Hilliard Caldwell, a longtime civil rights activist in the greater Chapel Hill community and former Carrboro elected official, died recently at 88 years old. A member of Caldwell’s family alerted Chapelboro to his passing on Monday. Known for his advocacy and work during Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools’ integration in the 1960s and for organizing civil disobedience protests against racial discrimination, Caldwell often found himself as a mediator to generations of Black Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents — working to inform older and younger people on the reasoning behind different approaches to race relations. He played a hand in advising the nine Lincoln High School students who held a sit-in at Colonial Drug on Franklin Street in 1960, later being nicknamed the Chapel Hill Nine and credited for kickstarting protest efforts in support of the Civil Rights Movement. Caldwell served four terms on the Carrboro Board of Alderman, from 1981 to 1997. He also worked as a UNC employee and serv...