An Afternoon in Chapel Hill

After a long weekend of warm, sunny October days, with the leaves finally revealing their autumn colors, Monday promised to be equally balmy and beautiful, before cooler weather sets in for Halloween, All Saints and All Souls Day, November. 

A good day, then, to meet a new friend for coffee in Carrboro and then run errands in Chapel Hill, including going to UNC's Davis Library to check out a book that is not available in Durham County. I deliberately parked downtown so I would need to walk through campus to get to the library. The point I pick to enter campus is a veritable allée of ginkgo trees, their yellow leaves illuminated by the dazzling sunshine.

I passed by a bright-red sculpture I had not seen before, designed to memorialize protests that preceded the removal of "Silent Sam," a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier that stood on campus for more than a century before it was toppled by protesters and then removed in 2108.  (Protests against the presence of the monument began as early as the 1960s, but really picked up steam and determination during the Black Lives Matter movement.) I just read that a tree has been planted in the spot where Sam stood vigil to The Lost Cause all those many years; next time I'm on campus I need to stop by there. "Forward Together, Not One Step Back!"

Walking across campus is an exercise in nostalgia. UNC, the nation's first public university, is where I went to law school, where my husband got his bachelors, masters, and law degrees, where our two children both went to college, and where I worked at the law school's career office from 2005 to 2022. I pass by The Old Well, the iconic symbol of the university modeled on the Temple of Love at Versailles. It's no longer a well of course, but a fountain, where a sip is supposed to bring luck in the form of good grades (many line up on the first day of classes for this purpose). I don't need those grades any more, but took a drink anyway. You never know when you might need some extra luck.

The law school has been located just off main campus since the late 1960's but before that it was in Manning Hall, right in the heart of the quad. And it was up those stairs and through those doors, on the morning of June 11, 1951, when Harvey Beech and J. Kenneth Lee walked into Manning Hall to register for summer school at the University of North Carolina School of Law, becoming the university's first Black students. Photographer Alex Rivera captured this moment in time with a vibrant and powerful picture -- I hope this link works so you can see it for yourself. 

Beech went on to become the first Black graduate not just of the law school but of the university itself. In 2004, near the end of his life, he was too ill to attend an awards ceremony, and asked a friend to deliver these words: “Use love to move up and on. Use love, not hate, to make a better world. . ..”

I arrive at Davis Library and take the elevator up to the 8th floor, accompanied by seven young women, some of whom are Black. Thank you, Harvey Beech, and Kenneth Lee, for opening those doors.

To a lifelong reader and English major what is more familiar, more wonderful than finding oneself in the peace and quiet of the stacks of a university library? What treasures await therein!

And then there's the moment when you spy the book you are looking for, in this case Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish, a 1980 novel set in Chicago’s Little Italy during the 1940s and 50s. It was republished by The Feminist Press in 1996, the edition which is sitting on the top shelf and which I check out.

I always love seeing this sign at the library exit. Makes me think of the young adult novel, a favorite of mine as a child, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, where the heroine, Claudia, plots to run away from home and hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with her little brother.

The way back through campus to my car was equally lovely.

As I approached my parking spot I walked by what was once the location of Spanky's restaurant, a hangout beloved by many UNC students and townspeople too. Great food, great atmosphere. Before it closed in 2018, after more than 40 years on Franklin Street, founder Mickey Ewell said that “people drove all the way from Washington [D.C.], Charlotte and all different parts of the country to have a last meal” there. I vividly remember sitting in my favorite spot when I could get it, the front window, perfect for people-watching, with my friend and roommate Sandy as we each drank a cold beer and dipped salty potato chips in mustard. No really, yummy! And when I worked at the law school and someone wanted to meet me for lunch, Spanky’s was always high on my list. But alas, even the southern restaurant that replaced Spanky’s is now gone and a chicken finger chain with disposable everything is slated to open next week.

I'm back at my car, the words of a favorite poem, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Spring and Fall: To a Young Child, floating through my head on this beautiful, nostalgic autumn day.

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.