A drawing of the Old Well on a 1900 letter from UNC President Francis Venable.

A new online exhibit, Water at UNC-Chapel Hill, explores the role that water has played in the history of the University.

The exhibit is the latest addition to The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History. It connects with the University’s two-year academic theme “Water in Our World,” which seeks to mobilize the campus, inspire interdisciplinary research, and spark new thinking about water issues.

Water at UNC-Chapel Hill features links to brief narratives and 19 sets of images taken from the University Archives, the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, and the North Carolina Collection Gallery.

Exhibit Highlights

• Photographs of local waterways and the Old Well;
• A 1793 letter from “Father of the University” William Richardson Davie in which he described the land on which the future university would be built as having an “abundance of springs of the purest and finest water”;
• An image of the indoor pool inside Bynum Gymnasium, now used as office space for the Graduate School;
• Images and materials related to the severe droughts of the 1960s and 70s, when the University Lake reservoir fell to one-sixth of its normal level, leading Chapel Hill to purchase water from Durham and institute usage restrictions.

The Virtual Museum tells the story of the history of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through online exhibits of digital texts and images.

Other exhibits on the site include campus architectural highlights, Carolina’s literary history, and student life at Carolina.

For more information, contact Records Services Archivist Lawrence Giffin at (919) 962-6402 or lgiffin@email.unc.edu.

Related Links

• Water at UNC-Chapel Hill virtual exhibit
• The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History

Download event flier (pdf)

University History Lives in Wilson Library
Wilson Special Collections Library
Saturday, May 11, 2013
1-5 pm.
Free and open to the public
Information: (919) 962-3765

Commencement visitors can step back in time during an open house at the Wilson Special Collections Library on Saturday, May 11.

Yearbooks and memorabilia from the reunion classes of 1953, ’58, ’68, and ’73 will be on view. A special class of ’63 slide show will feature music of that year, drawn from the Southern Folklife Collection.

Visitors will also be able to view the exhibitions A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC in the North Carolina Collection Gallery, and the Rare Book Collection exhibition The Encyclopedic Impulse in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room.

Wilson Library is located on the south side of Polk Place, opposite South Building. It is home to the North Carolina Collection and North Carolina Collection Gallery; the Rare Book Collection; the Southern Historical and Southern Folklife collections; and University Archives and Records Management Services.

The open house is sponsored by the Wilson Special Collections Library and the Friends of the Library.

In conjunction with the Wilson Library exhibit A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC, the University Gazette has published a quick quiz about the history of free speech at the University.

Take the quiz and let us know how you do!

You can cram first by visiting the North Carolina Collection Gallery on the main floor of the Wilson Special Collections Library. A Right to Speak and to Hear will be on exhibit through June 2.

Related Links

• UNC academic freedom quiz in the University Gazette (April 17, 2013)
• A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC exhibition information

Student opposition to North Carolina’s 1963 Speaker Ban Law will be the subject of the annual Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture Thursday, April 11, at the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Former UNC student body president Robert Spearman (’65) will discuss the controversial law that barred certain individuals from speaking on campus. Known members of the Communist Party, those who advocated the overthrow of the federal or state government, and those who pleaded the Fifth Amendment when questioned about communist or subversive activities were all prohibited from speaking at state-supported campuses.

The 5:30 p.m. lecture, sponsored by the North Carolina Collection and University Archives and Records Management Services, is free and open to the public.

The passage of the Speaker Ban Law fifty years ago drew almost immediate reaction from students and faculty, who protested that the law infringed on their rights to free speech. Students invited banned speakers to address their classmates from the sidewalk on Franklin Street and eventually initiated a lawsuit in federal court.

Spearman, now an attorney for a Raleigh law firm, testified before a state commission tasked with revising the law, which was eventually overturned in 1968.

Prior to the lecture, attendees can view the North Carolina Collection Gallery exhibition A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC beginning at 5 p.m.

The exhibition uses original letters, documents, and photographs to examine the University’s long history of free speech controversies from the nineteenth century to the present.

The exhibition runs through June 2, 2013.

“Wikipedia Edit-a-thon: African Americans in North Carolina”
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
1 – 5 p.m.
Free and open to the public (Registration requested)
Information: Emily Jack, North Carolina Collection Gallery, (919) 962-0104

Academics, history buffs, and Wikipedians are invited to UNC’s first-ever Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Sunday, April 14, at the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Participants will update, improve, and create new Wikipedia articles about African American history and institutions in North Carolina.

