Claude Sitton (1925-) is a journalist famous for covering the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 60s. Sitton served for six years as the New York Times’ chief Southern correspondent and reported on the desegregation of schools, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and the 1964 Freedom Summer—to name only three events. His dedication led the editors of Newsweek to praise him in 1964 as “the best daily newspaperman on the Southern scene.”
Soul City was a failed attempt to build a majority black community in the heart of rural North Carolina. Conceived by civil rights leader Floyd B. McKissick, Soul City began with high expectations but ended in disappointment.
Gene Roberts (1932-) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaperman who began his career as a writer with the Goldsboro News-Argus and ended it as editor of the New York Times. Described by one employee as “the ideal editor that reporters dream about,” Roberts transformed the Philadelphia Inquirer from a laughingstock into one of the nation’s top newspapers.
Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith (1921-), son of a poor mill worker, rose to become one of country music’s brightest stars. His singles, including “Guitar Boogie” and “Feuding Banjos,” sold millions of copies, and millions more people tuned in to his radio and television programs.
The Piedmont & Northern (P&N) Railway fueled the growth of North Carolina’s textile industry. Running from Spartanburg to Greenwood in South Carolina and from Gastonia to Charlotte in North Carolina, the P&N shipped cotton, textiles, and other goods throughout the Piedmont region. But an ambitious plan to make the railroad a regional powerhouse was foiled by the federal government.
The so-called Burlington dynamite plot refers to the attempted bombing of two Burlington textile mills and the legal battle that followed. Six Burlington workers were arrested and accused of plotting to dynamite the mills. Their trial became a media circus that attracted the attention of communists, college students, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.
Part church, part charity, the Salvation Army is best known for ringing bells for the needy on street corners. But the Army does far more than collect coins during the Christmas season. It is one of America’s largest charitable organizations and has helped millions, including many thousands of North Carolinians.
Ideas Have Consequences was a 1948 book by conservative intellectual Richard M. Weaver. Weaver, an English professor at the University of Chicago, argued that culture, society, and truth itself were disintegrating in the modern age. His book was a tremendous influence in the history of American conservatism.
James T. Leach (1805-1883) played an important role in North Carolina’s Peace Movement during the American Civil War. Leach took the rhetoric of liberty that had been used to justify secession and turned it against the Confederate government.
Robert L. Doughton (1863-1954) represented North Carolina’s ninth congressional district (centered in Alleghany and Ashe counties) from 1933 until 1953. Although he had a reputation as a fiscal conservative, Doughton was nonetheless an important ally of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.