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.”
Two spiritual revivals known as the First and Second Great Awakenings permanently changed the cultural and religious makeup of the fledgling United States. North Carolina experienced both revivals firsthand.
Isaac Shelby, one of the most celebrated leaders in early United States history, was a soldier, statesman, and pioneer renowned for his pivotal role in the Revolutionary War.
Most people consider the Battle of Yorktown as marking the end of the American Revolution, but some historians have called the Battle of Beaufort, North Carolina, the last battle of the war. (Beaufort is in Carteret County on Beaufort Inlet, across from Shackleford Banks and near Cape Lookout.) In early April 1782, a wily party...
The Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 is the only successful coup d’état in American history. The event was the first and only time in this country that a lawfully elected government was overthrown by a violent force motivated by racism. The Wilmington Insurrection, now often called the Wilmington Coup but historically called the Wilmington Race Riot,...
Issued by the British following the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the Proclamation of 1763 was a significant factor in the cultivation of revolutionary fervor but one that has been somewhat neglected. The proclamation was an attempt by the British not only to prevent colonists from migrating westward but to stabilize relations with...
The “Race to the Dan” is the name given to the competition between Patriot and British forces as they tried to reach the Dan River that flows along the border of North Carolina and Virginia. This race took place in early 1781, over the months between two key battles that shaped the Southern Campaign and...
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...
During the first six months of 1942, 86 merchant ships, primarily American and British, were sunk off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. At least 1200 men died. Many North Carolinians are still unaware of those losses.
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.