When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 – 50 years ago today – the reactions of UNC students were emblematic of the complex racial landscape at Carolina. Below is a timeline of events on campus in the week following the assassination.
April 4, 1968
In an oral history conducted in 2015, alumnus John Sellars remembered the reaction on campus when students learned of Martin Luther King’s assassination:
John Sellars, from the 1971 Yackety Yack yearbook
The night that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, I was in Hinton James, in my room, studying for class the next day. And all of a sudden I hear people running up and down the hallways, on the balconies, cheering. And so, I go outside to see what’s going on. And somebody says that Martin Luther King, Jr., just got assassinated. And it hit me that the reason for the cheering was because Martin Luther King, Jr., just got assassinated. Again, it gives you an idea of what the mood, what the attitude, what the social and racial structure was at UNC. Again, we’re talking about 1968.
April 5, 1968
Approximately 60 African American students and local clergy held a memorial service on Polk Place followed by a meeting in Gerrard Hall. Speaking at the meeting, Black Student Movement President Preston Dobbins said, “Martin Luther King’s assassination is the very last time that a black man is going to be killed in this country without violent reaction” (Daily Tar Heel, 6 April 1968).
From the Daily Tar Heel, 10 April 1968.
From the Daily Tar Heel, 6 April 1968.
The Daily Tar Heel reported that approximately 30-40 black students, including Dobbins, walked down Franklin Street and through campus. They purchased several Confederate flags at a Franklin Street store and burned one on the sidewalk and the rest in front of the Kappa Alpha fraternity house.
After learning of violent protests around the country (including in Raleigh, where police used tear gas on student marchers), the Chapel Hill Police enact a voluntary curfew of 8:00pm, asking businesses to close early and suspending alcohol sales. (Daily Tar Heel, 7 April 1968)
From the Daily Tar Heel, 7 April 1968.
April 6, 1968
Approximately 200 students and local residents line Franklin Street in a silent vigil honoring Dr. King (Daily Tar Heel, 7 April 1968).
From the Hugh Morton Photographic Collection, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archive.
Approximately 600 students march from Y Court to the First Baptist Church to pay tribute to Dr. King. Chancellor Sitterson and President Friday are part of the group (Daily Tar Heel, 9 April 1968).
Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial service program. From the Records of the Office of the Chancellor: J. Carlyle Sitterson (#40022), University Archives. Click the image above to read the full program.
April 8, 1968
Approximately 2,000 people attended a memorial in honor of Dr. King at Memorial Hall (Daily Tar Heel, 10 April 1968).
Some students volunteer to clean the Confederate Monument, which was spray painted over the weekend. During the clean-up, two small Confederate flags are placed on the statue, but were removed after an administrator asked them to be taken down (Daily Tar Heel, 9 April 1968).
April 9, 1968
African American students and approximately 90% of UNC’s African American non-academic workers staged a one-day walkout. Their absence forced a cut in many services across campus, with several dining halls having to close. The boycott was encouraged by Preston Dobbins and BSM to give people time to mourn and show respect to Dr. King. Chancellor Sitterson announced that employees could take a half-day off if they chose (Daily Tar Heel, 10 April 1968).
A Daily Tar Heel editorial criticizes the hypocrisy of the white moderates who attend the memorial services but do nothing to support civil rights and social justice for African Americans. On the same page, a letter to the editor criticizes the people who vandalized the Confederate monument, comparing them to King’s assassin (Daily Tar Heel, 10 April 1968).
In 2005, the University Archives put on an exhibit on the history of slavery at UNC. The exhibit materials provided evidence of the use of enslaved laborers in the construction of early campus buildings and as servants for students and faculty, and showed how proceeds from the sale of slaves were used to finance the University. It was an important exhibit— one of the earliest of its kind—but it was only a first step.
After the exhibit came down, scholars and many UNC students have continued to explore the history and legacy of slavery at the University. Last semester, Professor Jim Leloudis led an undergraduate seminar focused on slavery at UNC. The students dug deep into the archives, looking through correspondence, account books, and campus and government records in search of documents that could help further our understanding of the history and legacy of slavery in the building and funding of the university from its founding in 1789 through the end of the Civil War.
