Here is a look at our recent visit to chapel hill, North Carolina. The cspan cities tour is exploring the american story. As we take book tv and American History tv on the road. With the support of our cable partners, we traveled to chapel hill, North Carolina. Over the next hour, we will go to notable locations, speak with experts about the citys history and talk with some history makers themselves. In a moment, the story of the university of North Carolinas planetarium and the role it played in early nasa missions. Following that, in ten minutes, a conversation with howard lee, chapel hills first africanamerican mayor and the first africanamerican mayor elected in a majority white southern city. Then in 30 minlutes, the histor of uncs basketball tour as we tour the Basketball Museum. We will speak with an author on the academic scandal that involved the universitys athletic department. We will end our special with local lawyer rufus edmonston talking about delivering a subpoena to president nixon and his other experiences as a deputy chief counsel on the Senate Watergate committee. We still talk about the role that we played on the front lines of the cold war, because the space race was a major, Major Initiative within the cold war. T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Zero. Ignition. We are on the campus of the university of North Carolina at chapel hill. Im standing in front of the morehead building, home of the morehead planetarium which is now the morehead planetarium and science center. John morehead, iii, from a famous North Carolina family, his grandfather was governor of North Carolina. He attended carolina as an undergraduate student in chemistry. Made an accidental discovery in a Chemistry Lab as an undergraduate that led to the founding of Union Carbide and from that he became an extremely wealthy man. In the 30s when he conceived the idea what you did as a leading edge Science Education contribution would be building a planetarium. Whether when we opened, it was the first planetarium in the south. His contribution was significant. Were also the first planetarium anywhere in the world on a university campus. He visited other planetariums. He visited the leading lens manufacturer in the world. They arguably still are. In germany. He had a model two projector installed which was the very best in the world. His original vision was to be a place of education and enlightenment. Here is a photograph released by the soviets. This is a track of what you will see in the lower half of your television screen. Be sure that you watch very, very carefully. I see it. In the center of the screen in the lower third. In the late 1950s, the United States government in response to sputnik being launched and advancement of the soviet union and their technology, especially with rockets and space exploration, u. S. Government was felt threatened and like there needed to be a response. Nasa was formed in the late 50s. Shortly thereafter, announcement was made that we were going to eventually send humans into space. Our director at the time and the head of nasa at the time communicated about the possibility of this. The idea being that as the ancient mariners did, sailing the seas, using the stars as a way to navigate, these new pioneers could be able to use the stars just in case their Navigation Systems would fail. So from 1959 to 1975, morehead planetarium trained all the astronauts. I like to say that unc chapel hill is the only university in the country that can claim 62 astronauts as alumni. Because they came here for continuing education courses. The morehead team always used pretty primitive technology themselves throughout the training. We had the projector which was eventually replaced in 1969 with a model six which was a better projector. The philosophy of the training stayed the same. The main technology, if you want to call it that, that they used was a barbers chair. Then different wooden or cardboard hood attachments that they would attach to the chair to simulate whatever the capsule is. The idea was that whatever you could do to reorient the astronauts. A barbers chair seemed to work well. Could spin, it could rotate. You could pitch. All these things had to be simulated. That would be what the astronauts would experience when they were in space. Those 62 astronauts that came here for celestial Navigation Training needed to know the night sky better than anyone. They learned specific constellations, specific stars that they could relate to. They could figure out where they were in space in relation to where those constellations were. You have to remember that they had no horizon when they were in space to reference. Their vision was restricted through by the size of the windows. They may have only equipment failure, including the Navigation Systems he used his knowledge gained from morehead and training he received here to relocate and actually manually reenter earths atmosphere. Interestingly enough, that was the only one that of that mission, of that series of missions that was landed manually. It was the most accurate splashdown in the history of that series of missions. So it ended, 34 hours, 20 minutes, 31 seconds. The apololo 12 mission was impacted. There was it was struck by lightning on takeoff. What the hell was that . I lost a bunch of stuff. Roger. Throughout the Navigation Systems, the crew was able to use their knowledge of the stars, again, through the celestial Navigation Training here, to recalibrate their Navigation System that was thrown out from the lightning storm. They were able to reset pretty early in the mission. Then they were able to complete their mission. Apollo 13 is probably the most Famous Mission that did not land on the moon in the apollo series of missions. There was an explosion and a fire. We have a problem here. We have had a hardware restart. Houston, we have a problem. There was a debris field. The