Storyline
How Chapel Hill, Carrboro and UNC answered the Persian Gulf war in 1990 and 1991: the post office vigils, the Franklin Street march and the Polk Place protest, the CBS town meeting, the sanctuary votes, the rallies for the troops, and the Peace Village in the Pit until after the cease-fire.
In briefAs war with Iraq neared and began in 1990 and 1991, peace groups held vigils at the Franklin Street post office, about 1,100 people marched down Franklin Street and students protested in Polk Place. The Community Church became a sanctuary church, but Carrboro and Chapel Hill declined the Greens' sanctuary resolution. Smaller rallies backed the troops, and a Peace Village stood in the Pit until after the cease-fire.
Read the full storyRead the 18 eventsAll storylines
Read the events and sources below.
No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below are about the places and people this story names.
Before dawn on December 5, 1990 an anonymous student group calling itself Good Morning, UNC put trash bags over The Student Body statues outside Davis Library in protest against U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf; University police removed the bags. On January 7, 1991 the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and other peace groups began daily noon demonstrations against war with Iraq at the Franklin Street post office. On January 10 CBS News taped a town meeting on the crisis at Morehead Planetarium, hosted by Charles Kuralt and Lesley Stahl, and on January 12 about 1,100 people rallied in McCorkle Place and marched down Franklin Street, organized by the UNC Community for Peace and the Triangle Coalition for Peace in the Middle East.
On January 15 the Community Church of Chapel Hill declared itself a sanctuary church for soldiers absent without leave and people seeking conscientious objector status; its minister, Buddy Olney, tied the step to the church's work for peace and justice. On January 17, the first day of the air war, students and faculty held a day-long protest in Polk Place and lowered the flag to half-mast; a University police officer took that flag down and they raised another. About 25 people rallied near Silent Sam for President Bush and the troops on January 19, and on the King holiday about 100 people at the post office denounced the war as contrary to King's teachings.
The Orange County Greens asked both towns to declare themselves sanctuaries for war resisters. On January 22 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen declined to consider it, with Alderman Jacquelyn Gist saying the town could not legally become a sanctuary. On January 28, before more than 150 people, the Chapel Hill Town Council turned it down 6 to 2, with Joe Herzenberg and Joyce Brown dissenting; the Greens' Dan Coleman presented it and Alan Rimer said the war was not the council's business. Two days earlier about 60 people had rallied for the troops in McCorkle Place.
On January 29 the UNC Committee for Peace in the Middle East set up a round-the-clock Peace Village of tents in the Pit, and the next day the Orange County Women's Center started a support group for families of troops in the gulf. On February 2 seven College Republicans threw water balloons marked "SCUD" around the tents; the committee voted not to take legal action. In February members of Caritas staged an Ash Wednesday die-in at the Naval Armory, and St. Anthony Hall made its house a sanctuary for conscientious objectors. On February 21 the committee and the Student Environmental Action Coalition began a postcard campaign for a cease-fire, and the War Here exhibit opened in Carrboro. On March 6, a week after the cease-fire, the committee took down the Peace Village after 36 days.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 18 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.
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.
Half-hour video from GK Productions, released in Chapel Hill in 2001, centered on Charles M. Jones, the minister whose Presbyterian congregation and the later Community Church of Chapel Hill both figure in it, along with civil rights movements and racism in the town. Color with black and white sequences.
Civic papers of Adelaide Walters, 1907 to 1981, spanning 1954 to 1981, about 900 items in 1.5 linear feet, collection 4293 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. The papers document her work on the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen and her political life, covering city and regional planning, the civil rights movement in Chapel Hill, the Community Church, and the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service.
Joseph W. Straley, born 1914, taught at the University of North Carolina, and his papers, about 600 items in a linear foot and a half spanning 1936 to 2002, are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5252. Diaries and other primary material cover academic freedom and the Speaker Ban Law, civil rights work and segregation, the Community Church of Chapel Hill, Charles Miles Jones and Howard Lee.
Charles Miles Jones, 1906 to 1993, a Presbyterian minister in Chapel Hill, left these papers covering 1924 into the 1990s, about 1,800 items in 2.5 linear feet, collection 5168 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. The papers concern civil rights and segregation in North Carolina, the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church, the Community Church of Chapel Hill, the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, and names including Frank Porter Graham and Bayard Rustin.
Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
Charles Kuralt's 1998 calendar of American places, issued in 1997 by Price Stern Sloan with twenty-six unnumbered pages of color photographs. April belongs to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the other months follow Kuralt's travels across the United States.
An eleven minute videocassette carrying Charles Kuralt's television piece on Pauli Murray, drawn from his On the Road series and dated 2002. It concerns African American biography, the Episcopal Church and the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill. Kuralt lived from 1934 to 1997.
Compact disc gathering stories about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that aired on WCHL-AM, the Chapel Hill radio station. Running 43 minutes and issued by M. Kokai in 2002, it takes in Michael Jordan, Marion Jones, Dean Smith, Charles Kuralt and the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, along with Carolina basketball and soccer.
Charles Kuralt, Woody Durham and Mick Mixon in a broadcast booth during a sporting event in 1996, probably in Chapel Hill. Color 35 mm negative by Hugh Morton.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Anne R. Keene's history of the Cloudbusters, the baseball team of the Navy Pre-Flight School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill during the Second World War, on which Ted Williams played in 1943. The chapters move from a batboy's trunk of keepsakes through the pre-flight training program to the players' lives after the war, and Keene's own family is part of the story. Published by Sports Publishing in New York in 2018, 340 pages with sixteen pages of plates.
William Edward Fitch's account of the Regulator movement and the Battle of Alamance of 1771, which his subtitle calls the first battle of the American Revolution, published by Neale in 1905 in a second edition. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was the scene of the Regulators' 1770 courthouse riot and of the hangings that followed Alamance. 307 pages with nine leaves of plates, folding maps and a portrait.
Ernest Dollar examines the mental toll of the Civil War's last weeks in North Carolina on Confederate and Union soldiers and on civilians, using letters, diaries and later accounts. After chapters on each group, the narrative follows the days from April 10 to early May 1865 as Sherman's army moved through the central counties, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough among them; an epilogue considers how the trauma colored later memory of the conflict's end. Published 2022, 265 pages.
Reviewed in Civil War Book Review (2023).
A congregational history of New Hope Presbyterian Church in Orange County, written by Barbara A. Murphy and published in 2006 by Chapel Hill Press. Chapters take up the five successive church buildings, the land itself, the ministers who served, the cemeteries, members who went to war, the church's organization, its music, gifts and memorials, and its outreach to the surrounding community. It also covers Presbyterian experience of the Civil War. 126 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Numbered dispatches 59 through 67 from Governor William Tryon to the Earl of Hillsborough, with enclosures about the Regulators, whose protests broke into riot at Hillsborough in 1770. Reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office CO 5/302. The papers touch on the council and assembly, naval stores and trade, oaths, militia and provincial troops, judges, sheriffs and juries, voting, currency, Cherokee affairs, clergy, quitrents and land, and name officials such as Richard Caswell, Richard Henderson, Maurice Moore and Hugh Waddell.
Governor William Tryon's correspondence with the Earl of Hillsborough for the months from October 1768 to May 1769, just after Tryon marched militia to Hillsborough to protect the court from the Regulators. Adam Matthew Digital reproduced the file, Colonial Office CO 5/301, in 2019. Topics include legislation, Anglican clergy, soldiers' wages, sheriffs, land and quitrents, trade and currency, taxes and education, the Catawba and the boundary line, roads, a murder case, punishment and prison, and people such as Richard Caswell, James Hasell and John Rutherford.
Letters from Governor William Tryon to the Lords Commissioners in London, with enclosed legislation and the accounts of the ship Brigantine Fox, reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office file CO 5/300. They show the range of a governor's business: council appointments, judges and courts, assembly acts, cotton manufacturing, poverty, naval stores, rice, tobacco and indigo, currency, the Tuscarora, education, marriage, debt and customs. Hillsborough is among the places named, and people include William Johnston, Richard Henderson, Cornelius Harnett and Samuel Strudwick.
Stewart E. Dunaway's account of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, fought in September 1781 after the Loyalist David Fanning raided Hillsborough and carried off Governor Thomas Burke. Burke, Fanning and the Lindley family, whose mill gave the fight its name, are the people at its center, with the Revolutionary campaigns in North Carolina as the frame. Published in 2009.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Suzy Barile's account of Eleanor Hope Swain, daughter of the University of North Carolina's president, and Smith D. Atkins, the Union general whose troops occupied Chapel Hill in April 1865; the two married later that year. Published by Eno in Hillsborough in 2009, 237 pages with illustrations and portraits.
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.
