Storyline
How Orange County voted in 1990: Carl Fox’s filing for district attorney, a crowded race for three county commissioner seats, the registration drives and Harvey Gantt’s rally in the Pit during his Senate race against Jesse Helms, the November results and the ballot shortages.
In briefIn 1990 Democrats Alice Gordon, Stephen Halkiotis and Verla Insko won three open seats on the Orange County Board of Commissioners. Registration drives signed up thousands of new voters during the Senate race between Jesse Helms and Harvey Gantt, and UNC's campus precincts gave Gantt 84 percent of their vote. Chapel Hill voters narrowly turned down a $3 million library bond.
Read the full storyRead the 9 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.
On January 31, 1990 Carl Fox, district attorney for Orange and Chatham counties since 1984, filed for re-election, promising to seek mandatory prison terms for drug sellers and stronger laws against domestic violence; he was the only filer as of February 2. By February 5 nine Democrats and four Republicans had filed for three four-year seats on the Orange County Board of Commissioners ahead of the May 8 primaries. Stephen Halkiotis was the only incumbent to run again, and the field included former Chapel Hill mayor Jim Wallace, OWASA board chairwoman Verla Insko, former county planning board chairwoman Alice Gordon, former commissioner Ben Lloyd and, among the Republicans, OWASA board member Bill Aderholt, who resigned that post to run.
Registration for the November 6 election closed on October 8 after campus and community drives during the U.S. Senate race between Jesse Helms and Harvey Gantt, in which the county's number of special registrars doubled; Musicians Organized for Voter Education signed up 3,000 to 3,500 people at more than 150 events. On October 15 Gantt told more than 3,500 students in the Pit that they could be the margin in his race against Helms and called for spending less on B-52 bombers and more on students. Mayor Jonathan Howes and state senators Howard Lee and Russell Walker attended. By the end of October the county had 57,384 registered voters, 39,628 Democrats, 12,358 Republicans and 5,396 unaffiliated, and Democratic organizers said 4,000 to 5,000 students had registered in the county that year, about 80 percent of them Democrats.
On November 6 the four precincts serving the University, Greenwood, East Franklin, Lincoln and Country Club, gave Gantt 3,026 votes to 556 for Helms, 84 percent of their Senate vote, against the statewide result. Democrats Alice Gordon (24,449 votes), Halkiotis (23,477) and Insko (23,217) won the three commissioner seats over Republicans Ted Latta (11,226), Aderholt (10,229) and Johnny Kennedy (10,181). Chapel Hill voters turned down, 8,346 to 8,129, a $3 million bond for a 47,000-square-foot public library at Estes Drive and Franklin Street, which left the town to build the 27,000-square-foot library paid for by the bonds voters approved in 1986. Packaging mistakes left some precincts short of ballots, and voters in line at closing waited hours for more; the Weaver Dairy precinct got ballots mixed with another district's. Elections officials said no one was kept from voting.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 9 dated events in the chronology →
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.
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.
Howard N. Lee (born 1934) tells his own story, from a farm childhood in Lithonia, Georgia, through college, army service in Korea at Camp Casey and the move from Savannah that planted him in Chapel Hill, to his election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and his later run for Congress and years in the state legislature. Published by Cotton Patch Press of Chapel Hill in 2008, 199 pages with plates.
Edwin Caldwell, Jr. reviews a life in Chapel Hill politics in a three-hour Southern Oral History Program interview recorded March 2, 2001, by Oliver White. A skilled organizer, Caldwell worked in the campaign that made Howard Lee the town's first Black mayor in 1969, ran for office more than once without winning, and became a local political power. The conversation also covers race relations, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board and the Church of Reconciliation. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
Interview recorded June 21, 2000 with Rebecca Clark (1915-2009), a Black Chapel Hill resident, for the Southern Oral History Program at UNC. Clark, educated in Chapel Hill's segregated schools, describes working life under segregation and the economic discrimination she met in it. Topics also include Lincoln High School, school integration, and Howard Lee, elected mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969. Interview K-0536 in collection #4007.
Howard N. Lee's account of his own career, published in 2021 by the North Caroliniana Society with the society award given to him that year, together with tributes from Angela Lee, Valerie Foushee and others. Lee became mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969, the town's first Black mayor.
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.
Albert Coates's own account of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, which he founded, subtitled 'out of a classroom in Chapel Hill' and published in 1981. The 303 pages trace the institute's history and its role in educating North Carolina's public officials.
William J. Billingsley's history of the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 North Carolina statute that barred known Communists from speaking on state campuses, and the fight over it at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The subtitle sets the scope: race, politics and the public university in sixties North Carolina. It treats academic freedom, anti-communist movements and free speech in the state. University of Georgia Press, 1999, 308 pages with eight pages of plates.
Reviewed in Academe (2000), The American Historical Review (2001), The Journal of Southern History (2001), Journal of American History (2001), The Journal of Politics (2001).
Julian M. Pleasants and Augustus M. Burns III on the 1950 Democratic Senate primary in North Carolina, in which Frank Porter Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina, lost to Willis Smith after a campaign marked by race-baiting. Primaries, elections and race relations in the state are its subjects. Published by UNC Press in 1990, 356 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1991), The American Historical Review (1991), Journal of American History (1991), The Journal of Southern History (1992).
Ruth Blackwelder's study of political and intellectual leadership in Orange County and North Carolina from 1752 to 1861, published in Charlotte by W. Loftin in 1961. Topics include state politics and government, intellectual life before the Civil War, and county genealogy. It runs 216 pages with illustrations and a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
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.
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s biography of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the law professor who founded the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina and led it through its early years. Topics include Coates as a law teacher and the institute's history as a center for the study of public administration in Chapel Hill. Published in 2010 by the University Library at Chapel Hill, 322 pages with 32 pages of plates.
Warren Ashby's biography of Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972), president of the University of North Carolina from 1930 to 1949 and later a United States senator. Published by Blair in 1981, x and 386 pages with sixteen leaves of plates and a bibliography.
Reviewed in The American Historical Review (1981), Journal of American History (1981).
Hugh Talmage Lefler and Paul W. Wager's history of Orange County across its first two centuries, 1752 to 1952, prepared for the county's bicentennial. It covers government and politics, biography and the county's families, and doubles as a genealogical reference. Published in Chapel Hill by the Orange Printshop in 1953, 389 pages with illustrations and an index; this copy is a later reprint.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).
Michael Thomas Smith's biography of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, the University of North Carolina chemistry professor dismissed in 1856 after he declared support for the antislavery presidential candidate John C. Fremont. Published by University of Delaware Press in 2003, 216 pages with illustrations. Topics include abolitionists and dissenters in North Carolina, the antislavery movement in the state, and the university's biography before 1962.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2005).
The papers of Willie Person Mangum, 1792 to 1861, a lawyer, judge and United States senator from the part of Orange County that later became Durham County. Five volumes of correspondence published by the State Department of Archives and History beginning in 1950, arranged by date from 1807 to 1894, with illustrations, portraits and folding maps. A source for antebellum North Carolina and national politics, the Whig Party and the Mangum family.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1951), Journal of American History (1951), The Journal of Southern History (1953), Journal of American History (1953), The Journal of Southern History (1954), The Journal of Southern History (1955), The Journal of Southern History (1957), Journal of American History (1957), The American Historical Review (1957).
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
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.