This month, we will begin to share some of their findings. Caroline Newhall, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, has been sorting through the materials that the students in the undergraduate seminar uncovered and will be preparing short articles describing what they found and talking about the research process. As these articles are completed, we’ll share them on this blog. Caroline’s first post, about an 1829 runaway slave advertisement, was posted last week. Her work this semester is supported by the Chancellor’s Task Force on UNC-Chapel Hill History.
As with the 2005 exhibit, these articles will tell only a small part of the story of slavery at UNC. By sharing these documents and stories, we hope to provide a starting point and to encourage others, including faculty, researchers, family members, and especially students, to continue to explore the history and legacy of slavery at UNC.
Publicity photo for Smith’s biography, A Coach’s Life, first published in 1999. [Folder 129, Biography: Photographs of Dean Smith]We are thrilled to announce that the personal papers of Dean Smith are now available for research in Wilson Library. Donated by Coach Smith’s family earlier this year, the papers include materials from his youth in Kansas, scrapbooks kept by his parents for many years, and files kept by Smith in his retirement. The collection offers the opportunity to learn more about Smith’s life and interests, his work after he left coaching, and the lasting impact he has had on his players, fellow coaches, and Carolina fans everywhere.
The papers contain materials going as far back as 1946, with a report Smith wrote on his hometown of Emporia, Kansas. (He got an A.) There is a program from the NCAA champion 1952 Kansas men’s basketball team, of which Smith was a member, along with copies of his yearbooks from the University of Kansas.
Program from the 1982 NCAA Final Four in New Orleans. [Boxes 3-4: Magazines and Programs]
Invitation to the 55th reunion of the 1952 University of Kansas basketball team. Smith wrote, “Probably will go!” and did attend the reunion. [Folder 239, Kansas: Reunion at K.U. of 1952 NCAA Championship]
Excerpt from a letter to Dean Smith from Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight, 1997. [Folders 244-246: Bob Knight]
For those interested in learning more about Smith’s career at UNC, there is a wealth of information available in scrapbooks that were maintained by his parents over several decades. These include newspaper clippings and programs and are a great way to follow the progress of some of Smith’s legendary Tar Heel basketball teams.
The largest part of the collection is the files from Smith’s retirement office (as he often said to his correspondents, after retirement he still went to the office every morning, but he left whenever he felt like it). The retirement files include lots of correspondence with friends and coaches. Smith faced a seemingly endless number of invitations to speak and to accept awards. He accepted some, participating in ESPN’s 25th anniversary celebration and Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year award. Perhaps of more personal importance, he traveled Kansas in 2001 to accept the Kansan of the Year award and returned again in 2007 for the 55th anniversary of the 1952 basketball team. His papers show that he kept up with many longtime friends and family members in Kansas.
Report on Emporia, Kansas, by Dean Smith, 1946. [Box 1: Junior high and high school materials, 1946-1949]
Excerpt from a letter to Dean Smith from Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight, 1997. [Folders 244-246: Bob Knight]
Invitation to the 55th reunion of the 1952 University of Kansas basketball team. Smith wrote, “Probably will go!” and did attend the reunion. [Folder 239, Kansas: Reunion at K.U. of 1952 NCAA Championship]
Smith’s papers reflect his interest in faith and social issues, including a number of articles he was reading and discussing. There are a few files on political fundraising he participated in and a very interesting folder on discussions he had about running for U.S. Senate in 1990. The papers also include drafts of his autobiography, A Coach’s Life, first published in 1999, along with audio cassette recordings of interviews conducted with Smith by John Kilgo and Sally Jenkins, who collaborated with Smith on a revised edition of the book.
Letter of congratulations from Senator Bob Dole following Smiths 877th career win. [Folder 111-112, Congrats, 1997]
Report on Emporia, Kansas, by Dean Smith, 1946. [Box 1: Junior high and high school materials, 1946-1949]
Notes for Smiths’s acceptance speech for the Kansan of the Year Award, 2001. [Folder 86, Awards and honors: Retirement: Kansan of the Year]
If you have questions about the collection, or if you’d like information about using the Dean Smith Papers, contact Wilson Library at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.
We are pleased to announce the availability of a new digital collection that is certain to be of interest to the UNC community and theater lovers everywhere: Playbills from the first 40 years of the Playmakers Repertory Company are now available online.
