Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition

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Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition

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Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition, Community Service, 100 Library Dr, Chapel Hill, NC.

10/20/2026

We were pleased to cosponsor this first event—on Frederick Douglass's speech "What the Black Man Wants"—in the Douglass Speaks Series. Check out the video from the event (link in comments).

Coming Up:

February 8, 2027 in Carrboro. This event will focus on Douglass's 1857 “West India Emancipation” speech.

April, 2027 at Chapel Hill Public Library. This event will focus on Douglass's 1867 speech, “Composite Nation.”

May 2027 in Hillsborough. This event will focus on Douglass's 1894 speech, “Lessons of the Hour.”

July 4 in Carrboro. Annual community reading of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

10/09/2026

OCCRC founding member James Williams spoke with Aaron Keck of WCHL and Chapelboro.com this morning about the upcoming event, "What the Black Man Wants"—the first event in the Douglass Speaks Series.

🔗 See link in comments.

09/29/2026

We are proud cosponsors of this first event in a 5-part series focusing on notable speeches by Frederick Douglass. The session on October 12 will focus on the 1865 speech “What the Black Man Wants.”

(While free and open to the public, registration is required. See the link in our bio for more information.)

After the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery forever in the United States, Frederick Douglass argued that suffrage was the “keystone to the arch of human liberty,” and the “one idea” upon which all civil rights and political consent for just and equal laws rested. Douglass advocated for voting rights for all adults but saw the extension of the vote to Black men as a provisional step in the design to secure votes for women. The event will feature a panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Michelle Cotton Laws.

Our fellow cosponsors include Justice United, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, and the Chapel Hill Public Library.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP Chapel Hill Public Library LWV Orange-Durham-Chatham NC

03/31/2026

Harvey Beech, James Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd McKissick, and James Robert Walker enrolled in the UNC School of Law in 1951, following a court order that said the Law School must admit Black students. They became the first African American students at Carolina.

DESEGREGATING CAROLINA: MCKISSICK VS CARMICHAEL — April 7 — 5:30 pm — Chapel Hill Public Library — Meeting Room B
Information and registration: https://occrcoalition.org/events/

Join us at the Chapel Hill Public Library for a reception followed by a program featuring:

Poet Nick Courmon; Attorney Floyd McKissick, Jr; Attorney Ralph Frasier, Jr; Donna Nixon, law librarian and legal research specialist; Representative Rodney Pierce; NCCU Law Professor Irving Joyner; UNC Law Professor Gene Nichol; Kimberly Moore, president of the NC Association of Black Lawyers; UNC Professor Donovan Livingston, chair of the Carolina Black Caucus and poet laureate of Chapel Hill; and Samuel Scarborough, cochair of the UNC Black Student Movement Political Action Committee.
Moderator: Professor Emeritus Lloyd Kramer (UNC-Chapel Hill)

Presented in partnership with the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition, the UNC Center for Civil Rights, the Orange County Office of Civil Rights & Civic Life, and the Community History Program at Chapel Hill Public Library.

03/07/2026

Join us for a discussion with authors Sylvester Allen Jr and Belle Boggs about their book, The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw: From Reconstruction Through Black Lives Matter.

When: March 21, 2026; 1:00 pm
Where: Mt. Bright Baptist Church, Hillsborough

12/15/2025

Save the date for the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition’s first event of the new year! We’re looking forward to this conversation on January 8 with Professor Gene Nichol and guests Senator Graig Meyer and Chapel Hill Council Member Paris Miller-Foushee.

In a Southern state with a long history of racial violence, it’s past time to accept that we’re not always the “beacon of progress“ we wish to be, Nichol writes in his newest book. But there’s still a place for optimism, even if it’s now a rare commodity, he writes on the same page. Join the conversation about North Carolina’s future and help to answer the question, “Now What?”

When: January 8, 2026; 6:00 pm
Where: Chapel Hill Public Library, Meeting Room B

More information: https://occrcoalition.org/events/

10/20/2025

Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation - Community Read & Conversation

Register at https://www.chapelhillpubliclibrary.org/event/community-read-conversation-charles-sumner-conscience-nation-25288

Join retired Orange-Chatham Chief Public Defender James Williams in conversation with UNC Law's Professor Emeritus Jack Boger and Distinguished Professor Ted Shaw about Zaakir Tameez’s landmark biography of Charles Sumner, the unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction.

Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner’s status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped the Union win the Civil War and ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

An extraordinary achievement of historical and constitutional scholarship, Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation brings back to life one of America’s most inspiring statesmen, whose formidable ideas remain relevant to a nation still divided over questions of race, democracy, and constitutional law.

This program presented in partnership with the Chapel Hill Public Library's Community History Program.

10/10/2025

On December 6, 1865, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. This year, we will observe Abolition Day with two featured events:

DECEMBER 5: A performance of The Fire of Freedom by Mike Wiley at the Elizabeth Price Kenan Theatre at UNC-Chapel Hill. Registration required: https://www.chapelhillpubliclibrary.org/event/fire-freedom-mike-wiley-production-24995 — Our partners in this event are the Orange County Office of Civil Rights & Civic Life, The Paul Green Foundation, the UNC Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art, and the Chapel Hill Public Library's Community History Program.

DECEMBER 6: A symposium on the Thirteenth Amendment at the Carrboro Century Center featuring legal scholars and a keynote conversation between Dr. Martha Jones and NC Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls. Registration suggested: https://www.chapelhillpubliclibrary.org/event/beyond-thirteenth-amendment-reclaiming-promise-freedom-25007 — Our partners in this event are the Orange County Office of Civil Rights & Civic Life, Carolina Public Humanities, Carolina K-12, the Town of Carrboro, NC, and the Chapel Hill Public Library's Community History Program.

09/23/2025

October 9, 2025
6:00-8:00 pm
Chapel Hill Public Library
Meeting Room B
Registration: https://www.chapelhillpubliclibrary.org/event/author-talk-rob-christensen-21885

In his book, Southern News, Southern Politics: How a Newspaper Defined a State for a Century, reporter Rob Christensen tells the story of the News & Observer and how it helped shape modern North Carolina in complicated ways. Christensen takes readers from the N&O’s early days at the turn of the twentieth century as the militant voice of white supremacy to its denunciation by segregationist Jesse Helms for “selling out the South” in the 1960s and finally to its dwindling current fortunes. By telling the story of one important regional newspaper, Christensen shows how influence and messaging matter in influencing the politics of a state and a region for generations.

This event will feature a presentation by Christensen followed by a conversation between the author and Dr. Meredith Clark, Associate Professor of Race and Political Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill.

This program is hosted by the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition and the Chapel Hill Public Library.

01/30/2025

Updated. musical selections from Brown Sugar Strings, as well as Jones Grove Baptist Church.

Address

100 Library Dr
Chapel Hill, NC
27514

Website

http://occrcoalition.org/events

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