Storyline
The five-year effort by parents at Cedar Grove School, the Black elementary school in the far north of the county, to win state accreditation: their requests to the county board, the new cafeteria and classrooms, the state’s 1958 refusal and the 1961 approval.
In briefCedar Grove School won state accreditation in 1961 after five years of requests to the county board for classrooms, land and a lunchroom. In 1956 Wayne Compton and four other men asked for four more classrooms, a larger lunchroom and playground land; the board did not act, though it later approved a cafeteria. In 1958 Ruth Lawrence Woodson, state supervisor of the Black elementary schools, refused accreditation because the school had too few classrooms and was using its library as a fourth-grade room. In 1959 the five men, now the school's advisory committee, asked for a two-classroom addition, which was finished by September 1960, and in 1961 the state added Cedar Grove Elementary to its accredited list.
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On April 9, 1956 Wayne Compton, Arthur Wells, Lonnie Thompson, Carter White and Oscar Beasley asked the county board for four more classrooms at Cedar Grove School, a lunchroom large enough to grow and two more acres for a playground; the board did not act. In November it approved a cafeteria for 150 pupils at no more than $40,000 while again putting off new classrooms. On May 5, 1958 a delegation seeking state accreditation asked for one more classroom so the library could be used as a library again, land for a playground, paint for the north wing and outdoor floodlights, and again the board took no action. In July Ruth Lawrence Woodson, state supervisor of the Black elementary schools, refused accreditation because the school had too few classrooms and was using its library as a fourth-grade room. Late in 1958 a brick kitchen and cafeteria built to Archie Royal Davis's plans was finished behind the gymnasium. In April 1959 the five men, now the school's advisory committee, asked for a two-classroom addition, and in August the board approved Davis's plans with a $20,000 limit. The two classrooms at the south end of the original wing were finished by September 6, 1960, and by September 21, 1961 the State Department of Public Instruction had added Cedar Grove Elementary, with Harold Webb as principal, to its accredited list.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 8 dated events in the chronology →
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
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.
Background reading on Schools & Education. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
A 2026 novel set in Carrboro. Frances, thirty and grieving her mother, and her husband Ben open their marriage, and the book follows what that decision does to them and to the people closest to them. The characters include college teachers and a ghostwriter. 296 pages.
An illustrated online timeline of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, issued by the school in 2025. One page with portraits.
A 2025 history of University of North Carolina baseball from its nineteenth-century beginnings to the program's rise as an ACC power. Chapters cover the early years on campus, the building of Boshamer Stadium, and the Mike Fox era. Self-published by the author, 288 pages.
Joanna Pearson's novel of a cold case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Karlie Richards was a nineteen-year-old student when she was murdered; decades later her onetime roommate, divorced and in middle age, finds herself drawn back to the crime as online conspiracy theories about it multiply. A psychological thriller with a Chapel Hill setting, published by Bloomsbury in 2024, 275 pages.
The 2023 issue of Carrboro High School's literary magazine, featuring fiction and poetry written by its students.
William R. Burk's history of botany at the University of North Carolina, from its early natural scientists such as Denison Olmsted and Elisha Mitchell through later figures including George Francis Atkinson, Joseph Austin Holmes and Henry Van Peters Wilson, closing with a chapter on the Department of Botany itself. Published in Fort Worth in 2023.
Willis P. Whichard's biography of David Lowry Swain, governor of North Carolina from 1832 to 1835 and president of the University of North Carolina from 1835 until his death in 1868. The subtitle ties Swain, nineteenth-century North Carolina and the university together, and the book belongs with the lives of college presidents and governors. Published in 2022.
Jim Grimsley's coming-of-age novel about Ronny, who grew up in a trailer alongside his mother and a string of stepfathers, kept his head down, earned good grades and won a scholarship to UNC in Chapel Hill. On campus he finds his first love and begins to sort out who he is. Subjects include gay college students, first loves and mothers and sons. Published by Levine Querido in 2022, 322 pages.
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.
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.
Tracy Deonn's young adult fantasy about an African American teenager who arrives as a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after her mother's death and finds a secret society bound to Arthurian legend, with demons, magic and her own family's past. Published by Margaret K. McElderry Books in 2020, 501 pages, for ages 14 and up. Winner of the 2021 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Reviewed in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books./Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (2020).
Sylvia D. Hoffert's article on Margaret Anna Burwell, 1810 to 1871, and the work of being a Presbyterian minister's wife in North Carolina from 1835 to 1857, the years of the female school she and her husband kept in Hillsborough. Pages 245 to 275 with illustrations, facsimiles and portraits, issued by the Office of Archives and History in Raleigh in 2019.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this storyline. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
A 1980 edition, issued by the church, of A. A. Ellis's history of Eno Presbyterian Church at Cedar Grove, Orange County. Twenty unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits. Ellis's original history of the congregation appeared in 1955.
Irene Oliver Pender's history of the public schools of Orange County from 1752 to 1983, covering more than two centuries of schooling in Hillsborough, Efland, Cedar Grove and the rural districts of the county. Published in 1983, 186 pages with illustrations.
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