Storyline
The dry fall of 1941 in and around Chapel Hill: the drought and October heat that pushed the pipeline from University Lake to its limit, the University power plant cut loose from Duke Power to escape the power curtailment, and the forest fires fought by the Black CCC crews.
In briefThe dry fall of 1941 left Chapel Hill short of water and put its electric supply in question. From August 1 to October 15 the town had 1.98 inches of rain against a normal 10.41, and with only half a day's water in storage, University officials asked people to stop sprinkling until rain came on October 27. When the Office of Production Management ordered cuts in electric use, the University promised to cut its coal-fired plant loose from Duke Power's lines, and State Utilities Commissioner Winborne ruled the order did not apply in Chapel Hill. In November eight men from the nearby Civilian Conservation Corps camp, whose enrollees were all Black, put out a forest fire below the Gimghoul castle.
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From August 1 to October 15, 1941 Chapel Hill had 1.98 inches of rain against a normal 10.41, and the first half of October averaged 74.2 degrees against a normal 60.6. Lawn watering pushed the single pipeline from University Lake to its limit of a million gallons a day. With only half a day's water in storage, the University's utilities officials asked people to stop sprinkling lest a fire find the reserve empty, until rain on October 27 eased the danger. When the Office of Production Management ordered cuts in electric use because the drought had shrunk water power, University utilities superintendent J. S. Bennett promised State Utilities Commissioner Winborne to disconnect the coal-fired University plant from the Duke Power Company lines, and Winborne ruled that the order did not apply in Chapel Hill. The plant made all the town's power. On November 15 a forest fire broke out in the woods below the Gimghoul castle, and eight men from the nearby Civilian Conservation Corps camp, whose roughly 190 enrollees were all Black, put it out after it had burned about two acres. Camp work director S. O. Short said his crews fought fires across Orange, Durham and Chatham counties that dry fall, among them 500 to 600 acres near the Neuse River in Durham County.
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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.
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