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20th Century North Carolina Timeline
Twentieth-Century North Carolina History Timeline
North Carolina History Timeline, 1900 North Carolina Census Data 1900s, Historical Census Records
Data Facts for North Carolina 1900s, 1900 NC State Census Record Historical Data Facts Timeline
20th Century North Carolina Timeline
Twentieth-Century North Carolina History Timeline
1900-1920
The state has 217 textile mills and 101 tobacco factories in operation.
The
average wage for a family of five, with the father and four children ages 14 to 21 working in a prosperous textile mill, is
$17 to $21 per week, or no more than $1,000 per year.
The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association is founded
to foster growth in these fields, as well as to “engender an intelligent, healthy state pride.”
February
21: An amendment to the North Carolina Constitution is adopted that institutes a literacy test for voting. The amendment includes
a grandfather clause that allows illiterate whites to vote but effectively disfranchises the state’s African American
citizens.
November: Democrats regain control of the governorship and the legislature through a virulent white supremacy
campaign.
1900–1902
Reginald Fessenden conducts successful radio experiments, during which
he transmits messages from Roanoke Island to Cape Hatteras and Cape Henry, Va.
1901
Textile mill
leaders meet in Charlotte to discuss self-regulation. More than 100 manufacturers agree to maintain a 66-hour work week and
not to employ children under age 12 during the school year (with exceptions for children of widows and the disabled). The
leaders pledge cooperation with state officials and call for legislative restraint in dealing with labor-management issues.
Unfortunately, many mills fail to abide by the agreement.
Ransom Olds produces 1,500 Oldsmobiles, the first mass-produced
automobiles in the United States.
September: President William McKinley is assassinated in Buffalo, N.Y.
1902
The
Hall of History is founded by Colonel Fred Olds in Raleigh. It will evolve into the North Carolina Museum of History.
The
North Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs is organized.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown opens Palmer Memorial Institute
in Sedalia.
The state’s first automobile registration takes place in Charlotte.
The North Carolina Good
Roads Association is founded to promote a highway commission to maintain roads in the state.
1903
December
17: Orville Wright flies the first power-driven airplane at Kill Devil Hills. He stays aloft for 12 seconds on the first trip.
The
North Carolina Historical Commission (now the Division of Archives and History) is established.
North Carolina passes
its first child labor laws.
Booker T. Washington addresses the North Carolina Industrial Association’s annual
fair. He advises African Americans to content themselves as an agrarian people, to eschew migration, and to seek the type
of education that will promote community building.
The General Assembly charters Appalachian Training School (now Appalachian
State University) in Boone.
1904
Southern Power Company (now Duke Power Company) is formed.
The
Bijou Theater in Wilmington opens in a tent. Two years later a building is erected, making it the first permanent movie theater
in the state. The Bijou will operate until 1956, when it will be possibly the oldest continuously operated theater in the
country.
The General Assembly charters Cullowhee Normal and Industrial School (now Western Carolina University) in
Cullowhee.
1905
North Carolina author Thomas Dixon Jr. publishes his book The Clansman.
The book serves as the basis for D. W. Griffith’s controversial silent film The Birth of a Nation (1915).
1907
The
General Assembly enacts a compulsory school law.
R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company of Winston-Salem introduces the Camel
brand of cigarettes.
James W. Cannon, taking advantage of cheap farmland along the Southern Railway, establishes the
textile mill village of Kannapolis in Cabarrus County.
The General Assembly charters East Carolina Teacher Training
School (now East Carolina University).
Stonewall Jackson Training School in Concord is established as a state reform
school for boys.
1907–1908
The first cotton and corn demonstration supervised by a county
agent of the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service takes place on a farm in Iredell County.
1908
The
state’s first public sanatorium for treating tuberculosis opens in Hoke County.
Farmers organize the North Carolina
Farmer’s Union as a division of the national Farmer’s Union. North Carolina farmers made up one-third of the organization’s
national membership.
The second warship named USS North Carolina is commissioned. It is an armored cruiser
that will see action in World War I.
May: Voters pass a statewide referendum prohibiting the manufacture and sale of
alcoholic beverages.
October 1: Henry Ford introduces the Model T car. It costs $850.
1909
The
first 4-H club in North Carolina is organized in Ahoskie as the Corn Club.
May 30: The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in New York.
| 1910 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
2,206,287 |
| White |
1,500,511 |
| Black |
697,843 |
| Indians |
7,851 |
| Chinese |
80 |
| Japanese |
2 |
| Other races |
not applicable | The State of North Carolina takes authority for capital punishment away from individual
counties. The electric chair replaces hanging as the form of execution.
The National Religious Training School and
Chautauqua (now North Carolina Central University) opens in Durham. In 1923 it will become the state-supported Durham State
Training School for African American teachers. Two years later the General Assembly will make the school the first state-supported
liberal arts college for blacks in the United States, named the North Carolina College for Negroes.
1911
The
Sherman Antitrust Act forces the American Tobacco Company to split into four companies: American Tobacco, Liggett and Myers,
Lorillard, and R. J. Reynolds.
Booker T. Washington calls Durham a “city of Negro enterprises.” By 1915
the city has 110 African American–owned businesses, including the Mechanics and Farmers Bank and the North Carolina
Mutual Insurance Company.
Home economist Jane McKimmon initiates North Carolina’s home demonstration program.
The
Pentecostal Holiness Church forms in Falcon, Cumberland County, by the consolidation of the Fire-Baptized Holiness Association
and the Holiness Church.
The Greensboro city council and other southern cities pass ordinances requiring separate white
and black residential areas.
1912
Furnifold M. Simmons becomes the last United States senator from
North Carolina elected by the General Assembly before the law changes to provide for senatorial election by popular vote.
Robeson
County establishes the first rural health department in the United States.
1913
Mercy Hospital,
one of the first African American hospitals in the South, opens in Wilson.
