by Charly Mann

Little Red School House Kindergarten Class photo from December of 1952 (Class of 1953). Chip Clark, is in the 2nd row, next to last on the right, wearing a horizontally-striped shirt.  (Photo submitted by Peyton Clark)

 For many young Chapel Hillians The Little Red School House on Dogwood Drive in Westwood is our first memory of school. Even though many of us also attended Mrs. Wettig's nursery school next to the Porthole Restaurant, most of us were too young to recall that experience.

Little Red School House first grade class of 1955 – 1956 class photo
Front Row – left to right – Bill Patterson, Rob Patterson, Martha Houck, Posey Henderson, Candy Foxworth, Cely Carter
Middle Row l to r – Barbara Thomas, George Steel, Tommy Harriss, West Mattis, Dianne Gooch, Carl Tyndall
Back Row l to r – Jay Josselyn, Charles (Charly) Mann, Margaret Holman, Ronnie Justice, Harriet Good, Bruce Whitcher

LIttle Red School House Class of 1957 (photo from collection of Deborah Miller)

1st row: Andy White, Annis Arthur, Susan Jane Curtis, Claiborne Jones, Connie Jo Clifford, Chuckie Oberleitner, Julie Harris, Jay Cole
2nd row: Teresa Gerrity, Mary Mac Cox, Liv Taylor, Gail Basnight, Brian Seff, Johnny Lindahl, Debbe Wagoner Jimmy Vine
3rd row: Jane West, Jimmy Hunt, Katie Reed, Dewitt Ashby, Robbin Andrews, Askold Boretsky, Steven Chapin and Scott Klinghorn

I entered kindergarten at the Little Red School House in September of 1954 when I was four years and nine months old. (I recently found out the entering age of most students that year was between five years four months and six years old.) Even after nine months at the Little Red School, I recall having difficulty holding a pencil correctly which made it hard for me to draw or write, but I loved the songs we often sang together especially, Row, Row, Row, Your Boat and Frère Jacques which we did in three and four part rounds. I also loved my carpool from Greenwood each day because it contained most of my friends who were then in the first grade.

Charly Mann, in dark outfit with Davy Crockett coonskin hat, and Dianne Gooch, first girl to my right in kindergarden at Little Red School House Chapel Hill, NC 1955

Charles (Charly) Mann - rendition of Little Red School House (age 4)

The Little Red School House was a small private school that only offered classes in kindergarten and first grade. It was a throw back to education before the Depression, when most schools had total local automy and all grades were educated in a single classroom. By the time I started there, kindergarden was held on the lower level, while first grade was taught upstairs. The Little Red School House was praised by many Chapel Hill parents because their teaching system emphasized individual attention and recognition for each student in contrast to the Dewey system of education used in the public schools where everyone was taught as a group. At the Little Red School House every student was supposed to be taught at their own pace.

1954 – 1955 Chapel Hill Little Red School House Kindergarten Class
Brook Barnes, Bucky Barnette, Craig Barton, Dick Blum, Ruth Bowers, Stephen Creamer, Cyntia Davis, Timmy Edney, Walter Fields, Buddy Fine (now Bob Jurgensen), Cathy Goldsmith, Dianne Gooch, Harriet Good, Tommy Harris, Robby Hawkins, Martha Hill, Gwen Hyman, Margaret Holman, Warren Hook, David Jenner, Barbara Jones, Allan Josselyn, Shaun Julian, Charles Lanham, Marshall McIssac, Charles Mann, West Mattis, Robert Patterson, William Patterson, Louis Perlmutt, Bobby Perry, Claude Piantadosi, Dirk Schenkkan, Ross Scroggs, Anne Thomas Smith, William Sprunt, Carl Strowd, Barbara Thomas, Bruce Whitcher, Lucie White, Bobbie Whitehill

 
Little Red School House Graduation 1956

The Little Red School House was built by Walter Geddie Fields, Sr. His son, Walter Geddie Fields, Jr., and granddaughter, Patricia Fields Neubert, lived on Dawes Street, in Forest Hills. As a five year old girl, she would walk to The Little Red School House by herself up Dawes Street to Smith Ave, and then through the woods to the school house.

