by Charly Mann

While Chapel Hill is proud of the athletic glory of past UNC sporting teams, famed musicians who once called the town home, and its magnificent setting and beauty, it is the large number of great minds that have inhabited the town that make it so extraordinary. While these individuals have not received the wide spread adulation and celebrity status of other residents, Chapel Hill Memories will try to rectify this oversight by occasionally profiling some of these people.

Growing up in Chapel Hill I was privileged to meet and get to know a wide array of distinguished professors, university administrators, writers and playwrights. One of these individuals was the greatly admired UNC professor of philosophy Maynard Adams. He and his family lived near me when I was young, and he first attracted my attention by hand digging with a pick ax, shovel, and wheel barrel a large bomb shelter under his house on Old Mill Road in 1962. As I grew older and got to read some of his books, as well as letters he would often write to my father, I gained an appreciation this man's intellect.

Maynard Adams in 1962, the year he built a  bomb shelter under his house

The following was written by Maynard Adams in 1996 (Adams lived from 1919 to 2003) 

Death simply terminates one's life, but death on the horizon takes on meaning; it forces one to try to wrap up one's life and bring it to a fuller and richer completion. My pending death, although frightening, especially when first confronted, has become an important part of my life. It keeps my life in clearer focus. Every day becomes more precious and I hope more fully lived. My consciousness has been raised and my love deepened; the world has taken on a new splendor. While all of this makes life more attractive and whets my appetite for more time, it makes death a source of meaning that redeems it somewhat.

Of course the devil is in the dying, and the wrenching and tearing of the lives closely woven with one's own.  There are blessings to be found even in the dying and the loss of a loved one, if we are open to them.

The following is a condensed version of a 13 page typed memoir Maynard Adams wrote in 1994 that I found stuck in one of my files.

I grew up on a family farm in Halifax County in south/central Virginia. My early life revolved around the farm, the local Baptist church, and the school. Both the church and the school drew me like magnets, for to me they were gateways to a higher reality and a wider world. My family and most of my neighbors had only a limited education, but they were religious people and had a profound respect for education. We had daily family Bible reading and prayer in my home. My father always said a good education was something you would never lose and nobody could take it away from you. By the time I was twelve years old I was committed to being a Baptist minister and planned to attend the University of Richmond as a ministerial student upon graduation from high school.

Even in high school I began to feel a tension between the simple orthodox religion of my home and church and my studies in school. By the end of my first year at the University of Richmond, my intellectual cramps were severe. I turned to philosophy in trying find a way to deal with them. In the fall of my sophomore year I wrote my mother that I was engrossed with certain philosophy books that I had to force myself to do the assignments in my courses and to go to bed at night. At that point I had not taken a philosophy course, but I went on to major in philosophy with the hope of resolving the tension between my religion and the culture dominant in my education. During this time, although deeply troubled, I worked in several churches in the Richmond area. In fact, I was pastor of two churches during my last two years of college. I expected to find a solution to my intellectual problems that would allow me to continue as a minister.

Maynard Adams in 1951 shortly after starting his career as a philosophy professor at the University of North Carolina 

Upon graduating from Richmond I chose Colgate Rochester Divinity School because I understood that it offered an approach that would reconcile Christianity and modern ways of thought; and I began that summer a M.A. program in philosophy and literature at the University of Richmond, which I hoped to complete in summer sessions while enrolled at Rochester. At Rochester I took to my studies eagerly, doing far more work in each course than was expected. The longest paper I wrote was over 500 pages in a course, and most of my papers ranged from 50 to 100 pages. I did this amount of work because of the hunger I had for understanding the subject matter. After receiving an M.A. from Rochester, I enrolled in Harvard University in 1944 to do more graduate work in philosophy. At Harvard I received another M. A. and a Ph D.

I became a modern naturalist, but I remained troubled about how and why the classical framework of thought that defined a value-and meaning-saturated world had been transformed into our modern scientific perspective that presents us with a purely factual world devoid of inherent structures of value and meaning. I have carried on a running philosophical critique of modern naturalism while I developed and argued for a full-fledged humanistic view of the culture and the world. The great revolution in Western civilization was occasioned; I contend, by a shift in our culture-generating stance toward the world. The classical stance was the humanistic perspective, which was defined by such questions as: Who are we? What does reality require of us? What is it that we ought to become and ought to do? and How can we understand the world and ourselves in a way that will further the human enterprise conceived in these terms?