North Carolinian Georgia “Tiny”
Thompson becomes the first woman to parachute from an airplane.
1914
August: World War I begins
in Europe. The United States declares neutrality.
August 15: The Panama Canal opens.
1915
Mount
Mitchell becomes North Carolina’s first state park.
The North Carolina Highway Commission is established to build
and maintain roads.
Soybeans are grown for the first time in the state near Elizabeth City. North Carolina is the first
state to plant soybeans as a commercial commodity. Commercial processing of the crop begins at a plant in Elizabeth City.
May
7: The British steamer Lusitania, carrying munitions for Great Britain, is sunk by a German submarine, and 1,200 people drown,
including 128 Americans.
1916
North Carolina National Guard units join the United States Army in
action along the American-Mexican border against the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.
March 16: A 57-foot right
whale is killed in the shallows of Cape Lookout—reportedly the last one killed by whalers on the North Carolina coast.
The yield of 38 barrels of oil is apparently the last such oil procured by active shore-based whaling in the state.
July:
As a result of 41 hours of continuous rainfall, several counties in western North Carolina experience devastating floods.
The floods cause fatalities and massive property destruction, including extensive damage to railway lines.
1917
April
6: The United States enters World War I by declaring war on Germany.
September 5: The Pamlico County school system
puts the state’s first motorized school bus into operation.
1917–1918
Three military
training camps are established in the state: Camp Bragg as a field artillery training center near Fayetteville, Camp Greene
as an infantry training center in Charlotte, and Camp Polk as a tank training center in Raleigh. The latter two close at the
end of the war, but Camp Bragg (renamed Fort Bragg) remains open and will develop into a major military base.
The United
States armed forces purchase the entire production of Bull Durham roll-your-own smoking tobacco to supply troops during the
war. Two 30-car trains per month transport the tobacco through the state. Each boxcar bears a large banner with a patriotic
slogan such as “When our boys light up, the Huns will light out,” “The smoke that follows the flag is always
good old Bull,” and “Smoking out the Kaiser!”
1918
Henry B. Delany becomes the
first African American Episcopal bishop in North Carolina.
The first dam is built on the Catawba River to provide hydroelectric
power.
The North Carolina Society of Engineers organizes in Durham.
May: Congress passes the Sedition Act, making
it a crime to write or say anything against the war. It is the harshest legislation restricting freedom of speech ever enacted
in the United States.
August 16: The German submarine U-117 sinks the British tanker Mirlo off Cape Hatteras. Coast
Guardsman Captain John A. Midgett, keeper of the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station, commands a rescue effort that saves all
but 10 of the 52-member crew. In 1921, Midgett and other lifesavers receive Gold Lifesaving Medals from the British government.
September–November:
An influenza epidemic overtakes the state. More than 13,000 North Carolinians die, including Edward Kidder Graham, president
of the University of North Carolina.
September 29: North Carolina troops in the army’s 30th Division take part
in a decisive breakthrough of German lines in France.
November 11: An armistice between Germany and the Allies is signed,
ending World War I.
1919
November 19: The United States Senate defeats the United States’s
entry into the League of Nations.
| 1920 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
2,559,123 |
| White |
1,783,779 |
| Black |
763,407 |
| Indians |
11,824 |
| Chinese |
88 |
| Japanese |
24 |
| Other races |
1 | North Carolina is the second-most-industrialized state in the South, with an output of a billion
dollars per year. The state’s top industrial goods are textiles, tobacco products, and furniture.
Martin Goodman
of Winston-Salem invents Goody’s Headache Powders.
Lillian Exum Clement becomes the first woman elected to the
North Carolina General Assembly. She is nominated by Buncombe County Democrats before passage of the 19th Amendment gives
her the right to vote.
Katherine Everett becomes the first woman lawyer to argue a case before the North Carolina Supreme
Court.
January 29: The 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, enacting national prohibition of alcoholic
beverages, takes effect.
August 11: The North Carolina House of Representatives sends a telegram to the General Assembly
of Tennessee, where ratification of the 19th Amendment is simultaneously being debated. The telegram, signed by a majority
of the members, assures Tennessee legislators that North Carolina will not ratify the “Susan B. Anthony amendment”
and pleads that they defeat it as well.
August 26: After Tennessee becomes the final state in the two-thirds majority
needed for ratification, the 19th Amendment takes effect, giving women the right to vote.
November: Cameron Morrison
is elected governor, largely on a campaign to improve state highways and education.
1921-1940
1921
The Southern Furniture Exposition Center opens
in High Point. The Piedmont region of North Carolina is recognized nationally as a leader in furniture manufacturing.
In
large part because of extensive lobbying undertaken by Harriet M. Berry, the General Assembly passes a law aimed at improving
North Carolina’s roads. The state begins construction of a highway system that will connect each county seat with its
neighboring county seats via macadam, or blacktop, roads.
1922
Actress Ava Gardner is born in Smithfield.
January
28: The University of North Carolina Press begins operation in Chapel Hill. It is the first university press in the South.
1923
United
States military officials observe a demonstration, commanded by General Billy Mitchell, off the shore of Cape Hatteras in
which ships are sunk by airplane attacks.
North Carolina overtakes Massachusetts as the nation’s leading textile-producing
state in the value of its products.
North Carolina native Annie Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany becomes the second African
American woman to practice dentistry in New York City.
1924
Trinity College in Durham is endowed
by tobacco and hydroelectric-power magnate James B. Duke and renamed Duke University.
Bob Melton opens the state’s
first sit-down barbecue restaurant in Rocky Mount. Melton is credited with firmly establishing so-called eastern-style barbecue.
1925
Centered
in High Point, the state’s furniture industry ranks first in the nation in the production of wooden furniture and fifth
in all furniture production.
Cherokee lands are placed in trust status with the federal government.
Olive D.
