University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - History

History

Chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly on December 11, 1789, the university's cornerstone was laid on October 12, 1793, near the ruins of a chapel, chosen because of its central location within the state. Beginning instruction of undergraduates in 1795, UNC is one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the only such institution to confer degrees in the eighteenth century.

During the Civil War, North Carolina Governor David Lowry Swain persuaded Confederate President Jefferson Davis to exempt some students from the draft, so the university was one of the few in the Confederacy that managed to stay open. However, Chapel Hill suffered the loss of more of its population during the war than any village in the South, and when student numbers did not recover, the university was forced to close during Reconstruction from December 1, 1870 until September 6, 1875.

Despite initial skepticism from university President Frank Porter Graham, on March 27, 1931, legislation was passed to group UNC with the State College of Agriculture and Engineering and the Women's College to form the Consolidated University of North Carolina. In 1963, the consolidated university was made fully coeducational, although most women still attended the Women's College for their first two years, transferring to Chapel Hill as a junior, since freshmen were required to live on campus and there was only one women's dorm. As a result, the Women's College was renamed the "University of North Carolina at Greensboro", and the University of North Carolina became the "University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill." In 1955, UNC officially desegregated its undergraduate divisions.

During World War II, UNC at Chapel Hill was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.

During the 1960s, the campus was the location of significant political protest. Prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, protests about local racial segregation which began quietly in Franklin Street restaurants led to mass demonstrations and disturbance. The climate of civil unrest prompted the 1963 Speaker Ban Law prohibiting speeches by communists on state campuses in North Carolina. The law was immediately criticized by university Chancellor William Brantley Aycock and university President William Friday, but was not reviewed by the North Carolina General Assembly until 1965. Small amendments to allow "infrequent" visits failed to placate the student body, especially when the university's board of trustees overruled new Chancellor Paul Frederick Sharp's decision to allow speaking invitations to Marxist speaker Herbert Aptheker and civil liberties activist Frank Wilkinson; however, the two speakers came to Chapel Hill anyway. Wilkinson spoke off campus, while more than 1,500 students viewed Aptheker's speech across a low campus wall at the edge of campus, christened "Dan Moore's Wall" by The Daily Tar Heel for Governor Dan K. Moore. A group of UNC students, led by Student Body President Paul Dickson, filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court, and on February 20, 1968, the Speaker Ban Law was struck down.

From the late 1990s onward, UNC expanded rapidly with a 15% increase in total student population to more than 28,000 by 2007. This was accompanied by the construction of new facilities, funded in part by the "Carolina First" fundraising campaign and an endowment that increased fourfold to over $2 billion in just ten years. Professor Oliver Smithies was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2007 for his work in genetics.

Notable leaders of the university include the 26th Governor of North Carolina, David Lowry Swain (president 1835–1868); and Edwin Anderson Alderman (1896–1900), who was also president of Tulane University and the University of Virginia. The current chancellor is Holden Thorp, who earned a bachelor of science degree from UNC in 1986, a PhD in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1989, and was a postdoctoral associate at Yale University from 1989 to 1990.