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Edwin Caldwell
Edwin Caldwell (1867-1932) was a Black physician who developed the cure for pellagra. The son of Wilson Caldwell, an individual enslaved by UNC President David L. Swain, Edwin Caldwell was a child when his family was freed. Not much is known about Caldwell’s life outside of his career. In 1890, he graduated from the Leonard…
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Harriet M. Berry
Harriet M. Berry (1877-1940) is best known as the face of the Good Roads Campaign in North Carolina. Granddaughter of John Berry, the architect and builder responsible for the old Orange County Courthouse, she was educated by her family from a young age. Berry graduated from the State Normal and Industrial School, now UNC-Greensboro, in…
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Elizabeth Cotten
Elizabeth Nevills Cotten (1893-1987) was a Black folk singer and composer who wrote the award-winning song “Freight Train” at twelve years old. Born in the area now known as Carrboro, Cotten worked from a young age as a domestic servant in the homes of local white families. She was always a musical child, creating her…
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Roberta Jackson
Roberta Bowles Hodges Jackson (1920-1999) was the first Black woman professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Born in Germantown, Jackson’s family moved to West Virginia, where she graduated from high school and Bluefield State College. She went to Ohio State University for a master’s degree in education and to New York University for a doctorate in the…
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Karen Lynn Parker
Karen Lynn Parker (b. 1944) was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Raised in Winston-Salem, Parker remembers the moment she learned what segregation was: a Mickey Mouse event in 1949, held only for white children. Parker’s strong sense of justice was evident to her high school…
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Frances Hargraves
Frances Hargraves (1914-2002) was a teacher during the desegregation of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro public school system. Born in 1914, Hargraves attended Orange County Training School (OCTS), a high school funded almost entirely by the local Black community since the early 20th century. After marrying Willie M. Hargraves, she attended the Winston-Salem State Teachers College. She…
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Fannie Breeze
Fannie Breeze (1832-1912) was a Black midwife who assisted women in Orange County. Fannie was born into enslavement, owned by the white enslaver and farmer Samuel H. Breeze. Fannie married Stanford Breeze, a Black man whose state of freedom is unknown. Fannie practiced midwifery when the state of North Carolina was gradually professionalizing the practice.…
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Civil Rights in Chapel Hill
The national Civil Rights Movement reached Chapel Hill in 1960, nine Black students from Lincoln High School staged a sit-in at Colonial Drug Store. Dubbed the “Chapel Hill Nine,” the students organized community members into a formal movement. Over the next few years, hundreds of Black and white activists protested the segregation of Chapel Hill…
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Barbara Bynum Henderson
Barbara Bynum Henderson (1880-1955) was a white women’s suffrage activist known at the state level. Henderson graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1902 with membership in the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa. She met her husband, Archibald Henderson, at UNC, and they married in 1903. Her husband accepted a…
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Hillsborough Scene
In colonial America, the town of Hillsborough stood as the largest European settlement between the coast and Winston-Salem. Many ideas and people moved through it, as the town stood at the crossroads of the Eno River and Indigenous trading paths. Hillsborough had a history of rebellion before the Revolutionary War. In 1771, Orange County residents…
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