Campbell and Marguerite Butler establish the John C. Campbell Folk School at Brasstown in Clay County. The school specializes
in teaching the traditional folk arts of North Carolina.
1927
The first talking motion picture,
The Jazz Singer, is released.
The North Carolina State Art Society is incorporated for the purpose of beginning a state
art collection. In 1929 the society opens a gallery (the forerunner of the North Carolina Museum of Art) in Raleigh.
Buncombe
County Junior College (now the University of North Carolina at Asheville) is established.
May: American Charles Lindbergh
becomes the first person to fly an airplane alone and nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
1928
Annie
Wealthy Holland of Gates County forms the North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, the first such organization
for African Americans in the state.
May 1: The first airplane to fly through North Carolina carrying mail lands at
Lindley Field in Greensboro.
November: The presidential candidacy of Al Smith, who is a northerner and a Catholic,
splits the Democratic Party in North Carolina, and for the first time since 1872, a Republican (Herbert Hoover) wins the state’s
electoral votes.
1929
Union agitation and a strike at Loray Mill in Gastonia lead to the deaths
of the Gastonia police chief and of labor leader Ella May Wiggins.
Asheville native Thomas Wolfe publishes his first
novel, Look Homeward, Angel.
One-tenth of the state’s industrial labor force is employed by three tobacco
companies.
David Marshall “Carbine” Williams is released from the state prison after receiving an early
pardon for the shooting death of a sheriff’s deputy during a raid on Williams’s still. In prison Williams has
shown great aptitude for machinery, and firearms in particular. He invents the short-stroke piston system for the M1 carbine,
which revolutionizes the weapon. During his lifetime, Williams receives more than five dozen patents for improvements to firearms.
October
29: The Great Depression begins with a Wall Street stock market crash.
| 1930 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
3,170,276 |
| White |
2,234,958 |
| Black |
918,647 |
| Indians |
16,579 |
| Chinese |
68 |
| Japanese |
17 |
| Other races |
7 | The Great Depression grows worse as waves of bank closings wipe out millions of dollars in
private savings.
North Carolina leads the nation in producing cotton goods and leads the South in producing knit goods.
Biltmore
House, a private residence built by George W. Vanderbilt near Asheville during the 1890s, opens to the public as a museum.
1931
The
General Assembly passes an act consolidating the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina State College
in Raleigh, and the Woman’s College in Greensboro into one system of higher education.
The General Assembly votes
for the state to take over from the counties maintenance of all roads. Governor O. Max Gardner supports this plan as beneficial
for the individual counties during the Depression.
April 1: The first regularly scheduled airline service between New
York and Miami, which includes a stopover in Raleigh, is established.
1932
The North Carolina Symphony
is established.
Cotton mill workers in High Point, Rockingham, and other towns strike. The following year, employees
at more than 100 additional mills go on strike.
1933
Black Mountain College is founded in Buncombe
County as a communal grouping of professors and students in a natural setting with complete intellectual freedom. It has no
fixed regulations, no required courses, and no frequent examinations. The college attracts famous people from the art world.
Financial problems will cause the college to close in 1957.
March: Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes president of the United
States and begins instituting his New Deal economic programs.
December 5: The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution
ends national prohibition of alcohol.
Camp John Rock, one of the nation’s first Civilian Conservation Corps camps,
opens in Transylvania County. It operates through 1936.
1934
Lake Mattamuskeet, the state’s
largest natural lake, becomes a United States Wildlife Refuge.
1935
Statewide prohibition of alcohol
ends.
Construction of the Blue Ridge Parkway begins.
The North Carolina Rural Electrification Authority is established.
The
General Assembly passes an act to provide for the preservation of Indian antiquities in North Carolina. Citizens are “urged”
to comply. No criminal penalties for violators are set.
1936
The Intracoastal Waterway is completed.
The
Mint Museum of Art opens in Charlotte at the former United States Mint, which began operation in 1837.
1937
The
Brown Creek Soil Conservation District, the first such area in the United States, is established in Anson County.
July
4: The opening performance of The Lost Colony takes place on Roanoke Island. The play is the nation’s first
and longest-running outdoor drama.
1938
African American students in Greensboro initiate a theater
boycott that spreads to other cities.
1939
The state provides free textbooks for public school
elementary grades and establishes a rental plan for high schools.
North Carolina produces more wooden household furnishings
than any other state in the nation.
A law school for African American students is established at North Carolina Central
College.
September: World War II begins when France and Great Britain declare war on Germany following its invasion
of Poland. The United States declares neutrality.
| 1940 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
3,571,623 |
| White |
2,567,635 |
| Black |
981,298 |
| Indians |
22,546 |
| Chinese |
83 |
| Japanese |
21 |
| Other races |
40 |
The Wilmington Shipyard is completed. During the war, workers will build 243 Liberty and Victory Ships there.
The
Indian Normal School in Robeson County (now the University of North Carolina at Pembroke) grants its first college degree.
A
leading advocate of developing an airborne American military force, North Carolina native William C. Lee is given the responsibility
of developing a test platoon of paratroopers. Lee will later become a major general and receive the title “father of
the Airborne.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt moves the United States closer to war with Germany and Japan by
providing ships, arms, and supplies to Great Britain and by cutting oil supplies to Japan. Over 80 percent of the American
public prefers to remain neutral in the war.
June 13: The battleship USS North Carolina (the third navy ship
of that name) is commissioned. It serves in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945 and is decommissioned in 1947.
September
2: The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is dedicated.
1941-1960
1941
Seymour Johnson Air Base in Goldsboro and Cherry Point Marine
Air Station are begun.
W. J. Cash’s classic work of social criticism and history, The Mind of the South,
is published. It centers on the people of the backcountry South with which Cash is most familiar. He has lived most of his
life in North and South Carolina. He is a graduate of Wake Forest College and has worked for both the Charlotte News
and the Charlotte Observer.
