Storyline · 1972–1993
In 1972 UNC's Student Legislature called the Homecoming Queen pageant demeaning to women and asked that it end. From 1976 Black students won the crown four years running, and in 1984 the Carolina Athletic Association introduced the Carolina Pride Award to replace the queen. In 1989 Black Student Movement vice president Tonya Blanks was crowned homecoming queen after a student vote. In 1990 a racist note was left on the car of the new homecoming queen, and in 1993 the BSM's candidate became the fifth Black queen in a row.
On October 12, 1972, at the urging of the Association of Women Students, the UNC Student Legislature passed a resolution calling the Homecoming Queen pageant "discriminatory to men and demeaning to women" and recommending that it end. In November 1976, with strong support from Black students, a Black junior was elected Homecoming Queen in a race with two Black candidates; Black Ink called her the first Black woman to hold the title at the university. A second Black student won in November 1977, and on November 10, 1979 a Black senior, nominated by Omega Psi Phi and chosen as the Black students' candidate by the Black Campus Cabinet, was crowned at the Clemson game, the fourth Black homecoming queen in a row. On November 10, 1984 the Carolina Athletic Association first presented the Carolina Pride Award, a school-spirit honor designed to replace the homecoming queen, to a senior in the Marching Tar Heels chosen by student vote from seven nominees.
On September 30, 1989 Tonya Blanks, a senior and vice president of the Black Student Movement, was crowned 1989-90 homecoming queen at halftime of the game against Navy after more than 1,000 students voted among eight finalists; the BSM, one of her sponsors, had campaigned for her. In the fall of 1990 a racist note was left on the car of the newly elected homecoming queen, who was Black, and her tires were later damaged. In October 1991 a Carolina Athletic Association panel left the Black Student Movement's candidate off its list of ten finalists, then added her after the BSM president questioned the decision; Black Ink noted that the BSM candidate had won the crown the two previous years. On October 9, 1993 the BSM's Miss BSM was crowned, the fifth Black student in a row to win.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
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.
Lee Pace's second illustrated volume on Kenan Memorial Stadium in Chapel Hill, where the North Carolina Tar Heels play football. The dust jacket advertises forty-eight new pages, and the added title page lists original essays by Jill McCorkle, Will Blythe, Erskine Bowles, Tony Barnhart, Ron Green Jr., Ted Keith, Larry Keith, Debbie Moose and David Menconi. Pace Enterprises, 2020; 240 pages, large oblong format.
Memoir by William Rand Kenan, Jr., 1872 to 1965, the donor of Kenan Memorial Stadium at Chapel Hill. Written at intervals between 1949 and 1951 and privately printed at Lockport, New York, in 1952, it follows first and second editions of 1946 and 1949. Eighty-five pages with illustrations, touching the Kenan family and Kenansville as well as the university.
Benjamin Joseph Downs traces the money behind Kenan Memorial Stadium at Chapel Hill from 1926 to 1962, an article running pages 276 to 304, published in 2019 by the Historical Research Office of the state Office of Archives and History. Topics include William Rand Kenan Jr., university endowments and the finance of college sports. Illustrated with portraits.
Twelve page color booklet issued in 2015 by the Rams Club, the athletic support organization at the University of North Carolina, laying out the equity seating plan for Kenan Memorial Stadium. Color plans show where seats fall. Topics include football fans at Chapel Hill and the Tar Heels, making it a small record of how stadium seating was tied to giving.
Adam Lucas marks one hundred years of basketball at the University of North Carolina in this illustrated history, published by UNC Press in 2010 in association with the athletics department. Chapters follow the program from the game's arrival on campus and the 'White Phantoms' of the Southern Conference through the founding of the ACC, the 1957 season, Dean Smith's changes to the game and the title seasons of 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009, closing with a century of statistics. 289 pages.
Rick Jackson's true crime history of Chapel Hill, published by The History Press in 2023, in 28 short chapters. Cases include the Efland bank robbery, the execution of John Henry Breeze, the unsolved murder of Suellen Evans, the killing at the Internationalist Bookstore and the death of Eve Carson.
The Duke and North Carolina basketball rivalry written together by Johnny Moore and Art Chansky, the latter a sports reporter who has followed it since his student days at UNC. The book opens with the 2014 season and moves through recruiting battles old and new, 'Black and Blue Sunday', 'Blood and Roses', and chapters on the rivalry's heroes, leaders and teachers, with a foreword by Jay Bilas and a photo gallery. Published by Triumph Books in 2014, 289 pages.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
Steven J. Tepper's chronicle of how the University of North Carolina marked its bicentennial in 1993 and 1994. An appendix reprints the University Day speeches of October 12, 1993, given by Paul Hardin, James B. Hunt Jr., C.D. Spangler, William C. Friday, Charles Kuralt and President Bill Clinton, plus bicentennial addresses by Li Lu, Francis S. Collins and Richard J. Richardson. Published by the university in Chapel Hill, 1998; 284 pages.
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.
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.
William D. Snider's history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1992. It runs 370 pages with illustrations, a bibliography and an index.
Reviewed in History of Education Quarterly (1993), The Journal of Southern History (1993).
Twelve essays by novelist Daphne Athas (1923-2020) on the Chapel Hill she knew across the twentieth century. Subjects include Carrboro as 'the Paris of the Piedmont', philosopher Horace Williams, Betty Smith writing in Chapel Hill, Junius Scales, Ab Abernethy and the Intimate Bookshop, Richard Wright's visit, and a set of Chapel Hill murders. Published 2010, 243 pages with illustrations.
Scott Fowler gathers recollections from Carolina basketball players, decade by decade from the 1950s to the 2000s, organized around Roy Williams and the question in the title. Contributors include Lennie Rosenbluth, Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, Charlie Scott, Phil Ford, James Worthy, Brad Daugherty, Eric Montross, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Raymond Felton and Sean May, each entry giving position and playing years. Published 2010 by Triumph Books of Chicago, 270 pages, here as an e-book.
Archibald Henderson's history of the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, its buildings and grounds from the founding in the 1790s onward. Henderson, a professor of mathematics and a prolific historian of the university, wrote it in the years around the university's sesquicentennial. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 412 pages with illustrations and bibliographical footnotes.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1949), South Atlantic Quarterly (1950).
Charles Phillips Russell's biography of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825-1908), the Chapel Hill writer remembered for ringing the bell of South Building when the university reopened in 1875 after its closure during Reconstruction. It doubles as a history of Chapel Hill and the university. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 293 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1949).
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. “Homecoming queens and the Carolina Pride Award, 1972–1993.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/homecoming-queens-storyline-1972/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