 
Little Red School House Class of 1958
Jim Baucom – Stagecoach Road, Bill Daniel – 30 Davie Circle, Lloyd Davis – 11 Lea Court, Gary Garrison,– 412 Westwood Drive, Laura Sue Gaskin – Farrington Road, Charity Hardison – 179-A Jackson Circle, Lee Harris – 113 Maxwell, Vicky Hearn – (lived in Carrboro), Anne Huskey – 403 McCauley, Kris Jurgensen – 410 Whitehead Circle, Pat Kenney – 11 Hamilton, Roberta Layman – 404 Westwood Drive, Dee Ligon – 9 Powell Street, Donna Lynch – 132 Mason Farm Road, Tom Marshall – 64 Barclay Road, Pam Martin – (lived in Carrboro), Susie Mattis – 204 Friendly Lane, Rusty Mead – Church of the Holy Family, Martin Myer III – 50 Hayes Road

The Little Red School House building is now a private home and the playground is a forest.

Little Red School House Chapel Hill Class of 1953
On front row Alex Taylor is second from the left, Bobby Cadmus is forth from left, Danny Caston is next, and Victor Vance is third from the right
On second row Andy Julian is first on left and Arthur (now Dan) Gifford is second from the right in stripped shirt, next to Arthur is Gail Poe 
On the third row Grove Burnett is in stripped shirt fourth from left, Gloria Burnett is sixth from left,  and Joe Diconstanzo is on the far right

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by Charly Mann

William Hayes Ackland was born into a wealthy family in 1855. Throughout his life his main pursuits were writing poetry, travel, society, and collecting art. He had no close friends, and had only one brief marriage when he was 40. He died in 1940 and his will started a ten year court battle that ended at the United States Supreme Court. As a , UNC received one of its most important and stately buildings, The Ackland Art Museum.

Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ackland had been a collector of art all of his adult life and wanted to leave his collection and an endowment for a museum to Duke University. Duke was to have received $1,700,000, of which $300,000 would go toward the construction of a museum. (That would be $4,500,000 in today's dollars for the building itself.) The only problem was Duke was not interested in accepting the terms of his will which stated the endowment would be managed by trustees Ackland had appointed, and that his body had to be entombed within the museum.

William Hayes Ackland, poet and art lover

After Duke's rejection Ackland‘s heirs fought in the courts claiming they should receive this money. Within a year the courts determined that the intent of the will was for the "advancement of the cause of art in the South". Because Ackland had mentioned Rollins College in Florida and UNC in an earlier will as possible recipients of the funds, both schools hired lawyers to secure the museum. Both of these schools said they would happily allow Ackland to be buried in the building. The District Court of the United States in Washington, DC ordered the trustees of the estate to determine which of these two schools could best carry out the spirit of the will.

Tomb of William Hayes Ackland in Ackland Art Museum Chapel Hill

After a detailed investigation and heavy lobbying by the state of North Carolina, the trustees stated that UNC was the best location for the Ackland museum. Their primary reason was because as a state institution the museum could receive financial support from the state of North Carolina if needed, and this would ensure its permanence. Also UNC was only eight miles from Duke, the first choice of Ackland, and Chapel Hill was at the center of southern culture. UNC also had a graduate program in art and Rollins did not.

Inscription over tomb of William Hayes Ackland

In spite of the trustees' recommendations, the court ruled that Rollins should get the museum. This time UNC appealed to the Supreme Court which in February of 1949 reversed the decision of the lower court, and gave UNC the Ackland museum and endowment. Finally after years of delays because of material shortages and design controversies the Ackland Art Museum was opened on September 20, 1958 and eighteen years after his death, William Hayes Ackland's body could finally be laid to rest.

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by Charly Mann

Tapestry from Ackland Art Museum Chapel Hill

Mending Stockings by Archibald Motley, Jr. (1891 – 1981). Motley was a black painter who did many paintings of upper-middle class black Americans in the early 20th century. This is a painting of his grandmother.

A Roman Couple by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Rubens is one of the best known Flemish Baroque painters and based this painting on a carving of an ancient Roman cameo.

 
St. John the Evangelist by VALENTIN DE BOULOGNE (1591 – 1632), Valentin was an Italian painter. St John has just written the first sentences of his gospel on the scroll in this painting.

