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Named event or history

Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro

Northside, Pine Knolls, Tin Top and Pottersfield in Chapel Hill, the Lloyd–Broad neighborhood in Carrboro, and their churches, schools and businesses.

In briefNorthside, Pine Knolls, Tin Top and Pottersfield in Chapel Hill and the Lloyd–Broad neighborhood in Carrboro grew from land bought by freedpeople such as Toney and Nellie Strayhorn, around their churches, the Orange County Training School and Lincoln High. Urban renewal, campus growth and rising land prices pressed them from the 1970s, and conservation districts, a zoning overlay in Carrboro and the Jackson Center’s work have answered since 2004.

22 indexed works are connected with this event. 1 held at OCPL →

Search these works Research sources View indexed works ↓
St. Paul A.M.E. Church on Merritt Mill Road
St. Paul A.M.E. Church on Merritt Mill Road

Indexed works

Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.

Histories of home : a walk with Northside neighbors

Jackson Center for Saving & Making History · 2021 · Marian Cheek Jackson Center

A folded walking tour map of Northside, the historically African American neighborhood near downtown Chapel Hill, produced by Alexander Stephens for the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History in 2021. One illustrated sheet, 43 by 28 centimeters, folded to pocket size. The walk introduces the neighborhood through its residents' own histories of home.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Northside (Chapel Hill, N.C.) -- Tours.

UNC

African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties

Bolduc, Jean · 2016

Jean Bolduc's 2016 collection of interviews with African American residents of Durham and Orange counties, presented as short biographies. The subjects are Floyd McKissick (1922-1991), the first African American admitted to UNC's law school, Walter Jackson, Brenda Stephens, Nate Davis, poet Jaki Shelton Green, Jackie Wagstaff, Diane Wright and Michelle Johnson, with a closing chapter on the Ku Klux Klan. 125 pages with illustrations.

Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 975.656 BOLDUC Duke

Significance report : the Northside Neighborhood, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Mary L. Reeb, consultant · 1989 · Town of Chapel Hill

Consultant Mary L. Reeb's April 1989 report for the Town of Chapel Hill on the significance of the Northside Neighborhood, the historically Black neighborhood north of downtown. Topics include the neighborhood's buildings and dwellings and real estate development in Chapel Hill. Prepared as a working document for the town, it runs to 34 leaves with maps and a two-page bibliography.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Northside Neighborhood (Chapel Hill, N.C.).

UNC

Announcing: the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History

2009

Announcement issued in Chapel Hill in 2009 for the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History, a community history organization in the town's Northside neighborhood.

Why this is here: Its title names this subject.

UNC

African Americans of Durham and Orange counties : an oral history

Bolduc, Jean · 2016 · The History Press

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.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Davis, Nate, 1951?-.

NC Cardinal Duke Durham Wake Forest CH Historical Society UNC

Northside neighborhood, Chapel Hill, Orange County : an action-oriented community diagnosis : findings and next steps of action

2005 · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A community diagnosis of the Northside neighborhood in Chapel Hill, dated the twelfth of May 2005 and published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Findings on health status and socioeconomic conditions are followed by proposed next steps for action. Topics include community health services for town and county. Appendices A and D are missing from the copy described, and the bibliography sits on leaf 41.

Why this is here: Its title names this subject.

UNC
Show 6 more

Pine Knolls, Chapel Hill and Carr Court, Carrboro, Orange County community diagnosis

1997

A 1997 community diagnosis of two neighborhoods, Pine Knolls in Chapel Hill and Carr Court in Carrboro, dated the tenth of May. Topics include community health services, health status, socioeconomic factors and public opinion in the county. Bound in with it are a list of health services for Orange County and a 1995 guide to services for county parents and young children.

Why this is here: Its title names this subject.

UNC

A small business incubator for a disadvantaged community : is it the answer for Northside

Chanin, Douglas · 1995 · University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Douglas Chanin's 1995 study weighing a small business incubator as a tool for the Northside neighborhood in Chapel Hill. Forty-seven leaves, filmed on a single microfilm reel by the university library. Topics include African American business enterprises in North Carolina, small business in Chapel Hill and the town's economic conditions, which places the work with local community development research.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Northside Neighborhood (Chapel Hill, N.C.).

UNC

Newsletter, Pine Knolls-Northside communities

1988

Neighborhood newsletter for the Pine Knolls and Northside communities of Chapel Hill, starting in 1988. Issued in volumes at 36 centimeters, the large format of a folded news sheet.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Northside (Chapel Hill, N.C.) -- Periodicals.

