To begin its meeting on Wednesday, the Chapel Hill Town Council held a moment of silence for long-time Chapel Hill community member Edith Wiggins, who died on Sunday, April 4.
Wiggins, who retired from the council in 2005, lived in the town for decades and helped usher in many changes as an elected official and community leader. She moved to Chapel Hill for graduate school in 1962 after being raised and going to college in Greensboro. As the social worker remained in the area, she became more and more involved with community activities and assumed new roles in various organizations.
Voters elected Wiggins to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education in 1979 and she served for eight years, helping oversee changes in redistricting and enrollment. She then became even more involved with the university community, serving as the director of UNC’s Campus Y before becoming the first Black Vice Chancellor and Dean of Student Affairs in 1994.
On Wednesday, Chapel Hill leaders recognized Wiggins’ work on the town council, which she won election to in 1996. Wiggins served during a major period of development for the area, as the Meadowmont and Southern Village communities were approved during her time. A fierce advocate for improving pay and working conditions for the town’s sanitation employees, Wiggins became Mayor pro tempore in 2003 and spearheaded an effort to rename Airport Road to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Edith Wiggins, second from the left, stands with Tresa Brown, Deborah Stroman and Howard Lee as they were honored at a UNC women’s basketball game in 2018. (Photo via Carolina Athletics/Jeffrey A. Camarti)
To honor her lifetime of service and impact on our community, the Chapel Hill Historical Society bestowed Wiggins the title of “community treasure” with other inductees in 2018. Earlier this year, the annual University and Community Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Banquet revised its student scholarship to include Wiggins in its namesake.
“We thought this was very fitting for Edith,” Lillian Lee, who serves on the event’s Board of Directors, told 97.9 The Hill. “I think it’s an awesome gesture and well-deserved. When I told her about it, she said, ‘You are kidding, I can’t believe it.'”
Wiggins spent many years as a member of Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill and Pastor Marcus McFaul said she was a trailblazer and “an amazing example of servanthood.”
“She was a woman of prayer and action, study and social justice, and peace with justice,” McFaul told Chapelboro. “She radiated love, that will always be what I remember most: a loving and kind soul. Our community is diminished because of the death of this ‘town treasure,’ but our community wouldn’t be what it is today without the gifts and graces of Edith Wiggins shared so generously to us all.”
Wiggins is survived by her husband of 37 years, Sheldon, her sons Balaam and David, her daughter-in-law Kim, and her grandchildren. The family recently established a website in her honor.
Lead photo courtesy of the Chapel Hill Historical Society.
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