Storyline · 1928–1964
Chapel Hill's recorder's court, which voters approved 93 to 8 in 1929, tried the township's misdemeanors in town. At its first session, on June 3, 1929, with C. P. Hinshaw on the bench, six cases were tried, and by March 1931 it had tried 780, only five of them appealed, while Superior Court terms at Hillsboro shrank from about five days to three. From 1931 town voters elected the judge, and in 1937 more than 200 residents petitioned to keep that election. In 1947 it sentenced Joseph Felmet to the county roads on the bus seating charge. In 1964 L. J. Phipps, first its judge in 1933, returned to the bench.
Chapel Hill's recorder's court was first sought on August 13, 1928, when a petition from more than 100 citizens asking for an election on a recorder's court for Chapel Hill and the area within five miles was presented to the aldermen; the project stalled when its sponsor found that a special act of the legislature was needed first. In 1929 the town set up the court to hear all misdemeanors from Chapel Hill Township. A week after voters approved the court 93 to 8, the board of aldermen on May 13, 1929 named C. P. Hinshaw recorder, B. D. Sawyer prosecuting attorney and Ruby Ross clerk.
The court began to function on June 1, 1929, and at its first session, on Monday, June 3, in the upstairs room of the town hall, with Hinshaw on the bench, six cases were tried and three continued; it sat on Monday mornings at first and by 1930 on Saturdays. In its first year it disposed of 442 cases, turning $1,645 net into the town treasury and $2,303 in fines into the Orange County school fund, and by March 31, 1931 it had tried 780 cases, only five of them appealed and one reversed, while Superior Court terms at Hillsboro had shrunk from about five days to three. From the municipal election of May 1931 the judge was elected by town voters.
Chapel Hill attorney L. J. Phipps first became judge in 1933, when the court met in the old Pickwick Theater building. Early in 1937 the aldermen asked Orange County's representative, B. J. Howard, to bring in a bill letting them appoint the judge for one-year terms, and more than 200 men and women of the town petitioned the legislature to keep the popular election; the bill was introduced on March 3, and the calendar committee set a hearing for March 5 in the Supreme Court library. Phipps left the bench in 1939.
In May 1947 the trial of Joseph Felmet on the bus seating charge was put off while Bayard Rustin and Igal Roodenko were tried. Felmet was tried in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on June 24, 1947 and sentenced to the county roads, and he appealed to Superior Court and posted a $50 bond. On May 5, 1964 Phipps took the oath as the court's judge again, almost 25 years after he left the same bench. The aldermen had named him the week before to succeed W. S. Stewart, who quit in mid-term.
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.
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.
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.
Kemp Plummer Battle's memoir, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 296 pages with plates and portraits. Battle, a lawyer, state treasurer and president of the university from 1876 to 1891, recalls North Carolina manners, customs and public life across the nineteenth century, with Chapel Hill and the university's reopening after Reconstruction at the center.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1946), The Journal of Southern History (1946).
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).
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.
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.
Abstracts of the minutes of Orange County's Inferior Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for 1777 to 1788, the county court of justices of the peace in the Revolutionary years. The abstracts name the people who came before the court. First published in Charlotte in 1966 and later reprinted from Greenville, South Carolina, in three paginated sections with a map.
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), lawyer, poet and Episcopal priest, raised in Durham. Its six parts follow a Southern childhood, the move to New York, the 1938 application to the University of North Carolina that was refused because Murray was Black (the chapter is titled 'Members of your race are not admitted'), law school and the coining of the phrase Jane Crow, the Cold War years, the push toward 'an NAACP for women', and a late-life ordination. 494 pages with portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2018).
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
Nora Gaskin's short true account of a murder investigation in 1960s Chapel Hill and the judicial error that followed, centered on Frank Rinaldi (1929 to 2009). Published in 2013 by Lystra Books, 52 pages with references.
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. “Chapel Hill's recorder's court, 1928–1964.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/recorders-court-storyline-1929/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
