In mid-March 1992 the Midway Development Commission, formed to develop the largely Black business and church district at the west end of Franklin and Rosemary streets on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro line, asked the Chapel Hill Town Council for money to revitalize the area, including a cultural center annex tied to UNC's Black Cultural Center. Its declaration blamed a historic "whites-only" attitude in the business community for the district's weakness, and council members asked for more information. On April 13 Alan McSurely of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP told the council that the recession was ruining Black-owned businesses in the Midway and that a commission of Black businesses and churches, backed by Mayor Ken Broun and Carrboro Mayor Eleanor Kinnaird, was being organized.
On January 11, 1993 the council unanimously granted the commission $6,000 to promote Black-owned businesses and housing in the Midway; James Brittian, NAACP president and the commission's project development coordinator, said the money would bring in millions. The commission incorporated as a nonprofit in March, based at 705 West Rosemary Street. In November its president, Harvey Reid, said it was studying why money was not invested in predominantly African-American areas. A teen center the commission backed in the Midway building closed after a November 15 memorandum from police Chief Ralph Pendergraph said youths in a downtown beating had come from a dance there. Reid disputed the memo, and Pendergraph later said he had no indication anyone from the center was involved and called singling it out an injustice.
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.
Background on Black Life & Civil Rights · the most widely held histories of the theme this storyline is filed under; they may not discuss it
To Free A Family
Nathans, Sydney · 2012 · Harvard University Press
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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).
