Storyline · 1975–1994
UNC's School of Public Health banned smoking in its classrooms in 1975, but after a student vote for a classroom ban Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor left the matter to the faculty. In 1988 Orange County, the city schools and Carrboro restricted smoking by their employees, and a UNC library and the journalism school went smoke-free in 1989 and 1990. In October 1991 Chapel Hill adopted an ordinance restricting smoking in public places, University buildings included. Before a state cutoff in October 1993 the county board of health, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and UNC all adopted smoking rules, and in 1994 UNC barred smoking in Kenan Stadium's seats.
On March 17, 1975 the dean's cabinet of UNC's School of Public Health unanimously ratified a student and faculty poll and banned smoking in all classrooms of Rosenau Hall, effective at once, while leaving lounges, corridors and offices open to smokers. In the poll 221 of 400 voters had favored a complete ban, and student leaders then asked the chancellor to consider a campus-wide ban. On October 15 students voted 2,801 to 734 for an advisory ban on smoking in classrooms, but Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor told deans and chairpersons that faculty members, singly or together, should decide whether smoking was allowed in their classes. Student organizers protested, and department heads said they would wait for the Faculty Council.
Orange County adopted a policy, recommended by County Manager John Link on April 4, 1988, confining smoking by its roughly 400 employees to designated areas of county buildings from September 1 for a one-year trial. An employee committee had surveyed the staff since August 1987, and the Daily Tar Heel called it the first such restriction by any government in the area. On September 19 the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education banned smoking by all school employees on school grounds from September 1990, ending the designated smoking areas. Chairman Theodore Parrish cited the dangers of passive smoke; Mary Bushnell voted no, and Larry Wakeford, co-president of the teachers' association, objected that teachers had not been consulted. Late that fall Carrboro banned smoking by town employees in the board chamber and in the halls joining first-floor offices of the town hall, while a Chapel Hill staff committee drafted a wider employee policy.
At UNC the Health Sciences Library went smoke-free on October 1, 1989, with ash containers placed at the entrance for smokers. In October 1990 the faculty and staff of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication voted to ban smoking everywhere in Howell Hall except private one-person offices, while the administration studied a campuswide ban. On October 14, 1991 the Chapel Hill Town Council voted 7 to 0 to restrict smoking in stores, theaters, convention halls, sports arenas such as the Smith Center and Carmichael Auditorium, restaurants with 30 or more seats, and the halls and lobbies of apartment buildings and residence halls, allowing smoking areas of up to a quarter of the public space. Chancellor Paul Hardin had written that UNC could not endorse the ordinance as applied to campus; the University later said it would comply at its own pace.
On May 15, 1993 the Carolina Union went smoke-free, after Carolina Dining Services had banned smoking in Lenoir and Chase dining halls. Ahead of a new state law that froze local smoking rules after October 15, the Chapel Hill Town Council on September 13 made its town smoking policy an ordinance barring smoking in town buildings, Chapel Hill Transit vehicles and bus shelters enclosed on more than two sides. On October 7 the Orange County Board of Health adopted Smoking Control Rules, easing the restaurant deadlines of its September 16 draft: public buildings and workplaces had to be smoke-free or confine smoking to separately ventilated areas by October 14, and restaurants had to set aside half their seats for nonsmokers by July 1994 and limit smoking to ventilated areas by July 1995. On October 12 the Carrboro aldermen endorsed the county rules and passed a stricter town ordinance, and on October 14 UNC, with Chancellor Paul Hardin's backing, banned smoking in all campus buildings except residence hall rooms. On November 8 Chapel Hill required tobacco vending machines to stand where an employee could keep minors from buying, and at the football opener on September 3, 1994 UNC began barring smoking in Kenan Stadium's seats.
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 the 3 with a known location.
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.
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 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.
Robert Korstad's history of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina over its first fifty years, 1939 to 1989, published by the university in 1990. It runs 192 pages with illustrations.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
William Fred Mayes traces the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its response to a changing society, with emphasis on the 1960s. The title page describes the account as selective and interpretive rather than complete. Published by the school in 1975, 68 pages with illustrations. Topics include schools of public health in Chapel Hill and their history.