2009 book Maynard Adams : Southern Philosopher of Civilization by Glenn Blackburn on the philosophy of Maynard Adams  (1919 - 2003)

On the other hand, modern Western civilization is defined by such questions as: How can we get what we want? How can we impose our will on the world and exploit it for our purposes? and How can we understand the world in a way that will give us manipulatory power over our environment? This shift led to the progressive elimination of humanistic concepts (especially the concepts of meaning and value). This, I contend, is what gave rise to subjectivistic theories of the humanistic dimension of the culture, including the language of lived experience, morality, politics, and religion. Furthermore it is what pushes contemporary thinkers towards the total cultural subjectivism that is proclaimed by the self- labeled postmodernists.

Although I tried for ten years to find a way of integrating the culture and of developing a unified worldview on naturalistic terms, I was forced to conclude that the culture and the world can be made whole again only within the humanistic perspective and in humanistic categories. My four major books taken together make this case against modern scientific naturalism and for a realistic humanism. They are Ethical Naturalism and the Modern Worldview (1960, 1973, 1985), Philosophy and the Modern Mind: A Philosophical Critique of Modern Western Civilization (1975, 1985) , The Metaphysics of Self and World: Toward a Humanistic Philosophy (1991), and Religion and Cultural Freedom (1993).

The other books I have published along the way are The Fundamentals of General Logic (1954), Logic Problems (1954), (with others) The Language of Value (1957), Commonsense Realism (1966), and The Idea of America (1977). In addition, I have published about 100 articles and reviews in professional journals, encyclopedias, and books; and I have written newspaper columns for many years on topics of public interest from an ethical or philosophical point of view. In addition, I produced and participated in twelve educational films; and I produced and participated in six one-hour television programs on The Idea of America.

Book by Chapel Hill philosopher and professor Maynard Adams

My primary work has been teaching and participating in the life of the universities where I have taught. I was a graduate assistant in philosophy at Harvard from 1944 to 1946 and a teaching fellow and freshman adviser in 1946 to 47. I was an assistant professor of philosophy at Ohio University in 1947-48, but I moved on to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1948, where I remained on the faculty for forty- two years, retiring in 1990. I have been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, the State University of New York at Albany, and the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. I have lectured widely in universities and in public forums.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been a good place for me to do my work. I always wanted my career to be in my native South. And The University has been good to me. I moved smoothly through the academic ranks, becoming a full professor in 1958, and was elected to a coveted Kenan professorship in 1971. I was chairman of my department from 1960 to 1965: director of the Curriculum on Peace, War, and Defense 1970-72, and chairman of The University faculty 1976-79. I served on numerous hoards and committees through the years.

I have been active in professional organizations. I help found and was president of the North Carolina Philosophical Society; I was president of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology; and I served on the executive committee and was chairman of the program committee of the American Philosophical Association. In addition to having helped establish and having served as director of the Curriculum on Peace, War, and Defense: I helped establish and was director of the Free World Institute in The University in the early 1950s to conduct a state-wide program to counter the McCarthy-like mentality in the Cold War. I was one of the co-founders (with a group of business and institutional leaders) , and served as a member of the Board of Directors, of the Tanglewood Center for the Study of Human Values in the 1970s. I proposed and was instrumental in establishing the Program in the Humanities and Human Values in The University in 1979; and I had a guiding role in the development and running of it for more than ten years. It is a program of weekend and week-long seminars for people from all across the region. I worked for eight years with, and was chairman of, the North Carolina Humanities Council. In the 1980s, I was chairman of the Governor's Taskforce on Science, Technology, and Human Values. And I have worked with local churches and schools in various capacities. In connection with the civil rights movement in the 1960s, I proposed and was chairman of Chapel Hill Community Action, Inc., which was one of the first such organizations in the nation. It was expanded into The Orange Economic Opportunity Commission, Inc. , and then into the Joint Orange/Chatham Community Action, Inc., which I chaired in its early years. It is still a functioning institution

1963 lecture by UNC philosophy professor Maynard Adams entitled Where is Religion in Philosophy?

