This article is missing information about the history of the university since 1963..(October 2018) |
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a coeducational public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. It is one of three schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States. The first public institution of higher education in North Carolina, the school opened on February 12, 1795.
Until the 1970s, the university was simply known as the University of North Carolina. After the other state universities were combined into a single public university system, called the University of North Carolina, the original institution was given the new name of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
After the first constitution of the state of North Carolina was adopted in 1776 after the United States declared its independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, work began to establish the independent state of North Carolina. Article 41 of North Carolina Constitution set forth to establish affordable schools and universities for the instruction of the young people in the state. Samuel Eusebius McCorkle made the first attempt to implement article 41. (He is remembered in the name McCorkle Place, on the UNC-CH campus.) In November 1784 he introduced a bill in the North Carolina General Assembly to establish a state university. The bill was rejected due to financial restraints and political turmoil. [1]
Five years later, chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly on December 11, 1789, and beginning instruction in 1795, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (then named simply the University of North Carolina) became the oldest public university in the nation, as measured by start of instruction as a public institution. The university was the first land grant school in North Carolina; however, shortly after they[ who? ] were stripped of their title for using funds in an improper manner. The College of William & Mary, chartered in 1693, and the University of Georgia, chartered in 1785, are both older as measured by date of charter. However, William & Mary was originally a private institution, and did not become a public university until 1906. Georgia has always been a public institution, but did not start classes until 1801. [2] [3] A political leader in revolutionary America, William Richardson Davie, led efforts to build legislative and financial support for the university. [4]
The site of New Hope Chapel was chosen for "the purity of the water, the salubrity of the air and the great healthfulness of the climate", as well as its location at the center of the state, at the intersection of two major roads. [5] [6] David Ker, who conducted the local high school in Chapel Hill, was chosen as the first presiding professor of the university. [7]
The university opened in a single building, which came to be called Old East. Still in use as a residence hall, it is the oldest building originally constructed for a public university in the United States. [8] Davie, in full Masonic Ceremony [9] as he was the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina at the time, [10] laid the cornerstone on October 12, 1793, near an abandoned Anglican chapel which led to the naming of the town as Chapel Hill. [6] [11] The first student, Hinton James, from near Burgaw in what is now Pender County, arrived on February 12, 1795. While a student, James was among the students who broke off from the Debating Society (later renamed the Dialectic Society) to form the Concord Society (later renamed the Philanthropic Society). A dormitory on the UNC campus is named in his honor. It is currently the southernmost[ further explanation needed ] on-campus dormitory and houses primarily first-year students. [12]
Another founding member of the Concord Society and its first president, David Gillespie, the son of U.S. congressman James Gillespie, was the first person granted a document in the form of a diploma from the university. He received the document in 1796 before he left to assist Andrew Ellicott with determining the boundary of the United States after the Treaty of San Lorenzo with Spain. [13]
When the university opened there were 41 students, rising to 100 in the second term, with a faculty of five. [5] Entering students, according to an 1819 publication, were expected to be able to read the Bible in Greek, and to have read Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (7 books), Virgil's Bucolics and Æneid , and Ovid in Latin, the latter in an "editio expurgata". [14]
When it opened the university received no state financial support, as the charter made no provision for it. The school depended on donations of money and land, "but North Carolinians did not give these generously, feeling that the university was too expensive, too difficult to reach from all areas of the state, and that its liberal and skeptical teachings were insufficiently Christian". [5]
"Members of the Board of Trustees were among the largest slave owners in the state." [15] : 17–18
In the summer of 1793, ...slaves began clearing land to build the first public university in the new nation. Black workers labored through the summer heat to clear a main street for the village of Chapel Hill and to construct the foundations of Old East, the first building at the University of North Carolina. [15] : 22–23
At a Southern university, "slaves made the bricks that went into buildings, they worked the grounds and buildings around the campus. They carried water, serviced the dormitories, worked in the dining halls." [16]
The early 19th century saw a period of much growth and development with the help of the backing of the trustees. Through this growth, the university began to move away from its original purpose, to train leadership for the state, as it added to the curriculum, first starting with the typical classical trend. By 1815, the university started giving equal ground to the natural sciences, and in 1818 the Department of Chemistry was founded. This development continued with the establishment in 1831 of the first astronomical observatory at a state university in the United States.
Considerable information about university life in Chapel Hill in the antebellum period is provided by George Moses Horton, "the black bard of Chapel Hill" and the first North Carolinian to publish a book of literature. He delivered produce to the campus every week, and goaded by the students, he found he could speak in public and write poems; composing them at night, by memory since he could not write, he provided acrostics and similar light verse. The students, "the sons of wealthy planters", [17] paid him 25¢ to 75¢ for these pieces, which they wrote out and sent to their girlfriends.
