VIII.

History

A.

Early Inhabitants

The first humans in North Carolina were Native Americans, the so-called Paleo-Indians of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. They were nomads who pursued buffalo and other large game animals, some of which are now extinct. Their likely descendants were the Archaic people of about 3,000 to 10,000 years ago, who did not yet have agriculture. Agriculture, along with pottery, was introduced in the Woodland stage of culture, lasting from about 3,000 years ago into the historical period. After ad 800, the Mississippian culture, or Mound Builders, was represented in the south and west. They built large towns centered around ceremonial mounds. North Carolina’s Native American population in the 1600s is estimated at about 30,000, organized into about 30 peoples, of which the most important were the Hatteras, Tuscarora, Chowanoc, Catawba, and Cherokee.

Contact between Native Americans and whites resulted occasionally in friendship but often in hostility. In either event it ultimately led to the death or displacement of most of the Native Americans. Even in the friendliest of contacts, the Europeans unwittingly spread diseases to which the Native Americans had no resistance. Deaths from measles, smallpox, and colds decimated their populations and disrupted their societies.

In the present day, North Carolina has some 70,000 Native Americans, organized into nine or more governments or corporations. The state’s largest reservation is that of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, who descend largely from 1,000 Cherokee who fled into the Great Smokies in 1838 when the Cherokee nation was forcibly moved to Oklahoma. The reservation occupies 22,660 hectares (56,000 acres) near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and park-related tourism provides employment for many of the band’s approximately 5,750 members.

Another strong present-day Native American community is the Lumbee of Robeson County, with a population of about 34,500. The Lumbee are socially and politically well organized although they are unrecognized by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. They have had a number of strong leaders, notably Adolph Dial, a former university professor and member of the North Carolina state legislature (1991-1993).

B.

The 16th Century

B.1.

European Exploration

Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine navigator, led a French expedition that in 1524 explored the coast near the mouth of the Cape Fear River. The coast was visited as far north as Cape Hatteras by Spanish explorer Angel de Villafane in 1561. Parts of the mountain area were explored by Spaniards Hernando de Soto in 1540 and Juan Pardo in 1566 and 1567.

In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh of England obtained permission from Queen Elizabeth I to explore the Western Hemisphere and claim any land not already claimed by Christians or inhabited by them. Raleigh sent out an expedition that same year to choose a site for a colony; its members returned with an enthusiastic description of the Roanoke Island area. Two Native Americans, Wanchese and Manteo, returned with the expedition to England.

B.2.

First Roanoke Island Colony

Raleigh’s vaguely defined land was named Virginia in honor of Elizabeth I, the virgin queen. In his first attempt at settlement, Raleigh sent 108 men, including Wanchese and Manteo as interpreters, to Roanoke Island.

Leaving England in April 1585, the group reached Roanoke Island in August. However, unable to cope successfully with the new and difficult problems of colonization, in June 1586 the men boarded ship with the English privateer Sir Francis Drake, who had put in at Roanoke Island on his way back to England after a raid on the Spanish West Indies. Eighteen men were left behind to hold England’s claim to the land.

B.3.

Second Roanoke Island Colony

One member of Raleigh’s first colony was John White, who began at Roanoke Island his famous series of paintings of Native American life. Chosen to serve as governor of the second colony, White sailed from England in May 1587 with a group of more than 100 settlers, including 17 women and 9 children. The group reached Roanoke Island in July. Of the 18 men left there in 1586, only some skeletons were found. Manteo, who had returned as Raleigh’s personal representative, was designated Lord of Roanoke and Dasamonguepeuk—the first title of nobility granted to a Native American.

On August 18, White’s granddaughter, Virginia Dare, was born. She was the first child of English parents born in America. Nine days later, White returned to England for supplies. For three years the fleet of Spain, which was at war with England, kept him from sailing out of English ports. When he managed to return to Roanoke Island in 1590, the colonists had disappeared.

The mystery of the “lost colony,” as it is now called, has never been solved. The letters “CRO” were carved into a tree on the beach and the single word, “Croatoan,” was found on a post. These inscriptions may have indicated that the colonists had gone to live with the friendly Croatan or Croatoan Indians on Croatan Island or north to Chesapeake Bay. However, storms kept White’s ship from reaching Croatan, and later explorations found no trace of the settlers. The present-day, 1,725-member Coharie tribe of Sampson County claims to be descended from the Croatan tribe and the vanished colonists. Others believe the colonists may have been the victims of a hurricane, an attack by Native Americans, or disease. A recent theory, based on the analysis of growth rings in nearby trees, suggests that the colonists disappeared during one of the area’s worst droughts in 800 years and may have left the island or perished because of starvation.

C.

