's beer and wine permit At a state ABC Board preliminary hearing in Chapel Hill on February 15, 1980, more than 20 residents of the South Graham Street neighborhood argued against a permanent beer and wine permit for the Elliot's Nest nightclub, which they had petitioned against in January for noise, traffic and parking problems. The hearing officer recommended on March 4 that the permit be denied because of the club's location; the club, closed since its permit was refused in January, appealed to the state board. Place: Elliot's Nest, South Graham Street, Chapel Hill · Also mentions: South Graham StreetSearch the index · The Daily Tar Heel, March 10, 1980, p. 2

March 14, 1980 State ABC Board denies the Elliot's Nest nightclub a beer and wine permit Meeting in Raleigh, the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board followed its hearing officer and refused a beer and wine permit to Elliot's Nest on South Graham Street, finding its location unsuitable. Neighbors had complained of noise, traffic and parking since the club opened in 1975; it had been closed since the state turned down the new owner in January, and the ruling was expected to close it for good. Place: Elliot's Nest, South Graham Street, Chapel Hill · Also mentions: South Graham StreetSearch the index · The Daily Tar Heel, March 17, 1980, p. 1

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).

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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.

✓ Held at OCPL · 796.323 CHANSKY NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Chapel Hill PL Library of Congress Methodist CH Historical Society

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.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 323.4 EHL NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Chapel Hill PL Library of Congress UNCSA CH Historical Society

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.

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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).

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 324.975 PLE Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU CH Historical Society

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.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 975.656 RIBBONS NC Cardinal UNC Duke Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society

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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.

✓ Held at OCPL · 371.009 MOORE NC Cardinal UNC NC State Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society

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).

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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.

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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).

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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.

✓ Held at OCPL · 975.656 EID NC Cardinal UNC Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society

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).

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