The Playbills begin with the first shows from the company in 1975 and continue through 2016. (We’ll add the most recent season shortly).
From the Playbill for The Cherry Orchard, fall 1989.
We’ve digitized the full playbills, so you can see the cover artwork, cast lists, notes, and advertisements. The text of the playbills is also searchable by keyword.
I gave the digital collection a test run by doing a keyword search for Ray Dooley and then sorting the results by season. The top result was the Playbill for The Cherry Orchard from fall 1989, Dooley’s debut performance with Playmakers.
The Playbills complement the extensive collections in Wilson Library on theater at UNC, including photographs and scrapbooks from the Carolina Playmakers and records from the Department of Dramatic Art.
The digital collection covers the years 1893-1992. It contains 73,179 pages in 12,168 issues. For anyone interested in UNC history, it’s a fantastic resource.
The papers were digitized from microfilm (which is why they’re all in black and white) as part of a partnership between Newspapers.com and the UNC Library. The digital DTH is also available on Newspapers.com, along with hundreds of papers from across North Carolina.
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has already digitized papers from colleges and universities around North Carolina, including a few from UNC-Chapel Hill (Black Ink, the Cloudbuster, and the UNC Newsletter).
We’ve had lots of fun looking through the digitized DTH issues. You can browse by year or search by keyword. The transcription was done using optical character recognition, so it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good (thanks it part to the great quality of the microfilm, which was done here in Wilson Library).
If you’re looking for issues of the DTH that are not available in the digital collection, you can access articles from the past few years through dailytarheel.com and older issues on microfilm in Wilson Library.
Chapel Hill has always slowed down in the summer. Even with a growing population of summer school students and programs, the campus and town remain comparatively quiet in the months between commencement and the start of fall classes.
The summer staff of the Daily Tar Heel in 1979 took on the challenge of finding a summer activity for every letter of the alphabet. Presented below, from the issue published on May 31, 1979, is the “Guide to Good Times,” the ABCs of summer entertainment in Chapel Hill.
An Act to Establish Normal Schools. North Carolina General Assembly, 1877.
In the summer of 1877, the University of North Carolina offered classes in the summer for the first time. It wasn’t just a continuation of the regular course offerings: UNC was host to a statewide “Summer Normal School,” providing teacher education to primary school teachers (and aspiring teachers) from around the state.
The Normal School was established by the North Carolina General Assembly in March 1877, allocating $2,000 for the program, which was to be jointly administered by the University and by the North Carolina Board of Education.
The act creating the school specified that it was “for the purpose of teaching and training young men of the white race for teachers of the common schools of the state.” The act also mentioned the possibility of creating a separate school to train Black teachers.
While University administrators tacitly accepted the restriction of the school to white students (UNC would actively resist efforts of Black students to enroll for many decades to come), they did argue that it should be open to white women. In his early history of UNC, Kemp Battle, who was President of the University in 1877, wrote:
An important question came up at the outset. The Act authorizing the school confined its benefits to male teachers and those desiring to be teachers. It was exceedingly important that females should be included. The Board of Education took the ground and the University concurred, that while the public money could not be paid to females, there could be no objection to their attending the sessions, and they were accordingly invited to take advantage of all the exercises. Their presence contributed much to the success of the school. (Kemp Plummer Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. 2.)
Ad for the Normal School in the Western Sentinel (Winston-Salem), May 31, 1877.
The Hillsborough Recorder reported on the new program on May 30, 1877. The paper called attention to the fact that women would be allowed to attend, writing: “Although the law requires that the moneys paid by the State shall be devoted to the use of males, yet females are cordially invited to attend all the exercises of the school free of charge.”
The following summer, Emily Coe, a teacher from New York, joined the Normal School faculty, making her the first woman to teach on the University campus. Coe specialized in training kindergarten teachers at a time when formal preschool education was still fairly rare in the United States. Battle thought that Coe’s course in the 1878 Summer Normal School was the first Normal kindergarten class in North Carolina.
Women continued to make up a substantial number of the Summer Normal School attendees each year, and the number of women on the faculty slowly increased.
Education remained a focus of the summer school for decades, but the University gradually began offering courses in other areas. In 1914, summer school classes were able to be counted for credit toward a degree, which led to even more integration with the regular UNC curriculum.