My work with students, The University, the profession, the community, and the state has been most gratifying. The problems I have taken on in my philosophical writing and teaching are so large and so deeply situated in our culture that it is difficult to know whether I have had any effect, except with my own students and some others who may study my written work. But I have had some good students, both undergraduate and graduate. I have former Ph.D. students who are professors and administrators in universities all across the United States and a few in Canada and other countries. I am encouraged by the thought that one can never know what fruit one's ideas may hear.

While I hesitate to mention honors I have received, this memoir would be incomplete if I left them out. Perhaps the one that I have cherished most was election to the Kenan Distinguished Professorship in 1971. That same year I received The Thomas Jefferson Award from the McConnell Foundation, an Outstanding Educator of America Award for "'contributions to higher education and service to the community" from a national foundation, and the undergraduates at UNC-CH made me an honorary member of the Golden Fleece, their highest honorary society. In 1976, my book Philosophy and the Modern Mind was selected for inclusion in a series of "Contemporary Classics" for translation into several languages and distribution in many parts of the world by the U.S. State Department. In 1985, my book Ethical Naturalism and the Modern Worldview was selected for republication in a series of "classic works in their field" by the Greenwood Press: A division of Congressional Information Service, Inc. In 1988 I was given The North Carolina Adult Education Association's Special Award in recognition of "outstanding contributions to continuing education in North Carolina." In 1989, Wake Forest University gave me the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Also in 1989, I was presented with a volume of essays on my work by sixteen philosophers from around the country, edited by one of me former students on the faculty at Williams College; it is entitled Mind, Value and Culture: Essays in Honor of E. M. Adams. In 1992, the University of Richmond gave me the honorary Doctor of Humanities degree. Also in 1992, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill established an endowed distinguished professorship that bears my name. All of this was totally unexpected in each case and all the more gratifying for that reason.

The Philosopher of Chapel Hill, Maynard Adams

My Dad, William Robert Mann who was a UNC professor of mathematics, and Maynard Adams were great friends and loved talking about philosophy and religion. Later in life they would go on long hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains and engage in stimulating conversation along the trail. Fortunately many of their conversations have been preserved in writing, and the Wilson Library even has several audio recordings of their conversations in their archives.

The following is a letter my father wrote to Maynard when my father was 78.

Fall of 1998

Dear Maynard,

Since our lunch this past Monday I have been reading alternatively your Society Fit for Human Beings and Sokal's Fashionable Nonsense. I find much to admire in the former, and much to ponder in the latter.

The Age of Science, which dominated our youth, was a peak of intellectual achievement. The cloud of post modernism which is now sitting over us creates a pit of anti-intellectual darkness. We are in a state of free fall from the sublime to the ridiculous. Today underneath the glitter of scientific brilliance is a gestating growth of the most muddleheaded irrationality to be found in history. The nonsense spreading under the name of post modernism is not a blight rising from the swamps of illiteracy, but it is descending upon us from the highest levels of educational snobbery.

How can an age of such brilliance decline so quickly into irrational darkness? I think Chesterton answered that question when he said; "When men stop believing in God, they will believe in anything."

Bob Mann

Maynard Adams inscription to my Dad, Bob Mann, in his book A Society Fit for Human Beings

by Charly Mann

Few people know that the origins of Frank Zappa's musical genius come from Chapel Hill. It was Zappa's father, Frank Vincent Zappa Sr., who instilled an aptitude for music and love for the guitar in his son, and that all originated in Chapel Hill in the late 1920s. Frank Zappa Sr. was a student at UNC from 1926 to 1930. He had little money and first made ends meet by working as a barber in town. In 1928 Zappa met fellow UNC student Jack Wardlaw who was a banjo prodigy. Wardlaw was starting a group he called the Carolina Banjo Boys, and convinced Zappa he could further supplement his income as a guitar player in his band. In the these days the banjo was more popular than the guitar, and bands with good banjo players were in demand for dances and other social functions. 

Francis Vincent Zappa, father of Frank Zappa, UNC Chapel Hill student photo from 1928

Frank Zappa Sr. bought a guitar in Raleigh and for the next three years played in two very popular bands that were headed and organized by Wardlaw. Wardlaw's most famous band was called Jack Wardlaw And His Carolina Tar Heels and had thirteen musicians. Zappa learned to become a good guitar and banjo player from Wardlaw and became adept at many styles of music. In the Banjo Boys he played hillbilly and ragtime guitar, while in the Carolina Tar Heels he performed jazz music and Dixieland on both guitar and banjo.

