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.
On the eve of the American Revolution, the Vestry of St. Paul’s Church in Edenton wrote the “Test”, and it became a catalyst for fanning the flames of independence within the colony of North Carolina. Written approximately a month before the Declaration of Independence, the "Test" proved to be the church’s own declaration of independence.
Sacred Heart Cathedral is the Mother Church for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, making it the spiritual center for Catholics in eastern North Carolina. It is the smallest cathedral in the continental United States. Sacred Heart’s parochial school was desegregated in 1953, a year before the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Born on September 6, 1863 to free yeoman farmer parents, Aaron McDuffie Moore used educational opportunities to improve his social condition and to better his community.
Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World was “the most powerful piece of [anti-slavery] propaganda written by a black.” It was published in three installments in 1829. In it, Wilmington native David Walker encouraged slaves to revolt against their masters. In 1830, North Carolina’s legislature banned the pamphlet from being distributed within the state.
The “best-known, nineteenth-century African-American woman’s autobiography” is how historian Nell Irvin Painter describes Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written By Herself (1861). The Tar Heel’s work is also noteworthy because Jacobs penned the words, unlike other slave autobiographies, including Sojourner Truth’s, which were dictated.
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.
Enacted in 1765, the Stamp Act increased British control over the American colonial economy and further angered American colonists by confirming that salutary neglect had ended.
Established in 1734, St. Thomas Episcopal Church is North Carolina’s oldest surviving church. The church is located in the town of Bath.
Bishop of the Raleigh Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church from 1945 to 1974, Vincent S. Waters is known mostly for denouncing segregation and ordering the desegregation of North Carolina Catholic churches and schools in 1953—a year before the Brown v. Board of Education case.