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RALEIGH — The state Senate has elected N.C. A&T's trustees chairman to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors

Franklin McCain, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Burley Mitchell Jr. and six others were elected Wednesday to to fill eight Senate appointments to the board that oversees the state's 16 public universities.

The House also will elect eight nominees in the coming weeks.

McCain, now a resident of Charlotte, was one of four black students from A&T who refused to leave a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter until they were served. That sit-in  invigorated the civil rights effort that had become bogged down in disputes over tactics.

McCain joined A&T's Board of Trustees in 2005 and was elected as chairman  in September. McCain said today he will resign from the trustees to serve on the Board of Governors. The appointment will take effect this summer, and McCain said today that he expects the search for a new A&T chancellor, which he is heading, to be complete before he assumes his new role.

“It certainly wasn’t an easy decision," McCain said Thursday. "I respect what the Board of Governors does and I love my university. But in the end I know that what happens at the Board of Governors has a direct impact on all higher education in our state, including A&T. I’ll be in a position there to help decide direction and policy that will touch all our universities.”

Mitchell, of Raleigh, was chief justice from 1982 to 1999. He is a member of the N.C. State Board of Trustees.

Also among the Senate selections are:

* Hannah Gage of Wilmington, the UNC board's current chairwoman.

* Peaches Gunter Blank of Nashville, Tenn., a current UNC board member.

* John Blackburn of Linville, chairman of the Appalachian State University trustees board.

* Laura Buffaloe of Roanoke Rapids, a retired community college dean who has served on the UNC board since 2006.

* Phil Dixon of Greenville, an attorney who has been on the UNC board since 2005.

* Paul Fulton of Winston-Salem, a UNC-Chapel Hill trustee who was president of Sara Lee Corp. from 1988 to 1993 and dean of UNC-Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School from 1993-97.