June–July: President Franklin Roosevelt freezes German, Italian, and Japanese
assets in the United States and orders the United States Navy to fire on German warships.
December 7: Japanese forces
attack the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The United States declares war on Japan the next day, entering World
War II. Germany and Italy declare war on the United States. More than 362,000 North Carolinians serve in the armed forces
during the war. More than 7,000 lose their lives, with 4,000 of them being killed in action.
1941–1942
German
submarines sink more than 100 ships in the area of Diamond Shoals off the coast of Dare County during the “Battle of
Torpedo Junction.”
1942
Construction on Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, begins.
Greensboro
native Edward R. Murrow gains fame as a radio correspondent covering the war in Europe.
East Carolina Indian School
is established in Sampson County to serve Native Americans in seven surrounding counties. The school will close in 1965.
A
committee headed by Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University issues a document that becomes known as the Durham Manifesto. It
acknowledges that World War II has generated increased racial tensions. The statement demands complete voting rights for African
Americans and an end to white primaries, evasions of the law, and intimidation. It insists on equal access to all jobs.
January
1: For the only time, the Rose Bowl is played away from Pasadena. Because of fear of a Japanese attack in California, Duke
University hosts the game in Durham. The Duke Blue Devils lose to Oregon State 20-16.
May: A German submarine torpedoes
the British patrol boat HMS Bedfordshire off the Outer Banks. The bodies of four sailors from the Bedfordshire
wash ashore on Ocracoke Island. The sailors are buried on the property of Alice Williams, with services arranged by the Coast
Guard. In 1976 the cemetery will be officially leased to the British government in perpetuity for one dollar.
1943–1946
The
Greensboro Overseas Replacement Depot trains and processes more than 330,000 servicemen on their way to overseas deployment.
1944
Because
of food rationing due to the war, North Carolinians become increasingly self-sufficient. No fewer than 28 million quarts of
food are canned, 30 million pounds of meat are cured, and 8 million pounds of fruit and vegetables are dried for home consumption.
June
6: Allied forces, including American troops, land on the French coast of Normandy, beginning the invasion of Europe against
Nazi Germany.
1945
Communist forces of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin take over eastern Europe.
May
7: Nazi Germany surrenders, ending the war in Europe.
July 16: The first atomic bomb is exploded near Alamogordo, N.
Mex., ushering in the atomic age.
August 6: The United States drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima,
followed by a second bomb on Nagasaki three days later. The Japanese surrender on August 14.
1946
The
Charlotte Center of the University of North Carolina is established. In 1949 the center becomes Charlotte College. It is renamed
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1965.
1947
North Carolina state government inaugurates
the Good Health Program.
Kenneth R. Williams becomes the first African American candidate in the 20th-century South
to defeat a white opponent in a municipal election. Williams wins a seat on the Winston-Salem Board of Aldermen.
The
first Indian mayor of the town of Pembroke is elected. Previously the governor appointed the mayors, all of whom were non-Indian.
Elreta
Alexander becomes the first African American woman licensed as a lawyer in North Carolina.
Wilmington College (now
the University of North Carolina at Wilmington) is founded.
April: The Congress of Racial Equality tests a Supreme
Court decision against segregation in interstate bus travel by sending eight African American men to ride on Greyhound and
Trailways buses. Riders are arrested in Durham, Asheville, and Chapel Hill. This “Journey of Reconciliation” becomes
the model for the “Freedom Ride” of 1961.
1948
The state’s first commercial television
station, WBTV, opens in Charlotte. WFMY in Greensboro also opens.
Communist forces of the Soviet Union blockade Berlin
in Germany. The United States airlifts supplies into the city until the stranglehold is broken one year later.
February:
Thomas H. Davis establishes Piedmont Aviation, Inc. (later Piedmont Airlines) in Winston-Salem. It becomes one of the most
successful regional airlines in the nation.
1949
Susie Sharp becomes North Carolina’s first
female superior court judge.
April: The United States, Canada, and ten western European countries form the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) to resist the threatened Communist takeover of Europe.
Communist forces under Mao Tse-tung
take over China after a civil war and the deaths of more than 65 million people.
Texas political scientist V. O. Key
Jr. establishes the mid-twentieth-century image of North Carolina for both natives and outsiders in his book Southern
Politics in State and Nation. He describes the state as “energetic and ambitious. . . . The citizens are determined
and confident; they are on the move. The mood is at odds with much of the rest of the South. . . . Many see in North Carolina
a closer approximation to national norms, or national expectations of performance. . . . It enjoys a reputation for progressive
outlook and action in many phases of life, especially industrial development, education, and race relations.”
March:
Governor W. Kerr Scott shocks many people when he appoints Frank Porter Graham to the Senate seat left vacant by the death
of J. Melville Broughton. Graham is president of the University of North Carolina and one of the South’s best-known
liberals.
| 1950 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
4,061,929 |
| White |
2,983,121 |
| Black |
1,047,353 |
| Indians |
3,742 |
| Chinese |
345 |
| Japanese |
98 |
| Other races |
27,270 | The Cherokee Historical Association receives funding, and the first performance of
the outdoor drama Unto These Hills takes place.
June 25: Communist North Korean forces invade South Korea,
starting a three-year war with United Nations troops led by the United States. The Korean War results in the deaths of nearly
1,000 North Carolinians. More than 33,000 Americans are killed in service.
1951
A court order requires
the University of North Carolina to admit African American students to its graduate and professional schools.
1952–1959
Tryon
Palace, North Carolina’s colonial governor’s residence in New Bern, is reconstructed and opened to the public.
1953
The
State of North Carolina recognizes the Lumbee (formerly called the Cherokee of Robeson County).
1954
In
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the United States Supreme Court orders that public schools be integrated “with
all deliberate speed.” Most North Carolina schools are not fully desegregrated until the late 1960s.
North Carolina
ranks as the South’s industrial leader and as the twelfth-most-industrialized state in the nation.
