South Building and the Old Well, 1909. Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill.
The University Records from 1901-1940 are now available on DigitalNC. The University Record was a UNC publication that reported on various aspects of the University. There are annual reports on each of the schools of UNC–their enrollment, course catalogs, and other information–as well as reports on current research, Commencement programs, and general promotional materials about UNC. One of the annual publications is the President’s Report, in which the current University president describes the events of the past year and plans for the year to come. These reports can shed light on important debates that were happening on campus in the first half of the 20th century.
The Carr Bulding, 1902. Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill.
For example, in 1918, the debate surrounding the admission of women to the university was of such importance that the Chairman of the Faculty, M.H. Stacy (President Graham had died earlier in the year), closed his President’s Report with an inspiring call for the university to adapt to the times and make full provisions for the female students. He includes a letter from Mrs. T. W. Lingle, the Adviser to Women, who calls upon the university to seriously attend to the matter. “To continue to admit them in a half-hearted way, and to furnish them with classroom instruction without the other features which make up the all-round college life, is a rather doubtful kindness to them,” she writes, and Chairman Stacy recommends the expedient construction of a women’s building.
Memorial Hall and Cameron Avenue, 1903. Courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill.
So was this women’s building ever constructed? The following year’s Report does not include any mention of women at all. Chairman Stacy, who had so fervently supported this women’s building, died of influenza, and Mrs. T. W. Lingle, Adviser to Women, had resigned (Mrs. M. H. Stacy, presumably Chairman Stacy’s wife, was appointed the new Adviser to Women). Though the 1919 Report discusses at length the remarkable increase in enrolled students, the fate of female students is unknown.
Before you start paging through this paper, it’s important to know that the Jeffersonian is most likely named in honor of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America—and the reasoning will be obvious once you see any one of these issues. The editors of this paper are extremely sympathetic toward the Ku Klux Klan, frequently covering news (and sometimes just praise) of the hate group.
One of the biggest moments of the decade? President Obama’s historic election win in 2008. Click here to revisit this incredible moment in United States’ history.
These volumes also offer commentary on a myriad of issues affecting the Black community, both in Durham and nationwide. Prominent topics range from civil rights, societal and political inequality, and police brutality. This newspaper is a rich resource for any researcher and historian.
While the paper reports on national news, it also zooms in on local culture, celebrating joy in the Durham community. Below are selected images from parades, graduations, and other community-wide events.
To explore TheCarolina Times further, click here! And to search through other North Carolina newspapers, click here.
The 1994-1999 volumes of The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.) are now available, thanks to our partner UNC Chapel Hill. With this batch, volumes from 1937-1943 and 1949 through the rest of the 20th century are now searchable on Digital NC. Researchers can trace the evolution of this powerful voice for Durham’s Black community, which continued its tradition of advocating for accountability and equity into the 1990s.
The paper’s major concerns from the second half of the decade include police brutality, hate crimes and burnings of Black churches, and education issues — including charter schools, affirmative action, funding of HBCUs, and inequities in standardized testing. Many of the volumes reflect anxiety about the displacement of and underinvestment in Durham’s Black community in the post-“urban renewal” era. These issues and the manner in which they were addressed continues to reverberate in our present day. National news from this era includes the development of effective treatment for HIV/AIDS, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and the death of Betty Shabazz, Malcom X’s widow.
While the potential disaster of Y2K was avoided, the new millennium would bring many changes and challenges for The Carolina Times, including the retirement of its publisher Vivian Edmonds in 2002 and its ultimate closure in 2020. Future batches will document these changes and the continued prominence of The Carolina Times in North Carolina’s Black press landscape.
New issues of The Carolina Times are now available on Digital NC thanks to our partner, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The Carolina Times, based in Durham, was North Carolina’s preeminent Black newspaper from its inception in 1921 to its final publication 2020.
Recently uploaded issues cover major events of the early 1990s. These events include Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the fight to end apartheid, the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the ensuing protests over police brutality, the AIDS crisis, the death of Thurgood Marshall and contested confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and Mae Jemison’s historic mission into space. Additionally, these issues provide insight into the concerns, local news, leaders, and social events of Durham’s Black community.
The Carolina Times‘ dedication to Black empowerment and civil rights is evident in these pages, as it has been in previous years. The many op-eds speak to the social issues of the time and are evidence of the ongoing struggle for equality in 1990s America. These newspapers are a rich resource for researchers and historians, and can be accessed here.