The free public program will take place from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Refreshments and tours of Wilson Library will be provided.

Participants do not need specialized historical knowledge or experience with Wikipedia. Assistants will help locate book and article source materials and teach Wikipedia syntax and style.

Organizers encourage participants with personal laptops to bring them.

For more details and to register, visit the event page.

The event sponsors are the North Carolina Collection and student groups from the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), including the Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists (SCOSAA), the Art and Museum Library and Information Student Society (AMLISS), and the Information and Library Science Student Association (ILSSA).

Related Links

• Wikipedia Edit-a-thon registration
• Facebook event page

Download exhibit poster (pdf)

A new exhibition in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of Wilson Library explores the long history of free speech controversies at UNC.

A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC will use original letters, documents and photographs to examine some of the University’s most contentious moments from the nineteenth century to the present.

It marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Speaker Ban. The controversial 1963 law forbade known members of the Communist party or those who advocated the overthrow of the federal or state government from speaking on campus. The Ban was overturned in 1968.

Visitors to the exhibit will see original materials from the Library’s North Carolina Collection, Southern Historical Collection, and University Archives and Records Management Services. Highlights include:

• A page from the early 19^th century “Laws of the University of North Carolina” barring students from delivering “indecent, profane, or immoral” speeches.

• The November 1939 “Sex Issue” of the Buccaneer. The student council ordered this issue of the student humor magazine burned. The Buccaneer had frequent run-ins with campus authorities and was banned from campus at one point.

• Video of UNC police chief Arthur Beaumont ordering Herbert Aptheker, a member of the Communist Party, off the campus in March 1966 during the Speaker Ban.

• A letter from David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, to the Daily Tar Heel. Students shouted down Duke when he attempted to speak on campus in January 1975. He criticized the protesting students for “suppressing” his right to speak and for limiting their classmates’ right to hear.

• Postcards sent to Chancellor James Moeser as part of the Family Policy Council’s organized protest of the University’s summer reading selection for 2002, Approaching the Qu’ran: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells.

On April 11, former UNC student body president Robert Spearman (’65) will deliver the annual Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture in conjunction with the exhibition.

Spearman—now an attorney in Raleigh—will recall student efforts to repeal the Speaker Ban, including his own testimony before a state commission tasked with revising the law.

Download event flier (pdf)

Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Wilson Special Collections Library
5:30 p.m. Program | Pleasants Family Assembly Room
Free and open to the public
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

The life of one of the most significant black leaders in the South during the Civil War will be the subject of a lecture Thursday, March 7 in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Historian David S. Cecelski will discuss his new book, The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War (UNC Press, 2012). The book tells the thrilling life story of Galloway, a runaway slave and staunch abolitionist who served as a Union spy and recruiter during the war.

The 5:30 p.m. event, sponsored by the North Carolina Collection, the Stone Center Library for Black Culture and History, and the Friends of the Library, is free and open to the public.

Born in Brunswick County, North Carolina, Galloway advocated for equal rights for African Americans, organized a Freedman’s Convention in Raleigh, and became one of the first black men to serve in the North Carolina legislature.

Cecelski has served three times as the Lehman Brady joint chair in Documentary Studies and American Studies at UNC and Duke. He is the author of The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (UNC Press, 2001) and co-editor of Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (UNC Press, 1998).

Books will be available for sale and signing, courtesy of the Bull’s Head Bookshop.

Download event flier (pdf)

A Short Time to Stay Here
Book talk by Terry Roberts
Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013, at 5:30 p.m.
Wilson Special Collections Library
Free and open to the public
Information, Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

Author Terry Roberts will read from and discuss his first novel on Jan. 24. The book highlights a little-known chapter in North Carolina history: the detention of German prisoners of war in the Tar Heel State during World War I.

A Short Time to Stay Here is set at the Mountain Park Hotel in isolated Hot Springs, north of Asheville. The hotel served as the internment site for more than 2,000 German nationals during the war.

The 5:30 p.m. reading and discussion in the Wilson Special Collections Library is free and open to the public. The North Carolina Collection is the program sponsor.