According to Horton, the students "seemed more interested in sports, gambling, and pleasures of the table than in their studies. They often engaged in boisterous riots and at various times destroyed laboratories, recitation rooms, and blackboards. They attacked faculty with clubs, stones, and pistols; sang ribald songs; violently rang the university bell; stole farmers' produce and animals; and perpetrated assorted vulgar and dangerous pranks." [17] On the university's own posted history, we find that students hoisted pigs into dormitory rooms. "Cheating became a sport for many students, who transformed it into 'a trial of wit between the class and the Professor, and it was considered good fun to win.' They cut holes in classroom floors, put good students under them, and passed questions down by a string—what was called "working the telegraph." [18] "By all accounts, university students, faculty, and servants drank steadily and heavily.... Even on the Sabbath." [5]
Student behavior later reached the attention of the Trustees, who deplored "gross irregularities of conduct by students on the railroad cars, at circuses and other places". The students on one railroad car were "so boisterous" that it was unhitched, since it was the last car, and the train proceeded without them. [19] A thrown "fireball" deliberately started a fire that destroyed the university's bell and belfry. [20]
The first issue of a North Carolina University Magazine, literary in focus, was published by senior students in 1844. Describing the earlier venture as having been "starved out", No. 1 of a second North Carolina University Magazine appeared in February, 1852.
During the lead-up to the 1856 United States presidential election, an attack was made in the press on an unidentified professor who allegedly supported anti-slavery candidate John C. Frémont, whose election, the Raleigh Standard opined, would inevitably lead to "a separation of the states". "Let our schools and seminaries of learning be scrutlnized; and if black Republicans [Frémont supporters] be found in them, let them be driven out. That man is neither a fit nor a safe instructor of our young men, who even inclines to Fremont and black Republicanism." [21]
Following up on this, a lengthy letter to the editor soon appeared; signed only "Alumnus" (a student), the author was identified by university historian Kemp Battle as Joseph A. Engelhard. [22]
[C]an the Trustees of our own State University invite pupils to the institution under their charge with the assurance that this main stream of education contains no deadly poison at its fountain head? ...[W]e have been reliably informed that a professor at our State University is an open and avowed supporter of Fremont, and declares his willingness—nay, his desire—to support the black Republican ticket. ...Is he a fit or safe instructor for our young men? ...[O]ught he not to be "required to leave," at least dismissed from a situation where his poisonous influence is so powerful, and his teachings so antagonist to the "honor and safety" of the University and the State? ....We must have certain security, under existing relations of North with South, that at State Universities at least we will have no canker-worm preying at the very vitals of Southern institutions. [23]
In another lengthy letter, published by the author as a pamphlet after it appeared in the Standard, The pamphlet defending Hedrick contains neither date nor publisher, but it was obviously published by Hedrick in 1856. In addition to the letter of Hedrick and preliminary remarks, it concludes with an abolitionist speech at the University of North Carolina by Judge William Gaston. [24] Professor Benjamin Hedrick, an honors graduate of the university, said that there was "little doubt" that he was the professor attacked. He quoted Thomas Jefferson as saying that "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free". Citing as his "political teachers", besides Jefferson, fellow Southerners George Washington, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Edmund Randolph, Henry Clay, as well as Benjamin Franklin and Daniel Webster, "I cannot believe that slavery is preferable to freedom, or that slavery extension is one of the constitutional rights of the South." [25] According to the newspaper when presenting his letter, "We take it for granted that Prof. Hedrick will be promptly removed." [26] He was hung in effigy; faculty disowned him; parents threatened to withdraw their sons; and alumni joined the public in calling for his dismissal. [27] He refused to resign and since "Mr. Hedrick had greatly, if not entirely, destroyed his power to be of further benefit to the University", he was terminated within a week, though his salary was paid through the end of the term. The only faculty member to defend him, French instructor Henry Harrisse, [28] was terminated at the same time. [29] [30] Hounded by a mob, Hedrick left his native state. [27] [31] [24]
During the Civil War, the university was among the few in the Confederacy that managed to keep its doors open.[ citation needed ] Students from other seceding states left, as did many North Carolina students; by 1864, there were only 47 students. "The war ruined the University financially, so that by 1866, faculty salaries could not be paid; the University was $100,000 in debt; its buildings had deteriorated, and its entire endowment, [converted into Confederate money,] was lost through the insolvency of the Bank of North Carolina." [32] Because of lack of students and funding, the university was forced to close from 1870 until 1875.
After North Carolina's readmission to the Union in 1868, new political leaders came to power.[ who? ] They attempted to change the direction of the university[ how? ] through political appointments, but these were blocked.[ by whom? ] The university restored its prestige through growth and innovation, continuing to develop scientific programs. For example, it undertook a massive program to support farmers by conducting scientific analyses of fertilizers and their effectiveness in relation to different crops and soil types in North Carolina. It opened a normal school in 1877, which was both the first university summer school and the first normal school linked to a university in the United States. The university reopened its law school in 1877 and established schools of medicine in 1879 and of pharmacy in 1880. [33] [ page needed ]
In 1915, the mission of the university was broadened to include research and public service, [34] culminating in the Association of American Universities admitting UNC as a member in 1922. This change lead to a large number of new professional schools in the coming years, including:
In 1915, Cora Zeta Corpening became the first woman enrolled into the medical school. [35]
In 1932, UNC became one of the three original campuses of the consolidated University of North Carolina (since 1972 called the University of North Carolina system). During the process of consolidation, programs were moved among the schools, which prevented competition. For instance, the engineering program at North Carolina State University in Raleigh became the designated engineering school within the consolidated university and UNC relinquished its engineering program. [36] [ page needed ]
In 1963, the consolidated university was made fully coeducational. As a result, the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina was renamed the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Until the second half of the 20th century, only white students were admitted.