crew, they could not see where they were throughout the mission because of the debris cloud that surrounded the spacecraft. When they aborted the mission to land on the moon, they orbited the moon, heading back to earth right before they entered earths atmosphere, the debris field cleared. They were able to look out their windows to confirm that they had adjusted their Navigation Systems correctly. Again, they used their knowledge gained from morehead training to ensure they were on the right path and they made it home safely. Houston, we show you, it looks great. At morehead, we like to say we trained astronauts and we are training future astronauts. So we want every visitor here to see that the sky truly is not the sky is not even the limit. That there is an entire huge universe out there that the pioneers of tomorrow are looking at. The challenges of deep space but also the challenges here on earth. The things we are learning today, we have no idea how it will advance us. So what we want is for the people, especially the children that walk through the doors of morehead to know that whatever contribution that they can make is an important contribution. We have no idea where it will take us and how it will impact us. Howard lee was the first africanamerican elected mayor in a majority white southern city. Coming up, we sit down with mr. Lee to talk about serving as chapel hills mayor in the 1960s and 70s and the challenges he faced while in office. Mayor lee, why did you decide to run for mayor of chapel hill . Well, it was probably more of an accident than it was on purpose. I went to a friend of mine and asked him if he would consider running for mayor because i frankly didnt think a black person had any prayer of being elected mayor of chapel hill. He did not want to do that and couldnt persuade me to do it. What he did was to go to the local newspaper and tell them he had a scoop, which is that i planned to run for mayor. The newspaper, without even checking, printed that story as a front page headline. That, of course, split the chapel hill community. Following that, i had pressure on both sides. Pressure from one group thinking it was the most exciting thing since winning the ncaa championship. Another group thinking it would be the dumbest thing anybody could think of doing. Even in the black community, there was concern that if i were to run for mayor, it wouldnt do much of anything except exacerbate the race problem, which had been ugly through the years. I only ran, finally, because of one person who said to me, you shouldnt run for mayor because the time isnt right. I had been hearing that all my life, that as a black person living in the south and growing up, i was told the time wouldnt be right. I just decided, well, lets make it right. Thats when i declared i would run for mayor. Thats how it all started. I chose to run for mayor not necessarily to win, because i frankly still didnt think i had a prayer of winning. Then i won. From that point on, it was a whole different life for me. I remember turning to my wife at the time the victory was announced and said, okay, now that ive got it, what the heck am i going to do with it . But of it the beginning of a new life and certainly been a very good life for me. Where did you begin your life . Where did you grow up . I grew up in a little town southeast of atlanta. It was a town that was the site of a big rock quarry. They produced a lot of grain and rock that was shipped all over the world. That was the main source of jobs. It was actually a country town. My parents lived on a sha sharecroppers farm when i was born. I lived on that farm with my grandparents until i was 8 before moving more into the urban area of that section of the state. Grew up in segregated south. Were there moments where you realized that your life was apart from other peoples and that you were being separated from other folks . Yes, that had come a time when i realized that we just werent being treated fairly. Number one, the georgia klan was organized six miles in stone mountain, georgia, from where we lived. Every friday afternoon, the klan would hold a rally in a big field across from our house and burn a cross. That implanted in my mind the idea that this was a dangerous group for us, but we were also being intimidated and bullied and i didnt like that. But then i became very i had my first very best friend was a white boy. And he and i were inseparable until we reached the age of 15. When we reached the age of 15, his parents told him he could no longer be my friend and that he as a white boy was better than me and, therefore, he and i could no longer hang out together. He came to me and told me that story, which was amazing. And he was he felt horrible about it. But he had no basis of not obeying his parents. That split us up. We never had contact again. I became very angry as a result of that. Then engaged in my first protest on a saturday morning, i will never forget it, i was in the town and wanted to go in the bathroom. Went in what was at that time called a colored bathroom. It was a unisex bathroom. It was dirty with oil and grease and tires in the bathroom. I just refused to use it. I dont know why. But on that particular occasion, i just simply said, im not using it. So i went into the white mens bathroom. So i went into the white mens bathroom, used the white mens bathroom. And should have come out and gone on my way. But i decided since im here, i might as well check out the white womens bathroom. So i went in the white womens bathroom and i was discovered by the owner of the store. And when i came out, a group of men were waiting. They pushed me around and started beating me up. But the one thing that my dad had told me in the south as a black boy, you better learn how to run. On that case, it served me well because i was able to get a way and i could outrun these guys. And my whole life was reshaped from