Digital NC has new issues of The Carolina Times thanks to our partner, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Included among the new issues is a special editorial to highlight “unique Black women.” The Carolina Times demonstrated a commitment to celebrating Black history through its frequent educational articles.
The “Unique Black Women” feature covers recognizable names, including journalist Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), activist Rosa Parks (1913-2005), and politician Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005). The editorial also celebrates local Durham heroes, such as West End neighborhood elder and activist Constance Walker (1942-).
The editorial includes the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray (1910-1985), a priest, scholar, lawyer, and poet who grew up in Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Murray was the first Black person to earn a Doctor of the Science of Law degree from Yale. Murray’s legal arguments were utilized to end public school segregation and advance women’s rights in the workplace.
While Dr. Murray’s impact extends around the world, their legacy is especially honored in Durham. Murray attended Hillside, a historically Black and segregated high school. They later wrote Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family about their family and the history and legacy of segregation in Durham. Today, there are now murals across the city with Murray’s image. Work like this 1983 article helps preserve Durham’s memory and honor its local leaders, making future initiatives possible.
In these recently uploaded issues, it’s clear that the paper is committed to voicing some of the experiences of Black citizens of Durham in the late ’70s and early ’80s. One way that the paper celebrates Black history is through the “Things You Should Know” Continental Features, which briefly note the accomplishments of important historic figures.
One such figure is Mary Fields, apparently the first Black woman to be a star route mail carrier on behalf of the U.S. Postal Service. As her feature suggests, she was sometimes known as “Stagecoach Mary” due to her usual mode of transportation. But Fields didn’t set up her own mail route until she was 60 years old; before that, she worked on board the first Robert E. Lee steamboat (made famous by its race on the Mississippi) and served as the forewoman at St. Peter’s, a Catholic mission in Montana. Other sources confirm that she was incredibly strong and stood around six feet tall.
Though she encountered conflicts in her life and work, Fields was beloved in the community of Cascade, Montana; the town apparently closed schools each year to celebrate her birthday, and she was sometimes exempt from rules governing women. She passed away in 1914 and was celebrated with one of the largest funerals in the town’s history.
Another, even more mysterious figure is Beatrice Johnson Trammell. This blurb has pretty much all the information available about her that can be found with cursory internet searches, and the same is true for the others connected to her in the article. But apparently, she was known well enough in 1982 for someone to include her in the series.
One of the first big stories breaks about midway through the year: the parking meter debacle. Apparently, the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen had been tossing around the idea of installing parking meters for a couple of years, and the decision to finally do it happened in 1958. Local businessmen immediately pushed back, arguing that instituting paid parking would hurt their businesses.
Apparently, everyone could agree on the fact that the parking meters were ugly, but the author of the article, Roland Giduz, speculated that complaints about the meters would die down once everyone realized how much they improve traffic (spoiler alert: that doesn’t really happen based on the coverage that follows).
Just below the meter gripes article is another big story of the year: school integration. It describes two issues for an upcoming school merger election: first, whether Black students would attend Carrboro Elementary School, and second, whether the Chapel Hill School Board would charge $30 tuition for students from Carrboro. (Note: more materials about Carrboro Elementary School were also uploaded in this batch, including architectural plans and a document of education specifications).
The earlier articles that this one refers to (from May 22, 1958) don’t mention race until the very last line: “As to the general pupil assignment policy for next year, [Mr. Culbreth] said that he anticipated that the Board would re-adopt the existing regulations, whereby racial segregation has been maintained.” As the July article notes, this is four years after the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
September 11, 1958
The issue gets a more personal focus in the September 11, 1958 issue, when the Orange County School Board denied Lee and Lattice Vickers’ child admittance to the then all-white Carrboro Elementary School. The Vickers’ case was set against the backdrop of ongoing school assignment problems, with neighboring school systems fighting each other over pupil placement and resources.
The fight to racially integrate schools in Chapel Hill (and throughout North Carolina) continued well into the 1960s, and, sadly, none of the community papers that we have from the area extend past 1963. One of the latest articles available, from The Chapel Hill Weekly, reports a survey of Southern business leaders and how their perspective on industry shaped their views on the matter.
But, in 1958, public school integration was still competing for front page space with—you guessed it—parking meters.
