Storyline · 1970–1988
HEW pressed UNC from 1970 to do more than open its doors to Black students. The university system's desegregation plan was returned in 1973, and HEW approved a revised plan in June 1974 with a goal of raising Black enrollment at Chapel Hill to 7.1 percent. The Black Student Movement opened its membership to all students that fall, and in 1978 the Board of Governors ratified an agreement with HEW to strengthen the five historically Black campuses. Federal court rulings in 1977 had called for tougher requirements, and HEW rejected the system's plan in 1978 and again in 1979; the Board of Governors sued to block a cutoff of federal funds, and a 1981 consent decree ended the 11-year dispute. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund appealed the decree until the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 1984, and in 1987, with the decree's enrollment goal for the mostly white campuses unmet, the Board of Governors extended it two years. Chapel Hill's Black enrollment kept falling, to 7.48 percent in 1987, and the extended decree expired at the end of 1988 with minority enrollment at the mostly white campuses at about 8.5 percent.
In February 1970 President William Friday released the findings of HEW's January visits, which held that the University was acting in good faith but that a nondiscriminatory admissions policy was not enough while enrollment still followed the old racial lines; eight of its 12 recommendations touched Chapel Hill. In April Friday answered with Project Uplift, admissions visits to 41 predominantly Black high schools and the search for Black staff. In November 1973 HEW returned the university system's desegregation plan as too general, and Friday set out to replace it. HEW officials met privately with Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor's administration and with student leaders in January 1974, and Black Student Movement chairman Willie Mebane said afterward that the students had countered the administration's positive picture. The Board of Governors approved a revised plan in February and in March set four-year goals, among them raising Black enrollment at Chapel Hill from 5.1 to 7.1 percent; Richard Epps of the admissions office said the goals for the historically white campuses showed no real commitment. HEW approved the plan on June 21, 1974. That fall the Black Student Movement, facing a suit against its student-fee funding, opened its membership to all students and said the change complied with federal desegregation guidelines.
In January 1977, in the Adams case brought by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, U.S. District Judge John H. Pratt in Washington found desegregation in the UNC system and five other states' universities lagging and gave HEW 45 days to set new requirements, and on April 1 he ruled that HEW had wrongly accepted the six states' plans and ordered new guidelines and new plans, writing that desegregation must not place a greater burden on Black institutions or Black students. On August 22 the Board of Governors adopted a Phase II plan for 1978 to 1983 that set a goal of a 32 percent rise in Black enrollment at the traditionally white campuses instead of the 150 percent HEW had called for; chairman William A. Johnson called HEW's criteria unrealistic, and J. J. Sansom Jr., one of the board's Black members, voted no, saying the system was segregated in fact. Moments before the vote Julius Chambers, president of the Legal Defense Fund, whose suit had led to the new criteria, resigned from the board. The Chapel Hill trustees endorsed the plan in September, with Walter S. Tucker, their only Black member, and student body president Bill Moss abstaining.
That fall a group of faculty and students, begun largely at the urging of assistant dean Hayden B. Renwick, began meeting on how white faculty treated Black students, and Taylor reported that Black faculty, up 175 percent since 1972, were still 2.4 percent of the faculty and that Black students were 6.3 percent of the student body, short of the plan's 7.1 percent goal. In October 1977 BSM members held a silent University Day protest against the University's rejection of a federal desegregation proposal and over the Bakke case, and on November 2 Chambers told about 100 people in Memorial Hall that the administration would not give up past policies. On November 11 Friday presented the board a 17-page HEW letter objecting that the plan set too low a goal for Black students at the white campuses and did too little for the Black ones, and warned that a court fight was likely. On December 30 the board approved a supplement Friday had worked out with the Office for Civil Rights that turned HEW's required 150 percent rise into a goal and dropped HEW's demand to approve program changes in advance; Kathleen Crosby, its newest member, cast the only vote against it. On February 2, 1978 HEW Secretary Joseph Califano rejected the plan and began proceedings that could cut off federal funds, after Friday refused HEW's requirement to eliminate programs duplicated at traditionally Black and traditionally white campuses. On February 10 the Board of Governors voted 26 to 1 to seek outside lawyers for a possible court fight, with Crosby voting no, and the Chapel Hill trustees urged it not to retreat, over the objections of Tucker and Moss. On May 12, 1978 the Board of Governors ratified, 19 to 3, an agreement with HEW to strengthen programs at the five historically Black state universities.