October: Hurricane
Hazel hits North Carolina, bringing terrible devastation to the eastern part of the state. Hazel causes 19 deaths and $136
million in property damage.
1955
The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill admits its first
African American freshmen: Leroy Frasier, John Lewis Brandon, and Ralph Frasier, all of Durham.
In response to the
Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the General Assembly passes a resolution stating that
“The mixing of the races in the public schools within the state cannot be accomplished and if attempted would alienate
public support to such an extent that they could not be operated successfully.”
1956
The
General Assembly passes an amendment to the state constitution known as the Pearsall Plan to allow the state legally to oppose
immediate desegregation of the public schools. Individual school systems are given the right to suspend operation of their
schools by vote, and the legislature is authorized to provide payment for students who attend private schools because their
parents do not want them to attend integrated schools. The Pearsall Plan gives the state time to begin a slow process of integration.
The
North Carolina Museum of Art opens to the public in Raleigh.
Wake Forest College moves to a new campus in Winston-Salem,
where it will become Wake Forest University in 1967. Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary takes over the school’s
old campus in Wake Forest.
Congress passes the “Lumbee Bill,” which recognizes the Lumbee as an Indian
tribe but denies them services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
1957
The Research Triangle Park
opens in Durham County.
Wilmington native Charles B. Kuralt begins working for CBS.
Small numbers of African
American students enroll in previously all-white public schools in Greensboro, Charlotte, and Winston-Salem, beginning a period
of token integration in North Carolina.
Under Governor Luther H. Hodges, the state’s biennial budget tops $1
billion for the first time.
Seven black activists led by the Reverend Douglas E. Moore seek service in the white section
of an ice-cream parlor in Durham. They are arrested and convicted of trespassing, but their sit-in presages a decade of conflict
and social revolution.
October 4: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first rocket-powered satellite to orbit Earth.
1958
The
United States launches Explorer I, the first American satellite. Congress creates the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) for space exploration.
January 18: A large group of Lumbee, angered by racist agitation and threats
of cross burnings, descend on a Ku Klux Klan rally near Maxton. Their war whoops and gunfire scatter the Klan members, two
of whom are later indicted on charges of incitement to riot.
February: The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. visits North
Carolina. He delivers speeches in Raleigh and Greensboro.
1959
Communist forces under Fidel Castro
take over the island of Cuba, 90 miles south of Florida.
North Carolina becomes the first state to require polio vaccinations.
Two
Durham African American families successfully sue to have their daughters admitted to the city’s predominantly white
high school.
Panty hose, called Panti-Legs and made at Glen Raven Mills near Burlington, go on sale for the first time.
| 1960 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
4,556,155 |
| White |
3,399,285 |
| Black |
1,116,021 |
| Indians |
38,129 |
| Chinese |
404 |
| Japanese |
1,265 |
| Filipino |
343 |
| Other races |
708 | The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, an organization promoting peaceful
means of protesting racial inequality, forms in Raleigh.
Governor Terry Sanford’s quality-education program (named
Go Forward) starts.
The Charlotte Motor Speedway is built.
February 1: The nation’s first lunch counter
sit-in begins in Greensboro when four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (now North Carolina
A&T State University) are refused service at a Woolworth’s counter. The mode of protest used by Ezell Blair, Franklin
McCain, David Richmond, and Joseph McNeil quickly spreads across the South.
1961-1980
1961
The battleship USS North Carolina
is berthed at Wilmington and opens as a museum and war memorial.
January 24: A B-52 bomber from Seymour Johnson Air
Force Base crashes near Goldsboro while carrying two nuclear warheads. Department of Defense reports released in 1980 will
indicate that one of the weapons snagged in a tree and was only a final safety catch away from detonation. The bomb was 1,800
times as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima.
April 12: Yury Gagarin of the Soviet Union becomes the first person
to enter outer space when he completes one orbit of Earth. On May 5 of this year, Alan Shepard becomes the first American
in space, and on February 20, 1962, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth.
1962
Susie
Sharp becomes first woman to serve on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
National Geographic labels North Carolina
the “Dixie Dynamo” for the state’s progressive social and economic atmosphere.
October: The United
States and the Soviet Union near global nuclear war after atomic warheads are placed in Communist Cuba. The Soviet Union finally
agrees to remove the missiles, ending the immediate threat.
1963
The General Assembly passes a
controversial bill in the last few hours of its session. The so-called Speaker Ban Law, intended primarily to prohibit Communist
speakers, sets limits on who can receive permission to speak on state-supported university campuses.
The North Carolina
community college system is established.
February 6: The General Assembly convenes for the first session in its new
Legislative Building.
November 22: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Tex.
1964
Congress
passes a Civil Rights Act giving African Americans equal access to public accommodations.
The homes of Charlotte civil
rights activists Kelly Alexander, Fred Alexander, Julius Chambers, and Reginald Hawkins are bombed.
The Haliwa receive
state recognition as an Indian tribe.
Samuel S. Mitchell becomes the first African American judge in North Carolina.
August:
Following reports that Communist North Vietnamese forces have attacked United States warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, President
Lyndon Johnson asks Congress to send American troops to South Vietnam. In the succeeding 10 years of war, 1,500 North Carolinians
are among the more than 53,000 Americans killed in service.
1965
Congress passes a Voting Rights
Act prohibiting discrimination against African Americans and their right to vote.
The North Carolina School of the
Arts opens as the first state-supported residential school for the performing arts in the United States.
1968
Congress
passes a Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination against African Americans in the sale or rental of housing.
Greensboro
attorney McNeil Smith argues against the Speaker Ban Law before a federal court, which declares the law unconstitutional.
Reginald
A. Hawkins becomes the first African American candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in North Carolina.
Margaret
Taylor Harper runs for lieutenant governor. She is the first woman to run for statewide office in North Carolina.