In this case, efforts were headed by a citizens group concerned about the effects of the ABC stores in the area. Meetings were held at the University Baptist Church, though Carolyn Noell, a spokesperson for the group, noted that local churches were only providing contacts and spaces (not serving as official sponsors).
Not long before this, the News Leaderreprinted an article from the Durham Morning Herald about how lucrative the ABC stores were. Apparently, the Durham ABC stores sold almost $58 million of alcohol from June 30, 1957, to September 1958 (enough to pay for Durham’s entire share of the Raleigh-Durham airport, plus some for Lincoln Hospital, local schools, warehouse equipment, public libraries, garbage disposal services, and a rabies inspection program, among other things). To put these sales into proportion, a fifth of whiskey (from a “popular brand”) cost $3.95 back then. Certainly, money was at the heart of the argument for the Orange County Citizens for Legal Control in their ad in the January 29, 1959 issue.
Of course, in a college town like Chapel Hill, there’s also frequent news about the University. One article, from October 2, 1958, warned that student enrollment may swell to between 12,000 and 14,000 in 1970 (today, total enrollment exceeds 30,000). And—surprise!—much of the concern about the growing student population is related to parking.
One of the funnier articles about UNC-CH is about Rameses, the live mascot (not to be confused with costumed cheerleader Rameses, former bodybuilder). Rameses VIII, then in power, was “the most aggressive ram I’ve handled,” according to Glen Hogan, his boarder. He was also one of the biggest up until then, clocking in at 250 pounds. These two facts, Hogan hoped, would dissuade rival Duke students from stealing the mascot.
The reigning Rameses (né Otis) ascended in 2020 as the twenty-second mascot. His handler, James Hogan, is part of the same family that has been caring for the mascots since the 1920s. Rameses XXII has “come a long way” in getting used to people and is (presumably) a bit sweeter than his “big and mean” predecessor—though he is still well-guarded.
December 4, 1958
One final story from 1958 is the opening of the Chapel Hill Public Library, which was originally opened in the Hill House on West Franklin Street. The goal, according to Mrs. Richmond Bond, chairman of the board, was to “supplement” the University’s library by focusing on children’s and popular books that were generally unavailable at UNC.
Bond argued that Chapel Hill was the only town of its size in North Carolina without a public library and that the University library had “almost more than it can do” with the increase of UNC students. This led the Board of Aldermen to approve a $4,600 grant for the local library. Somebody even donated over 300 books before the library opened its doors.
In the very last uploaded issue of the Chapel Hill News Leader, from January 29, 1959, the top headline reads, “Death of a Newspaper.” Due to internal litigation, the paper had to stop running.
The paper was published biweekly with special issues sometimes appearing more frequently. The Chapel Hill Conscience provided updates on the progress of groups that were working towards desegregation and ending racial discrimination in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In addition, the paper included articles which discussed psychological studies on integration, common sense positives for integration (for businessmen in particular), and establishments that practiced racial discrimination.
This clipping, taken from the August 24, 1963 issue, provided a comprehensive list of establishments in Chapel Hill to boycott due to their continued practice of racial discrimination. The establishments included Colonial Drug Store, Tar Heel Sandwich Shop, Allen’s Lunch Counter, Carolina Grill, and more.
To learn more about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, please visit their website.
To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.
The first 8 years of The Front Page newspaper, from 1979-1986, are now on DigitalNC. The Front Page was published in Raleigh for twenty-six years covering “news and happenings of interest to gay people.” The paper covered national and local news impacting and of interest to the LGBTQ+ community. There are ads for local businesses that were safe spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals, and a community calendar listed events. There’s also a Q&A column where letters from readers all over the state wrote in with problems or questions to recieve a broad spectrum of personal advice.
Q-Notes, a prominent Charlotte area LGBTQ+ newspaper and the one Front Page merged with in 2006, published a retrospective of The Front Page and an interview with the Page‘s publisher Jim Baxter in the July 29, 2006 issue. Baxter penned an article in IndyWeek shortly after the paper’s final issue, and it describes parts of his career and the history of Front Page.
The paper has been added with kind permission from the publishers and thanks to efforts by staff at the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Duke University. Digitization of this paper was funded by an IDEA Action Grant from UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries. Archived issues of Q-notes are available from our site, and you can view more current content at their site.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
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