Storyline · 1980–1988
Chapel Hill residents and UNC students held vigils against the return of draft registration in 1980. In 1981 and 1982 they signed nuclear freeze petitions, the Town Council accepted 7,000 signatures and marchers walked from Carrboro to campus. The 1983 invasion of Grenada brought rival rallies in the Pit, a law faculty letter to President Reagan and a teach-in, and a protest marked its anniversary in 1984. In 1985 the county commissioners called a state plan to move Durham residents to Chapel Hill in a nuclear attack unrealistic, and students marched against the Strategic Defense Initiative, which they protested again in 1986 and 1988.
People Against the Selective Service, a group of Chapel Hill residents and UNC students formed at a meeting of more than 40 people in the Carolina Union on February 4, 1980, opposed President Carter's call to resume draft registration, and on February 6 about a dozen members stood in the snow in front of the Franklin Street post office with signs against war and the draft. On April 21 four people with signs against draft registration met the Naval ROTC battalion's annual spring march on Franklin Street without disrupting it. On July 21, the first day of the new national registration, about 50 people kept a noon vigil at the post office, organized by People Against Registration, a coalition tied to the War Resisters League; Town Council member Joe Herzenberg joined them, and a student burned a registration form.
On October 14, 1981 the Caravan for Human Survival, a traveling group of anti-nuclear students and citizens, held a rally in the Pit where about 200 students signed its manifesto for a worldwide freeze on nuclear weapons. On May 24, 1982 the Chapel Hill Town Council voted unanimously to accept petitions signed by more than 7,000 area residents calling for an end to the nuclear arms race, presented by Gordon Dragt of the Chapel Hill Coalition for a Nuclear Arms Freeze, and Mayor Joe Nassif said he would send them with a letter of support to the state's senators, the area's congressmen and the secretary of state. On June 5 about 200 people marched from Carrboro Town Hall to Graham Memorial at the edge of the campus, organized by the June 12th Coalition for Disarmament to build support for the June 12 disarmament rally in New York. On November 11 UNC's Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense and Student Government held a day-long convocation on the arms race, which opened in the Pit with the curriculum's chairman, James Leutze. On October 6, 1983 about 70 students lay down in the Pit in a die-in against the MX missile, sponsored by Students Taking Action for Nuclear Disarmament (STAND), formed the year before.
On October 26, 1983, the day after U.S. forces invaded Grenada, about 100 people rallied in the Pit for the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles in support of the invasion, while about 100 others joined a protest by the Carolina Committee on Central America, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Workers Party and STAND that moved from Franklin Street to the Pit; speakers warned that Nicaragua could be next. By November 2 the dean and 16 professors of the UNC School of Law had sent President Reagan a letter, first drafted by Kenan Professor Daniel H. Pollitt, saying they were "deeply anguished" by the invasion, which they also called an invasion of the power of Congress to declare war. On November 14 more than 200 students and faculty filled 100 Hamilton Hall for a teach-in of the curriculum in peace, war and defense, where Leutze, Pollitt and two other professors discussed U.S. policy in Lebanon, Grenada and Central America and Pollitt argued that the invasion broke U.S. and international law. On October 17, 1984 the Rev. Robert Drinan, the Jesuit former Massachusetts congressman, told about 160 people in Memorial Hall that the Reagan administration had damaged the chances for nuclear arms reduction, in the keynote of the campus Week of Nuclear Education. On October 25, the first anniversary of the invasion, about 200 students gathered in the Pit for a National Student Peace Day protest organized by STAND, the Carolina Committee on Central America, the Democratic Socialists of America and Internationalist Books, while fewer than 30 attended a Student Liberation Day celebration of the invasion held by the College Republicans and the USA Foundation in Great Hall.
On November 5, 1985 the N.C. Division of Emergency Management told the Orange County commissioners that on warning of a nuclear attack 123,000 Durham County residents would move to Chapel Hill as a host area, a two-and-a-half-day evacuation of some 35,000 cars; chairman Donald G. Willhoit called the plan unrealistic, said the board viewed it with general cynicism and asked for a public hearing before the state returned with a written plan in March. On November 12 the Chapel Hill Town Council invited residents to light candles during the Reagan-Gorbachev summit of November 19 and 20 to show their wish for world peace and an arms agreement cutting nuclear stockpiles. On November 16 STAND and the Campus Awareness Network led a march against the Strategic Defense Initiative from the Pit down Cameron Avenue and Columbia Street to University Presbyterian Church on Franklin Street; the crowd grew from 25 to more than 150, town residents among them, short of the 500 to 1,000 the organizers had predicted, and the Rev. William Finlator was among the closing speakers. At noon on April 9, 1986 about 50 students fell to the ground at a simulated blast in the Pit and had their bodies outlined in chalk in a STAND die-in against the arms race; College Republicans marched in with signs backing the Strategic Defense Initiative, and about 20 more students joined the die-in. Sixteen STAND members later led the Southeastern delegation at National Student Lobby Day in Washington on April 17. On September 24 three members of the Soviet Physicians Committee for the Prevention of Nuclear War, invited by the Triangle chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, told about 300 people in Hamilton Hall that Soviet citizens feared nuclear war as much as Americans and that doctors on both sides should press their governments to prevent it; they also described the Chernobyl accident, which one of them, Vladimir Almazov, said had killed 31 people, with 19 bone marrow transplants done with American help. On March 23, 1988 the National Student Movement and STAND marked the fifth anniversary of President Reagan's Star Wars speech with a protest in the Pit before about 50 onlookers, calling for an end to Star Wars research on campus.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
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, 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).
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.
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. “Draft registration, the nuclear freeze and Grenada: peace protest in Chapel Hill, 1980–1988.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/peace-protest-storyline-1980/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