The 17th Century

Although Raleigh failed to plant a permanent colony, he gave impetus to ventures that succeeded elsewhere, some of them on land that had been part of his grant. In 1606 King James I of England granted patents to two commercial companies, the Plymouth Company of Virginia and the London Company of Virginia, to colonize Virginia. The London Company dispatched three ships, the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery, under the command of Captain Christopher Newport. In May 1607 the voyagers landed on a swampy peninsula and erected James Fort, the nucleus of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.

In 1629 James’s son, King Charles I, split off the part of Virginia south of Albemarle Sound, which was still unsettled, to make a new proprietary colony called, after himself, Carolana. Charles granted Carolana to his attorney general, Sir Robert Heath. The grant was from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean between latitudes 31° north and 36° north.

C.1.

The Lords Proprietors

Heath was never able to undertake the settlement of Carolana. So in 1663 King Charles II, the son of Charles I, changed the name slightly to Carolina and regranted the land to eight lords who had helped him regain the English throne. In 1665 these men, known as the lords proprietors, obtained a new charter that greatly extended the boundaries to the north and the south to include all the land between latitudes 36°30’ north and 29° north.

The lords proprietors planned three counties in Carolina, each named for one of them: Albemarle, Clarendon, and Craven. Albemarle County already had some settlers who had come from Virginia in the 1650s and was the only one of the three counties to play an important role in North Carolina history.

Until 1689 Albemarle County had the only proprietary government in Carolina. During that period 12 officials served by appointment, under varying titles and for irregular terms, as governor of the county. The governor was assisted by a council, which he appointed. The council advised the governor in executive and legislative matters, sat with the elected assembly as part of the legislature, and served with the governor as the general court for legal disputes. In most matters the legislature was subordinate to the governor. It could not convene unless he called it, and he could veto its decisions. However, the legislature controlled the governor’s salary and used this power to strengthen its authority.

In 1689 the proprietors, in an effort to improve administration, began appointing governors over that part of Carolina lying north and east of Cape Fear. This was a first step toward creation of a distinct identity for North Carolina, although the governor was a deputy under the governor of Carolina. North Carolina and South Carolina became popular terms.

D.

The 18th Century

D.1.

The Emergence of North Carolina

Finally, in 1712, the proprietors began to appoint governors for North Carolina who were independent of the Carolina governor. From 1711 to 1713 the colony was involved in a war with the Tuscarora people, and it relied on assistance from South Carolina to defeat them. Pirates posed another problem for North Carolina. The colony’s unusual coast, with its sandbars and shallows, provided a haven for pirate ships. Furthermore, the colonists frequently benefited from purchasing the pirates’ goods. It was not altogether accidental that the two most notorious pirates, Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet, were captured by expeditions sent out by the governors of Virginia and South Carolina, respectively, although they operated from North Carolina. Some of North Carolina’s governors are believed to have collaborated with the pirates.

Settlers came from Virginia and South Carolina and directly from France, Germany, and Switzerland. By 1729 the estimated settler population was 35,000. As settlement spread, dispute over the Virginia-North Carolina boundary intensified. Finally, in 1728, commissioners representing both colonies chose a point on the coast and surveyed a line west. The line proved to be north of the land already claimed by North Carolina and also north of latitude 36°30’ north, but Virginia accepted it.

D.2.

Royal Colony

In 1729 King George II of Great Britain (a union of England, Scotland, and Wales) bought out seven of the eight shares in the Carolina grant. One owner, John Carteret, refused to sell. A strip of land just south of the Virginia border was assigned to him and became known as Granville District. He continued making grants to settlers out of that tract. During the American Revolution (1775-1783), North Carolina abolished the district and confiscated its lands that had not yet been regranted.

Under the king, the quality of administration improved. In general, the royal governors demonstrated significant ability compared to the proprietary governors. The legislature became two-house, or bicameral: The council sat as the upper house, and the assembly as the lower house. The judicial system was enlarged by the creation of new courts but continued to be subordinate to the governor.

Through the Vestry Act of 1701 and subsequent acts, the legislature had established the Anglican Church as the official church of the colony. However, the church’s influence gradually weakened because of the rapid growth of Presbyterian, Quaker, Baptist, Lutheran, German Reformed, Moravian, and Methodist congregations.

The colony’s politics was marked by sectional controversies. There was an early north-versus-south sectional division of the Coastal Plain, but this faded in importance as these two eastern sections united in competition with the growing west. The east dominated the colony. New Bern, in the east, was chosen as the permanent capital. Tryon’s Palace, the nickname for an expensive residence and statehouse erected for Governor William Tryon (1765-1771), was built in New Bern over the objections of the west. To the east’s advantage, local government was in the hands of the justices of the peace, who were appointed by the governor. The whole structure was conducive to abuses of power.