On February 23, 1979 about 75 Black Student Movement members marched to South Building calling for federal action while HEW officials Mary Berry and David S. Tatel toured the campus, and BSM chairman Allen Johnson told the officials that qualified Black applicants were being turned away; that morning Taylor had reported a 33 percent rise in Black freshmen. On March 16 about 20 students picketed a Board of Governors meeting to urge the University to meet HEW's demands, and on March 26 Califano rejected the plan again and began proceedings that could cut off nearly $90 million a year in federal aid. Talks broke down over HEW's demand to end duplicate programs at neighboring Black and white campuses, after the state offered $41 million for the five historically Black campuses, and on April 24 the Board of Governors sued HEW in federal court in Raleigh to stop a cutoff set to begin May 2. On June 8 Judge Franklin T. Dupree Jr. ruled that HEW could not withhold funds until an administrative hearing on the University's record, though he would not stop the hearing itself.
On January 7, 1980 Administrative Law Judge Lewis F. Parker postponed the hearing, set for March 10, until May 19 after HEW listed 88 witnesses; the University had asked for June 9, and on February 13 he refused its request to move the hearing to September. University officials put their cost for the case at about $500,000, with about $90 million a year in federal aid at stake. In the week of March 31 Parker, who had overseen the case for 11 months, withdrew at the request of University lawyers after telling them his daughter had been placed on the waiting list for admission to UNC-Chapel Hill; Friday called the move proper. The hearing opened in Washington on July 22 before Judge John Mathias, to decide whether the U.S. Department of Education could end federal funding to the 16-campus system for failing to dismantle its dual system of higher education. Among the early government witnesses, Chapel Hill businessman George Watts Hill Jr., former chairman of the state Board of Higher Education, blamed the Board of Governors for slowing desegregation and underfunding the five historically Black campuses. After a four-month delay the University and the state began their defense on February 24, 1981, saying they would call more than 30 witnesses over about two months to show that the system had complied with civil rights law and was improving its five historically Black campuses. In the summer of 1981 the board approved and a federal judge signed a consent decree ending the 11-year dispute, with goals of 10.6 percent Black enrollment at the traditionally white campuses and 15 percent white enrollment at the Black campuses by 1986–87 and 29 new programs at the five Black campuses; BSM chairperson Mark Canady said it gave no guarantee of desegregation. Judge Franklin T. Dupree Jr., who signed the decree in July 1981, called it fair and said it should have a chance to work; the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which opposed it, appealed in Washington.
On September 13, 1981 CBS's "Sunday Morning" aired a 12-minute report on the decree that set the Chapel Hill and N.C. Central campuses beside 1960s footage of whites resisting integration and of Gov. George Wallace. Friday called it a profound disappointment and filed a formal protest, and Gov. Jim Hunt and Charlotte station WBTV also complained, while Canady called the report fair; on September 20 CBS aired a five-minute follow-up from Friday's interview, which Friday accepted. At the University Day convocation on October 12, UNC system vice president Raymond Dawson, one of the negotiators of the settlement, charged that a "civil rights establishment" had become intolerant of dissent; by October 14 an anonymous faculty petition calling his attacks offensive was circulating, and Canady called it ludicrous to cast the civil rights movement as the orthodoxy. At UNC's second annual Black Alumni Reunion on May 22, 1982, a panel moderated by state NAACP vice president Kelly Alexander weighed the decree: Cleon Thompson said it would raise the Black share at the historically white campuses, while Harold Wallace and Lawrence Cooper said it would close the gap only slightly before it expired in 1986 and did nothing about Black colleges losing faculty and small programs. Chancellor Christopher Fordham also spoke.
On August 24, 1982 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2 to 1 that it would not interfere with the decree, upholding Judge John H. Pratt's finding that he no longer had jurisdiction over the challenge the Legal Defense Fund had brought for Black students opposed to the plan; Friday called it the third federal court to sustain the University's position. On October 14 the full appeals court agreed to hear the challenge, setting aside the panel's ruling. In November Chambers, a Charlotte civil rights attorney and former member of the Board of Governors, told about 40 people in Gerrard Hall that the University's affirmative action had failed and that the decree left no way to enforce integration of the system, noting that Black full-time faculty at the predominantly white campuses had fallen from 2.35 percent in 1975 to 2.29 percent in 1979; University officials present said newer figures showed gains. The appeals court upheld Dupree's approval of the decree, and in early November 1983 the Legal Defense Fund asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal, arguing that the decree did not protect minority rights; UNC's Washington attorney said the University was meeting it in letter and spirit. On February 21, 1984 the justices refused without comment, leaving the decree in force. Friday called the outcome a vindication, and Chambers, as president of the Legal Defense Fund, said it would keep watching the University's progress toward the decree's enrollment goal. That fall Black students made up 8.22 percent of UNC-Chapel Hill's enrollment, down from 8.65 percent in 1983; only 66 percent of the Black students admitted in 1984 enrolled, and Vice Chancellor Harold Wallace blamed federal aid cuts among other causes. The Affirmative Action Office's Minority and Female Presence Report put Black students at 7.8 percent of Chapel Hill's enrollment in fall 1986, though women outnumbered men in both undergraduate and graduate programs, meeting another of the decree's goals. The decree expired on December 31, 1986 with its goal of 10.6 percent minority enrollment on the mostly white campuses unmet, and by February 1987 the Board of Governors had voted unanimously to extend it voluntarily for two more years; UNC president C. D. Spangler put minority enrollment at Chapel Hill between 8 and 9 percent.
