Orange County Courthouse Mural

Culture

The cultural figures, organizations, and institutions depicted in the courthouse mural offer a glimpse of the wide array of cultural contributors and thought-provokers who have passed through Orange County or who have called or made Orange County their home. This diverse group includes novelists, playwrights, and poets; musicians and performers; educators and coaches; newspaper publishers; and social justice advocates. The artistic, cultural, and societal contributions of these individuals and institutions have left indelible marks on Orange County, and well beyond. Names of figures such as singer/songwriter James Taylor, novelist and playwright Betty Smith, and folk musician Elizabeth Cotten will ring bells in the minds of both avid and casual cultural consumers and fans. The acclaimed work of these three artists includes Taylor’s hit songs “Fire and Rain,” “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),” and “Carolina in My Mind,” the last of which pays homage to Taylor’s childhood in Chapel Hill; Smith’s novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which she wrote and published while living and working in Chapel Hill; and Cotten’s popular folk song “Freight Train,” which she wrote as a child growing up in Orange County.

Many of the depictions of cultural figures and institutions represented in the mural are affiliated or associated in some way with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Thomas Wolfe, Kay Kyser, and Paul Green were students at the university (Green was a professor at the school as well). George Moses Horton sold poems that he had written to university students; he also wrote poems protesting slavery and his own enslavement, as well as the first book published in the South by a Black man. Drama professor Frederick Koch and basketball coach Dean Smith are also represented through their close associations with campus institutions – the Carolina PlayMakers and the Dean Smith Center, respectively – demonstrating traditions of theater and athletics at the university. However, while UNC-Chapel Hill is a prominent institution in Orange County, it is certainly not the sole producer of local culture.

Another cultural institution represented in the mural that has a strong association with an individual is the newspaper the Hillsborough Recorder, which was established and published by Dennis Heartt at a time when there were not many newspapers being printed in central and western North Carolina. This widely-read paper, which ran from 1820 to 1879, provides a window into the culture and society of the day, and therefore into the history of Hillsborough and Orange County. In the Recorder, Heartt printed local news, reprints of reports and letters from other U.S. newspapers, practical suggestions for farmers and housewives, the work of local literary talent, and political opinions favoring the Whig Party, which included racist, pro-slavery, and anti-abolition pieces and content. History of slavery and racism are also evident in the former home of the Carolina PlayMakers on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, a building which was previously named after an enslaver.

While each of these individuals and institutions are unique, they have been grouped together under this theme of “Culture” because of their collective influence on the cultural footprint of Orange County through formats and media varying from the arts to athletics. These depictions of cultural figures and institutions in the mural represent the thread of diverse identity and cultural work evident throughout Orange County history. Please visit the pages of the individual mural item representations to learn more about each of them and for links to further reading and educational materials.