Named event or history
From the enslaved and hired laborers of the university’s first century to the staff of the affirmative-action era: the cooks, janitors, laundresses, and grounds crews whose work ran the campus, mostly unnamed in its records.
20 indexed records are connected with this event.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Dated events connected with this event: sixteen of 22, the highlights and the earliest of the rest, in date order. See all 22 in the chronology →
James Patterson, the slaveholding contractor who built Old East between 1793 and 1795, reported in a 1795 letter that several of his own enslaved workers had painted the building's roof. Their names were not recorded.
Bills from William Nichols's 1822 to 1824 enlargement of Old East list enslaved carpenters, bricklayers and laborers including Bob, Henry, Nelson, Allman, Tony, Luke, Isaac and Ned Peek, with their pay due to their owners. One bill from John C. White came to about $395.
Samuel M. Stewart advertised a $20 reward in the Hillsborough Recorder for James, who had worked four years as a college servant at the university. Stewart thought he was headed for Norfolk or Richmond to reach the free states or Africa through the Colonization Society.
In 1830 Professor James Phillips hired David Barham from William Barham to work as a college servant. A university account book page from the same year shows students paying a two-dollar fee to compensate the slaveholders whose people were hired as servants.
People: James Phillips
Thomas Waitt's bill for 1837 work on South Building, including its tin roof, lists wages for enslaved plasterers and masons Stewart, Chester, Peter, Calvin and Evans and laborers including Lewis, Tom, Redin, Abraham and Jordan.
The 1844 to 1845 extension of Old East, designed by Alexander J. Davis and costing $9,454, used the labor of Albert and Osborne, brothers enslaved by Dabney Cosby. Albert's plastering was praised as first-rate work.
People: Albert · Osborne · Dabney Cosby
After 1845 the trustees prohibited students from bringing enslaved people of their own to Chapel Hill. The university went on hiring enslaved college servants by the year from local slaveholders.
In 1869 Wilson Caldwell, who had worked at the university as an enslaved servant and janitor, resigned and started a school for children of color in Chapel Hill.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
When the university reopened in 1875 Wilson Caldwell went back to work there. He became curator of South Building and head of the campus labor corps, and held the post until his death in 1898.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
Placed on the Republican ticket without seeking it, Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's labor force, was elected a Chapel Hill commissioner in 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
When a new monument to President Joseph Caldwell went up on campus, the Class of 1891 moved his original 1837 obelisk to the Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery and rededicated it to Wilson Caldwell, November Caldwell, David Barham and Henry Smith, who had served the university.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
Facing a threatened 10 percent pay cut, janitors Kennon Cheek, Frank Hairston, Elliot Washington and Melvin Rich organized the Janitors' Association, with Cheek as its first president. Its early gains included a week's paid vacation and showers in the janitors' bathrooms.
People: Kennon Cheek
In 1934 Dean Robert House wrote to President Frank Porter Graham about a request from association president Elliot Washington for help with union membership, since the janitors could not afford local union dues.
The Janitors' Association became Local 403-P of the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, a CIO union. Minutes of July 2, 1942 name pay as the most important matter, and laundry worker Rebecca Clark became a shop steward.
People: Rebecca Clark
After the legislature approved a 20 percent raise for state employees and the university dropped a wartime bonus, Local 403 workers circulated petitions and flyers asking students for support. Under shop steward Rebecca Clark laundry workers won wage increases, safer workspaces and better schedules.
People: Rebecca Clark
On January 28, 1998 the trustees voted to rename the 1920s University Laundry for Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark, who led campus housekeepers in the 1930s and 1940s. The building was rededicated on September 17, 1998.
People: Rebecca Clark · Kennon Cheek
Background from selected state and local sources
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Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this event; they may not discuss the Orange County event directly.
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