Storyline
The picture shows of Chapel Hill and Carrboro from the Tar Heel Theatre and the Pickwick in 1916 to Henry Guthrie’s picture house, the parish-house shows for children, the Pickwick fire and rebuilding in 1924, and the Standard, opened by and for Black residents.
In briefIn 1924 Chapel Hill lost its Pickwick theatre to fire and gained a theatre owned by and run for Black residents. Early in 1916 Lindsey and Strowd opened the Tar Heel Theatre on Franklin Street and S. J. Brockwell's Pickwick went up in the same row, and about 1918 Henry Guthrie opened a picture house on West Franklin Street, in the blocks where Black families were settling. On February 9, 1924 an early-morning fire burned the Pickwick. Brockwell rebuilt it, fireproof, on the same site, and it opened on May 31 with seats for 750. On July 4 the Standard opened on West Franklin Street, owned by tailor Durward O'Kelly, builder Charlie Brooks and brick mason Jesse Kirkland.
Read the full storyRead the 10 eventsAll storylines
Read the events and sources below.
No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Black Life & Civil Rights.
Early in 1916 Lindsey and Strowd opened the Tar Heel Theatre in a new building on Franklin Street beside Strowd's garage, and S. J. Brockwell's new Pickwick went up in the same row. On July 13, 1917 the stockholders of the Tar Heel Garage and Theatre Company, with Bruce Strowd as its agent, consented to its dissolution. In Carrboro the Colonial Movie Theatre on Weaver Street closed around 1917. About 1918 Henry Guthrie opened a picture house on West Franklin Street just west of Graham Street, in the blocks where Black families were settling. From October 6, 1922 the Episcopal church showed pictures for children on Friday evenings in its parish house. On February 9, 1924 an early-morning fire burned the Pickwick and the O'Kelly pressing club next door, and the University Y.M.C.A. took over a picture show in Gerrard Hall. Brockwell's new fireproof Pickwick, built on the same site and run by W. S. Roberson under lease, opened on May 31 with seats for 750. On July 4 the Standard, owned by and run for Black residents, opened on West Franklin Street with two crowded shows; its owners were tailor Durward O'Kelly, builder Charlie Brooks and brick mason Jesse Kirkland. That month a trustee advertised Henry and Matilda Guthrie's Franklin Street land, with its moving-picture house, for foreclosure.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 10 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 Black Life & Civil Rights. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
An Alex Cross thriller by James Patterson with Chapel Hill among its settings alongside Washington, D.C. Bombings, a kidnapping, a missing-persons investigation, terrorism and fathers and sons are its subjects; the Sampson of the title is Cross's longtime partner John Sampson. Published by Little, Brown in 2026.
Theodore Parrish's memoir of a Black life in Chapel Hill and of gentrification in the town, subtitled race, gentrification, and the path of my own life. Published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in August 2025, 243 pages with illustrations. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, race relations and gentrification in North Carolina.
Sylvia D. Hoffert's study of gossip, rumor and reputation in nineteenth-century Hillsborough, using the town as a case study of how talk shaped social standing and race relations in a small Southern place. Chapters take up the workings of idle chatter, people living on the edge of freedom under slavery, schooling, daily labor, and a period of fear over madness in the community. Published 2025 by the University of Georgia Press.
Beverly A. Scarlett's 2024 study of a free community of color in nineteenth-century Orange County, drawing on apprenticeship and freedmen's records among other county sources.
Brian Burns's collection of lesser-known episodes from Chapel Hill's past, published by The History Press of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2023. Topics include the town's history, its buildings and structures, and the history of civil rights in Chapel Hill. 158 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Tracy Deonn's young adult fantasy novel set around the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bree, an African American teenager with newly awakened powers she cannot yet control, learns that the leaders of the secret Order mean to hide the coming demon war, and she and her friends flee so that she can find her own training. Subjects include magic, secret societies, imaginary wars and psychic trauma. Published by Simon & Schuster in 2022, 561 pages.
Reviewed in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books./Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (2022).
Picture book by Courtney Soling Smith, published by the Orange County Historical Museum in Hillsborough in 2022, about a collie named Minnie and an African American family in Cedar Grove Township. Twenty-nine unnumbered pages, chiefly color illustrations, with portraits that point to a real family behind the story.
Companion picture book about Minnie the collie by Courtney Soling Smith, again from the Orange County Historical Museum in 2022, following an African American farm family in Cedar Grove Township. Thirty-seven unnumbered pages, chiefly color illustrations, with a facsimile. Written for children, with the museum's local history interest behind it.
Adam Lucas's account of the 2021-2022 Carolina men's basketball season, Hubert Davis's first as head coach. Davis, appointed in April 2021, was the first Black head coach in the program's history, and the season ended at the NCAA tournament in New Orleans. Published 2022 by the UNC Department of Athletics, 155 pages with color illustrations. Topics include the Tar Heels, Davis, and college basketball in Chapel Hill in the twenty-first century.
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.
Collected first-hand and second-hand stories from the Eno River valley as told from the standpoint of African Americans and Native people who have lived along the river in Orange and Durham counties, from prehistory to the present day. Issued by the Eno River Association in Durham as volume 10, number 2 of the Eno Journal, 2021, 106 pages with illustrations.
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.
Sources and research tools for this storyline. Research guide: Follow an event across several accounts.
More to discover
The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
