Breakthrough in Chapel Hill

North Carolina is the South's most liberal state, and Chapel Hill has long had an envied reputation as one of its most liberal towns. Home of the University of North Carolina, it was once called by Editor-Publisher Mark Ethridge "the capital of the Southern mind." Last week Chapel Hill chose Howard Nathaniel Lee, 34, a Negro, to be its next mayor--by 2,567 votes out of a record 4,734 cast. Lee is the eleventh black mayor in the South, but the first to be elected in a predominantly white Southern community. Said former Vice President Hubert Humphrey in a congratulatory telegram: "This is a new breakthrough in Southern politics."

Lee is the son of a Georgia sharecropper, a child of the Depression who was twice a high school dropout. He eventually went to Georgia's Fort Valley State College, worked as a probation officer in. Savannah, and then moved to Chapel Hill in 1964 as a graduate student in social work. Lee's strenuous campaign centered on the contention that Chapel Hill, whose voting population is less than 10% Negro, was failing to meet the needs of its people in public transportation, recreation, city planning and housing.

Lee's opponent was Roland Giduz, a 43-year-old white who has served twelve years on the town board of aldermen. Giduz is a liberal on race issues and supports the town's open housing ordinance. He manages the University of North Carolina alumni magazine; Lee is head of employee relations at Duke University in nearby Durham. Lee is not unaware of his special position. "I'll be walking a tightrope," he says. "I could be slaughtered from both sides: by the white racists or the black militants."

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