Before the introduction of national welfare in the twentieth century, local charities and mutual aid societies provided financial assistance to the less fortunate and also provided entertainment and social outlets for members. These societies many times worked and cosponsored programs with local churches. Winona Society was a Charlotte example.
Formed by African American educators in 1881, the North Carolina Teachers Association (NCTA) promoted education as an avenue toward racial progress. Their membership included educators such as James E. Shepard, founder of North Carolina Central University, and Joseph C. Price, founder of Livingstone College. NCTA boasted an African American membership that included not only educators but also politicians, lawyers and doctors.
As an advocate of the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” philosophy, which urges people to depend on themselves instead of government initiatives, Sowell believes that affirmative action actually hurts African Americans’ chances for equality.
A business owner, Quaker, abolitionist, and an organizer of the Underground Railroad, Levi Coffin was born in New Garden, North Carolina. According to Coffin, “The Underground Railroad business increased as time advanced, and it was attended with heavy expenses, which I could not have borne had not my affairs been prosperous.”
During the creation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, Oliver O. Howard, Commissioner of the Bureau, appointed Eliphalet Whittlesey as North Carolina’s first assistant commissioner.
Governor James B. Hunt appointed Justice Henry Frye, in 1983, to the North Carolina Supreme Court. He thus became he became the first African American to sit on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Named in honor of Nathaniel Macon, a United States congressman and senator and a leading early-republic statesman of North Carolina, Fort Macon was built after the War of 1812 to defend America and North Carolina from foreign invasion. During the Civil War, Fort Macon was a Confederate fort, but Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside had plans to return it under Union control.
In this compilation, Walter Hines Page includes three essays discussing democracy and education in the South: “The Forgotten Man,” “The School That Built a Town,” and the publication’s namesake, “The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths.”
In North Carolina, the debate teaching evolution became a contentious issue between religious leaders and educators. William Louis Poteat, president of Wake Forest University drew criticism from conservative critics from North Carolina and around the United States when he openly accepted the theory of evolution.
The United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown v Board of Education (1954) declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Following the Brown ruling, North Carolina enacted legislation that undermined the Supreme Court ruling. In August 1954 and in response to the Brown decision, Governor William B. Umstead created a “Governor’s Special Advisory Committee on Education,” with Thomas Pearsall, a prominent Rocky Mount farmer and businessman and former North Carolina Speaker of the House, as chairman. Along with Pearsall, the advisory committee included twelve whites and three blacks.