Storyline
How the Black Student Movement’s 23 demands of December 1968 were pressed and answered: the visits to South Building, the Faculty Council’s recruiting steps, Chancellor Sitterson’s reply, the marches of February 1969, the BSM’s recognition and its own court, and the start of Afro-American Studies.
In briefIn December 1968 the Black Student Movement presented 23 demands to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson, among them special admissions, an Afro-American studies department, a dean of Black students and better treatment of nonacademic workers. The Faculty Council recommended steps toward recruiting Black students, and in January 1969 Sitterson answered that the University could not give unique treatment to any race. Marches through South Building and down Franklin Street followed, and on February 19 Sitterson recognized the BSM as an official organization. In April a faculty committee proposed 23 courses in Black studies, and UNC began its Afro-American Studies curriculum in 1969.
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On December 11, 1968 a Black Student Movement delegation delivered a five-page list of 23 demands for Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson to his assistant Claiborne Jones, charging that UNC denied equal opportunity to Black people. They asked for special admissions for Black students, an African and Afro-American Studies department, a dean of Black students, Black members on the admissions board, BSM funding and better treatment of nonacademic workers. Two days later about forty Black students went into South Building to press the chancellor, and chairman Preston Dobbins said they would show him the demands were urgent. That month a Faculty Council committee chaired by law dean J. Dickson Phillips recommended a central effort to raise the share of Black students, a talent search, an experimental admissions program and Black assistant directors in student aid and admissions, and in January 1969 the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors voted unanimously to back the BSM's demands. Sitterson answered on January 24 in a 19-page statement that the University could not give unique treatment to any race and that most of the issues were already being studied or addressed.
On February 3 Sitterson named James A. Garriss, a Black senior, assistant director of admissions to recruit at the state's Black high schools, and announced committees on minority students and on Afro-American studies. After a rally of about 450 to 500 people in Memorial Hall on February 7, about 200 students and faculty marched through South Building and down Franklin Street, and a week later about 100 students spent an hour on South Building's main floor. On February 18 six BSM members, among them Dobbins and basketball player Charlie Scott, asked Sitterson to recognize the BSM, and the next day he declared it an officially recognized organization. The campus NAACP chapter called for active recruitment and an Afro-American studies major but opposed a separate Black judiciary, and on February 22 the BSM declared that its members would answer only to a court of its own, which 76 Black students signed. In April a faculty committee chaired by G. B. Cleveland proposed 23 courses in African and Afro-American studies, which the College of Arts and Sciences board approved, and UNC began its Afro-American Studies curriculum in 1969.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 16 dated events in the chronology →
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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.
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.
Photograph from about 1903 of South Building on the university campus in Chapel Hill. Work on the building started in 1798 under Samuel Hopkins, was later carried on by John Clare, and finished in 1814. Part of the Images of North Carolina collection.
Draft minutes of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina for 14 April 1798, recording the Masonic ceremony for laying the cornerstone of the University of North Carolina's Old South Building in Chapel Hill.
South Building at UNC on 22 April 1987, showing its columns with flowers in bloom, in a Hugh Morton color photograph. Mounted 35 mm slide.
South Building on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, probably shot on infrared film by Hugh Morton in late 1946 or early 1947. Morton gave six photographs to the Alumni Office that autumn, and this one ran on page 216 of the April 1947 Alumni Review. Black-and-white sheet film negative.
Seventh of nine Southern Oral History Program interviews with Daniel H. Pollitt, a professor at the UNC School of Law. Recorded April 5, 1991, by Ann McColl, this session of just under an hour is devoted to the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 act of the General Assembly that barred Communists and certain other speakers from state campuses, and to the fight over it at Chapel Hill in the mid-1960s, in which Pollitt took part. Published online in 2008 in Documenting the American South.
