University of North Carolina

University of North Carolina main campus at Chapel Hill; state supported; coeducational; chartered 1789, opened 1795, the first state college to open as a university. In 1931 the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (now North Carolina State Univ., founded 1887, opened 1889) at Raleigh, the Woman's College of the Univ. of North Carolina (founded 1891, opened 1892) at Greensboro, and the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were consolidated under the present name. The university also has campuses at Asheville (1927), Charlotte (1946), and Wilmington (1947). A leading Southern university, it has a noted university press and institutes for research in folklore, the natural sciences, fisheries, statistics, and Latin American studies. The Raleigh campus has an outstanding school of textiles. Since 1972 the university has been part of the Consolidated Univ. of North Carolina, which includes nine other universities and the North Carolina School of the Arts at Winston-Salem. There is a noteworthy art center and a planetarium, and the university library has an outstanding collection of North Caroliniana.

Bibliography: See A. Henderson, The Campus of the First State University (1949); L. R. Wilson, The University of North Carolina, 1900-1930 (1957); P. Russell, These Old Stone Walls (1972).

Carolina Playmakers, writing and producing group founded at the University of North Carolina (1918) by Frederick Henry Koch (1877–1944), who had founded the Dakota Playmakers in 1910. The North Carolina group, now called the Playmakers Repertory Company, in their own theater and during frequent tours through the Southern states has been influential in the little‐theater movement as a leader in regional and folk drama. Plays by student writers, including Thomas Wolfe and Paul Green, have been published in a series of Carolina Folk‐Plays.

Klopfer v. North Carolina 386 U.S. 213 (1967), argued 8 Dec. 1966, decided 13 Mar. 1967 by vote of 6 to 3; Warren for the Court, Harlan and Stewart in dissent. Under North Carolina's “nolle prosequi with leave” law, challenged in this case, a prosecutor could indefinitely suspend prosecution on an indictment without having to provide a reason to the court. Frustrated by a prosecutor who after his inability to obtain a conviction at a first trial decided to reinstitute charges but suspend prosecution indefinitely, Klopfer, the defendant, pressed for a trial or dismissal of charges. When neither was forthcoming, he attacked the law and the prosecutor's decision on the grounds that his Sixth Amendment guarantee of a speedy trial had been denied.

In accepting Klopfer's arguments and extending the Sixth Amendment speedy trial guarantee to the states under the same standards that apply to the federal government, the Supreme Court also gave its first significant interpretation of the Sixth Amendment's right to a speedy trial. It held that the right was “as fundamental as any of the rights secured by the Sixth Amendment” and traced it back to “the very foundation of our English law heritage” (p. 223). Furthermore, the Court ruled, although the accused was neither being held in custody nor subject to restrictions on his movement, nevertheless the “anxiety and concern accompanying public accusation,” as well as the possibility of public scorn, was injury enough to violate his right to a speedy trial (p. 222). Despite its sweeping language, in subsequent cases, such as Barker v. Wingo (1972), the Court has employed a balancing test to interpret this right and in so doing has almost always held for the prosecution.

See also Due Process, Procedural.

Malcolm M. Feeley