Jack Wardlaw and His Carolina Tar Heels from 1929. Jack Wardlaw is in the white jacket. Francis Zappa played guitar with this group.

It is the musical versatility that Frank Zappa Jr. learned from his father that makes Zappa's music so intriguing and hard to categorize. In a career of just 25 years he released 70 albums in styles ranging from rock, classical, jazz, rhythm and blues, electronic, oratorios, symphonic ballets, to avante garde, all rooted in the diversity and originality that Zappa's father learned from UNC's Jack Wardlaw.

Senior photo of Frank Zappa's father, Francis Vincent Zappa, from University of North Carolina yearbook

After leaving UNC and his guitar and banjo playing career in 1930, Frank Zappa Sr. had a long career as a computer scientist and engineer. He remained  friends with Jack Wardlaw for the rest of his life. He retired from Lockheed in the early 1970s. His son Frank Zappa Jr. was born on December 21, 1940 and died in 1993 at age 52 of prostate cancer. Frank Zappa's two most popular albums were Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe. His only Top Forty single was the satirical Valley Girl which featured his daughter Moon Unit Zappa.

Frank Zappa with his mother and UNC alumnus and guitar playing father, Frank Zappa Sr.

Note: many people think that Frank Zappa's father was the actor Hugh Brannum who played Mr. Green Jeans on the children's television program, Captain Kangaroo. This is because on Zappa's very popular 1969 album Hot Rats there is a song called Son of Mr. Green Genes.

Jack (John) Wardlaw's Yackety Yack senior photo from 1930. He inspired Frank Zappa's father to become a guitar player and play in two of his bands.

Jack Wardlaw remained a performing musician the rest of his life playing banjo in various bands well into his nineties. He also ran a very successful insurance company in Raleigh. His Carolina Tar Heels became internationally popular in the late 1930s, and performed throughout the United States and Europe. On one tour a young singer named Peggy Lee made her big band debut with the band. Soon after that she became one of the most popular female vocalists in America when she joined the Benny Goodman Orchestra. In the 1960s and 70s Wardlaw led a banjo band called the Executives that often performed throughout the Carolinas and made frequent television appearances. Jack Wardlaw died in 2003.

by Susan Prothro Worley

The destination of choice for Chapel Hill kids in the 1960s was Franklin Street. I don't remember that area being referred to then as downtown. Whenever anyone I knew was headed that way, we said we were going "uptown," probably because that part of Franklin Street sits at the top of the hill that defines our town.

Friends enjoying a meal at Suttons Drug Store on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill

Franklin Street plays a central role in our memories of Chapel Hill just as it plays a central role in our town. It's Franklin Street that forms the backdrop for many of the things we remember best. Not only personal childhood experiences took place on Franklin Street - for me that would be going to the movies at the Carolina or Varsity, eating pizza at the Rat, browsing at the Intimate - but it's also the place we traditionally gather as a community, whether for the Beat Dook parade, street festivals, protest marches, or basketball celebrations.

Enjoying coffee and great conversation on the stone wall next to the UNC campus on the south side of Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill.

Looking back at a time we can never return to, it's natural to think of that past as a better era. When I was a child, there was much lamenting over the loss of our village atmosphere. A regular Chapel Hill Weekly series, Looking Back, included stories from past decades, highlighting the small town atmosphere of an earlier period. As much as I loved my hometown, from a young age I felt a sense of loss that Chapel Hill was no longer the special village it had been before I arrived. Along with that sense of loss, I felt some guilt because my family, having shown up in 1960, was part of the problem. It was because of newcomers like us that a formerly wooded area was carved into the developments of Coker Hills and Lake Forest. Without us, Eastgate Shopping Center may never have been built and Estes Hills Elementary School wouldn't have been necessary.

The face of a young girl strolling down Franklin Street near the Kidzu Museum

There I was though, along with my newly arrived neighbors and classmates, contributing to change and development but claiming Chapel Hill as our own just as generations before us had done.

At that time, Chapel Hill was a town where dogs roamed free and so did kids. Safety was not an issue we gave a lot of thought to. We biked and walked around town and campus without a sense of boundaries or fear.

Locally Grown Rooftop Music and Movies Series is held in downtown Chapel Hill on top of the Wallace Parking Deck during the summer.

