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 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...
For many years, North Carolina was a leading textile-making state, specializing in cotton.The fortunes of North Carolina’s textile industry illustrate how industries can grow and shrink. Factors such as geography, competition, changing tastes, and changing technology have all contributed to the industry’s ups and downs. North Carolina has many rivers, most of which are not...
When the North Carolina Supreme Court was established in 1819, John Louis Taylor became its first chief justice, a post that he would hold until his death in 1829. During his time on the court, he would profoundly shape American law and establish the North Carolina Supreme Court as a source of new legal ideas....
Not many North Carolinians are aware that a Wilmington shipyard was a major force in the Second World War. It built 243 ships to carry military cargo. Named the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, the company’s workforce reached 21,000 in 1943. In addition to contributing to the war effort, it gave a big economic boost to...
The University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) is an arts school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Its courses include dance, design and production, drama, filmmaking, and music. The school was established in 1963 when Governor Terry Sanford and writer John Erle worked together to create the first public arts conservatory in the United States.