Once again, the 2024 electoral cycle showed that North Carolina is a battleground state. What few know is that it has often been a battleground state! This article starts with the 1787 Constitutional Convention.
The subject of Scottish folklore and myth, Flora MacDonald assisted Prince Charles Stuart in his escape from King George II during the Jacobite rebellion. In 1774, Flora and her family moved to the North Carolina colony, and Flora’s husband and son fought for the Loyalists during the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge. The Jacobite heroine returned to her native Scotland in 1779 where she died
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.
Most North Carolinians believe the Civil Rights Movement occurred strictly in the 1960s, with the start of the Sit-Ins at the Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. The movement, however, began much earlier, and one can argue that its roots lay in the Civil-War period.
The Edenton Tea Party was one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history. On October 25, 1774, Mrs. Penelope Barker organized, at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King, fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina. Together they formed an alliance wholeheartedly supporting the American cause against “taxation without representation.”
The Great Wagon Road was an important throroughfare in colonial and early America. Northern colonists searching for farmland began traveling the road in the 1720s, and thousands others followed suit during the mid-eighteenth century. The Moravians, in particular, migrated into North Carolina via the pathway, and the main road prompted the establishment of Charlotte and Salisbury.
On May 31, 1775, the county of Mecklenburg, North Carolina signed 20 resolutions or “Resolves.” They start by saying that a recent address by Parliament had stated that “the American Colonies are declared to be in an actual State of rebellion.” Whereas by an Address presented to his Majesty by both Houses of Parliament in February last,...
The Battle of Kings Mountain took place on Oct. 7, 1780. A Patriot victory, it was a turning point of General Charles Cornwallis's Southern Campaign and of the revolution itself.
The Battle of Hayes Pond took place on January 18, 1958. A clash or skirmish more than a battle, the event pitted two groups against one another—a Ku Klux Klan rally of about 50 men and a spontaneous gathering of about 500 Lumbee Indians. The place was near a pond close to Maxton, North Carolina,...
The date May 20, 1775, is on North Carolina's state flag to commemorate the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence of 1775. But was there really such a declaration?
One of the species that the Endangered Species Act was supposed to protect was the red-cockaded woodpecker. But the law's negative incentives led Ben Cone, Jr., to cut down trees that might harbor the woodpecker.
Note: This entry continues the story of tobacco in North Carolina, beginning in the late 1800s. Part I tells the story of North Carolina tobacco from the time of its discovery by Europeans. Cigarette consumption in the U.S. reached 2.19 billion cigarettes in 1889. That was five times what it was before James Duke introduced...
Today, tobacco is known to be a dangerous product, and its use around the country has been on the decline for many years. Yet tobacco has been a crop associated with North Carolina since Sir Walter Raleigh took tobacco to England (from Virginia) in 1586. Starting around 1880, tobacco farming, and especially the manufacture of...