By September 1986 Seawell, Carrboro and Frank Porter Graham elementary schools had added temporary classrooms for the 1986-87 year, while permanent multipurpose buildings were being built at Glenwood and Estes Hills. School officials blamed the area's steady development, and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education planned recommendations that winter that could include three-year middle schools. At a public hearing on February 2, 1987 about 150 people spoke overwhelmingly for turning the system's two junior high schools into middle schools for grades six through eight, and teachers asked for careful planning and training. On February 23, after a six-month study, the board's six members voted unanimously to begin the conversion: elementary schools would take kindergarten through fifth grade, middle schools sixth through eighth, and the ninth grade would move to the high school. Assistant superintendent Michael Radz put facilities for the plan at $19.5 million against $16 million for the existing grades and expected the middle schools in three to five years.
On November 16, 1987 more than 60 parents, teachers and educators packed the Lincoln Center meeting room as parents of Carrboro Elementary School pupils urged the board to study every answer to overcrowding before moving sixth graders into a junior high. Superintendent Gerry House called the move an option, not a recommendation, and the board set up a committee of parents, teachers and administrators to report in February. On February 1, 1988, with Carrboro Elementary holding about 605 pupils in a building meant for 482, the board voted 7 to 0 to move the school's sixth grade to Grey Culbreth Junior High School by August 1988. Several parents spoke against it; House had recommended the move as consistent with the planned shift to middle schools. On February 20, 1989, with Carolyn Horn the only member opposed, the board voted to send rising sixth graders from Frank Porter Graham to Culbreth and those from Seawell and Estes Hills to Phillips Junior High and to move Phillips's ninth graders to Chapel Hill High the next fall while Culbreth's stayed.
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.
Educational specifications for Carrboro Elementary School
Rosenstengel, William Everett, 1896-1958 · 1956 · University of North Carolina School of Education?
William E. Rosenstengel's report on what Carrboro Elementary School needed in classrooms, library and site layout, with a plan. Dated 1956, though May 1965 is also given. Part of North Carolina Memory.
Carrboro Elementary School, Carrboro, North Carolina.
1956 · Croft & Hammond, A.I.A.?
Croft and Hammond, architects of Asheboro, prepared this 1956 presentation of Carrboro Elementary School: ten unnumbered leaves of illustrations and plans at 22 by 28 centimeters. Topics include the school itself and elementary school buildings in Carrboro as pictorial works, which makes it a source for the design of the building as it was put up.
Contract documents for school construction and appurtenant work : Aycock School (white), Carrboro School (white), Chapel Hill school (Negro), Hillsboro School (Negro), Murphey School (white), Orange Grove School (white), St. Mary's School (white)
Atwood and Weeks, Inc., architects and engineers, H.D. Carter, associate · 1935 · Orange County Board of Education
Contract documents prepared in 1935 by the architects and engineers Atwood and Weeks, with H. D. Carter, for a Public Works Administration school-building program in Orange County, PWA project NC 1005, issued by the county Board of Education in Hillsboro. The title lists seven schools, five for white pupils, Aycock, Carrboro, Murphey, Orange Grove and St. Mary's, and two for Black pupils, at Chapel Hill and Hillsboro, in the period's own labels. 49 leaves plus 20 unnumbered.
Plumbing : contract documents for school construction and appurtenant work : Aycock School (white), Carrboro School (white), Chapel Hill school (Negro), Hillsboro School (Negro), Murphey School (white), Orange Grove School (white), St. Mary's School (white)
Atwood and Weeks, Inc., architects and engineers, H.D. Carter, associate · 1935 · Orange County Board of Education
Plumbing contract documents for a 1935 school construction program of the Orange County Board of Education, a Public Works Administration project numbered NC 1005, covering seven schools: Aycock, Carrboro, Murphey, Orange Grove and St. Mary's, designated for white pupils, and the Chapel Hill and Hillsboro schools, designated for Black pupils. Prepared by Atwood and Weeks, architects and engineers, with H. D. Carter, 39 leaves.
Wider background: Schools & Education · 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 Woman Who Rang the Bell: The Story of Cornelia Spencer Phillips
Russell, Charles Phillips · 1949
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).
Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices
Barefoot, Daniel W. · 2008
Daniel W. Barefoot arranges first-hand recollections of the University of North Carolina by decade, from the 'infant university' of the 1790s through the Civil War years when promise turned to despair, the rebuilding of the 1870s, the 'frosh' life of the 1880s, wartime fame in the 1940s, the controversies of the 1960s and the bicentennial of the 1990s. Thomas Wolfe's student years appear among the voices. Published by John F. Blair of Winston-Salem in 2008, 257 pages.
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.
Blood on the Old Well
Emery, Sarah Watson · 1963
Sarah Watson Emery's 1963 book on the University of North Carolina, concerned with communism on the Chapel Hill campus and with academic freedom in 1960 and 1961. Published by Prospect House in Dallas, 240 pages with illustrations.
Horace Williams
Winston, Sr., Robert Watson · 1942 · The University of North Carolina press
Robert Watson Winston's biography of Henry Horace Williams (1858-1940), who taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina for half a century, subtitled gadfly of Chapel Hill. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1942, 309 pages with frontispiece and portraits; this copy is autographed. Topics include educators in Chapel Hill and the university's history.
Reviewed in Social Forces (1943).
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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.
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).
Francis Preston Venable of the University of North Carolina
Bursey, Maurice M. · 1989 · Chapel Hill Historical Society
Maurice M. Bursey's biography of Francis Preston Venable (1856 to 1934), chemist and president of the University of North Carolina, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1989. It also covers the history of the university's chemistry department. Illustrated, 111 pages, with bibliographies.
Reviewed in Isis (1992).
Old Days in Chapel Hill
Chamberlain, G. Hope Summerell · 1926
Hope Summerell Chamberlain's life and letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), published in 1926, which doubles as a picture of Chapel Hill and the university in the nineteenth century. It runs 325 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase
Covington, Jr., Howard E. · 2018
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s history of how the University of North Carolina took shape under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham (1876 to 1918) and Harry Woodburn Chase (1883 to 1955), published by the University Library in 2018. The 528-page account covers campus history in the early twentieth century and includes portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2020).
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