UNC

Let the record show, the Hackneys : two early, prominent Black families of Chatham and Orange Counties, NC : a history and genealogy of Charles H. & Antoinette Stone Hackney and Louis Henry and Laura Edwards Hackney

1987 · The Associates

A history and genealogy of two Black families of Chatham and Orange counties, tracing the households of Charles H. Hackney and Antoinette Stone Hackney and of Louis Henry Hackney and Laura Edwards Hackney. Published in 1987 by The Associates, it sets out the family lines from the nineteenth century forward.

Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.

Library of Congress

Chapel Hill - Carrboro : report of a survey conducted by a group participating in a workshop on neighborhood centers.

1966 · Institute of Government, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Report of a survey of Chapel Hill and Carrboro made in 1966 by a group at a workshop on neighborhood centers, sponsored jointly by the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers and the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina. Subjects include the Hargraves Community Center and the Northside neighborhood, and the topic is community center planning and social conditions in the town. Forty-six leaves.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Northside Neighborhood (Chapel Hill, N.C.) -- Social conditions.

UNC

Northside news.

Jackson Center

Community paper for the Northside neighborhoods of Chapel Hill, issued by the Jackson Center and described beneath its title as a print link for the neighborhoods of Northside. Volumes with color illustrations at 36 centimeters.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Northside (Chapel Hill, N.C.) -- Periodicals.

UNC

Search all 22 indexed works →

Start at OCPL

Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this event. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this event itself.

  • Foundational · NC 929.209 SCARLETT The Harris Family of Orange County, North Carolina: 318 Years of Black-American Indian Culture Scarlett, Beverly A. · 2019

    Beverly A. Scarlett traces the Harris family of Orange County across what her subtitle calls 318 years of Black-American Indian culture, a family history of mixed African American and Native descent in the county. Published through Lulu in Morrisville in 2019, 95 pages with illustrations, portraits and maps. It concerns both African American and Indigenous genealogy for Orange County.

  • Foundational · NC 975.656 BOLDUC African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History Bolduc, Jean · 2016

    Jean Bolduc's 2016 collection of interviews with African American residents of Durham and Orange counties, presented as short biographies. The subjects are Floyd McKissick (1922-1991), the first African American admitted to UNC's law school, Walter Jackson, Brenda Stephens, Nate Davis, poet Jaki Shelton Green, Jackie Wagstaff, Diane Wright and Michelle Johnson, with a closing chapter on the Ku Klux Klan. 125 pages with illustrations.

  • Foundational · NC 305.896 AND Race and Politics in North Carolina, 1872-1901: The Black Second Anderson, Eric · 1981

    Eric Anderson's political history of North Carolina's Second Congressional District, the Black Second, from 1872 to 1901. The district, where most counties had Black majorities, sent four Black Republicans to Congress: John A. Hyman, James E. O'Hara, Henry P. Cheatham and George H. White, who left in 1901 after the state's disfranchisement amendment of 1900. Louisiana State University Press published the study in 1981, with a bibliography and an index.

Show 6 more
  • Wider context · NC 305.896 BRO Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South Brown, Leslie · 2008

    Leslie Brown's history of Black Durham, the community Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois both admired in the 1910s, from emancipation to the civil rights era. Drawing on interviews and family stories, Brown puts African American women at the center and argues that conflicts of gender and class among Black Durhamites fed their activism. UNC Press, 2008, in the John Hope Franklin series; 451 pages with maps.

  • Foundational · NC 975.6 BLA The Black Presence in North Carolina North Carolina Museum of History · 1978

    An illustrated booklet from 1978 on the history and culture of African Americans in North Carolina, part of a project of the North Carolina Museum of History, with Jeffrey J. Crow and Robert E. Winters Jr. as co-editors. The 55 pages end with a short bibliography.

  • Wider context · NC 975.6 HER The Heritage of Blacks in North Carolina 1990

    Family histories of African American North Carolinians, written largely by the families themselves and drawn from about 85 percent of the state's counties, with articles on Black churches, schools and farm life. Linda Simmons-Henry directed the project for the North Carolina African American Heritage Foundation, with Phillip N. Henry and Carol M. Speas as editors and a foreword by Alex Haley. Published in Raleigh in 1990 as volume one, illustrated, with an index.