Henry
E. Frye is elected to the General Assembly. He is the first African American elected to the state house of representatives
in the twentieth century.
Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel Hill. He is the first African American to serve as
mayor of a predominantly white southern city.
Elreta Alexander becomes the first African American elected judge in
North Carolina.
1969
July 20: American Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the
moon.
Durham resident Warren Wheeler founds Wheeler Airlines, the only African American–owned airline in the
state. Wheeler Airlines is based at the Raleigh-Durham Airport.
Police and National Guardsmen fire on demonstrators
at North Carolina A&T State University. One student is killed and five police officers are injured.
| 1970 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
5,082,059 |
| White |
3,901,767 |
| Black |
1,126,478 |
| Indians |
44,406 |
| Chinese |
1,255 |
| Japanese |
2,104 |
| Filipino |
905 |
| Other races |
5,144 | Kannapolis, the mill “village” owned primarily by Charles A. Cannon, is
the nation’s largest unincorporated municipality.
1971
A federal court in Charlotte orders
busing to enforce school integration. Public schools across the nation are forced to follow suit.
A grocery store in
Wilmington is firebombed, sparking racial violence. The “Wilmington 10,” a group of mainly African American citizens,
are convicted of arson and other charges. A federal court will overturn their convictions in 1980.
The third North
Carolina state constitution is enacted.
The state recognizes the Coharie and Waccamaw-Siouan tribes.
The General
Assembly establishes the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs.
The Lumbee Bank is established in Pembroke. It
is the first Indian-owned and -operated bank in the United States.
June 30: The 26th Amendment to the United States
Constitution grants 18-year-olds the right to vote.
October 30: The General Assembly merges all state-supported senior
institutions of higher education into the University of North Carolina, resulting in a statewide multicampus system of 16
constituent institutions. The changes take effect on July 1, 1972.
1972
James E. Holshouser becomes
the first Republican elected governor of North Carolina in the twentieth century.
Jesse Helms is elected to the United
States Senate for the first time.
The Carolina Indian Voice, an Indian-owned newspaper, begins operation.
United
States senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina is chosen as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.
The committee investigates the Watergate break-in, in which associates of Republican president Richard Nixon burgled the Democratic
National Committee headquarters.
1973
January 27: The United States signs a peace treaty in Paris,
ending American military involvement in Vietnam.
The United States Supreme Court rules in Roe v. Wade that a woman
has the legal right to have an abortion.
Henry Ward Oxendine, a Lumbee from Robeson County, becomes the first Indian
elected to the General Assembly.
1974
The North Carolina Zoo opens to the public in Asheboro.
Susie
Sharp becomes the first woman elected chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, and the first popularly elected female
chief justice in the nation.
August 9: Faced with impeachment, Richard Nixon resigns as president of the United States.
1975
The
capture of Saigon by the Communist North Vietnamese army brings the Vietnam War to an end. Many Vietnamese flee their country
and start a new life in the United States. Some settle in North Carolina.
1976
Tobacco and tourism
each bring in $1 billion to the state’s economy. Recent industrial development in the state amounts to $1 billion as
well.
The United States lands the Viking I and Viking II space probes on Mars.
1977
The
North Carolina General Assembly refuses to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment fails national ratification.
Isabella
Cannon is elected mayor of Raleigh. She is the first female mayor of a major North Carolina city.
1979
Iranian
militants capture American diplomats in the embassy at Tehran and hold them hostage; a rescue attempt six months later fails.
The Americans are not released until 1981, after 444 days of captivity.
Members of the Communist Party and the Ku Klux
Klan clash in Greensboro during an anti-Klan rally. Gunfire is exchanged, and Klan members kill five Communist supporters.
A year later a court clears the Klan members of all charges.
| 1980 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
5,881,766 |
| White |
4,457,507 |
| Black |
1,318,857 |
| American Indian |
64,536 |
| Eskimo |
57 |
| Aleutian |
59 |
| Japanese |
3,186 |
| Chinese |
3,176 |
| Filipino |
2,542 |
| Korean |
3,518 |
| Asian Indian |
4,720 |
| Vietnamese |
2,391 |
| Hawaiian |
839 |
| Guamanian |
500 |
| Samoan |
241 |
| Other races |
19,574 | After both the General Assembly and a popular vote approve a constitutional amendment
allowing a governor to serve consecutive terms, James B. Hunt becomes the first North Carolina chief executive to succeed
himself in office.
Wilmington native and journalist David Brinkley retires from NBC after 24 years.
The North
Carolina Film Office is created to promote North Carolina as a site for the filmmaking industry.
The portion of North
Carolina’s workforce employed in industry has increased to 33 percent from 29 percent in 1950. Agriculture, which employed
one-fourth of the state’s population in 1950, now employs only 3.6 percent of the workforce. The number of family farms
has decreased from 288,508 to 93,000 during the same period. Despite a reduction in the number of acres farmed—from
19,317,937 to 11,700,000—the average size of individual farms has increased from 67 to 126 acres as agriculture in the
state has become more of a business and less of a family affair.
1981-2000
1981
The estimated total value of manufactured products
in the state reaches $60 billion.
The General Assembly passes the Unmarked Human Burial and Human Skeletal Remains
Protection Act and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. Criminal penalties for violations are set, and the involvement
of Indian communities in decisions concerning the treatment, analysis, and disposition of Native American remains is mandated.
March:
President Ronald W. Reagan survives an assassination attempt in Washington, D.C., in which he is shot twice in the chest.
1982
A
Fortune magazine survey of top executives ranks North Carolina second in the nation (behind Texas) as a location
for companies wanting to build new plants.
1983
Henry Frye becomes the first African American to
sit on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
October 25: Troops from North Carolina military bases assist in the expulsion
of Communist forces from the Caribbean island of Grenada.
1984
July 4: Richard Petty wins his 200th
NASCAR victory at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida, with President Ronald Reagan in attendance.
