The full story
On November 6, 1985, while CIA recruiters were on campus, a noon rally in the Pit sponsored by the Carolina Committee on Central America and the Campus Awareness Network drew a crowd that at times approached 150. On October 28, 1987 about 50 protesters marched from the Pit to Hanes Hall against CIA recruiting, and six, five students and a community resident, chained themselves together across the doors to the interview rooms and were arrested for disorderly conduct after refusing the dean of students' order to leave. On January 14, 1988 Judge Stanley Peele ruled that three of them had broken the law but entered a prayer for judgment continued; later in 1988 he jailed one for 21 days and gave another a suspended sentence for violating its terms.
In early February 1988 seven members of the student CIA Action Committee began a fast to press the University to cancel a CIA recruiting visit to the law school set for February 25. Dean of Students Frederic Schroeder and Vice Chancellor Donald Boulton said a state university had to stay open to legitimate organizations. On February 18 about 100 students held an eat-in in the Pit with signs supporting the CIA and opposing student-fee funding of the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association. The next day the recruiters called law dean Kenneth Broun to cancel their interviews at the School of Law and said they would not recruit on campus that semester; Boulton said the protests had played a part, and Chancellor Christopher Fordham had declined to bar the agency. On February 23 about 15 protesters met a CIA recruiter outside the University Inn room where he planned to interview law students, after a red liquid had been spilled at his door; he canceled the interviews and drove away. On February 26 the Board of Trustees voted 6 to 5 for trustee John Pope's resolution calling the confrontation violent, terrorist acts and saying the University would investigate and discipline students who broke the student code.
On April 13 University police removed a committee demonstration from the doors of the Lenoir Hall cafeteria, and the group finished in the Pit. On September 30, after a four-hour public hearing in Manning Hall, the Undergraduate Honor Court found five committee members guilty of willfully interfering with University activities during an April 15 sit-in at the Career Planning and Placement office, but not guilty of trespassing, and censured them. In October the Black Student Movement, Action Against Apartheid, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups formed the Chapel Hill Coalition for Freedom to Dissent. On October 20 it told about 150 people in the Pit that the University's actions against the protesters endangered the right to peaceful dissent; it rallied at South Building on October 21 and 27, when Chancellor Paul Hardin came out to address it, and on October 28 accused the trustees of prejudging a graduate student protester's case through their February resolution. After a closed session the board resolved to make no further comment on the case and to defend the First Amendment rights of all persons. On November 2 about 20 committee members held a "CIA Cafe" protest in Hanes Hall, where a recruiter was interviewing. After break-ins and threats against two coalition members at their homes, the coalition rallied in the Pit on November 9, and Boulton spoke in support of free speech. On November 17 former CIA agent Philip Agee told about 500 people in Hamilton Hall that UNC should not let the CIA recruit on campus. The next day the Faculty Council unanimously backed a statement criticizing the trustees' resolution and affirming the freedom to dissent, and Hardin told it he had never approved censorship or speaker bans.
On March 30, 1989 the committee demonstrated at the law school while CIA representatives interviewed students for internships, arguing the agency was a criminal organization barred from recruiting by the Campus Code; the Daily Tar Heel noted that this protest was peaceful. On October 11 members handed out fliers outside the Carolina Career Day in Great Hall rather than protest inside. On October 30 a UNC senior from the committee spent more than six hours halfway up WCHL's radio tower with a "CIA Off Campus" banner and was arrested by Chapel Hill police when he came down. On November 6 members marched in a "funeral procession" from the Pit past Hanes Hall to South Building, hammered white crosses into the lawn and left two coffins on Hardin's desk while he was out; the placement office said all 25 students signed up for CIA interviews kept them. On November 8 the University Hearings Board sent back the graduate student's conviction for the April 1988 protest, finding his right to a fair hearing compromised, in part by the trustees' resolution branding the protesters "terrorists", and six days later the graduate student attorney general dropped all charges. On November 16 Judge Lowry Betts sentenced the tower climber to 30 days in the Orange County jail, served on weeknights, weekends and holidays; WCHL's general manager raised the sentence with District Attorney Carl Fox, but the student chose not to appeal. On February 16, 1990 members of the CIA Action Committee stood outside the law school in wind and rain for almost four hours to protest CIA job interviews, charging the agency with refusing to hire gay men and lesbians. Law professor Daniel Pollitt backed their case, but Chancellor Paul Hardin, who had met the group two days earlier, said the CIA could keep recruiting.
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.
Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, April 5, 1991: interview L-0064-7, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Pollitt, Daniel H. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
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.
Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, December 13, 1990: interview L-0064-3, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Pollitt, Daniel H. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
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.
Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, February 15, 1991: interview L-0064-4, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Pollitt, Daniel H. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
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.
Oral history interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, November 28, 1990: interview L-0064-2, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Pollitt, Daniel H. · 2008 · University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
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.
Recording with Judge Stanley Peele, 1983 (Chapel Hill Historical Society cassette)
1983
Judge Stanley Peele, recorded on cassette in 1983 for the Chapel Hill Historical Society. Part of the society's CHHS.012 Audiovisual Materials Collection.
Wider background: UNC & Campus Life · the most widely held histories of the theme this story belongs to; they may not discuss it
Carolina Basketball: A Century of Excellence
Lucas, Adam · 2010 · University of North Carolina Press
Adam Lucas marks one hundred years of basketball at the University of North Carolina in this illustrated history, published by UNC Press in 2010 in association with the athletics department. Chapters follow the program from the game's arrival on campus and the 'White Phantoms' of the Southern Conference through the founding of the ACC, the 1957 season, Dean Smith's changes to the game and the title seasons of 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009, closing with a century of statistics. 289 pages.
Chapel Hill Murder and Mayhem
Jackson, Rick · 2023
Rick Jackson's true crime history of Chapel Hill, published by The History Press in 2023, in 28 short chapters. Cases include the Efland bank robbery, the execution of John Henry Breeze, the unsolved murder of Suellen Evans, the killing at the Internationalist Bookstore and the death of Eve Carson.
The Blue Divide: Duke, North Carolina, and the Battle on Tobacco Road
Moore, Johnny; Chansky, Art · 2014 · Triumph Books
The Duke and North Carolina basketball rivalry written together by Johnny Moore and Art Chansky, the latter a sports reporter who has followed it since his student days at UNC. The book opens with the 2014 season and moves through recruiting battles old and new, 'Black and Blue Sunday', 'Blood and Roses', and chapters on the rivalry's heroes, leaders and teachers, with a foreword by Jay Bilas and a photo gallery. Published by Triumph Books in 2014, 289 pages.
Miss Mary's Money
Jones, H. G. · 2014 · McFarland & Co.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
The Chronicles of the Bicentennial Observance of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tepper, Steven J. · 1998
Steven J. Tepper's chronicle of how the University of North Carolina marked its bicentennial in 1993 and 1994. An appendix reprints the University Day speeches of October 12, 1993, given by Paul Hardin, James B. Hunt Jr., C.D. Spangler, William C. Friday, Charles Kuralt and President Bill Clinton, plus bicentennial addresses by Li Lu, Francis S. Collins and Richard J. Richardson. Published by the university in Chapel Hill, 1998; 284 pages.
Game Changers
Chansky, Art · 2016
Art Chansky's 2016 account of Dean Smith, Charlie Scott and the years that changed Chapel Hill as a Southern college town. Scott was the first Black scholarship player in the Carolina basketball program. Topics include civil rights, racism in sports and the university's twentieth-century history.
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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.
Light on the Hill
Snider, William D. · 1992
William D. Snider's history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1992. It runs 370 pages with illustrations, a bibliography and an index.
Reviewed in History of Education Quarterly (1993), The Journal of Southern History (1993).
Chapel Hill in Plain Sight
Athas, Daphne · 2010 · Eno Publishers
Twelve essays by novelist Daphne Athas (1923-2020) on the Chapel Hill she knew across the twentieth century. Subjects include Carrboro as 'the Paris of the Piedmont', philosopher Horace Williams, Betty Smith writing in Chapel Hill, Junius Scales, Ab Abernethy and the Intimate Bookshop, Richard Wright's visit, and a set of Chapel Hill murders. Published 2010, 243 pages with illustrations.
What it means to be a Tar Heel: Roy Williams and North Carolina's greatest players
Fowler, Scott · 2010 · Triumph Books
Scott Fowler gathers recollections from Carolina basketball players, decade by decade from the 1950s to the 2000s, organized around Roy Williams and the question in the title. Contributors include Lennie Rosenbluth, Larry Brown, Billy Cunningham, Charlie Scott, Phil Ford, James Worthy, Brad Daugherty, Eric Montross, Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Raymond Felton and Sean May, each entry giving position and playing years. Published 2010 by Triumph Books of Chicago, 270 pages, here as an e-book.
The Campus of the First State University
Henderson, Archibald · 1949
Archibald Henderson's history of the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, its buildings and grounds from the founding in the 1790s onward. Henderson, a professor of mathematics and a prolific historian of the university, wrote it in the years around the university's sesquicentennial. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 412 pages with illustrations and bibliographical footnotes.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1949), South Atlantic Quarterly (1950).
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).
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