Programme for the Closing Exercises of the University Normal School, 1877. UNC Ephemera collection.
UNC’s Confederate history is very well documented: in the Confederate monument on campus, in the “Roll of Confederate Dead” in Memorial Hall, and in the names of several buildings. While the heavy focus on Confederate veterans is not surprising for a state university in the South, we often get asked about a largely unexplored aspect of Carolina history: alums who served in the Union army.
Were there any Union veterans from UNC? We’ve heard the question a lot, and never had a great answer. We do now: Yes, but not many.
After some research and consultation with colleagues around campus, we’ve identified a handful of UNC students who went on to serve in the Union army or in the federal government during the Civil War.
Francis Preston Blair, a native of Kentucky, attended UNC for the 1839-1840 school year. According to available student records, he was expelled from UNC. Blair also attended Yale before finally earning his degree from Princeton. He was living in Missouri when he joined the army, eventually rising to the rank of Major General.
Edward Mallet, UNC class of 1818, was Paymaster General for the United States from 1862 to 1865.
Edward Stanly attended UNC during the 1829-1830 school year. He was elected to the North Carolina state legislature and represented the state in Congress before moving to California. He was appointed by President Lincoln as military governor of Eastern North Carolina in 1862, but resigned the following year.
Junius B. Wheelerwas a native of Murfreesboro and a veteran of the war with Mexico. He was student at UNC from 1849-1851, then transferred to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., where he earned a degree in 1855. When the war began, there were split loyalties in his family: one of his half brothers was an officer in the Confederate Army. Wheeler served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers throughout the war.
George H. Williamson, from Cincinnati, Ohio, was a student at UNC during the 1860-1861 school year. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War.
We think there are almost certainly more Union veterans who attended UNC, but these are the only ones we know about right now. If you know of any, or have suggestions, let us know. If we confirm any others, we will add them to this list.
Daily Tar Heel, April 7, 1986 (via Newspapers.com)
In the mid 1980s, UNC students actively campaigned to convince the University to divest from investment in South Africa in protest of the legalized segregation in place under that country’s apartheid system.
This timeline presents an overview of major dates and activities on campus.
1978-1979: Students at Harvard and several other American universities begin advocating for university endowments to stop investing in South African companies. The students argue that providing financial support for South African business provides indirect support to the government and its formal policy of racial discrimination (apartheid). UNC administrators discuss the issues but decide not to make any changes to the university’s investment policy at the time. Source: Office of the Chancellor, Nelson Ferebee Taylor Records #40023, box 11, “Sullivan Principles 1978-1979.”
November 19, 1982: UNC Public Interest Research Group lobbies the Board of Trustees to divest from South Africa. Source: Anti-Apartheid Support Group Records #40143, folder “UNC Related Materials: Collateral, 1981-1981.”
February 8, 1983: UNC students vote 3,313 to 1,891 in support of a resolution urging the Board of Trustees to divest from South Africa Source: Anti-Apartheid Support Group Records #40143, folder “UNC Related Materials: Collateral, 1981-1981.”
April 23, 1983: UNC Endowment Board rejects divestment but says they will not invest in South African companies unless they agree to the “Sullivan Principles,” described as a voluntary code of racial equality for companies doing business in South Africa. Source: Daily Tar Heel, April 7, 1986.
February 4, 1986. Students vote 2,560-1,130 in support of a referendum in favor of UNC divesting from South Africa. Source: Daily Tar Heel, February 5, 1986.
Shanties build in protest of UNC’s investment in South Africa, Spring 1986. (Yackety Yack, 1986)
March 18, 1986. The UNC Anti-Apartheid Support Group builds several shanties in front of South Building in order to draw attention to their cause and to express sympathy for South Africans forced to live in shantytowns. Campus police dismantle the structures, which are rebuilt later in the day after the group receives permission from Chancellor Fordham. Source: Daily Tar Heel, March 19, 1986.
March 31, 1986. Two student groups, the College Republicans and Students for America, stage a counter protest in front of the shanties by construction a mock “Berlin-type wall.” The counter-protesters spoke out against oppressive governments in South Africa and the Soviet Union. The Daily Tar Heel quoted the College Republicans Chairman: “(The wall) is to show that there are other atrocities around the world that are even far greater than those in South Africa. It is hypocritical to just call for divestment (in South Africa). If you say you’re against ‘immoral governments’ then you should do it across the board.” The counter-protesters also objected to the extended presence of the shanties. Source: Daily Tar Heel, 1 April 1986.
