Chapel Hill citizens gathered at the Peace and Justice Plaza for the annual Peace and Justice Nominee Ceremony on Sunday.
Each year since 2009, the post office plaza and its granite tribute marker are dedicated to community members who have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to furthering the causes of peace and justice in Chapel Hill. Members must be nominated post-mortem.
This year, the two honorees are Chapel Hill Town Council member William “Bill” Thorpe and UNC men’s basketball coach Dean Smith.
In addition to serving as head coach for 36 years, earning two national championships and being named National Coach of the Year, Smith was a social activist in Chapel Hill. He encouraged places in downtown Chapel Hill to desegregate and recruited the first African-American basketball player to the then-all-white team. For his activism, President Barack Obama presented Smith with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, one of the highest accolades awarded in the nation.
At the ceremony on Sunday, Dean Smith was honored with remarks from both his son, Scott Smith, and Bobby Gersten, UNC’s oldest living basketball alumnus.
“Everyone was equal in my father’s eyes; he was a man of God, ” Smith said. “That’s why he did what he did. Not because it was popular but because it was right.”
Town Council member Thorpe was also honored in Sunday’s ceremony. Thorpe served on the Chapel Hill Town Council for a total of 11 years.
Thorpe is most known in Chapel Hill as the council member that initiated legislation to rename Airport Road to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a change made May 2005.
Three years before Martin Luther King Jr. Day was declared a national holiday in 1986, Thorpe convinced Chapel Hill to become one of the first municipalities to celebrate his birthday.
