Students, faculty, buildings, departments, activism, and athletics.
In briefChartered in 1789 and opened in 1795, the university made Chapel Hill and has shaped the county ever since: its buildings and departments, its students’ politics from the Speaker Ban to the 1970 strike, and the workers who kept it running. The storylines here follow desegregation, Silent Sam, the Navy Pre-Flight School, the Playmakers and the medical center.
9,945 indexed works are connected with this theme. 67 held at OCPL →
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina, the most widely held first, novels aside. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Narrow these works. Each link opens the search already limited to this theme. Counts are indexed works, not copies on a shelf; a work can carry more than one period or place.
Lucas, Adam · 2010 · University of North Carolina Press
Adam Lucas marks one hundred years of basketball at the University of North Carolina in this illustrated history, published by UNC Press in 2010 in association with the athletics department. Chapters follow the program from the game's arrival on campus and the 'White Phantoms' of the Southern Conference through the founding of the ACC, the 1957 season, Dean Smith's changes to the game and the title seasons of 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009, closing with a century of statistics. 289 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.
The Blue Divide: Duke, North Carolina, and the Battle on Tobacco Road
Moore, Johnny; Chansky, Art · 2014 · Triumph Books
The Duke and North Carolina basketball rivalry written together by Johnny Moore and Art Chansky, the latter a sports reporter who has followed it since his student days at UNC. The book opens with the 2014 season and moves through recruiting battles old and new, 'Black and Blue Sunday', 'Blood and Roses', and chapters on the rivalry's heroes, leaders and teachers, with a foreword by Jay Bilas and a photo gallery. Published by Triumph Books in 2014, 289 pages.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
The Chronicles of the Bicentennial Observance of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tepper, Steven J. · 1998
Steven J. Tepper's record of the University of North Carolina's bicentennial observance of 1993 and 1994. An appendix gathers the University Day speeches of October 12, 1993, by C.D. Spangler, James B. Hunt Jr., Charles Kuralt, William C. Friday, Paul Hardin and President Bill Clinton, with other bicentennial addresses by Richard J. Richardson, Francis S. Collins and Li Lu. Published by the university in Chapel Hill in 1998, 284 pages.
Art Chansky's 2016 account of Dean Smith, Charlie Scott and the years that changed Chapel Hill as a Southern college town. Scott was the first Black scholarship player in the Carolina basketball program. Topics include civil rights, racism in sports and the university's twentieth-century history.
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.
William D. Snider's history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1992. It runs 370 pages with illustrations, a bibliography and an index.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this theme. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
Archibald Henderson's history of the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, its buildings and grounds from the founding in the 1790s onward. Henderson, a professor of mathematics and a prolific historian of the university, wrote it in the years around the university's sesquicentennial. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1949, 412 pages with illustrations and bibliographical footnotes.
Two-volume collection of documents on the founding and first years of the University of North Carolina, 1776 to 1799, compiled by R. D. W. Connor and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1953. Each volume carries its own bibliography.
Kemp Plummer Battle's two-volume history of the University of North Carolina, printed in Raleigh in 1907 and 1912. The first volume runs from the beginnings to the death of President Swain, 1789 to 1868; the second continues to 1912. Battle was himself a president of the university. Illustrated with portraits and facsimiles.
An illustrated history of Chapel Hill by James Vickers with Thomas Scism and Dixon Qualls, published in Chapel Hill by Barclay Publishers in 1985. It treats the town and the University of North Carolina together. First edition, 208 pages with illustrations, some in color, and a bibliography.
Mary Jane Kagarise's history of the Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill across its first four decades, 1952 to 1993, with biographies of the surgeons on its faculty. Published by the department in 1997 in a first edition of 461 pages with illustrations, some in color. Topics include surgery and medical colleges in Chapel Hill and biography of the department's faculty.
William D. Snider's history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1992. It runs 370 pages with illustrations, a bibliography and an index.
Louis Round Wilson's history of the University of North Carolina from 1900 to 1930, subtitled the making of a modern university, written by the librarian who served the university through most of that period. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1957, 633 pages with illustrations, it covers the growth of the campus, its schools and its faculty in three decades of expansion.
Art Chansky's 2016 account of Dean Smith, Charlie Scott and the years that changed Chapel Hill as a Southern college town. Scott was the first Black scholarship player in the Carolina basketball program. Topics include civil rights, racism in sports and the university's twentieth-century history.
Robert Burton House, later chancellor of the University of North Carolina, recalls Chapel Hill and the campus in his student years from 1912 to 1916. A memoir published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1959, 216 pages with illustrations and portraits. Topics include Chapel Hill's social life and customs and the university's history in the twentieth century.
In the chronology
Other storylines that include this theme, earliest first. Each has its own page.
Dated events connected with this theme: sixteen of 1,915, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 1,915 dated events in the chronology →
Earliest first. Scroll sideways, or use the arrows.
By about age twenty, George Moses Horton, enslaved on a Chatham County farm, was carrying fruit to the UNC campus on Sundays, and students began paying him to compose love poems and acrostics. His first printed poem appeared in April 1829, the year The Hope of Liberty was published.