  • Wider context · NC 975.6 GAI Becoming Truly Free: 300 Years of Black History in the Carolinas Gaillard, Frye · 1985

    Three centuries of Black history in North and South Carolina, condensed from a series the Charlotte Observer ran in February and March 1982. Frye Gaillard, Richard Maschal and Ed Williams wrote the text and Vanessa Gallman and Jerry Shinn the epilogue; Al Phillips drew the illustrations, and Milton Hinnant and Don Sturkey took the photographs. The newspaper published the 80-page summary in 1985 in cooperation with Johnson C. Smith University.

  • Wider context · NC 975.004 BLA Black Americans in North Carolina and the South 1984

    Jeffrey J. Crow and Flora J. Hatley edited these essays on the history of Black Americans in North Carolina and the wider South, with bibliographies and an index. The University of North Carolina Press published the collection in 1984; 200 pages.

  • Wider context · NC 306.488 WIL Hope and Dignity: Older Black Women of the South Wilson, Emily Herring · 1983

    Older Black women of North Carolina and the South tell their life stories in Emily Herring Wilson's oral biographies, set beside Susan Mullally's portrait photographs, with a foreword by Maya Angelou. Temple University Press of Philadelphia published the 200 pages in 1983.

In the chronology

Episodes in this history, earliest first. Each has its own page.

Northside, Pine Knolls, and Tin Top1864–2023 · 43 events · Chapel Hill’s historic Black neighborhoods took shape after emancipation around the West End church and school, the Orange County Training School and its Rosenwald campus of 1924, St. Joseph CME and First Baptist, and the tin-roofed houses that named Tin Top. Lincoln High opened on Merritt Mill Road in 1951, residents resisted urban renewal in the 1970s, and as the Black population fell by about 40 percent the conservation districts, the Jackson Center and the 2015 Northside initiative worked to keep the neighborhoods in place.

Other dated events here: sixteen of 55, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 55 dated events in the chronology →

Earliest first. Scroll sideways, or use the arrows.

16 dated events

  1. Freedpeople build a church and school at Chapel Hill's West End

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    After emancipation, Black families kept homes and small farms on Chapel Hill's west end. St. Paul's congregation, first gathered under an arbor in December 1864, built a log church on Merritt Mill Road and bought land in 1878, and in 1866 Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought an acre nearby for a freedmen's school.

    Subject: St. Paul AME Church

  2. Black families make homes on Lot 16 on East Franklin Street

    Migration or settlement · Lot 16, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill

    After E. Hunt closed his boarding house and Dr. Johnston B. Jones left town, Black families moved into both buildings: Tom Moore into the larger two-story house and the Burnett family into the small former medicine shop. Several other Black families settled on what had been Lot 16.

  3. Cotton Chapel CME Church, the forerunner of St. Joseph CME, was organized

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    Chapel Hill members of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church, who had worshipped at Hamlet Chapel in Pittsboro, formed their own congregation named for founder Henry Cotton. Its first building later burned and was rebuilt as a frame church.

  4. The Chapel Hill Community Club runs an improvement contest in a Black neighborhood

    Health or relief action · African American neighborhood at the edge of Chapel Hill

    Susan Moses Graham and the Community Club, with YMCA students under Frank Porter Graham, organized a project in an African American neighborhood at the edge of town, giving prizes for the cleanest house, the cleanest yard and the best fence.

    People: Frank Porter Graham

    Subject: University YMCA

  5. Luther R. Hargraves built the tin-roofed houses that gave Tin Top its name

    Construction or physical change · Hargraves Street, Chapel Hill and Carrboro

    Luther R. Hargraves, a carpenter and Chapel Hill's first African American mortician, built a row of houses with tin roofs on Hargraves Street near the railroad tracks behind St. Paul AME, and the cluster became known as Tin Top or Tin Top Alley.

  6. The Black neighborhood on the Chapel Hill line spreads west into Partridge Field

    Migration or settlement · Partridge Field, east Carrboro, on the Chapel Hill line

    In the late 1930s the African American neighborhood straddling the Chapel Hill and Carrboro line grew west into Partridge Field. Only then, the book says, was it readily counted as part of either town; segregation and the community's own sense of itself had kept it apart, with its churches and schools facing Chapel Hill.