In 1768 westerners organized the Regulator movement to resist arbitrary taxes and fees and to demand honest local officials. In vain the Regulators sought redress of grievances through the courts and the legislature. Rioting erupted in several counties. In Rowan and Orange counties the Regulators declared that they would pay no more taxes and would tolerate no more courts. On May 16, 1771, Governor Tryon led the militia against a force of about 2,000 Regulators at Alamance Creek and defeated them. The movement was broken. Many Regulators left North Carolina, more than 6,000 were pardoned, and six were hanged for treason.

Conflicts with the governor were, in essence, conflicts with Britain. This became obvious after 1763, when the governor was required to enforce a new policy designed to strengthen the colonies but also to restrict them to colonial status. The colonists were aggrieved by two colonial tax laws, the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, which were enacted without the colonies’ consent or vote in the British legislature, or Parliament. Armed members of the Sons of Liberty, a secret patriotic resistance organization, compelled all of the important North Carolina officials except the governor to agree not to enforce the Stamp Act. Nonimportation associations were formed to boycott British goods in protest against the Townshend Acts. In December 1773 the assembly created a committee to correspond with the other colonies and coordinate resistance. When Massachusetts was punished for resisting the Tea Act of 1773, North Carolina sent supplies of corn, flour, and pork.

A proposal by Massachusetts for a continental congress was opposed by North Carolina Governor Josiah Martin, who refused to call a meeting of the legislature to elect delegates. As a consequence, delegates were elected locally in counties and towns to the colony’s first provincial congress, which met in New Bern in August 1774. It declared any tax by Parliament on the colonies to be unconstitutional and chose delegates to the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 1774. The second provincial congress met in New Bern early in April 1775.

D.3.

The American Revolution

On April 18, 1775, the American Revolution began with the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. On May 31, 1775, the people of Mecklenburg County, at a meeting in Charlotte, adopted a new county government on the basis that the king had allegedly severed relations with the colonies. Also in May 1775, Governor Martin fled from the palace to Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear River; in June he reached safety on a British ship. In August, North Carolina’s third provincial congress met at Hillsboro and provided for a new colonial government, with a congress to replace the assembly and a council to replace both the royal governor and his council.

In February 1776 Governor Martin devised a plan for combining British forces with Loyalists (locals loyal to the king) in Brunswick in order to capture all the Southern colonies. His plan failed, however, when 1,400 to 1,500 of the Loyalists, called Tories by their opponents, were defeated on the way to the rendezvous by North Carolina revolutionists, who called themselves Whigs, at Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776. After that, no major engagements with the British occurred in North Carolina until 1781.

The fourth provincial congress met at Halifax in April 1776 and adopted the Halifax Resolves. These authorized North Carolina’s delegation to Congress to concur with the other delegations in declaring independence for the colonies. The North Carolina signers of the Declaration of Independence, adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776, were William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, and John Penn.

D.4.

A State Constitution

The fourth provincial congress rejected a proposal for a state constitution, preferring to govern through a continuously functioning council of safety. However, the fifth congress, meeting in Halifax in November 1776, adopted a constitution and a bill of rights. The constitution contained protections for the political and legal rights and personal liberties of the people. It also provided for a legislative branch, consisting of a bicameral legislature; an executive branch, consisting of a governor and a council of state; and a judicial branch, consisting of supreme courts of law and equity, judges of admiralty, and justices of the peace.

Both houses of the legislature, the senate and the house of commons, were elected by the people. The senate consisted of a small body of men owning 121 hectares (300 acres) of land, who were elected by freemen owning 20 hectares (50 acres). The house of commons was open to men owning 40 hectares (100 acres), who were elected by freemen who paid public taxes. Representation was based primarily on counties, rather than on population. The governor had to own land and tenements valued at no less than 1,000 pounds, and he and the council of state were elected by the legislature for one-year terms. An official church was forbidden, but no person who denied the “Truth of the Protestant Religion” could hold public office. The legislature was required to establish a public school system and “one or more Universities.”

Legislative supremacy was the most striking characteristic of the new constitution. The dislike of a strong chief executive was reflected in his being elected by the legislature, his short term of office, and his restricted powers. The governor could recommend legislation, but had no veto power.

The fifth provincial congress launched the new government by electing a governor and a council of state, who took office in January 1777. Richard Caswell (1776-1780) was the new governor. The first legislature elected under the new constitution convened in April.

D.5.