On August 20, 2018, student protestors tore down the university's Confederate monument, known as Silent Sam . The pedestal (plinth) and plaques were removed shortly afterwards on instructions from then-Chancellor Carol Folt (who announced her resignation in the same letter [37] ). Although there has been much discussion about what to do with the monument, as of December 2020 it remains in storage.[ citation needed ] Additionally, the university's Carr Hall, which was named for former pro-white supremacy, KKK-supporting Confederate veteran Julian Shakespeare Carr, was renamed the "Student Affairs Building" in July 2020. [38] Carr had previously served on the university's Board of Trustees. [39]
On August 28, 2023, during the second week of the fall semester, a shooting occurred on the campus that resulted in the death of one faculty member. [40]
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange and Durham County, North Carolina, United States. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-most populous municipality in the state. Chapel Hill and Durham make up the Durham-Chapel Hill, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 608,879 in 2023. When it's combined with Raleigh, the state capital, they make up the corners of the Research Triangle, which had an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023.
The University of North Carolina is the public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC System to differentiate it from its first campus, UNC-Chapel Hill.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolling students in 1795, making it one of the oldest public universities in the United States.
Orange County is a county located in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 148,696. Its county seat is Hillsborough.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is a public research university in Charlotte, North Carolina. UNC Charlotte offers 24 doctoral, 66 master's, and 79 bachelor's degree programs through nine colleges. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
The Research Triangle, or simply The Triangle, are both common nicknames for a metropolitan area in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of North Carolina. Anchored by the cities of Raleigh and Durham and the town of Chapel Hill, the region is home to three major research universities: North Carolina State University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, respectively. The "Triangle" name originated in the 1950s with the creation of Research Triangle Park located between the three anchor cities, which is the largest research park in the United States and home to numerous high tech companies.
William Richardson Davie was an American statesman, politician, military general, Founding Father of the United States who served as the 10th Governor of North Carolina from 1798 to 1799. A member of the Federalist Party, Davie also served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention as a representative of North Carolina. He is also one of the key founders of the University of North Carolina.
The Confederate Monument, University of North Carolina, commonly known as Silent Sam, is a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier by Canadian sculptor John A. Wilson, which once stood on McCorkle Place of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) from 1913 until it was pulled down by protestors on August 20, 2018. Its former location has been described as "the front door" of the university and "a position of honor".
Old East is a residence hall located at the north part of campus in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Built in 1793 by slave labor, it became the first state university building in the United States. The Wren Building at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, was built in 1695, but William and Mary did not become a public university until 1906.
The Order of Gimghoul is a collegiate secret society at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is headquartered at Hippol Castle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Woody Lombardi Durham was an American play-by-play radio announcer for the North Carolina Tar Heels football and men's basketball programs from 1971 to 2011.
The University of North Carolina School of Law, sometimes referred to as Carolina Law, is the law school of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Established in 1845, it is among the oldest law schools in the United States and is the oldest law school in the state of North Carolina.
Davie Poplar is a large tulip poplar tree located in McCorkle Place on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Named in honor of Revolutionary War general and university founder William Richardson Davie, the tree is approximately 300 to 375 years old.
Julian Shakespeare Carr was an American industrialist, philanthropist, and white supremacist. He is the namesake of the town of Carrboro, North Carolina.
The State University Railroad is a 10.2 mile railroad spur of the North Carolina Railroad that began offering service from Glenn, North Carolina, near Hillsborough to a point west of Chapel Hill, North Carolina on January 1, 1882.
Joseph Carlyle "Lyle" Sitterson was an American educator who served as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from February 16, 1966, to January 31, 1972.
Edwin Caldwell was an American physician who served patients in Central North Carolina around the turn of the 20th century. Caldwell is credited with discovering one of the first effective treatments for pellagra.
The Black Student Movement (BSM) is an organization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is the second largest student-run organization and one of the largest cultural organizations on the school's campus. The organization was created on November 7, 1967 to combat problems of black recruit, admissions, and integration on UNC-CH campus.
Over 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students live in campus housing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during a regular school year. Forty residence halls are grouped into 16 residential communities across campus.
Joseph Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton (1878–1961) was an American historian of the South, author, and the founder of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he spent most of his academic career. He published books and articles about the history of Reconstruction but his most influential role was as an archivist, collecting manuscripts from around the South that form the core of the Southern Historical Collection.