$100 for the 100th: Celebrating UNC Press’s History of Excellence
Having reached our centennial anniversary, we invite you to join with us in including the Press in your end-of-year giving with a gift of $100 for the UNC Press 100th—or, any amount meaningful to you!
We’ve compiled a concise listing of facts concerning our early history that many are unaware of in order to convey the important contributions of UNC Press’s not-for-profit publishing over the past one hundred years.
- Chartered in 1922, the University of North Carolina Press was the first university press in the American South, and one of the first in the nation, and it was the first nonsecular publisher in the South.
- The establishment of UNC Press was a visionary act, as part of a series of investments made by the state and campus leadership (which included its library system, curriculum expansion, and faculty recruiting) to transform UNC from a sleepy southern university into a center of gravity for the study of the South.
- The Press legitimized the study of the South, and shared the complex southern way of life and its history with the world.
- Daniel J. Singal stated that the approach to its publishing and policies instated under leadership of UNC Press Director Couch made UNC Press “the single most influential institution in launching Modernist thought in the South.”
- From its very beginning, UNC Press identified parts of the regions whose stories were not being told, and continues in this pursuit to the present day.
- The late UNC President Emeritus C.D. Spangler, Jr. called UNC Press “a jewel in the crown of the University of North Carolina System,” sharing with the University a commitment to excellence and a dedication to serving the people of North Carolina and the world.