Roberts, who was born in Asheville and raised in Weaverville, N.C., is the director of the National Paideia Center in Chapel Hill, which advocates for a holistic approach to life-long learning.

Books will be available for sale and signing, courtesy of the Bull’s Head Bookshop.

Related Links

• A Short Time to Stay Here (book site)
• North Carolina Collection 

Download flier (pdf)

Silent Sam in History and Memory
Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013
Free and open to the public
Wilson Special Collections Library
5 p.m. Display viewing | 5:30 p.m. Program
Information: Liza Terll, Friends of the Library, (919) 548-1203

The early history of UNC’s controversial “Silent Sam” statue will be the topic of a free public lecture Jan. 22 at the Wilson Special Collections Library. “Silent Sam in History and Memory” marks the centennial of the Confederate memorial.

The program will consist of the following:

• Silent Sam exhibit from the Wilson Library special collections – 5 p.m.

View photographs and postcards; the address that Julian Shakespeare Carr delivered at the monument’s dedication on June 2, 1913; letters about UNC’s involvement in construction of the monument; and materials documenting protests against the monument.

• Original poetry reading – 5:30 p.m.

Will McInerney and C.J. Suitt, Chapel Hill community activists, will perform an original poem about the history of racism in Chapel Hill. The two are members of the Real Silent Sam Coalition and the Sacrificial Poets.

• “Silent Sam in History and Memory” Lecture – 5:35 p.m.

Fitz Brundage, William B. Umstead Distinguished Professor of History at UNC, and doctoral student Adam Domby will discuss the original impulse behind the monument, the role of the University community in building it, and changing views of the statue over time.

The lecture will also mark the formal release of the Library website Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina. Brundage was scholarly advisor to the site, which documents the state’s history through its monuments, shrines, and public art.

Silent Sam is one of 200 current entries, each one described, geo-referenced, and linked to a database of thousands of digitized postcards, photographs, print publications, and manuscript materials. Brundage and his students continue to add to the site.

The lecture is sponsored by the University Archives and Records Management Services in Wilson Library, Friends of the Library, and the Chapel Hill Historical Society.

Hurricane Hazel at Carolina Beach, 1954. Photograph by Hugh Morton.

The work of photojournalism will be the subject of a lecture by former Daily Tar Heel student photographer James Wallace (’64) on Nov. 1 at Wilson Library.

The 5:30 p.m. talk, sponsored by the Friends of the Library, Wilson Library’s North Carolina Collection, and the Center for the Study of the American South, is part of the Center’s James A. Hutchins Lecture series. It also serves as the keynote for a Civil Rights in Chapel Hill Celebration Weekend taking place Nov. 1-3 at locations around Chapel Hill and Durham.

Beginning at 5 p.m., attendees can enjoy a special viewing of the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives exhibit Photographic Angles: News Photography in the North Carolina Collection.

The theme for Wallace’s lecture will be “That we may know by our eyes,” and he will also discuss his new book of photographs, Courage in the Moment: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961–1964. Also presenting will be Patrick Davison, associate professor of journalism at UNC, who will examine the current and future state of the photojournalism profession.

Davison previously worked as a staff photojournalist at the Rocky Mountain News (Denver) and the Dallas Morning News.

Wallace served for 25 years as director of Imaging and Photographic Services at the Smithsonian Institution, and currently serves on the board of advisers of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The exhibit features 30 published and unpublished photographs taken for the News & Observer of Raleigh, the Daily Tar Heel, the Durham Herald-Sun, and other newspapers from 1891 through 2000. The images show how photographers use low camera angles, wide-angle lenses, and personal perspectives to create compelling news photographs.

The exhibit will be on view through February 3, 2013. February 10, 2013.

Among the photojournalists represented are Hugh Morton (UNC ’43); UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication faculty members Jock Lauterer (UNC ’67) and Paul Cuadros; Roland Giduz (UNC ’48), former editor of The Chapel Hill News Leader and The News of Orange County; Charlotte Observer photographer Don Sturkey; and The Hatterasman author Ben Dixon MacNeill.

The exhibit is sponsored by the North Carolina Collection and draws on the holdings of its North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.

The website www.jacksoncenter.info/events contains complete schedule information for the Civil Rights in Chapel Hill Weekend.