April 24, 1986. University Endowment Board meets in a “very argumentative” session and votes against total divestment, electing partial measures and agreeing to place pressure on South African companies to encourage them to abandon Apartheid. Chancellor Fordham supports divestment and says “we did not get the vote I wanted.” Student protesters hold a sit-in followed by a march down Franklin Street to protest the decision. Source: Daily Tar Heel, April 4, 1986.
UNC students march on campus in protest of the school’s investment in South Africa, November 20, 1986. (Yackety Yack 1987)
May 1987: A group of students from Action Against Apartheid hold an eight-day hunger strike to protest UNC investment in South Africa. Source: Daily Tar Heel, 21 May 1987.
October 1, 1987: UNC Endowment Board agrees to divest all funds from South African companies. The change of mind is due partly to the ongoing protests, but also due to diminishing returns in those funds. Source: Daily Tar Heel, 2 October 1987.
October 12, 1987. Student protesters interrupt University Day celebrations in Memorial Hall, marching down the aisle carrying signs and banners opposing apartheid in South Africa. Source: Daily Tar Heel, October 13, 1987.
Last week, we spotted an interesting photo on a flier advertising an event at the Chapel Hill Historical Society. The flier included what is apparently a photo of the enslaved poet George Moses Horton. This is a pretty big deal: very little is known about Horton’s life and we were not aware of any images of Horton (other than imagined drawings, such as in this excellent recent children’s book).
Where, then, did the image come from? And was it really Horton? A quick online search for Horton revealed the photo used in several different places: on a poetry website, advertising a lecture, and on a “free social encyclopedia.” However, none of these sites listed a source or any information about how the image was identified as Horton.
The man in the photo appears to be wearing a Union army uniform. Horton was known to have been in North Carolina until the end of the Civil War, when he was reported to have left the state with a Union regiment to find a new home in the north. Could he have been photographed along the way wearing a uniform? It’s certainly possible.
We shared the photo and the story among Wilson Library staff. One archivist thought the photo looked familiar — possibly from the Ken Burns Civil War documentary — but that it had been identified as somebody else, not George Moses Horton. Another archivist did a reverse image search on Google and found that the photo, while most often described as being Horton, is also identified as being another man: Martin Robinson Delany.
Delany was a prominent African American newspaper editor and, during the Civil War, became the first African American major in the U.S. Army. He seemed like somebody who was much more likely to have had their photograph taken at the time. But we still wanted to verify the information: how could we be sure that the photo wasn’t also being misidentified as Delany?
The Wikipedia page for Delany includes a version of the now familiar photo, with a citation to West Virginia University. We got in touch with the special collections library at WVU and quickly heard back from a photo archivist there. The Wikipedia citation pointed to a now-removed web page (sadly a common fate for many Wikipedia citations), but the West Virginia archivist was able to track down an earlier version of the page using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
That web page listed the photo as coming from the U.S. Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. That organization has changed its name to the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, but the collections are still there. The West Virginia archivist pointed to a digitized scrapbook that included the photo we were after.
Martin R. Delany. From the MOLLUS – Mass Civil War Photo Collection, vol. 74. U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.
The photo is included in a scrapbook compiled by the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. It’s definitely the photo we were looking for and the caption was clear: “Martin R. Delany.”
We can now say, with certainty, that the photo that is widely identified as George Moses Horton is not Horton: it’s Martin Delany. While Delany was a contemporary of Horton’s, there’s no evidence that they ever met or had any connection. The only mystery that remains is, how did this photo ever start to be used to represent Horton in the first place? It’s not as if it was a mystery photo of an unidentified person — it was clearly identified as Delany, who was himself a prominent figure.
Tracking down the source of the original photo was an interesting project, and we want to thank the awesome librarians and archivists who helped us get to the bottom of it. There are two big lessons we’re taking away from this: first, it’s always amazing how quickly misinformation can spread online, even by well-meaning people. And second, whenever there’s the slightest doubt about historical information, not just online but in print, it is always a good idea to go back to the original sources. If the answers are going to be found anywhere, they’ll be in the archives.
