The Pines Restaurant

1955 (via CHW)

Built (or remodeled?) in 1941 by/for William C. Coker, and operated by Jack Sparrow as a restaurant. The building was remodeled inside and out in late 1955/early 1956; Archie Royal Davis was the architect for the renovation.

From the April 18, 1941 CHW

From the February 17, 1950 CHW

January 1956 ad (via CHW)

1961 (via CHW)

View west, circa 1964

The Pines Restaurant was segregated, and thus was the scene of several Civil Rights protests:

"[On December 13, 1964] We drove out to the Pines, Chapel Hill's only elegant eatery, and walked in. The hostess dashed over as soon as we got in the door and asked us to leave. Dunne [the white student] didn't refuse, but he didn't leave. The manager, a Mr. Leroy Merritt, came on the scene. He exploded almost immediately: 'We're segregated! Everybody in Chapel Hill knows we're segregated! You got to leave right now!' Dunne spoke quietly about how he had made a reservation by phone and hadn't been told Negroes wouldn't be served, and pointing to me, said I was a visiting speaker and he had planned to have me out for dinner at the best place in town, and now he was terribly embarrassed, etc.... All this time the moral elite of Chapel Hill continued to come into the restaurant, walk by, and sit down to their dinners. And all this time Mr. Leroy Merritt got redder in the face and kept yelling, 'You gotta get out of here!' Then he called the police. They arrived almost at once .... The four of us were ushered out and, to our dismay, notified we would be arrested as soon as Mr. Leroy Merritt could get down to the station to sign the warrants. Would we be so kind as to come down to the station at 8 p.m. for arrest, by which time the warrants would be ready? Yes, we would. The arrest did not stop matters; in fact it had the opposite effect. A day or so later, another integrated group arrived at the Pines for dinner and were denied service. When the police arrived, the demonstrators went 'limp,' i.e., they relaxed, fell on the floor, and had to be carried out. Pictures of a policeman dragging a white coed across a rough parking lot, of two policemen more gingerly carrying an eighty-year-old Episcopal minister to a police car, were recruitment fodder to the growing group of demonstrators." (From Legal Problems in Southern Desegregation: The Chapel Hill Story. By Daniel H. Pollitt, June 1, 1965.)

"In those days, the basketball team was all white. They had many of their evening meals in a very fine local restaurant called The Pines. The Pines was one of the restaurants that was rigid about not admitting blacks. When the federal government passed a public-accommodations act, Dean Smith was willing to be a party to our congregation's effort to ensure that all the restaurants were complying. Dean and myself and a black student from the University of North Carolina went to The Pines. We asked to be served and with Dean Smith at the door, they could not say no. That was the opening of the door of The Pines restaurant." (from the Seattle Times, Mar 29, 1997.)