that one incident. Up to that point, my goal was to grow up, move to new york or anywhere outside the south. I just knew i didnt want to be in the south. But my life changed in such a way that after that experience i committed to myself that i would never, ever leave the south and i would stay and do whatever i could to make sure that i gained some ownership of my home area. And the second promise i made to myself is that i would never try to take the system headon again. I would be smart enough to go ahead and tackle the problems that i feel need to be dealt with without being confronting in the process of doing it. So that was the beginning, i think, of what ultimately transformed me into the person i became for the rest of my High School Years and then on through college and to this point. What brought you to chapel hill . Graduate school. When i finished my graduate work, duke offered me a job as a researcher with a Ford Foundation funded program. We had planned to go back to georgia. And they offered me more money than i ever dreamed. And we accepted i accepted the job. And came along with that job was a possibility of living in duke forest, which at that time was a very Prestigious Development around Duke University. But for some reason we decided we wanted to stay in chapel hill. How would you describe chapel hill at that time . Chapel hill was a schizophrenic community. It was schizophrenic because it had this liberal image. And thats what sucked us in, is and there were there was a strong progressive, liberal community in chapel hill that really were trying to break down the racial barriers. But then if one looked closer, it was also one of the most discriminatory communities in the area. Because there was no middleclass. All the blacks lived in the western section of chapel hill, and they would they were the ones who did most of the media work in chapel hill because the job inventory was not very broad. And most of the townspeople who were not University Connected were old southerners who really had anywhere from prejudicial attitudes to very strong prejudicial attitudes. My wife and i, upon moving to chapel hill, had difficulty buying a house, which we forced a realtor into selling. And after we moved in, we lived under the threat of death for the better part of a year for both ourselves and our children. So chapel hill was very segregated. So when we bought our house in colony woods, which was in the eastern part of chapel hill, that was the first time a black family had bought a house in outside the traditional black community. And it was very tenuous because black folk thought we felt we were too good to live in the black community. And they really didnt see that if we could open up opportunities and show that housing could be available to people regardless of ethnicity that it could make a difference in terms of how the community resolved many of its conflicts. Over time, it did come to that. And of Course University people were very proactive. Because a lot of these folk were coming here where they simply did not buy into the southern tradition of segregation. The restaurants had, by the time we got here, had started to break down the discriminatory barriers. And most of the demonstrations, were some of the nastiest demonstrations took place in chapel hill. On one occasion a group of kids were sitting in at a restaurant and a waitress goes to the bathroom, urinates in a cup and comes out and starts putting it on their heads. That got a lot of criticism in chapel hill as well as across the state of incoming in. North carolina. But gradually things started to improve, and they improved quickly. 1969, what is the reaction to you winning becoming mayor of chapel hill . Well, my first reaction was lying to my wife not thinking i was going to win. I did not write an acceptance peach. I did not plan a celebratory event. I was just sitting around Smoking Cigars and having fun and getting ready to go home and get back to my position at duke. But then i won. And i looked at my wife and said, oh, now that i got it, what the heck am a going to do with it . And it was such joy and such elation in chapel hill. Not just in chapel hill. Once the word got out that i was on the verge of winning, people started to come in from durham. Some folk from raleigh, greensboro. They sent students down to campaign in the campaign. And i was not here when unc won its first ncaa championship, but i was told that the crowds in the street were absolutely amazing. That was what happened the night of my election. And the reaction was mixed. There was some people, some newspapers printed stories that chapel hill elects a black power mayor. Some wrote that radical elected mayor of chapel hill. And so there were those responses. There were others that recognized the historical aspect of what had just occurred. I did not know until that night that there had never been a black mayor of a majority white municipality. We dont think ever, but certainly since reconstruction. And that started to make the headlines. But even more pleasant part is that even my hometown paper had a positive story. Atlanta journal had a positive story. And i was confident that my election certainly put a small fact that martin king had set the stage for this to happen. And i think if it had to happen chapel hill was the place it should happen. And im just obviously very delighted that i was the person who was in the middle of that. Cspan is in chapel hill, North Carolina where we are learning about the citys history. Up next, we take you to the citys north side neighborhood to the Jackson Center to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We are in chapel hill, North Carolina, at the marion cheek Jackson Center. The marian cheek Jackson Center is a place where we preserve the history of the north side tin top communities. Behind me are photographs that took place here in chapel hill in the 60s. In