Breton Woman and Haystacks by ÉMILE BERNARD (1868 – 1941) Bernard was a French post-impressionist painter and a friend and influence of Paul Gauguin.

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Damocles by RICHARD WESTALL (1765 – 1836) This is a very famous painting that tells Cicero’s famous tale of Damocles. The theme of the story is that for a powerful man, there's always danger, and that happiness is fragile.

Portrait of Mélanie de Forbin-Gardanne, Marquise de Villeneuve-Flayosc by Jean-Louis Le Barbier Le Jeune a relatively obscure 18th century French painter

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by Charly Mann

As one enters the Coker Arboretum from the northwest entrance next to the Chapel of the Cross  there is a monument that has gone unnoticed and unused for almost fifty years. It is a horse watering trough that was built as a memorial to Susan Williams Graham, wife of former University President Edward Kidder Graham for whom the Graham Memorial Building is named.

Susan Williams Graham horse watering trough at northwest entrance of arboretum. It is often unnoticed and long neglected. We hope a sign will be erected explaining its history. 

Well into the third decade of the twentieth century horses were the primary means of transportation in Chapel Hill. Even as a handful of automobiles began appearing on the poorly maintained dirt streets of town around 1910, there would be still be hundreds of horses every day coming down Franklin Street pulling carts of goods and carriages with professors and merchants. In 1918, the automobile in Chapel Hill seemed more like a novelty, and the Susan Williams Graham large horse trough was erected in the center of the town's business district in front of the University Methodist Church. There, horses drank water while their owners conducted business.

There were several horse stables in Chapel Hill into the late 1920's. The two most popular were behind the downtown Post Office and across the street from where the sundial is located.

By 1956, horses had disappeared from downtown and the trough stood abandoned and daily scratched by parked cars whose fenders protruded over its edge. In November of that year the University Buildings and Grounds committee headed by botany professor H.R. Totten decided to move the trough to the rear entrance of the Episcopal Church where Mrs. Graham had been a devoted member.

The University Methodist Church at 150 East Franklin Street Chapel Hill, NC. From 1918 to the late 1940's as many as three hundred horses a day would drink water from the water trough in front of the church. 

The inscription on the trough reads: "The waters of truth run freely; drink when and where you may." Today only birds drink from the trough after it rains.

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by Dr Harold Kushner

I first met Professor Mann in the fall of 1958 when he walked into my math 15A classroom in Phillips Hall. He was dressed in a tan gabardine double breasted suit fashionable in the 1930's, a white shirt with the collar buttoned and no tie. His hair was reddish brown, abundant and unruly, and he was thin, but full cheeked with ruddy complexion. He looked like a young English vicar but he could have been a student, for in those days there were lots of older students implementing their GI bills. He was 38 and the youngest full Professor on the faculty.

Painting of former UNC Mathematics Professor Robert Mann by his grandaughter Kathryn Mann

But, he assumed his position in the front of the class and began teaching immediately with great authority. He spoke in fluent and eloquent paragraphs with exquisitely precise language, but pronounced in soft southern syllables. About five minutes into his presentation, a young male student asked no one in particular who he was. He stopped, and said, "I'm sorry, my name is Bob Mann." And wrote "Robert Mann" on the blackboard.

That began my 48-year relationship with Professor Robert Mann. I took six courses from Professor Mann and when it was time to apply for medical school, I went by his office and asked him if he would write me a letter of recommendation. He was standing in the office smoking a cigar and blowing the smoke into a cigar box which had holes cut into it, and the holes were covered with Saran wrap. He explained that he was investigating the mathematical description of exhaust gases from rockets in the then very nascent space program. When I asked him if he would write a letter for me, he responded with great alacrity: "of course." And he stopped what he was doing, picked up a lead pencil and a yellow legal pad and proceded to write the most beautiful and persuasive letter a prospective med school applicant could ever have. He tore the page from the pad, and handed it to me and said to use it as I saw fit.

His knowledge was encyclopedic; his brilliance was luminous. He formulated the Mann Iteration for fixed point analysis, wrote an advanced calculus textbook which was the standard college text for many years, and he taught with such passion and inspiration that it was a wonderful gift to be in his presence. I used to sit with him at Emerson Field and watch baseball games just for more exposure to his wisdom and judgment.

