Colleges and Universities
Salem College
1664-1775
The story of Salem College goes back to 1744, when immigrants from Moravia settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.There, Moravians fostered communitarian values, and each individual devoted labor to community needs in exchange for food and shelter, in a system known as oeconomies. They kept this enterprising spirit as they expanded into North Carolina and founded the...
Salem
A Moravian town formed in 1772, Salem, or Old Salem, was once the center of the Wachovia Tract. Salem's history is rooted in Moravian culture and religion.
“Whistler’s Mother,” Anna McNeill Whistler
After the Virgin Mary herself, Anna McNeill Whistler may be one of the most recognizable mothers in all of art history. The Wilmington native is also one of the most famous moms to call North Carolina home.
Second-to-the-Last in Freedom (for Women)
In 1971 the North Carolina legislature ratified an amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving equal voting rights to women. Not the Equal Rights Amendment! The Nineteenth Amendment of 1920.
Richard Etheridge
Richard Etheridge was the first African American to command a lifesaving station in the United States. Lifesaving stations on the Atlantic Coast were responsible for rescuing people from shipwrecks in the late 1800s. Etheridge also fought for the Union in the Civil War and continued to fight for civil rights for the African American community...
James H. Harris (1832 – 1891)
Described by W.E.B. Du Bois as a politician of “great ability,” James Henry Harris was perhaps the most consequential black political leader in nineteenth-century North Carolina.[1] By the time of his death in 1891, Harris had served as chair or president of several state and national equal-rights conventions, a delegate to the 1868 North Carolina...
Historic Preservation: “George Washington Slept Here”
Beginning in 1887, North Carolinians began seriously preserving the state’s historical buildings. One popular focus was buildings in which George Washington either “slept here” (to use a popular and overused cliché) or with which he had genuine connections. In 1791, George Washington, then president, took a tour of the southern states, and, as a result,...
Meherrin Nation
The Meherrin are Native Americans who resided in northeastern North Carolina near the river of the same name. As of 2011 there were approximately 900 members.
Anna Julia Cooper (1858 – 1964)
Anna Julia Cooper was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1858. It is believed she was the daughter of her enslaver, Fabius J. Haywood. Cooper was emancipated when she was nine years old and in 1867 enrolled in Saint Augustine’s Normal and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh with the aid of the Freedmen’s Bureau. At Saint...
Salem College
The story of Salem College goes back to 1744, when immigrants from Moravia settled in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.There, Moravians fostered communitarian values, and each individual devoted labor to community needs in exchange for food and shelter, in a system known as oeconomies. They kept this enterprising spirit as they expanded into North Carolina and founded the...
Latta University
The Rev. Morgan L. Latta was the founder and president of Latta University, located in Oberlin Village, which is now part of Raleigh, North Carolina. Born in 1853, he was enslaved on the Cameron Plantation in Durham County. Fifty years later (in 1903) Latta published his autobiography, which tells, among many things, about how he...
Should Southern Military Bases Be Renamed?
On January 1, 2021, Congress enacted (over President Trump’s veto) a defense funding law that calls for renaming military bases that honored Confederate generals. Samuel R. Staley, writing for the Independent Institute, gives an intriguing argument in favor of the renaming. His argument is not that Confederate generals were traitors, as some have claimed (and...
The Tobacco Industry in North Carolina, Part I
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...