The full story
On November 2, 1993 LaVonda Burnette, a 22-year-old graduate of the district described as a part-time UNC student, won the third of three Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board seats, 113 votes ahead of Bea Hughes-Werner; the Daily Tar Heel called her the first University student to run for the board. On December 8 she acknowledged that she was not enrolled in any UNC class that semester, after the registrar's office found no record of her. At her first meeting, on December 27, the other six members unanimously asked her to resign for damaging the board's credibility by misrepresenting her education; NAACP counsel Alan McSurely said she would not resign.
On January 8, 1994 the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, of which Burnette was a vice president, and the South Orange Black Caucus condemned board members who had discussed replacements while she held her seat; their spokesman, the Rev. Gene Hatley, said they did not condone what she had done but her fate belonged to the voters. On January 10 the board turned down her offer to resign on July 1, 1995 and asked the county's legislators for a law letting voters recall school board members. At a May 16 hearing on its bill, which required petitions from 10 percent of registered voters, about 4,250, eight of nine speakers opposed it, with the NAACP the only organized opposition. On June 6, after letters from State Superintendent Bob Etheridge directing a hearing, the board presented Burnette with 10 charges that she had lied about her educational status and set a July 7 hearing on whether they were true and amounted to "immoral or disreputable conduct" requiring removal. The legislature passed the recall bill, sponsored by Sen. Howard Lee, by the first week of July, and the board dropped the hearing and left the matter to the voters. On July 7 two residents sued board chairman Ken Touw to force the hearing.
A recall petition with 7,257 signatures was turned in on August 17, and on August 30 the Orange County Board of Elections certified enough of them to set a recall election for November 8. The Daily Tar Heel reported a News and Observer finding that only 43 of the 6,300 verified signers were Black, and NAACP vice president and Carrboro Alderman Hank Anderson said the petitions had been placed where Black residents did not go, which the organizers denied. On September 18 Hatley, as NAACP president, asked state Sen. Beverly Perdue and Rep. Anne Barnes to review how the signatures were gathered. On October 14 Burnette handed Superintendent Neil Pedersen her resignation, citing the strain of the controversy and her work for underserved children; the board accepted it 6 to 0, ending the recall election, and on November 3 unanimously appointed Hughes-Werner to the seat until December 1995.
Reading on the places and people in this storyline
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.
More than a mentoring program : attacking institutional racism
Meyer, Graig M. · 2018 · Information Age Publishing
Graig M. Meyer's 2018 account, written with George Noblit, of a youth mentoring program in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools that set out to attack institutional racism and close racial achievement gaps. Chapters lay out an antiracist mentoring model, racial identity development, advocacy at the system level, staffing and leadership, and a culture of continuous improvement. Published by Information Age Publishing, 211 pages, online.
Oral history interview with Sam Holton, March 28, 2001: interview K-0206, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Holton, Samuel M. · 2007 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Samuel M. Holton (1922-2010) sat on Chapel Hill's school board during desegregation. Elected in 1968 after a term as PTA president, he took office as racial tension rose after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Talking with Jenny Matthews in March 2001, he describes the board's decisions on integrating the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and the conflicts that came with them. Runs about eighty minutes; electronic edition issued by the UNC library in 2007 through Documenting the American South.
Oral history interview with Edwin Caldwell, March 2, 2001: interview K-0202, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Caldwell, Edwin · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Edwin Caldwell, Jr. reviews a life in Chapel Hill politics in a three-hour Southern Oral History Program interview recorded March 2, 2001, by Oliver White. A skilled organizer, Caldwell worked in the campaign that made Howard Lee the town's first Black mayor in 1969, ran for office more than once without winning, and became a local political power. The conversation also covers race relations, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board and the Church of Reconciliation. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
The effects of desegregation on selected variables in the Chapel Hill city school system
Prichard, Paul Newton, 1935- · 1969
Paul Newton Prichard's 1969 study of what desegregation changed in the Chapel Hill city school system, measured against academic achievement and other selected variables. Topics include school integration and achievement in the town, and a bibliography runs to page 115. Written during the district's own desegregation years, which makes it a contemporary source as well as a study.
Alan McSurely papers, 1928-2003 (bulk 1960s-1980s)
McSurely, Alan, 1936- · 1928
The papers of the lawyer Alan McSurely, born 1936, span 1928 to 2003 with the bulk from the 1960s to the 1980s. Topics include the civil rights movement, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, employment discrimination in Chapel Hill and the UNC Housekeepers Association. Part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4928.
