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Event

Holy Week Fast, 1964

The fast on the Franklin Street post office lawn that pressed for a public accommodations ordinance.

1 work about Holy Week Fast, 1964 is indexed here.

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The Chapel Hill post office and its lawn on Franklin Street, October 1940
The Chapel Hill post office and its lawn on Franklin Street, October 1940

In the chronology

Chronology entries for this event, in date order. See these 6 dated events in the chronology →

  1. The Holy Week fast began on the Franklin Street post office lawn At sunrise on Palm Sunday, Freedom Committee members John Dunne, Pat Cusick, James Foushee and the Rev. LeVert Taylor began an eight-day, water-only fast on the grounds of the Chapel Hill post office, planned to last through Easter. The fast was aimed at the Board of Aldermen, and a fifth faster joined within two days. People: John Dunne Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: Pat Cusick, James Foushee · Also mentions: Chapel Hill post officeThe Daily Tar Heel, March 22, 1964, p. 1
  2. A Klan rally gathers at the post office fast and a UNC student is struck On the fast's seventh day a Ku Klux Klan rally drew onlookers to the Franklin Street post office, where textile worker Milford Cordell Hill of Gold Hill struck UNC senior Louis S. Calhoun Jr. and knocked off his glasses; police officers who saw it swore out complaints. Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: Louis S. Calhoun Jr., Milford Cordell Hill · Also mentions: Franklin Street post officeThe Daily Tar Heel, April 10, 1964, p. 1
  3. The Holy Week fast ends on Easter Sunday and the Rev. LaVert Taylor is hospitalized The five fasters finished their eight-day water-only fast in front of the post office on Easter Sunday. The Rev. LaVert Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was admitted to Memorial Hospital with an upset stomach afterward; James Foushee had been treated there during the fast and released. People: Pat Cusick, John Dunne Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: LaVert Taylor, James Foushee · Also mentions: Memorial HospitalThe Daily Tar Heel, April 4, 1964, p. 1
  4. The Committee of Concerned Citizens raises about $400 for injured demonstrators and the hospitalized faster Committee members served bread and cheese for donations twice a day in the basement of the First Baptist Church, raising about $400 to cover the hospital bills of demonstrators hurt in sit-ins and of the Rev. LaVert Taylor after the fast. People: Joe Straley Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: LaVert TaylorThe Daily Tar Heel, April 4, 1964, p. 1
  5. Judge Mallard sentences fasters Pat Cusick and John Dunne to a year in jail In Orange County Superior Court at Hillsborough, Judge Raymond B. Mallard gave Pat Cusick a year in jail on April 23 and John Dunne twelve months on April 24 for the February street-blocking demonstrations, among a dozen active sentences and about 100 suspended ones that stripped the Chapel Hill movement of its leaders four weeks after the fast. People: Pat Cusick, John Dunne Place: Hillsborough · Also named: Raymond B. MallardThe Daily Tar Heel, April 24, 1964, p. 1
  6. Chapel Hill Recorder's Court fines the man who struck a student at the post office fast Judge William S. Stewart fined Milford Cordell Hill $50 and costs for striking Louis S. Calhoun Jr. at the scene of the fast on March 28, on complaints sworn out by the police officers who saw it. Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: William S. Stewart, Milford Cordell Hill, Louis S. Calhoun Jr.The Daily Tar Heel, April 10, 1964, p. 1

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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.

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Indexed works

Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.

Holy Week fast

Dunne, John B. · 1964 · Chapel Hill Freedom Committee

A single-leaf statement issued by the Chapel Hill Freedom Committee in 1964 announcing a Holy Week fast, part of the civil rights demonstrations then pressing the town to pass a public accommodations ordinance. Signed by John B. Dunne as committee chairman, LaVert H. Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Patrick A. Cusick of the Student Peace Union and others. Subjects include civil rights demonstrations and race relations in Chapel Hill.

Included because: Its title names this subject.

UNC

Start at OCPL

Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this event. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this event itself.

  • Wider context · 323.119 GRE Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina Greene, Christina · 2005

    Christina Greene's history of Black and white women in Durham's freedom movement, from the fight against Jim Crow in the 1940s through the protests of 1957 to 1963, neighborhood organizing among poor residents, the War on Poverty, Black Power politics and a boycott. Revised from her 1996 Duke doctoral thesis, it was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2005; 366 pages with bibliography and index.

  • Wider context · 975.6 DRE Triumph of Good Will: How Terry Sanford Beat A Champion of Segregation and Reshaped the South Drescher, John · 2000

    The 1960 Democratic primary for governor, in which Terry Sanford, campaigning on education and a moderate line on integration, beat the segregationist law professor I. Beverly Lake, is the subject of John Drescher's book. Part campaign history and part biography of Sanford, it argues that his approach became a model for later Southern Democrats such as Jim Hunt, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2000.

  • Wider context · NC 810 WRITING Writing Civil Rights: The Pursuit of Justice in African American Literature : A Collection of Student Reflections, Summer 2011 2011

    Reflections by incarcerated students at Orange Correctional Center in Hillsborough, written for a Stepping Stones seminar on the pursuit of justice in African American literature that Patrick Elliot Alexander and Allison Curseen taught from June 20 to August 22, 2011. Writings by Pauli Murray and Martin Luther King Jr. figure in the 54-page collection.

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Black Life & Civil Rights →The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–1964 →

Picture: The Chapel Hill post office and its lawn on Franklin Street, October 1940. Public domain. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration; Library of Congress

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