"Bob" Mann in his office on the third floor of Phillips Hall at UNC Chapel Hill where he enjoyed nothing more than helping his students

Once after a particularly trying and rigorous exam period, I showed up at his office, unkempt, bleary eyed and unshaven, dressed in raggedy Bermuda shorts and a tee shirt (and this was in the days when boys dressed in khakis and oxford blue shirts from Milton's) to see what my grade was. He gave me the news, and then asked if I would like to accompany him to Danziger's Tea Room to have lunch with Mrs. Mann and him. I demurred because of my appearance; but he was completely oblivious to my inappropriate dress. It was unimportant to him. He saw through the superficial.... straight to the heart of a person or a problem.

I recall that we had an earnest student in the class named Mendenhall. He asked Dr Mann a question one day, and Professor responded with great patience; "As usual, Mr. Mendenhall, your problem lies with the ambiguity to the antecedent of the relative pronoun." And he advised me on several occasions, even into the 90's, to attempt to avoid pronouns in my discourse if possible. He was a very strict prescriptive grammarian. Once a student asked for his help on a problem, and Dr Mann asked him where he was going with a step. The student said, I really don't know where I'm going. "In that case," Dr Mann said, "you should read Alice in Wonderland." When the student looked perplexed, Dr Mann reminded him of the Cheshire Cat's admonition to Alice: "if you don't care where you are going, it doesn't matter which direction you take", and he reminded us that Lewis Carroll taught Math at Cambridge.

Once, he asked me to baby-sit for him when he lived in the house on Old Mill Road in Greenwood, before he moved to Whitehead Circle. I agreed, and we went out in the parking lot to drive over to his home in his car. We must have spent 30 minutes looking for his car, before he remembered that he didn't bring his car that day, and had been dropped off.

I left Chapel Hill in 1961 and wrote him erratically. Then in 1980, my daughter came to Chapel Hill and took one of his classes. He was already family folklore. So when I went up to visit her, she arranged for us to have lunch together, and we resumed our friendship. He came to see me each year for 8 or ten years, and I would come to visit him in the house on Whitehead Circle, and met his friends. He loved to dance, and play tennis with much guile and wickedness, and read philosophy and study theology, and fight against what he thought were the destructive currents of academia. When he came to see me, he enjoyed walking on the beach, the conviviality of a good meal and wine with friends, and he even went to surgery and watched me operate. He never lost his sense of wonder or his love of learning. I have long since forgotten the math that he taught me. But he taught all of his students to think clearly, objectively, and logically, and to communicate with precision and exactitude. I often recall his lessons when I have a difficult problem to solve, and think how he would approach it. In a man's life, perhaps one has two or three teachers who have been profound influences on his direction and maturation. I can say one person stands head and shoulders above the rest, as the prime mentor of my life, save my own father. My relationship with Professor Mann shaped and enhanced my life as it did to countless others, and we have been made so very much richer by the association. I am deeply grateful to him for all that he gave me. 
 

Professor William Robert Mann congratulates the first three black undergraduate students to be admitted to the University of North Carolina on September 15, 1955. He is shaking hands with Leroy Frasier. His brother Ralph Frasier is on the right and on the left is John T. Brandon.

At this time there was strong resistance in Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina to admit black students. Robert Mann was the only professor to formally greet the students. A few years later, in 1957, a leading member of the UNC medical faculty, Dr. W. C. George, wrote a four piece article entitled The Negro Race is Biologically Inferior for the Daily Tar Heel that argued against ever integrating the races. Even then, few on the campus or the community took issue with this belief.

The W. Robert Mann Award is given each year for excellence in actuarial science. Plaques bearing the names of winners are located in the undergraduate study room in Hanes Hall.

In 1967 Professor Mann received the Tanner Outstanding Teacher Award from the University of North Carolina.

W. Robert Mann Fund

This is a fund of the Curriculum in Mathematical Sciences that honors the outstanding undergraduate teacher who retired in 1986 after a 37-year career at UNC-CH. The fund enriches the educational experience for students in the curriculum by providing career information, support for technology, and possibilities for interaction for students in that program.