Third session of the nine-part Pollitt series, recorded December 13, 1990, by Ann McColl, an hour and a quarter long. Daniel H. Pollitt, who joined the UNC law faculty in 1957, picks up the portrait of his colleagues begun in the previous interview: who they were, what they did in the classroom and beyond it, and how the school changed as Black students and women entered it. Published online in 2008 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Race, sports and student protest at UNC are the subjects of this fourth interview with law professor Daniel H. Pollitt, recorded February 15, 1991, by Ann McColl for the Southern Oral History Program. Pollitt discusses the integration of Carolina athletics, including basketball player Charlie Scott, the university's first Black scholarship athlete, the discrimination Black athletes met, student activism from the late 1950s through the 1960s, and the Campus Y. Published online in 2008 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Second interview in the Pollitt series, recorded November 28, 1990, by Ann McColl, and the shortest at about 35 minutes. Daniel H. Pollitt explains how he came to join the UNC law faculty in 1957. Before that he had declined a loyalty oath demanded by another university, and the interview covers that episode and his move to Chapel Hill. Published online in 2008 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library as part of the Southern Oral History Program collection in Documenting the American South.
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.
Sixth Pollitt interview, recorded March 21 and 22, 1991, by Ann McColl, about an hour long. Its single subject is the 1969 strike by food service workers at UNC, which Pollitt supported. He sets the strike in its local and national context, the labor and civil rights currents of the late 1960s, then follows how it unfolded among the workers, their union backers, the faculty and the university administration. Published online in 2008 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Catalog of an exhibit mounted by the Manuscripts Department of Wilson Library from January 23 to May 31, 2007, on student protest in Chapel Hill during the 1960s. Topics include civil rights demonstrations, the Speaker Ban Law, the Black Student Movement, restaurant strikes and Vietnam War protests at the university. Compiled by Biff Hollingsworth, 59 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, published by the university library.
Ashley Davis, who entered UNC in 1968 and joined the Black Student Movement, recalls the 1969 strike by the university's cafeteria workers and the BSM's decision to stand with them when the workers asked. Recorded April 12, 1974, by Russell Rymer for the Southern Oral History Program, the hour-and-a-half interview touches on Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson, the Southern Student Organizing Committee and race relations among students on campus. Published online in 2007 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Elizabeth Brooks, a cafeteria worker at UNC and a leader of the 1969 food workers' strike, speaks in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded October 2, 1974, by Beverly Jones. Born in Caswell County, Brooks had made her home in Hillsborough since 1949 and raised nine children before her first paid job, at the university. She describes the strike, the Black Student Movement's support for the workers, and the response of Governor Robert W. Scott. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
J. Derek Williams's 1979 study of the 1969 strike by cafeteria workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, examining a chapter in the university's labor and Black history. A typescript of 270 leaves with a bibliography.
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.
Program calendar for the 2017 Diaspora Festival of Black and Independent Film, presented in the fall by the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at Chapel Hill and tied to the campus Arts Everywhere initiative. Topics include film festivals in Chapel Hill and Black people in the motion picture industry, so the leaflet records what the festival screened that season.
Derek Sykes's film marking the fortieth anniversary of the Black Student Movement at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, made in 2007 and first issued in electronic form. Topics include African American student movements and African American students, so the piece records four decades of Black student organizing on the Chapel Hill campus.
Account of student protest in 1960s Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 with illustrations. It draws together the civil rights movement and segregation in the town, discrimination in restaurants, academic freedom and university autonomy, protest against the Vietnam War, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Student Movement on campus.
Milestones is the newsletter of the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the center and dated 2004. African American students in Chapel Hill and the center itself are its subject. As a serial it carries programs, speakers and news of Black student life on campus.
The program guide of the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center at Chapel Hill, issued in illustrated volumes and recorded from 2004, with the 2000 to 2001 issue lacking that title.It concerns African American students and their societies and clubs. Volumes range from 18 to 26 cm.
Literary magazine of the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published from 2004. Topics include American literature by African American authors in North Carolina and student periodicals in Chapel Hill, so the issues carry student poetry and prose. Volumes with illustrations, 22 to 28 cm.
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