The North Carolina Speaker Ban Law was passed in 1963 to forbid communists from speaking on any of the campuses of the University of North Carolina. Students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill opposed the law and requested permission to invite controversial speakers Herbert Aptheker and Frank Wilkinson to their campus. Chancellor Joseph Carlyle Sitterson denied the request, which was used as the basis of a lawsuit that resulted in a U.S. District Court in Greensboro, North Carolina overturning the law in 1968. The North Carolina Speaker Ban Collection dates from 1965 to1988 and contains depositions, exhibits, testimonies and other documents from judicial hearings.
