Storyline
How Chapel Hill paid for hard-surfaced streets from 1937 to 1941: the last of the PWA street surfacing, the $16,000 curb-and-gutter bonds the debt-limitation amendment put to a vote, the 1941 street and fire apparatus bonds, and the state’s taking over of three streets.
In briefChapel Hill surfaced its dirt streets between 1937 and 1941 with a PWA project, bonds the voters approved and help from the State Highway Commission. In September 1937 a contractor began laying asphalt on about twenty dirt streets, the last part of the PWA project. That October the State Local Government Commission, said street bonds needed a vote, and the Weekly explained that owners who had petitioned for curb and gutter would repay about $13,000. Voters approved the bonds 273 to 5. In 1941 they approved more street bonds, sold at what the Weekly called the lowest rate on record, and the state agreed to surface unpaved stretches of Church Street, which ran through the Black neighborhood.
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No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Black Life & Civil Rights.
In late September 1937 contractor J. M. Gregory of Raleigh began laying asphalt on about twenty of Chapel Hill's dirt streets under a $9,348 contract. It was the last part of a three-part PWA project with the southwest sewer lines and the incinerator. On October 13 the aldermen adopted an ordinance for up to $16,000 in bonds for street surfacing, curb, gutter and sidewalk work and called an election, after the State Local Government Commission, citing the 1936 debt-limitation amendment, said a vote was required. The Weekly explained that about $13,000 would be repaid by owners who had petitioned for curb and gutter. On November 16 voters approved the bonds 273 to 5. On August 19, 1941 voters approved $17,000 in street bonds, 102 to 78, and $9,000 for fire apparatus, 104 to 76. That fall the town sold the $26,000 issue at 2 and 1.75 per cent, which the Weekly called the lowest rate on record for a Chapel Hill issue. By October 17 the State Highway Commission had agreed to surface and maintain the unpaved stretches north of Franklin Street of Church Street, which ran through the Black neighborhood, and of Hillsboro and North Columbia streets. The aldermen chose five more streets for the town's own surfaces from the August bonds.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 5 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.
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. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this storyline itself.
Richard Joseph Moore's history of Front Street United Methodist Church, from its start in Company Shops, the railroad town renamed Burlington, to 1984. He covers early Methodism and Bishop Asbury in the county, the church's three buildings and its 1949 fire, its ministers, Sunday school classes, organs and music, and closes with a 1984 roll of the church family. Published by the church in 1984; 144 illustrated pages with an index.
Katharine Kerr Kendall's compilation of Caswell County land grants, tax lists, state census returns, apprentice bonds and estate records, published in 1977 in 90 pages. Caswell was formed from the northern part of Orange County in 1777, and Kendall later abstracted its deed books and marriage bonds as well.
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