1985
January
21: The temperature on Mount Mitchell reaches minus 34 degrees Fahrenheit—the lowest temperature ever recorded in North
Carolina.
1986
January 28: The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after liftoff, killing
all seven people on board, including pilot Michael Smith, a native of Beaufort, and Ron Erwin McNair, a 1971 graduate of North
Carolina A&T State University.
1987
March: Film legend George Randolph Scott dies and is buried
in Charlotte, his family home. Scott starred in 96 motion pictures and was famous for his westerns, including his last film
in 1962, Ride the High Country.
April: Charlotte is selected as the location for a National Basketball Association
franchise. The Charlotte Hornets begin playing the next year.
1988
Gertrude B. Elion and George
H. Hitchings win the Nobel Prize in medicine. Both formerly worked at the Research Triangle Park.
| 1990 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
6,628,637 |
| White |
5,008,491 |
| Black |
1,456,323 |
| American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleutian |
80,155 |
| Asian or Pacific Islander |
52,166 |
| Other races |
31,502 | 1990–1991
The United States fights the Persian Gulf
War. The North Carolina Army National Guard mobilizes 19 units and more than 2,000 personnel in response to the crisis.
1991
East
Carolina University’s medical school pioneers modern telemedicine.
Dan Blue becomes the first African American
to serve as speaker of the house in the General Assembly.
Troops from North Carolina military bases assist in the expulsion
of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
November: Eva Clayton becomes the first woman elected to Congress from North Carolina.
1992
January
1: The Soviet Union is officially declared dead after several years of economic collapse and the secession of its former republics,
which reject Communism and establish independent nations.
November: James B. Hunt becomes the first North Carolina
governor elected to a third four-year term. Four years later he will be elected to a fourth term in office.
1993
October
26: National Football League team owners vote unanimously to place a team in the Carolinas. The Carolina Panthers begin playing
in 1995.
North Carolina natives Sadie and Bessie Delany, at ages 104 and 102, publish the book Having Our Say:
The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years. The sisters, daughters of Episcopal bishop Henry B. Delany, turn into celebrities,
and their story becomes a successful Broadway play.
1994
North Carolina resident Martin Rodbell
wins the Nobel Prize for discoveries about how proteins trigger basic body functions.
April: The North Carolina Museum
of History opens its new facility to the public in Raleigh.
1996
North Carolina has approximately
9.3 million hogs, making it the second-largest pork producer in the nation. Most farms are in 20 eastern counties.
September:
Hurricane Fran hits North Carolina, causing more than $5 billion in damage, primarily in the eastern part of the state.
1997
North
Carolina gains its third major-league sports franchise when the Hartford Whalers (now the Carolina Hurricanes) of the National
Hockey League relocate to the state.
December: President Bill Clinton is impeached in the United States House of Representatives,
becoming the second president impeached by Congress (the first was Andrew Johnson, in 1868). The Senate votes not to remove
Clinton from office.
1999
January 13: North Carolinian Michael Jordan retires from the National
Basketball Association after 13 seasons, six NBA championships, 10 scoring titles, and five Most Valuable Player awards.
September:
Hurricane Floyd causes widespread and devastating flooding in the eastern portion of North Carolina.
2000
April:
The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences opens its new facility to the public in Raleigh.
| 2000 North Carolina Census Data |
| Total |
8,049,313 |
| White |
5,804,656 |
| Black |
1,737,545 |
| American Indian and Alaska Native |
99,551 |
| Asian |
113,689 |
| Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander |
3,983 |
| Hispanic or Latino |
378,963 |
| Other races |
186,629 | 2002
November: Elizabeth Dole becomes the first woman to represent
North Carolina in the United States Senate.
2004
North Carolina Senator John Edwards runs for vice president.
He and running mate Senator John Kerry are narrowly defeated by incumbent President George Bush.
Source: North Carolina Museum of History
Recommended Reading: Encyclopedia of North Carolina (Hardcover: 1328 pages) (The University of North
Carolina Press). Description: The first single-volume
reference to the events, institutions, and cultural forces that have defined the state, the Encyclopedia of North Carolina
is a landmark publication that will serve those who love and live in North Carolina
for generations to come. Editor William S. Powell, whom the Raleigh News & Observer described as a "living repository
of information on all things North Carolinian," spent fifteen years developing this volume. With contributions by more than
550 volunteer writers—including scholars, librarians, journalists, and many others—it is a true "people's encyclopedia"
of North Carolina. Continued below...
The volume
includes more than 2,000 entries, presented alphabetically, consisting of longer essays on major subjects, briefer entries,
and short summaries and definitions. Most entries include suggestions for further reading. Centered on history and the humanities,
topics covered include agriculture; arts and architecture; business and industry; the Civil War; culture and customs; education;
geography; geology, mining, and archaeology; government, politics, and law; media; medicine, science, and technology; military
history; natural environment; organizations, clubs, and foundations; people, languages, and immigration; places and historic
preservation; precolonial and colonial history; recreation and tourism; religion; and transportation. An informative and engaging
compendium, the Encyclopedia of North Carolina is abundantly illustrated with 400 photographs and maps. It is both a celebration
and a gift—from the citizens of North Carolina, to the citizens of North Carolina.
"Truly an exhaustive and exciting view of every aspect of the Old
North State!”
Advance to:
Recommended Reading: The Tar
Heel State: A History of North Carolina (Hardcover). Description: The Tar Heel State:
A History of North Carolina constitutes the most comprehensive and inclusive single-volume chronicle of the state’s
storied past to date, culminating with an attentive look at recent events that have transformed North Carolina into a southern megastate. Integrating tales of famous pioneers, statesmen,
soldiers, farmers, captains of industry, activists, and community leaders with more marginalized voices, including those of
Native Americans, African Americans, and women, Milton Ready gives readers a view of North Carolina that encompasses perspectives
and personalities from the coast, "tobacco road," the Piedmont, and the mountains in this sweeping history of the Tar Heel
State. The first such volume in more than two decades, Ready’s work offers a distinctive view of the state’s history
built from myriad stories and episodes. The Tar Heel State is enhanced by one hundred and ninety illustrations and five maps.