  7. Jeter and Ethel Neville buy a corner lot at Cobb and Broad streets in Carrboro

    Property or economic transaction · Jeter and Ethel Neville House, 107 Cobb Street, Carrboro

    On September 13, 1944, Jeter and Ethel Neville bought a small lot at the northwest corner of Cobb and Broad streets, in the Lloyd-Broad section of the Black Northside neighborhood, from Guilford Realty and Insurance Company. Jeter Neville was a janitor at Northside Elementary School.

    Subject: Jeter and Ethel Neville House

  8. The Campbells build a stone bungalow for carpenter Vance Thompson on Broad Street

    Construction or physical change · 201 Broad Street, Carrboro

    Next door to the Neville House, John Wesley Campbell and his sons designed and built a fieldstone Craftsman bungalow at 201 Broad Street for carpenter Vance Thompson and his family just after World War II. Land records show it finished by 1947; a Thompson son recalls moving in in 1946, and the family kept it until 2013.

  9. African American flower sellers known as the Flower Ladies set up on Franklin Street

    Founding or opening · Franklin Street, Chapel Hill

    A group of Black vendors, each working independently, began selling fresh-cut flowers on the Franklin Street sidewalk around 1950 and became one of the town's best-known enterprises.

  10. Rock Hill Baptist, renamed First Baptist, holds its first services on North Roberson Street

    Construction or physical change · North Roberson Street, Chapel Hill

    The Black Baptist congregation organized in 1865 had worshipped for decades as Rock Hill Baptist Church on the south side of West Franklin Street. Under its pastor, the Rev. J. R. Manley, it raised $10,001 in the first months of 1952 and began a colonial-style brick church on North Roberson Street between Franklin and Rosemary streets. The first services in the $100,000 building were held on Sunday, September 27, 1953, opening three weeks of dedication services; with the move the congregation took the name First Baptist Church. By early 1954 the old Franklin Street lot stood vacant.

    Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill

  11. Northside and Pine Knolls residents resist federal urban renewal

    Protest or organizing · Northside and Pine Knolls, Chapel Hill

    When Northside and Pine Knolls were targeted for urban renewal, residents confronted HUD and avoided the wholesale clearance seen in Durham's Hayti, winning home improvements and new construction instead.

  12. Northside's Black population falls by about 40 percent

    Statistic or record · Northside, Chapel Hill

    Between 1980 and 2010 Northside's Black population fell by roughly 40 percent as investors bought homes and converted or replaced them as student rentals; over the same period the share of university workers living 10 or more miles away rose above 60 percent.

  13. St. Joseph CME Church and UNC begin the Northside oral history partnership

    Founding or opening · Northside, Chapel Hill

    Rev. Troy Harrison and UNC professor Della Pollock began collecting oral histories in Northside, the project that grew into the Marian Cheek Jackson Center.

    Subject: Marian Cheek Jackson Center

  14. Council freezes building in Northside and Pine Knolls for six months

    Law, policy or court · Northside, Chapel Hill

    The council voted 7-0 for a six-month development moratorium in Northside and Pine Knolls, backdated to May 23, 2011, while a community plan was drafted. Jackson Center staff helped organize residents in support.

    Subject: Marian Cheek Jackson Center

  15. Ethel Fuller Neville dies at 99 in the stone house on Cobb Street

    Life event · Jeter and Ethel Neville House, 107 Cobb Street, Carrboro

    Ethel Fuller Neville, widowed in 1960, lived at 107 Cobb Street until her death in 2013 at 99. Her five children all took part in the local civil rights movement, and son Calvin became a stonemason trained by the Campbells. The house stood mostly empty afterward.

    Subject: Jeter and Ethel Neville House

  16. EMPOWERment broke ground on PEACH apartments at the former Pine Knolls Community Center

    Construction or physical change · 107 Johnson Street, Pine Knolls, Chapel Hill

    The nonprofit began building 10 debt-free apartments for households earning 30 percent or less of area median income at 107 Johnson Street, where Ted Parrish had run the independent Pine Knolls Community Center. It had raised $3.5 million for the project.

    Part of Preserving affordable housing · 30 events

Places in this history

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 7 with a known location.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.

All places and the county map →

Research sources

Background context 3

Background from selected state and local sources

Ask locally 4

Local organizations that preserve the story and can help you go further

Additional research sources

Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.

Related themes

Schools & Education →Libraries, Archives & Public Memory →

Picture: St. Paul A.M.E. Church on Merritt Mill Road. CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph by Ildar Sagdejev; via Wikimedia Commons

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