About Stone Walls
“What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. … No, our love for this place is based on the fact that it is, as it was meant to be, the university of the people.” — Charles Kuralt, University of North Carolina bicentennial, 1993
The knee-high stone walls around UNC and Chapel Hill are evocative images. They have been replicated as an aesthetic throughout the town for two centuries. But as is the case with many things that bind people to the place, their symbolism hides half the story.
The Stone Walls newsletter aims for an unobstructed view.
Enslaved people built the early stone walls that became a defining feature for the town. They and their descendants, many of whom have lived nearby for generations, were long excised from the history and promise of this place.
This place was not meant to be the “university of the people” any more than “we the people” and “all men are created equal” has meant all the people or all men.
With this newsletter, I am using my platform and resources to tell historical stories, as best I can, that center unheard people. I understand the implications and complications inherent in being yet another white man telling stories of others. I take that responsibility seriously. I do not presume to speak for anybody, nor do I endeavor to do so. But I will try my informed best to think and write from angles often ignored. I have access to and knowledge of this history, and I intend to widen its imprint.
Finally, this newsletter is not about hating Chapel Hill or UNC. Love letters to them and their celebrated pasts are plentiful though. I love this place, in my own way, too. Because of that love, I hope for this place to evolve into a better version of itself, and better realize its potential. That starts with listening to what’s been obscured.
For more on this newsletter’s ethos, read the Stone Walls inaugural post.
About me
I, Mike Ogle, am a journalist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who has written for the New York Times, ESPN The Magazine, Sports Illustrated, New York, ESPN Books, Washington Post, News & Observer, Herald-Sun, and Charlotte magazine. My piece “On the Fourth Day in Chapel Hill” was cited in the Best American Sports Writing anthology. Another article examined the discrimination Martin Luther King Jr. faced visiting Chapel Hill and unearthed previously unknown connections between Dr. King’s trip and the prosecution of the First Freedom Riders here in 1947.
I spent two years investigating the life and murder of James Cates on UNC’s campus, and extensively researched the lynching of Manly McCauley. I have also taught at UNC’s School of Journalism and Media.
I am a member of the local NAACP branch and have served on its executive committee; am part of the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition (OCCRC) that works in coordination with the Equal Justice Initiative; and am on a community advisory committee formed by Danita Mason-Hogans, a seventh-generation Chapel Hillian, to assist her work on UNC’s Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward.
I am a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate who spent several years as a sports journalist before concentrating on Chapel Hill-area history, particularly under-covered topics of Black history and racism.
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Ideas or Suggestions
Have a suggestion, idea, question, or criticism? You can leave a comment on a post, visit me on Twitter, or write me directly at stonewalls1793 at gmail.