John Andrew Kairalla's 2002 survey of the people who earned the bachelor of science in public health in biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between 1978 and 2001. It reports on graduates of the Department of Biostatistics and on the graduate teaching of biometry in Chapel Hill. Sixty four leaves with illustrations and a short bibliography.
Dorothy M. Talbot's seventeen page account of the public health nursing program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dated October 1995. It traces the Department of Public Health Nursing and its place in the School of Public Health across the twentieth century.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Louis Round Wilson's 40-page review of the University of North Carolina library, subtitled on the cover a review of its past and a look at its future. Wilson had directed the library for three decades before leaving for Chicago, and the university's main library carries his name. Published by the University of North Carolina Library in Chapel Hill in 1960, with illustrations.
Judith M. Panitch's illustrated account of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library between 1992 and 2004, published by the library in 2004. It is a history of the academic library, and the notes point out its references to the Aldo P. Magi collection of Thomas Wolfe material. 50 pages with color illustrations in an oblong format.
Edward G. Holley's twelfth Hanes Lecture, given in Wilson Library on 11 April 1995, on how the library, philanthropy and publishing helped the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill become a major American university. Printed by the Hanes Foundation, 28 pages.
Exhibition booklet from the Rare Book Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published in 1996, recording the benefactors whose gifts built the collection and the items they gave. The cover reads Selections from the Rare Book Collection, and Henry Pearson, 1914 to 2006, is among the people it covers. 32 pages with illustrations.
History of the Department of Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, compiled by William W. McLendon and published by the department in 2012. After a section of historical perspective, the book covers the deans, founding faculty and department chairs, then the subspecialty divisions, offshoot departments, teaching and research, with appendices. Much of it is biographical, profiling the physicians who built clinical medicine in Chapel Hill. 478 pages with illustrations.
Alice Noble's history of the School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1961. It runs 237 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Mary Jane Kagarise's history of the Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill across its first four decades, 1952 to 1993, with biographies of the surgeons on its faculty. Published by the department in 1997 in a first edition of 461 pages with illustrations, some in color. Topics include surgery and medical colleges in Chapel Hill and biography of the department's faculty.
Reviewed in The American Journal of Surgery (1998).
Two volumes collecting the Norma Berryhill Lectures, an annual address at the UNC School of Medicine named for the wife of its long-serving dean, W. Reece Berryhill. Volume one gathers the lectures from 1985 to 1999, edited by Floyd W. Denny, Jr., William B. Blythe and William W. McLendon; volume two, edited by McLendon and Elizabeth B. Dreesen, continues through 2008. Published by the Medical Foundation of North Carolina, with illustrations and portraits.
Departmental history of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill covering its first fifty years, published by the department in 2000. The history covers medical schools, medical education and the teaching of obstetrics in North Carolina. First edition, xvii and 366 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Annie Sutton Cameron compiled this account of Orange County's part in the First World War in 1919 as historian for the county's Council of Defense, at the request of its chairman J.S. Webb. It covers the Council and the Home Guard, drives for war bonds and overseas relief, Red Cross work, patriotic observances, the influenza epidemic and women's war work, with registers of the county's soldiers. Published online in 2002 by the UNC library in Documenting the American South's North Carolinians and the Great War.
Summary of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's twelve-volume institutional self-study, edited by C. Hugh Holman and dated January 15, 1974, issued in 1975. Topics include the university's accreditation, history and statistics, including the School of Public Health. ix and 546 pages with charts, some folded.
Selections from the essays and addresses of William de Berniere MacNider, pharmacologist and physician at the University of North Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1953, two years after his death. Includes a portrait and a list of his publications.
An illustrated online timeline of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, issued by the school in 2025. One page with portraits.
Lynn Roundtree covers the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between 1957 and 1972 through its three chancellors, William Brantley Aycock, Paul F. Sharp and J. Carlyle Sitterson, set against the student movements of those years. Part of the Coates university leadership series, published by the author in 2024 and running to 926 pages. It is twentieth century campus history.
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. “Restricting smoking in Orange County and at UNC, 1975–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/smoking-rules-storyline-1975/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