Continued below...
Ready begins
with a study of the state’s geography and then invites readers to revisit dramatic struggles of the American Revolution
and Civil War, the early history of Cherokees, the impact of slavery as an institution, the rise of industrial mills, and
the changes wrought by modern information-based technologies since 1970. Mixing spirited anecdotes and illustrative statistics,
Ready describes the rich Native American culture found by John White in 1585, the chartered chaos of North Carolina’s
proprietary settlement, and the chronic distrust of government that grew out of settlement patterns and the colony’s
early political economy. He challenges the perception of relaxed intellectualism attributed to the "Rip van Winkle" state,
the notion that slavery was a relatively benign institution in North Carolina,
and the commonly accepted interpretation of Reconstruction in the state. Ready also discusses how the woman suffrage movement
pushed North Carolina into a hesitant twentieth-century
progressivism. In perhaps his most significant contribution to North Carolina’s
historical record, Ready continues his narrative past the benchmark of World War II and into the twenty-first century. From
the civil rights struggle to the building of research triangles, triads, and parks, Ready recounts the events that have fueled
North Carolina’s accelerated development in recent years and the many challenges that have accompanied such rapid growth,
especially those of population change and environmental degradation.
Recommended Reading: A People's
History of the United States: 1492 to
Present. Review: Consistently lauded
for its lively, readable prose, this revised and updated edition of A People's History
of the United States turns traditional textbook history on its head. Howard Zinn infuses the often-submerged voices
of blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, and poor laborers of all nationalities into this thorough narrative that
spans American history from Christopher Columbus's arrival to an afterword on the Clinton
presidency. Addressing his trademark reversals of perspective, Zinn--a teacher, historian, and social activist for more than
20 years—explains: "My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. Continued below…
It is too late
for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but
necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization;
Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism;
nuclear proliferation, to save us all)--that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have
learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth." If your last experience of American history was brought to you by
junior high school textbooks--or even if you're a specialist--get ready for the other side of stories you may not even have
heard. With its vivid descriptions of rarely noted events, A People's History of the United
States is required reading for anyone who wants to take a fresh look at the rich, rocky history of America. "Thought-provoking,
controversial, and never dull..."
Recommended Viewing: 500 Nations
(372 minutes). Description: 500 Nations is an eight-part documentary (more than 6 hours and that's not including its interactive CD-ROM
filled with extra features) that explores the history of the indigenous peoples of North and Central America, from pre-Colombian
times through the period of European contact and colonization, to the end of the 19th century and the subjugation of the Plains
Indians of North America. 500 Nations utilizes historical texts, eyewitness
accounts, pictorial sources and computer graphic reconstructions to explore the magnificent civilizations which flourished
prior to contact with Western civilization, and to tell the dramatic and tragic story of the Native American nations' desperate
attempts to retain their way of life against overwhelming odds. Continued below...
Mention the
word "Indian," and most will conjure up images inspired by myths and movies: teepees, headdresses, and war paint; Sitting
Bull, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, and their battles (like Little Big Horn) with the U.S. Cavalry. Those stories of the so-called
"horse nations" of the Great
Plains are all here, but so is a great deal more. Using impressive computer imaging, photos, location film footage
and breathtaking cinematography, interviews with present-day Indians, books and manuscripts, museum artifacts, and more, Leustig
and his crew go back more than a millennium to present an fascinating account of Indians, including those (like the Maya and
Aztecs in Mexico and the Anasazi in the Southwest) who were here long before white men ever reached these shores.
It was
the arrival of Europeans like Columbus, Cortez, and DeSoto that marked the beginning of the end for the Indians. Considering
the participation of host Kevin Costner, whose film Dances with Wolves was highly sympathetic to the Indians, it's no bulletin
that 500 Nations also takes a compassionate view of the multitude of calamities--from alcohol and disease to the corruption
of their culture and the depletion of their vast natural resources--visited on them by the white man in his quest for land
and money, eventually leading to such horrific events as the Trail of Tears "forced march," the massacre at Wounded Knee,
and other consequences of the effort to "relocate" Indians to the reservations where many of them still live. Along the way,
we learn about the Indians' participation in such events as the American Revolution and the War of 1812, as well as popular
legends like the first Thanksgiving (it really happened) and the rescue of Captain John Smith by Pocahontas (it probably didn't).
Recommended Viewing: The History Channel Presents The Presidents (A&E) (360 minutes). Review: THE PRESIDENTS is an unprecedented eight-part survey of the personal
lives and legacies of the remarkable men who have presided over the Oval Office. From George Washington to George W. Bush,
THE PRESIDENTS gathers together vivid snapshots of all 43 Commanders-in-Chief who have guided America
throughout its history--their powerful personalities, weaknesses, and major achievements or historical insignificance. Based
on the book To the Best of My Ability, edited by Pulitzer Prize-winner James McPherson, THE PRESIDENTS features rare and unseen
photographs and footage, unexpected insight and trivia from journalists, scholars, and politicians such as Walter Cronkite,
David Brinkley, Wesley Clark, Bob Dole, and former President Jimmy Carter. Continued below...
Viewed within the changing contexts of each administration, the Presidency has never seemed more compelling
and human. Narrated by Edward Herrmann (The Aviator), this three-DVD (6 HOURS) set is a proud addition to the award-winning
documentary tradition of THE HISTORY CHANNEL®. DVD Features: Feature-length Bonus Program "All The Presidents' Wives"; Timeline
of U.S. Presidents; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection. (6 HOURS); Highly Recommended!
Great for the home, family, and classroom…
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