When I think back to those childhood days uptown, it's easy to recall various experiences that might make the police blotter today. However, we didn't associate such episodes with a place or with a time period. We learned that scary things can happen in the world but, just because they sometimes happened on Franklin Street, that didn't mean Franklin Street was a threatening place to be.

Carolina blue eyes in a future Tar Heel scholar

Recently, a handful of Franklin Street merchants began expressing their frustrations about crime, street people, and the lack of parking downtown. It struck me as odd, first because it didn't match my reality of the vibrant place I visit. What was really puzzling was that it was coming from people who had every reason to promote a positive image of Franklin Street. It wasn't long before I started hearing the same rumblings from friends - not based on their experiences but on those complaints that were now being perceived as fact. It only takes a short time before rumors become conventional wisdom. And of course there are people who can come up with a negative story about an experience on Franklin Street...or any other street in America. Just as has been true in past times though, those random incidents don't define the place.

Michael Brown mural on the side of the NCNB building in downtown Chapel Hill

We warmly remember past characters of Franklin Street, chuckling at their eccentricities. Is it possible that some of the so-called street people sitting on a bench uptown could be the Franklin Street characters of today? The only way to find out is to get to know them.

The diversity of life in downtown Chapel Hill

Today many of the places and people we recall from our own childhoods on Franklin Street are gone. Just as people in the 60s lamented the loss of the village, it's easy for us in 2010 to dwell on the things we miss from our own pasts. There is a whole new generation of children though, and a new crop of students, and newcomers to town, and they are creating memories of their own. They may enjoy the view from Top of the Hill, marvel at Michael Brown's murals, check out the caricatures of local celebrities at Spanky's, or take their children to Kidzu Museum.

Enjoying Ben & Jerry Ice Cream on West Franklin street in Chapel Hill

For newcomers and oldtimers alike, there are plenty of merchants to counter the negativity of those whose glass is perennially half empty. Locally owned, thriving Franklin Street businesses, places like Med Deli, Chapel Hill Sportswear, The Varsity, and Chapel Hill Comics, are too busy serving happy customers to spend their time complaining.

Two young people on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill

A site like chapelhillmemories is a draw for those of us who remember the good old days. But it takes nothing away from yesterday's creaky wood floors at the Intimate Book Store to acknowledge the fun of identifying North Carolina musicians pictured on the walls of today's Pepper's Pizza. The joys of a small town have given way to the vibrancy of a small city. Missing the former shouldn't stop us from embracing the latter. If we do, we miss out on the very place that defines our community, uptown Chapel Hill.

Susan Prothro Worley has been the personification of Chapel Hill  for the last five decades. She eats and breathes  the place, and Carolina blue blood runs through her veins. She loves the history of the town, and adores its present. There is very little she does not like about Chapel Hill. She is the Executive Director of Orange County's Volunteers for Youth.

by Charly Mann

For years I lived on the edge of Chapel Hill surrounded by Duke Forest. Looking up at the sky I enjoyed seeing a wide variety of local and migratory birds.

A rare Bald Eagle soaring over Chapel Hill near Whitfield Road

At night when the moon began to rise I often enjoyed its luminescence. There was a peaceful essence flowing from the heavens that often sparked memories of my childhood days near the woods across from Greenwood Road.

The moon rising through the winter trees of Duke Forest

by Charly Mann

During the first 16 years of my life The Goody Shop was a Chapel Hill institution, yet I must confess I do not think I was aware of it during those years. Since starting Chapel Hill Memories ten months ago more than two dozen readers have suggested I write about this long forgotten restaurant. On every occasions I confessed my lack of knowledge, and suggested they were better qualified to write a piece on it, but sadly no one accepted my offer and I have now taken on the task of preserving the memory of this place.

Pete and Spero Dotron on The Goody Shop of Chapel Hill logo

Spero Dorton opened the Goody Shop in 1948 and it was located on the south side of Franklin Street near the Carolina Theater. During the 1950’s it was the most popular place on Franklin Street to hang out at. It sold more beer than any restaurant or bar in town, had incredible cheeseburgers, and almost the only subject for conversation there was UNC Sports. Spero had passion for Carolina basketball and football, and both teams had their dinners there before all home games.

