Storyline
A New York lingerie maker’s sewing plant at Hillsborough: the town’s drive to build it a home, the 1957 strike for a union, the fire that destroyed the struck plant, the labor board’s findings and the arson trial.
In briefHillsboro business and professional men set out to give a New York lingerie firm a permanent plant, and within two years it faced a union strike, the wrecking of the plant by explosion and fire, and years of litigation. Reverie Lingerie opened a pilot sewing plant near Hillsboro in 1955. In April 1957 workers struck for recognition of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and the company hired replacements. In September an explosion and fire wrecked the plant; the strike ended in November. In 1958 a labor board examiner found the company had refused to bargain in good faith, and in 1960 a jury convicted four men, among them an ILGWU representative, of burning the plant; all appealed.
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Reverie Lingerie, a New York firm, opened a pilot sewing plant on Highway 70 near Hillsboro in 1955 with about 25 women at work, at first as training for a larger plant planned in Durham. When the firm dropped the Durham plan, Hillsboro business and professional men moved in January 1956 to form a development corporation to build it a permanent plant. On April 3, 1957 workers struck for recognition of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which charged the company with intimidation and refusing to bargain; the company asked for a labor board election, which the union opposed, and hired replacements. On the night of September 27 an explosion and fire wrecked the struck plant and the jobs of about eighty workers, and the strike ended in November when the union stopped paying strikers. Local people pledged loans toward a new building, and in March 1958 a labor board examiner found that the company had refused to bargain in good faith and had coerced its workers. In September 1960 an Orange County jury convicted four men, among them an ILGWU representative, of burning the plant; all appealed. The company's damage suits against the union and four of its agents went on, and in June 1962 Judge William Y. Bickett ruled that the union had been properly served.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 17 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 the 1 with a known location.
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 Law, Courts & Justice. 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.
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Joanna Pearson's novel of a cold case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Karlie Richards was a nineteen-year-old student when she was murdered; decades later her onetime roommate, divorced and in middle age, finds herself drawn back to the crime as online conspiracy theories about it multiply. A psychological thriller with a Chapel Hill setting, published by Bloomsbury in 2024, 275 pages.
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.
John Bare's mystery set in Chapel Hill. Lassie James is drinking at the Pig Farm Tavern one October night when Holly Pike, the woman who left him years earlier when they were about to marry and never explained, walks in; before he can settle his feelings she draws him into trouble involving fraud, corruption and a murder that he ends up investigating as an amateur. Published by Wisdom House Books of Chapel Hill in a first edition of 2021, 287 pages.
Patricia S. Parker draws on civil rights organizer Ella Baker (1903-1986) to set out a method of community engagement and communication for social justice work, illustrated by case studies from the Ella Baker Women's Center for Leadership and Community Activism in Chapel Hill. Chapters cover entering into community partnerships, creating participative spaces for organizing, storytelling as leadership, and self-care for activists, with a case study timeline and curriculum overview appended. Published by the University of California Press in 2020, 177 pages.
Charlotte Fryar's 2019 doctoral dissertation on racial justice movements at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1951, the year the university admitted its first Black students, through 2018. Topics include African American students and employees, school desegregation, racial discrimination and activism, and the work belongs to the history of race relations on the Chapel Hill campus.
J. G. Hetherton's mystery novel set in Hillsborough, in which a woman journalist returning home investigates murder and missing children. Published in New York by Crooked Lane in 2018, 312 pages.
Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), lawyer, poet and Episcopal priest, raised in Durham. Its six parts follow a Southern childhood, the move to New York, the 1938 application to the University of North Carolina that was refused because Murray was Black (the chapter is titled 'Members of your race are not admitted'), law school and the coining of the phrase Jane Crow, the Cold War years, the push toward 'an NAACP for women', and a late-life ordination. 494 pages with portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2018).
Jean Bolduc's 2016 collection of interviews with African American residents of Durham and Orange counties, presented as short biographies. The subjects are Floyd McKissick (1922-1991), the first African American admitted to UNC's law school, Walter Jackson, Brenda Stephens, Nate Davis, poet Jaki Shelton Green, Jackie Wagstaff, Diane Wright and Michelle Johnson, with a closing chapter on the Ku Klux Klan. 125 pages with illustrations.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2015 addendum to his history of Hillsborough's town lots, adding deed records arranged by lot number and further town history, with the expansion of the 1890s covered for the first time. Self-published in North Carolina as version 1.0, 446 pages with illustrations, facsimiles and maps. Topics include deeds, court records, land titles and real property in Hillsborough.
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
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