In briefThe Rogers-Eubanks area grew from Black-owned farms and sawmills after emancipation, and in 1972 the county landfill was placed beside it. Residents organized through RENA and the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition from 2007, the landfill closed in 2013, and the neighborhood won a community center in 2014 and the sewer extension in 2019.
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Rogers Road
Pearce, Emily Eidenier · 2009
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Dated events connected with this event: sixteen of 25, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 25 dated events in the chronology →
Earliest first. Scroll sideways, or use the arrows.
16 dated events
The Hogan-Rogers House was built on the Hogan plantation on Purefoy Road
Construction or physical change · Purefoy Road, Chapel Hill
The two-story frame house on Purefoy Road, on land now owned by St. Paul AME Church, dates to the 1840s or 1850s; the 1992 township survey recorded it as the Lloyd-Rogers House at 1612 Purefoy Road, the only house in the township on a raised basement. A fireplace in that basement led the Preservation Society's director to conclude that enslaved people on the Hogan plantation probably lived and worked there. INDY Week reported in 2012 that many Rogers-Eubanks residents descend from people held on the plantation.
Black-owned family farms and sawmills made up the Rogers-Eubanks area
Migration or settlement · Rogers Road
By the late nineteenth century the area between Homestead and Eubanks roads, north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, was a neighborhood of Black-owned family farms and sawmills set among forest. RENA and the Town of Carrboro both date settlement of the wider area to the 1700s.
Campbell, who grew up in the Northside community of Chapel Hill, moved to Rogers Road in the early 1970s, as the Orange County landfill was going in next to the neighborhood. He later became president of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP.
RENA's chronology records that Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee, Mayor Robert Wells Jr. and county commission chairman H.D. Bennett signed the full landfill agreement. Residents remember Lee promising that their road would be paved and that the filled site would become a recreation center for them.
Robert Campbell petitioned Chapel Hill for bus service to the Rogers Road neighborhood
Protest or organizing · Rogers Road
Minister Robert Campbell asked the Chapel Hill council to extend free transit service to the Rogers Road community, noting that it lacked sidewalks and sewer service and that children walked along the landfill's heavy truck route. He suggested rerouting underused Airport Road buses.
Chapel Hill council took up how to carry out a Rogers Road small area plan
Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill
Under a 2002 resolution adopted jointly by Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Chapel Hill had agreed to plan the residential area west of the Greene Tract around Rogers and Purefoy roads, including an affordable housing site. The manager recommended starting after four neighborhood conservation districts were finished, with the Planning Board leading.
Carrboro annexed subdivisions on the west side of Rogers Road
Law, policy or court · Carrboro
Carrboro annexed six subdivisions north of Homestead Road, including Fox Meadow and Highlands, bringing part of the Rogers Road area inside town limits. In September 2004 the aldermen had voted 6 to 1 to go ahead even though the historic neighborhood had asked the two towns to move their annexation boundary so the community would not be split.
Residents of the Rogers Road and Eubanks Road neighborhood formed the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism in 2007. At the September 20, 2007 Assembly of Governments meeting, member Neloa Jones asked officials to drop the neighborhood as a transfer station site, end solid-waste operations there by November 2009, and provide water and sewer service.
St. Paul AME Church bought land on Rogers Road for a new church campus
Property or economic transaction · Rogers Road and Purefoy Drive, Chapel Hill
The Chapel Hill congregation bought more than 22 acres for a worship complex with a banquet hall, wellness center, daycare, senior and affordable housing, athletic fields and a cemetery. The land, at Rogers Road and Purefoy Drive, became the site of the planned St. Paul Village.
Chapel Hill council received the Rogers Road Small Area Plan Task Force's final report
Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill
Council members Mark Kleinschmidt and Bill Strom presented the report, and the council voted 9 to 0 to send it to advisory boards, Carrboro, Orange County, OWASA and the city schools, with a joint public hearing planned for October 2009. Rev. Robert Campbell of RENA thanked the council for giving the community a voice.
Three years after incorporating as a nonprofit, the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association opened a small community center on Edgar Road so the neighborhood had a place of its own to gather and run programs.
The Community Unity Board brought together leaders from every sub-neighborhood of Rogers-Eubanks, among them Historic Rogers Road, Billabong, TallyHo, Meadow Run, Phoenix Place and Sandberg, for continuing talks about the area's future. RENA and the Jackson Center reconvened it in 2015 for the planning work the three governments had asked for.
Chapel Hill extended its extraterritorial jurisdiction over the Historic Rogers Road area
Law, policy or court · Rogers Road
Because none of the neighborhood lay inside Chapel Hill's limits, the town could not legally spend money on its sewer, so the council held a public hearing set for October 15, 2014 on bringing its part of the area under the town's extraterritorial jurisdiction. Afterward the neighborhood was split between Carrboro and Chapel Hill's ETJ.
RENA and the Jackson Center produced the Historic and Vibrant Rogers Road report
Publication, speech or performance · Rogers Road
The Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and the Marian Cheek Jackson Center put together survey analysis and community feedback on the neighborhood's future. Two years later the same partners ran the planning process behind Mapping our Community's Future.
Publication, speech or performance · Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood
In July 2015 Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro asked the Marian Cheek Jackson Center and RENA to run a community-first planning process as sewer design advanced. The resulting report, built from nine Unity Board sessions and two rounds of interviews, set four priorities for the neighborhood and became the reference document for the later zoning districts and Greene Tract resolutions.
Health or relief action · Rogers Road Community Center, Chapel Hill
The Orange County Health Department held a pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Rogers Road Community Center for Hispanic and Asian American residents, many of whom do not speak English, after local volunteers asked for one and printed flyers in several languages.
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.
Town of Chapel Hill: Council minutes, March 16, 2009Town or county website
The council received the Rogers Road Small Area Plan Task Force’s final report and sent it to advisory boards, Carrboro, Orange County and OWASA
Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.
Background context:UNC Libraries exhibit: We’re All Family HerePublic library local history
Families who shaped the Rogers Road neighborhood, drawn from Emily Eidenier Pearce’s 2009 history
Search beyond the index:NC LIVE: prepared search for Historic Rogers Road neighborhoodNC LIVE
An advanced search of the state’s shared databases already scoped to Orange County’s places and this subject; edit it freely, and sign in through your North Carolina library to read
Ask locally:Local History Help Hours and request formOCPL Local History Liaison
The library’s Local History Liaison helps in person most Mondays, 12 to 3, at the Main Library, or by the online request form
