North Carolina played a critical, often overlooked, role in our nation’s founding. We at the North Carolina History Project have put together this timeline of our state’s contributions to the American Revolution. The following timeline chronologically lays out some of the most important events in North Carolina’s revolutionary history and links out to our more...
To academic historians and amateur (or avocational) historians: We explored the North Carolina Historical Review to find articles about the American Revolution. I hope these summaries (written by a person, not AI) will whet your appetite for the longer versions. (A link to each article on JSTOR is provided for each.) Did North Carolina’s Revolution...
The North Carolina Historical Review includes a rich collection of articles about the American Revolution. This list was compiled by Kathryn McKee and Jane Shaw Stroup.
Pyle’s Defeat occurred in February 1781 near the end of the Revolution. It was a savage blow to British hopes, as Lt. Gen. Charles, Lord Cornwallis attempted to stop the Patriots’ momentum.
The subject of Scottish folklore and myth, Flora MacDonald assisted Prince Charles Stuart in his escape from King George II. In 1774, she moved to North Carolina, where her Loyalist husband and son fought in the Battle of Moores Creek.
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.”
Greensboro Sit-In
On February 1, 1960, four black students of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a white-only lunch counter inside a Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's store. The Greensboro sit-in catalyzed a wave of nonviolent protest against private-sector segregation in the United States.
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
Decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 20, 1971, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education dealt with the desegregation plan adopted by Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Chief Justice Warren Burger rendered the opinion of the court, and its decision was unanimous. The product of several years of NAACP litigation, the Swann decision lent the imprimatur of the Court to busing as a solution to inadequately desegregated public schools.
Griggs v. Duke Power
Griggs v. Duke Power Company was a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971. It concerned the legality, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of high school diplomas and intelligence test scores as prerequisites for employment. The court ruled unanimously against the intelligence testing practices of the Duke Power Company. In his opinion, Chief Justice Warren Burger argued that employers can use intelligence tests only if "they are demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance."
Stephen Dodson Ramseur (1837 – 1864)
The Lincolnton native became the youngest major general to serve in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and earned a reputation, writes historian Douglas Southall Freeman, as “[one] of the most daring, hardest fighters in the Army.”
Josiah Bailey (1873-1946)
Josiah Bailey was a leading figure in North Carolina’s progressive movement in the early twentieth century. In the 1930s and 1940s, he served as a Democratic U.S. Senator from North Carolina and co-authored the “conservative manifesto,” which defended fiscally conservative policy during the heyday of the New Deal.
Dorothy Counts (1942- )
Realizing desegregation was unavoidable, Charlotte School Board members ordered four black students to attend four non-integrated schools in the area. Dorothy Counts, one of the four students, was assigned to Harding High School and required to report there on September 4, 1957. While escorted by Reginald Hawkins, Counts was heckled, hissed, and spat upon while walking to the school.
Residential Segregation
Residential segregation of whites and African-Americans was enforced by law in many major U.S. cities, including several in North Carolina. in the early twentieth century.
Braxton Bragg (1817-1876)
Braxton Bragg was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. He fought primarily in the western theatre. Prior to the Civil War, Bragg fought in Florida during the Second Seminole War (1835-42) and under Zachary Taylor's command in the Mexican American War (1846-48).
Daniel Harvey Hill (1821-1889)
Daniel Harvey Hill was a Confederate States army officer and educator. Described as deeply religious and intellectual, Hill is most remembered for displaying an intense sense of honor, on and off the battlefield. Hill served as a mathematics professor, founded a military institute, and was president of colleges in Arkansas and Georgia.
Battle of Bentonville
After Confederate General William J. Hardee delayed Union general William Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign at the Battle at Averasboro, Union forces marched on to Goldsboro for supplies. Meanwhile, C.S.A. General Joseph E. Johnston maneuvered his men into what would be, writes historian Mark A. Bradley, “the Southern Confederacy’s final hurrah.”
Bryan Grimes (1828-1880)
A planter, Confederate general, and a University of North Carolina trustee, Bryan Grimes was one of the Tar Heel State’s most respected men. His life had an unfortunate end; returning from a political convention in Beaufort, Grimes was assassinated in 1880. It would take seven years for the assassin’s identity to be determined conclusively.
Restrictive Covenants
Restrictive covenants are clauses in property deeds that contractually limit how owners can use the property. Use of these covenants in property deeds remains widespread. During the early-twentieth century, however, they were used in the United States as instruments of residential segregation. By stipulating that land and dwellings not be sold to African Americans, restrictive covenants kept many municipalities residentially segregated in the absence of de jure racial zoning.