Fall 1987 figures released by the Board of Governors put Black students at 7.48 percent of UNC-Chapel Hill's enrollment, 1,703 of 22,775, and across the eleven predominantly white campuses Black enrollment fell from 8.43 to 8.21 percent, the first systemwide decline since 1972, according to the Daily Tar Heel. In November 1988 the Board of Governors voted to keep its minority presence scholarships, recruiting and aid programs, and the University's Minority and Female Presence Report that month put Black undergraduates at Chapel Hill at 8.8 percent, short of the 10 percent goal. The extended decree expired on December 31, 1988, with minority enrollment at the mostly white campuses at about 8.5 percent.
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 them all.
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.
Scott Madry's recollections of the student tech crew at Memorial Hall, the University of North Carolina's auditorium in Chapel Hill, presented under the banner of the Carolina Union, the campus student union. Published in Chapel Hill in 2021.
Catharine Carter photographed the rebuilding of Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina between 2002 and 2005, and twelve of the images were issued in 2005 as limited edition lithographic prints, numbered and signed by her, in a portfolio with text and illustrations.
Patrick S. Wooten's 1992 guide to the memorial tablets in Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, identifying the people commemorated there. Subjects include university biography, alumni and Confederate rosters, so the volume doubles as a name list for anyone tracing individuals honored on the walls. One volume in various foliations with illustrations.
Robert W. Winston's 1939 address on Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina and the memorial tablets set in its walls, given when tablets honoring Colonel Robert Bingham, Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham and Senator Matt W. Ransom were accepted. Printed at Chapel Hill, it records how those tablets came to be placed in the hall.
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.
Georgia Carroll Kyser's brief biographical tribute to William Clyde Friday and his wife Ida Howell Friday, published by the North Caroliniana Society in 1984. It runs 25 pages with eight pages of plates and illustrations. Friday led the consolidated state university from Chapel Hill, where the couple made their home.
Robert W. Scott (1929-2009), North Carolina's governor between 1969 and 1973 and son of Governor Kerr Scott, interviewed by William Link on April 4, 1990 for the Southern Oral History Program. Scott discusses his student years at North Carolina State College in the early 1950s and his dealings with university president William Friday, including the food workers' strike at Chapel Hill, college integration, and the consolidation of the state's universities into the UNC System during his term. One hour thirty-seven minutes. Electronic edition 2007.
William C. Friday, UNC system president from 1957 until 1986, was interviewed by Cindy Cheatham in December 1990 about Anne Queen (1911-2005). Queen came to the campus YWCA as associate director in 1956 and led the merged YMCA-YWCA from 1964 to 1975. Friday recalls working with her through the years of student political activity in Chapel Hill and reflects on the place of the Y in university life. About forty minutes; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2007, through Documenting the American South.
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor of UNC-Chapel Hill stands before the sundial at Morehead Planetarium in June 1973, on a color slide by Hugh Morton.
Letters from friends and associates gathered for John L. Sanders at the close of his tenure as director of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on July 1, 1992. The title calls him North Carolina's invisible hand. Printed by the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill in one unpaginated volume.
Papers of John L. Sanders spanning 1915 to 2005, roughly 15,500 items across thirty three linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 04858. The papers document his work with the Institute of Government at Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina system, legislative apportionment, faculty tenure and retirement, community colleges, Research Triangle Park, and preservation groups including Preservation North Carolina and the Tryon Palace Commission.
Julius L. Chambers, the attorney and later university administrator, interviewed on June 18, 1990 and published in 2007. Topics include college integration in North Carolina, affirmative action in education, the work of college trustees and litigation involving the University of North Carolina system, matters that ran through William Friday's Chapel Hill offices.
Remarks by Governor Bev Perdue at a dinner on 10 December 2010 honoring Julius L. Chambers, founding director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights in Chapel Hill. Civil rights, education and leadership are among its topics. Seven images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Julius L. Chambers, the civil rights lawyer, gave the commencement address at Chapel Hill on May 9, 2004, urging the graduating class to make a mark on society and the wider world. Five pages. Topics include civil rights in North Carolina, segregation in education, and the university's commencement of 2004.
Oral history of Julius L. Chambers, 1936 to 2013, recorded with Renee Poussaint for the National Visionary Leadership Project. The interview ranges over his work as a civil rights lawyer, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, North Carolina Central University and the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the Orange County connection lies. Color digital photographs from 2000 to 2010 accompany the interview.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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).
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. “UNC, HEW and the desegregation consent decree, 1970–1988.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/unc-hew-desegregation-storyline-1970/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