The university resumed classes on Monday, September 6, 1875, after more than four years closed, with Charles Phillips as chairman of the faculty, and held a public celebration on September 15. Kemp P. Battle, then secretary of the trustees, was elected president in 1876.
Sallie Walker Stockard, a Guilford College graduate, entered UNC's senior class in the fall of 1897, the first year the university admitted women. She became the first woman to graduate from UNC when the class of 1898 received its degrees on June 1, 1898, and she earned a master's degree there in 1900.
Spanish influenza swept the University in early October 1918, putting the campus and its student soldiers under a three-week quarantine. By October 23 about 300 students had been ill and three had died, and President Edward Kidder Graham died of influenza and pneumonia on October 26.
On June 12, 1922, university librarian Louis Round Wilson, nine other faculty members and three trustees founded the University of North Carolina Press, the first university press in the South. Its first book, William C. Coker's study of water molds, appeared in 1923, and William T. Couch became director in 1932.
The B-1 Band, 44 Black musicians sworn in at Raleigh on May 27, 1942 as the first African Americans to serve in the Navy at general rank, played for the Navy Pre-Flight School at UNC from July 1942 to April 1944. Barred from campus housing, they lived in the new Black community center on Roberson Street, now the Hargraves Center.
North Carolina Memorial Hospital opened to patients on Tuesday, September 2, 1952, without a formal ceremony, as the core of the new University Medical Center. Its opening allowed the UNC School of Medicine to grow from a two-year program into a four-year school.
On February 23, 1969 food service workers at UNC's Lenoir Hall left their counters and sat down at the cafeteria tables, and by the next morning nearly 100 dining hall employees had refused to report for work. The strike ended on March 21 when the University agreed to raise the hourly minimum from $1.60 to $1.80, pay roughly $180,000 in back wages, and appoint a Black supervisor.
About 250 of UNC's 275 cafeteria workers, organized as the UNC Non-Academic Employees Union, struck SAGA Food Services on November 7, 1969 over pay, job reclassification, and the firing of workers for union activity. They voted on November 21 to affiliate with AFSCME, and the strike was settled in December after Ralph Abernathy visited the strikers and Black students from across the state threatened to converge on the campus.
James Lewis Cates Jr., 22, a Black Chapel Hill resident, was stabbed outside the UNC Student Union shortly before 2 a.m. during an all-night dance, in a clash with members of Durham's Storm Troopers motorcycle gang, and died at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. Three white men charged in his death were acquitted by an all-white jury in 1971.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 86 with a known location.
Historical marker G-140: Pre-Flight SchoolNC Highway Historical Marker
Operated 1942-1945 to provide rigorous training to about 20,000 U.S. Navy cadets. Elevated national profile of the university. Was on campus, nearby.
Historical marker G-132: Astronaut TrainingNC Highway Historical Marker
Morehead Planetarium trained NASA astronauts in celestial navigation for Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab missions, 1960-75. Dome 450 ft. S.
National Register: Chapel of the CrossNational Register nomination
Nomination (2/1/1972), Chapel Hill: history, description, and sources for the property
National Register: Old EastNational Register nomination
Nomination (10/15/1966), Chapel Hill: history, description, and sources for the property
NCpedia: Benjamin S. Hedrick (public-domain image)NCpedia
An 1857 portrait of Benjamin S. Hedrick, the UNC professor dismissed in 1856 for supporting the antislavery Frémont campaign, made from a daguerreotype in Documenting the American South.
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Background reading at OCPL
Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this theme; they may not discuss the Orange County theme directly.
Background reading · Rebecca Wall CollectionThe Descendants of Matthew McCauleyNeville, David Lindsay · 2001 Subjects in the OCPL catalog record: McCauley family; Neville family; Lloyd family OCPL call number: NC 929.209 NEV
Mary Coker Joslin's essays on her uncle, William Chambers Coker (1872 to 1953), the University of North Carolina botanist who began the Coker Arboretum in Chapel Hill in 1903 and chaired the botany department for 36 years. She presents him as scientist, teacher, landscape designer and editor. Published in Chapel Hill by the Botanical Garden Foundation in 2003, the arboretum's centennial year, with drawings by Sandra Brooks-Mathers and eight pages of plates.
Subjects in the Library of Congress catalog record: Coker, William Chambers, 1872-1953; Botanists -- North Carolina -- Biography OCPL call number: NC 580.92 JOS
North Carolina's part in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, told by Burton Craige (1875 to 1945) with biographical sketches of the state's delegates: William Blount, William R. Davie, Alexander Martin, Richard Dobbs Spaight and Hugh Williamson. Archibald Craige published it in 1987, the Convention's bicentennial; 200 pages with portraits, a bibliography and a folded color facsimile map in a back pocket.
Subjects in the Library of Congress catalog record: United States Constitutional Convention (1787); Constitutional history -- United States; Constitutional history -- North Carolina OCPL call number: NC 342.73 CRA
Nancy Roberts wrote the text and Bruce Roberts took the photographs for this large-format book about Robert W. Scott, governor of North Carolina from 1969 to 1973. McNally and Loftin of Charlotte published it in 1972, while Scott was still in office; 141 pages.
Subjects in the Library of Congress catalog record: Scott, Robert Walter, 1929-2009 OCPL call number: NC 975.604 ROB
