On December 4, 1994, Charlotte Smith, then a member of the UNC Tar Heels women’s basketball team, became the second collegiate women’s player ever to dunk. The first dunk had come nearly 10 years earlier when West Virginia University player Georgeann Wells accomplished the feat in a game against the University of Charleston.
Topics Related to UNC
On October 26, 1895, UNC fullback Joel Whitaker threw the first forward pass in football to his teammate George Stephens.The history-making throw happened in Atlanta where the Tar Heels were playing the University of Georgia Bulldogs. Whitaker was punting from the Carolina end zone and, to avoid the Georgia players charging him, tossed the ball forward. As luck would have it, Stephens was the one to catch the toss. It probably looked to many in the audience like the ball was knocked out of Whitaker’s hands and that the whole situation was an accident.
On March 29, 1982, UNC basketball Coach Dean Smith and his Tar Heels won the school’s first national title since 1957. The Tar Heels took on the Georgetown University Hoyas in New Orleans in final game in the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament that year.
On March 13, 1953, UNC-Chapel Hill students Carl Kasell and Charles Kuralt stepped up to the microphone for WUNC’s inaugural FM broadcast.After getting its start as a student-run AM station in the 1940s, the station made its transition to the FM band with future broadcasting greats Kasell and Kuralt. The station went on a six-year hiatus in 1970, after being taken off the air by technical difficulties and returned in 1976 as a professionally-run National Public Radio affiliate.
On February 12, 1795, Hinton James became the first student to enter the University of North Carolina. James, who had walked to Chapel Hill from his home in New Hanover County, was the only student for the first two weeks of the school year. Academically gifted, James helped organize the first literary club and debating society on campus. He was awarded a bachelor’s degree as one of the seven students in the university’s first graduating class in July 1798.
On February 9, 1956, basketball legend Phil Ford was born in Kannapolis.Ford was raised in Rocky Mount, where he graduated from high school in 1974.As a point guard at UNC-Chapel Hill, he led the basketball team to four NCAA tournaments. Ford’s accolades during his college career were many. In 1978, he capped off his senior year by winning the coveted John R. Wooden Award, given annually to the country’s most outstanding college basketball player.He graduated that year with a degree in business administration.
There aren’t many places in North Carolina—or the country, even—where you can see the power of archaeology more than at Town Creek Indian Mound in Montgomery County.
All this month we’re bringing you stories from North Carolina’s black history. Check back here each weekday for a new tidbit from our state’s African American’s past.