The YWCA Coalition for Battered Women began its local program in 1977 and won North Carolina Council on the Status of Women funding the next year. In March 1979 an anonymous gift created a fund for an Orange County Women's Center, meant to give office space to the rape crisis center, the Women's Health Counseling Service and the Orange-Durham Coalition for Battered Women, along with classes and counseling. A steering committee planned it from March, and the center was incorporated on October 19, 1979. On March 5, 1980 it acquired a house at 307 North Columbia Street as offices for those groups and called a public clean-up day for March 22, and by late May the Women's Health Counseling Service, which offered information, counseling, referrals and low-cost pregnancy screening, had moved in. In mid-October 1980 the center moved to a renovated house at 406 West Rosemary Street, which by early 1981 also held the Rape Crisis Center and the Women's Health Counseling Service. By April 1981 it had begun a peer counseling program, with trained volunteers to help women through life crises and everyday stresses and refer them to housing, legal and other resources, alongside its lending library and job listings.
In July 1981 the Orange-Durham YWCA Coalition for Battered Women won funding from Orange County, Chapel Hill, Durham and Durham County and the local United Way and United Fund. In October it opened a ten-room shelter house in Chapel Hill, given by the board of Access Inc. when that agency went out of business, which let it offer women and children up to eight weeks of emergency housing instead of the three nights it had managed in its first four years. By 1982 the coalition answered 60 to 65 calls a month from the Durham YWCA and the Shelter in Chapel Hill and was starting Change, a counseling program for abusers. The Orange County Center for Battered Women, which served Orange and Durham counties, housed 23 women in 1984, and 168 women called its helpline, according to director Sandra Butler. By November 1987 the coalition had begun a $150,000 drive to buy and renovate a larger house in Durham, where about 75 percent of its calls came from, keeping its three-bedroom Orange County shelter as an overnight emergency shelter.
On November 4, 1981 the Chapel Hill Town Council voted 7 to 2 to lower the rent charged the Women's Center for its interim use of the old town police building, which it shared with the Dispute Settlement Center, and to drop 15 free parking spaces. The center was without a full-time director from March 1982, and in May its board voted to suspend operations unless money came in; volunteers kept it open over the summer, and a new board of trustees was formed. On October 4, 1982 a Chapel Hill donor who asked not to be named offered the center $20,000 if it could raise a matching $20,000, enough to hire a full-time director at $15,500 a year from December 1, and the fund-raising committee set a total goal of $60,000.
On October 15, 1985 the Chapel Hill Planning Board voted unanimously to recommend that the Town Council deny a rezoning that would have let the center use the Hill house at 210-212 Henderson Street as offices. By 1987 the center had a contract to buy the house at 210 Henderson Street, in the Cobb Terrace part of the historic district, from an estate for $170,000, and its lease in the Courtyard on Franklin Street ran out in December. The board recommended rezoning the house for the center 5 to 3 on April 7 and again, 5 to 4, on September 1. Cobb Terrace residents, fearing that offices would creep into the area, opposed the move, as did North Street neighbors, the Alliance of Neighborhoods and the Historic District Commission, while Town Manager David Taylor had endorsed it. On November 9, after a three-year fight with the neighbors, the council voted 7 to 2 to grant the center a special-use permit; a neighbors' petition meant seven votes were needed, and Nancy Preston and Mayor James Wallace voted no. On December 7 Cobb Terrace and North Street residents sued the town and the center to overturn the permit. On December 31 Superior Court Judge Anthony Brannon let the center renovate and occupy the house while the case went on but barred its planned 14-car parking lot, and by February 24, 1988 the center had begun moving in. In September the two sides asked that the suit be held open while they tried to settle, and a consent judgment filed on October 24 ended it. The settlement upheld the council's decision but limited the house to use as a nonprofit women's center keeping its single-family look, and barred further rezonings or special-use permits for residential property in the neighborhood. The center later merged with the Family Violence Prevention Center of Orange County to form Compass Center.
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 Women's Lives & History · 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).
Miss Mary's Money
Jones, H. G. · 2014 · McFarland & Co.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
The Woman Who Rang the Bell: The Story of Cornelia Spencer Phillips
Russell, Charles Phillips · 1949
Charles Phillips Russell's biography of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825-1908), the Chapel Hill writer remembered for ringing the bell of South Building when the university reopened in 1875 after its closure during Reconstruction. It doubles as a history of Chapel Hill and the university. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 293 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1949).
Old Days in Chapel Hill
Chamberlain, G. Hope Summerell · 1926
Hope Summerell Chamberlain's life and letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), published in 1926, which doubles as a picture of Chapel Hill and the university in the nineteenth century. It runs 325 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Selected Papers of Cornelia Phillips Spencer
Spencer, Cornelia Phillips · 1953
Selected writings of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), the Chapel Hill writer who campaigned for the university's reopening after Reconstruction, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1953. The 753 pages touch on Chapel Hill life, education and the university in the nineteenth century.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).
Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray
Rosenberg, Rosalind · 2017
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).
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Well worth a shindy : the architectural and philosophical history of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Madry, Sarah Brandes · 2003 · iUniverse
Sarah Brandes Madry's history of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, treating both its architecture and the ideas attached to it. It takes in drinking fountains and water use in Chapel Hill and the university's history, with a chapter on Edwin Anderson Alderman, the president under whom the well took its present form in 1897, and one on water at the university. Published by iUniverse in 2003, 399 pages with illustrations.
Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave
Fleischner, Jennifer · 2003 · Broadway Books
Jennifer Fleischner's double biography of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley, the dressmaker who had been enslaved, including years in Hillsborough, before buying her freedom and becoming the First Lady's confidante. Published by Broadway Books in New York in 2003, 372 pages with illustrations and a map. Topics include enslaved women in Hillsborough and the United States, dressmakers and women's friendships in the nineteenth century.
The Book of Burwell Students
Engstrom, Mary Claire · 1979 · Historic Hillsborough Commission
Mary Claire Engstrom's biographical register of the young women who attended the Burwell School in Hillsborough, subtitled lives of educated women in the antebellum South. The school was kept by Margaret Anna Burwell and her husband, and the book bears on women's education in nineteenth-century North Carolina. Published by the Historic Hillsborough Commission, 1979, 256 pages with illustrations and portraits.
The last ninety days of the war in North-Carolina
Spencer, Cornelia Phillips · 2005 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Cornelia Phillips Spencer's account of the closing weeks of the Civil War in North Carolina, reissued in 2005 as an electronic edition by the University Library at UNC-Chapel Hill. Topics include the 1865 campaigns, Sherman's march through the Carolinas, Stoneman's raid, and the history of Chapel Hill and the university in the nineteenth century, where Spencer, 1825 to 1908, spent her working life.
More than petticoats
Cohn, Scotti · 2000 · TwoDot
Scotti Cohn's short biographies of notable North Carolina women, including Harriet Jacobs, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Annie Lowrie Alexander and Cornelia Phillips Spencer of Chapel Hill. Published by Twodot in 2000, 198 pages with illustrations.
First Women of Orange County
1994 · Orange County Women's History Month Committee
A Women's History Month project of 1993 and 1994 from the Orange County Women's History Month Committee, profiling women who were firsts in the county. Published in Chapel Hill in 1994, 13 pages plus unnumbered leaves with illustrations, facsimiles and portraits.