The Courage to Lead: One Man's Journey in Public Service
Lee, Howard N. · 2008 · Cotton Patch Press
Howard N. Lee (born 1934) tells his own story, from a farm childhood in Lithonia, Georgia, through college, army service in Korea at Camp Casey and the move from Savannah that planted him in Chapel Hill, to his election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and his later run for Congress and years in the state legislature. Published by Cotton Patch Press of Chapel Hill in 2008, 199 pages with plates.
Oral history interview with Rebecca Clark, June 21, 2000: interview K-0536, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Clark, Rebecca · 2006 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Interview recorded June 21, 2000 with Rebecca Clark (1915-2009), a Black Chapel Hill resident, for the Southern Oral History Program at UNC. Clark, educated in Chapel Hill's segregated schools, describes working life under segregation and the economic discrimination she met in it. Topics also include Lincoln High School, school integration, and Howard Lee, elected mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969. Interview K-0536 in collection #4007.
My life of breaking barriers, building bridges, and making history
Lee, Howard, 1934- · 2021 · North Caroliniana Society
Howard N. Lee's account of his own career, published in 2021 by the North Caroliniana Society with the society award given to him that year, together with tributes from Angela Lee, Valerie Foushee and others. Lee became mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969, the town's first Black mayor.
Oral history interview with Anne Barnes, January 30, 1989
Barnes, Anne Craig · 2006
Oral history interview with Anne Craig Barnes recorded on January 30, 1989 and issued in 2006. Barnes represented Orange County in the North Carolina House of Representatives, and topics include women in politics, the National Women's Political Caucus, the state Democratic Party, Terry Sanford and Howard Lee of Chapel Hill.
Wider background: Schools & Education · the most widely held histories of the theme this story belongs to; they may not discuss it
William Friday
Link, William A. · 1995
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.
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).
Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices
Barefoot, Daniel W. · 2008
Daniel W. Barefoot arranges first-hand recollections of the University of North Carolina by decade, from the 'infant university' of the 1790s through the Civil War years when promise turned to despair, the rebuilding of the 1870s, the 'frosh' life of the 1880s, wartime fame in the 1940s, the controversies of the 1960s and the bicentennial of the 1990s. Thomas Wolfe's student years appear among the voices. Published by John F. Blair of Winston-Salem in 2008, 257 pages.
The Story of the Institute of Government, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Coates, Albert McKinley · 1981
Albert Coates's own account of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, which he founded, subtitled 'out of a classroom in Chapel Hill' and published in 1981. The 303 pages trace the institute's history and its role in educating North Carolina's public officials.
Blood on the Old Well
Emery, Sarah Watson · 1963
Sarah Watson Emery's 1963 book on the University of North Carolina, concerned with communism on the Chapel Hill campus and with academic freedom in 1960 and 1961. Published by Prospect House in Dallas, 240 pages with illustrations.
Horace Williams
Winston, Sr., Robert Watson · 1942 · The University of North Carolina press
Robert Watson Winston's biography of Henry Horace Williams (1858-1940), who taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina for half a century, subtitled gadfly of Chapel Hill. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1942, 309 pages with frontispiece and portraits; this copy is autographed. Topics include educators in Chapel Hill and the university's history.
Reviewed in Social Forces (1943).
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To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation’s Oldest University
Kapur, Geeta · 2021
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.
Communists on Campus
Billingsley, William J. · 1999 · University of Georgia Press
William J. Billingsley's history of the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 North Carolina statute that barred known Communists from speaking on state campuses, and the fight over it at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The subtitle sets the scope: race, politics and the public university in sixties North Carolina. It treats academic freedom, anti-communist movements and free speech in the state. University of Georgia Press, 1999, 308 pages with eight pages of plates.
Reviewed in Academe (2000), The American Historical Review (2001), The Journal of Southern History (2001), Journal of American History (2001), The Journal of Politics (2001).
Frank Porter Graham and the 1950 Senate Race in North Carolina
Pleasants, Julian M.; Burns, Augustus M., III · 1990 · UNC Press
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).
Francis Preston Venable of the University of North Carolina
Bursey, Maurice M. · 1989 · Chapel Hill Historical Society
Maurice M. Bursey's biography of Francis Preston Venable (1856 to 1934), chemist and president of the University of North Carolina, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1989. It also covers the history of the university's chemistry department. Illustrated, 111 pages, with bibliographies.
Reviewed in Isis (1992).
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.
Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase
Covington, Jr., Howard E. · 2018
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s history of how the University of North Carolina took shape under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham (1876 to 1918) and Harry Woodburn Chase (1883 to 1955), published by the University Library in 2018. The 528-page account covers campus history in the early twentieth century and includes portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2020).
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
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