On September 6, 1983 the Orange County commissioners appointed 18 people, nine nominated by each of the county's two school systems, to a Schools Capital Needs Task Force to study the building and repair needs of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County schools and how to pay for them, chiefly through the new local half-cent sales tax option. Chairman Richard Whitted and Commissioners Don Willhoit and Shirley Marshall said they wanted any sales tax put to a referendum. On February 6, 1984 the commissioners set a special public hearing on the tax for March 13, and a week later the Chapel Hill Town Council unanimously urged them to enact it; town officials estimated it would bring Chapel Hill $417,000 in 1984-85. Sixteen people spoke at the hearing, and only a former Chapel Hill council member opposed the tax, as unfair to the poor. Chapel Hill Mayor Joe Nassif backed it but objected to a task force plan to give all of the money to the schools, Carrboro Mayor Jim Porto said Carrboro would otherwise have to raise property taxes, school board chairman Max Kennedy said even the whole yield would not meet the schools' short-term needs, and parents described poor conditions at A. L. Stanback Middle School.
On April 2 the commissioners adopted the tax 3 to 2, raising the county's sales tax to 4.5 percent from June 1 and, on Commissioner Ben Lloyd's motion, setting aside at least 80 percent of the new money for school buildings over the next five and a half years. Whitted and Marshall voted no, calling a tax on food regressive and asking for a referendum; Willhoit, now chairman, said a vote would cost about $500,000 in lost revenue. The Daily Tar Heel reported that Orange was the 91st county to adopt the tax. On November 26 the commissioners unanimously backed five funding options from the School Capital Task Force, among them an $8 million to $9 million bond issue, chiefly to replace Stanback, and $750,000 a year in county capital money for each school system.
By March 17, 1988 the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce had asked the commissioners to strive for parity between the city and county school systems by raising county per-pupil spending each year, without limiting the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools, which drew $553 more per pupil from their district tax on top of the $871 both systems got from the county. On November 8 Orange County voters approved $22 million for repairs and additions to school buildings, 25,047 to 9,486, $7 million for county public works, 18,720 to 14,537, and $1 million to buy land for a future reservoir to serve central Orange and Hillsborough, 20,950 to 12,476; the reservoir bond, expected to meet opposition in southern Orange, carried in all but six of the county's 41 precincts. On April 4, 1989 the commissioners sold $11.8 million of the $30 million in bonds, most of it bought by NCNB, at 7.1 percent interest; Commissioner John Hartwell said $10.5 million would go to school construction and additions and the rest to an animal shelter addition, a records building in Hillsborough and a human services building in Chapel Hill.
That spring the commissioners proposed an impact tax on new development, a bill letting the county tax new building by the square foot to help pay for roads and other public facilities. On April 17 the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board voted unanimously to support it, provided part of the money went to the schools; Superintendent Gerry House said new subdivisions brought more children. On April 24 the Chapel Hill Town Council approved a memorandum from members David Godschalk and Art Werner supporting the draft bill, which the work group estimated would bring Chapel Hill $488,450 a year. The same night the commissioners, meeting in Hillsborough, voted not to send the bill to the General Assembly, judging it could not pass before the May 11 deadline, and returned it for more study to the Intergovernmental Work Group of the county, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough. Trouble had begun when Hillsborough asked to be left out, saying the tax would hurt development and affordable housing.
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.
More than a mentoring program : attacking institutional racism
Meyer, Graig M. · 2018 · Information Age Publishing
Graig M. Meyer's 2018 account, written with George Noblit, of a youth mentoring program in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools that set out to attack institutional racism and close racial achievement gaps. Chapters lay out an antiracist mentoring model, racial identity development, advocacy at the system level, staffing and leadership, and a culture of continuous improvement. Published by Information Age Publishing, 211 pages, online.
Oral history interview with Sam Holton, March 28, 2001: interview K-0206, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Holton, Samuel M. · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Samuel M. Holton (1922-2010) sat on Chapel Hill's school board during desegregation. Elected in 1968 after a term as PTA president, he took office as racial tension rose after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Talking with Jenny Matthews in March 2001, he describes the board's decisions on integrating the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and the conflicts that came with them. Runs about eighty minutes; electronic edition issued by the UNC library in 2007 through Documenting the American South.
Oral history interview with Edwin Caldwell, March 2, 2001: interview K-0202, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Caldwell, Edwin · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Edwin Caldwell, Jr. reviews a life in Chapel Hill politics in a three-hour Southern Oral History Program interview recorded March 2, 2001, by Oliver White. A skilled organizer, Caldwell worked in the campaign that made Howard Lee the town's first Black mayor in 1969, ran for office more than once without winning, and became a local political power. The conversation also covers race relations, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board and the Church of Reconciliation. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
The effects of desegregation on selected variables in the Chapel Hill city school system
Prichard, Paul Newton, 1935- · 1969
Paul Newton Prichard's 1969 study of what desegregation changed in the Chapel Hill city school system, measured against academic achievement and other selected variables. Topics include school integration and achievement in the town, and a bibliography runs to page 115. Written during the district's own desegregation years, which makes it a contemporary source as well as a study.
Wider background: Politics & Government · the most widely held histories of the theme this storyline is filed under; they may not discuss it
William Friday
Link, William A. · 1995
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.
The Story of the Institute of Government, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Coates, Albert McKinley · 1981
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.
Communists on Campus
Billingsley, William J. · 1999 · University of Georgia Press
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).
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).
The Age of Orange: Political and Intellectual Leadership in North Carolina, 1752-1861
Blackwelder, Ruth · 1961
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.
Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary
Nash, Frank · 1953
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.
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The Good Government Man
Covington, Jr., Howard E. · 2010
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.
Frank Porter Graham: A Southern Liberal
Ashby, Warren H. · 1981 · Blair
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).
Orange County, 1752-1952
Lefler, Hugh Talmage; Wager, Paul W. · 1953
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).
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).
The Papers Of Willie Person Mangum
Mangum, Willie Person · 1950 · State Dept. of Archives and History
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).
An Historical Address Delivered in Saint Matthew's Church, Hillsboro, N.C., on Sunday, August 24, 1924
Cheshire, Joseph Blount · 1925
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.