Contributions to this fund can be sent to:
     Ms. Rhonda Inman
     Department of Mathematics, CB #3250
     Phillips Hall
     University of North Carolina
     Chapel Hill, NC 27599

You can also contribute through the UNC Development Office by mailing a check made out to:
     UNC-Chapel Hill to Office of University Development
     Post Office Box 309
     Chapel Hill, NC 27514-0309
and designating that it go to the Department of Mathematics. You can contribute online through the web site carolinafirst.unc.edu
 

Final words from Amanda (a college professor and artificial intelligence researcher)

While it's not as exciting as my friend who managed to buy a many-hundred-dollar-valued autographed book for a couple of bucks recently, I had what I think was a very cool used book experience yesterday. I spotted a copy of Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind on the $1 rack outside the local used book store, which I've been curious to skim. Well, it was on the cheap rack because there are notes scattered through the margins of the book, but they're tidy notes, so I decided to buy it anyway. However, on closer examination, the book was labelled as having belonged to a "W. Robert Mann", which any math major will immediately identify as the name of one of the authors of Advanced Calculus the classic . Granted, it's plausible that multiple people would share this name, but the previous owner was also kind enough to note that the book was purchased at McIntyre's Book Shop, which is in Pittsboro, NC, not far from UNC, where Dr. Mann is listed as a professor emeriti. And the comments clearly come from someone fluent in mathematics. So, I am going to chose to believe that I'll be reading the criticisms of the man whose textbook introduced me to advanced mathematics. His very first note reads:

One of the seductive fascinations of mathematics is that every subject turns out, in the long run, to be merely a small part of something else.
William Robert Mann

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by Charly Mann

On June 25th 1963, the N.C. General Assembly enacted a law entitled An Act to Regulate Visiting Speakers at State Supported Colleges and Universities. Leading conservatives in the state led by Jesse Helms, who was then doing a nightly commentary on WRAL TV news, opposed left-wing thinkers being allowed to speak and promote their ideology on the UNC campus. The law had been provoked because Milton Rosen, the head of a group called Progressive Labor that was advocating civil rights for blacks but was also supportive of the then radical Maoist communists; spoke on the Chapel Hill campus in 1962. The law prohibited communists, people who advocated the overthrow of the United States government, and anyone who had ever invoked the Fifth Amendment in a hearing that was looking into Communism or subversive behavior, from speaking on the UNC campus.

Jesse Helms was the news director at WRAL in Raleigh and gave nightly editorials during the news from 1960 to 1972. He was the leading proponent of the Speaker Ban

Many UNC students and professors opposed the law on the grounds that it violated the “free-speech” provision of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It was also widely believed by many in Chapel Hill that the real aim of the law was to prevent leading civil rights leaders who advocated demonstrations, boycotts and sit-ins as a means to end to segregation from coming to UNC. Many on the right in the state believed communist and other left-wing groups were actively trying to infiltrate the University.

The biggest test of the ban came on March 9, 1966 when a group of UNC students invited Herbert Aptheker, a member of the communist party, and Frank Wilkinson a radical civil rights advocate to speak at UNC. Because of the ban the two were denied permission to speak on campus, and in and act of defiance they spoke to a crowd of almost 3000 students just over the stone wall between Graham Memorial and the Battle, Vance, and Pettigrew buildings on Franklin Street that separated UNC from downtown. Neither of these men were particularly inspiring speakers, and the majority of the crowd was there as either an act of protest to the Speaker Ban Law or curiosity.

Herbert Aptheker was a Marxist who had previously spoken at UNC in the 1950's. In 1966 he had to speak over a wall because of the Speaker Ban

On February 19, 1968, the federal court in Greensboro said The Speaker Ban law was invalid because it was too vague. The legislature did not attempt to revise the law, and ever since there has been no restriction on who can speak at UNC, though it is now not unusal for consevative speakers to get shouted down when they try to speak on campus. Recently both former congressman Tom Tancredo, and six-term Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode had to end their speeches because of the shouts of protestors.

Frank Wilkinson speaks just outside UNC campus over a wall in Chapel Hill in 1966 during Speaker Ban

For those who think Jesse Helms and North Carolina were particularly reactionary in these days, I need to remind you that in 1960 in California, a liberal governor and legislature enacted an even more restrictive speaker ban aimed at the University California at Berkeley. It was the California precedent and law on which North Carolina, three years later, would model its own Speaker Ban law. The California law was enforced for five years until January of 1965. 

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