Smoking and enjoying a beer and two beautiful UNC coeds at the Goody Shop in Chapel Hill in 1962

The head waiter at the Goody Shop was large black man named Bozo. He would flip you double or nothing for your bill. If you lost you paid double, if you won he paid your bill. Spero's father, Pete, was the main cook at the restaurant and often dripped ashes from the cigars he smoked into the food. In those days students did not have credit cards, and Spero would allow them to sign a little I.O.U. note called a chit. Many students left UNC owing Spero hundreds of dollars.

UNC students enjoying beer at the Goody Shop in 1955. Note typical student attire of the time and girl to boy ratio.

Tar Heel athletes and coaches were regulars at the Goody Shop. Legendary basketball coaches Frank McGuire and Dean Smith were friends of Spero's and ate there often. A former UNC student, Hal Kushner who is now an ophthalmologist in Florida, remembers Spero was talented at writing comic poetry and that Sports Illustrated even published a couplet he sent in after they did a feature on UNC basketball star Lenny Rosenbluth saying he was overrated. Spero wrote the magazine: “come on Sports Illustrated tell the truth/what have you got against Rosenbluth?”

UNC Basketball coach Frank McGuire in 1953. He was a regular at The Goody Shop.

From the  time The Goody Shop first opened in 1948 and throughout its first decade 75% of its sales were in beer, and by far the most popular beer was Pabst Blue Ribbon. Beer was served in bottles which students delighted in peeling the labels off of as they became more intoxicated. By the mid 1960s this trend was reversed and food sales were 80% of their sales and beer only 20%. In the 1950s many students formed drinking clubs that would meet at the Goody Shop after classes to drink beer. Spero said students simply drank more beer in those days because many of them were older and veterans of World War II or the Korean War. The Goody Shop closed every evening at 11 PM, but they had a back room where a poker game was usually played until the wee hours of morning.

We believe this is Bozo who worked at The Goody Shop driving this car in a parade in front of the Tin Can at UNC in 1949 

The Goody Shop like many other Chapel Hill cultural landmarks was a causality of the high rents on Franklin Street and the changes of time. By the late 60s when the Goody Shop closed "beer" bars had sprouted up all over downtown, and a restaurant where you could have a beer with fries and a cheeseburger seemed antiquated. After the Goody Shop closed Spero Dorton went into the real estate business in Durham, and Bozo got a job at UNC's Memorial Hospital.

This is a rare 1921 photo of Franklin Street. Note the name of this business is The Goody Shop. I assume Spero Dorton bought this establishment in 1948 and made it into a restaurant.

by Charly Mann

There are several stories that attempt to explain the origin of the name Tar Heel. The one I believe is accurate has highly racist overtones, and has been supplanted by more benign explanations in the last eighty years. My source is Kemp Plummer Battle, one of Chapel Hill most beloved and influential residents, who was President of the University of North Carolina from 1876 to 1891. For the last thirty years of his life until 1919, he spent much of his time diligently recording the history of Chapel Hill and the University. His two volume History of the University of North Carolina remains the definite source of information about the first 120 years of the university. What follows are the recollections of Battle who was born on December 19,1831and graduated from UNC in the class of 1849.

Kemp Plumber Battle, President of the University of North Carolina for 15 years and author of the History of the University of North Carolina

At the beginning of the Civil War in January of 1862 a group of black slaves in Mississippi were playing a game in which a copper penny was placed in the middle of a ring. Each man had a chance to dance over to coin and try to pick it up with their foot. The man who could pick it up and then dance with it out of the circle got to keep the penny. An especially dark black man who was referred to as a "darkey" kept winning the penny and the crowd watching the game became suspicious. A man in the crowd shouted," Dat nigger has got tar on his heels!" The man's foot was inspected, and indeed he did has tar on his heels.

Racist writings and cartoons sometimes appeared in UNC publications like this one from the 1913 Yackey Yack until almost 1960

This story was widely reported by Southern newspapers and soon Virginia soldiers started calling North Carolina soldiers Tar Heels because they said North Carolina was best known for producing "tar, pitch, and turpentine" The North Carolina soldiers enjoyed the nickname and declared Virginia soldiers would run away in battle with the Yankees, but the North Carolina soldiers would not run because they had tar on their heels. From then on people from North Carolina has been known as Tar Heels.

A cartoon with racist undertones from the 1912 Tar Heel