Military Action During the Revolution

During the revolution, North Carolina was called on to help defeat the Cherokee, who sided with the British, and to suppress Loyalists. It also raised a militia containing thousands of men and supplied ten regiments for the rebels’ Continental Army. An attempted invasion by British forces was repelled by North Carolinians and Virginians at Kings Mountain, in South Carolina near the North Carolina border, on October 7, 1780, and a second attempt was stopped at Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781. British General Charles Cornwallis won the battle at Guilford Courthouse, but his forces were so weakened that he withdrew to Wilmington, from which he ultimately moved north to Yorktown, Virginia. After his surrender at Yorktown in October, the last of the British forces evacuated Wilmington in November and the military phase of the revolution was ended in North Carolina.

D.6.

Political Organization

During the revolution, when Congress sought to unify the newly established states and to strengthen the central government by proposing the Articles of Confederation, the North Carolina legislature ratified the articles unanimously.

The state’s delegation to the Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1787, did not contribute extensively to the writing of the new Constitution of the United States. Hugh Williamson was the most active of the five delegates, making frequent speeches and motions and suggesting the six-year term for senators. Although North Carolina was the fourth largest state in population, its delegation voted with the small states in favor of a senate in which all were represented equally.

A convention met in Hillsboro on July 21, 1788, to vote on the Constitution but declined to ratify it. Instead, it adopted a resolution requesting several amendments and a bill of rights. The new government of the United States was organized, with North Carolina left out as an independent nation.

D.7.

Statehood

North Carolina’s status was uncomfortable for its citizens. A second convention, meeting at Fayetteville, ratified the Constitution on November 21, 1789, and thus North Carolina became the 12th state to enter the Union. In 1790 the state’s western lands, which had been annexed in 1777, were ceded to the federal government; this territory later became the state of Tennessee.

Between the implementation of the state’s constitution in 1776 and its modification by a constitutional convention in 1835, North Carolina had 27 governors. Few of them were able to enhance the power of the chief executive significantly. The judicial branch was more successful in acquiring power and prestige. In the case of Bayard v. Singleton, 1787, this court handed down the first decision under a written constitution in the United States declaring a legislative act unconstitutional. Later, superior court judges began to function as supreme court judges, and they did so until 1818, when a separate supreme court was created.

The legislative branch had great power but used it in limited ways. Exigencies of the revolution prompted the legislature to issue large quantities of paper money, levy taxes, and borrow money. After the war the state’s economy was so depressed that the legislature declined to create the public school system required by the constitution, although it incorporated many private academies. In 1789 it chartered the University of North Carolina, which in 1795 became the first state university to open in the United States. Wake County had been agreed upon by the Hillsboro Convention of 1788 as the site for the capital. In 1794 the legislature began meeting in the new city of Raleigh.

E.

The 19th Century

After achieving statehood, North Carolina tended to turn against the concept of a strong federal government. Beginning in 1800, the state predominantly voted for the Democratic-Republican Party, which emphasized states’ rights. It remained basically a one-party state until the Whig Party emerged in 1834. At the same time, however, it rejected the extreme position that states could override federal power, as suggested by Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic-Republican Party, in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.

E.1.

Constitutional Changes

Largely because of strong support in the west, a state constitutional convention was held in Raleigh in 1835. In most respects the amendments adopted by the convention strengthened and democratized the government. The governor was elected for a two-year term by the adult male taxpayers of the state. The house of commons was reorganized to contain 120 members, one for each county and the remainder apportioned among all the counties on the basis of population. Meetings of the legislature became biennial rather than annual. This legislative organization is still basically intact. In the provision imposing a religious restriction on officeholding, the word “Christian” replaced “Protestant,” thus legitimizing officeholding by Roman Catholics—but not Jews, Muslims, or atheists. Because of the growing desire to create a sharp distinction between free whites and enslaved blacks, the right of free blacks to vote was abolished. All the amendments were ratified by a statewide referendum.

The constitutional changes paralleled and stimulated a diminished sectionalism, an increased interest in government, the development of a two-party system, a heightened governmental concern with the people’s welfare, and a period of cultural and economic advancement. The Whig Party, representing largely the nonslave areas of the west, held the governorship and most public offices from 1836 to 1850. Thereafter the Democratic Party, usually dominated by slaveholders of the east, controlled the government.

Both parties used governmental power on the people’s behalf to an unprecedented extent. Money was appropriated to aid navigation companies and the building of roads and railroads. A public school system was established that was regarded as the best in the South prior to the Civil War. Nonetheless, the number of illiterate people remained high. In 1860 among the Southern states only Virginia, with a larger population, had more illiterates than North Carolina. Institutions for the deaf, blind, and insane were founded, and some of the harsh penalties inherited from English criminal law were abolished. The tax system was reformed, and taxes were raised to support the new services. However, as concern about slavery grew more intense, the free blacks, as well as the slaves, were increasingly repressed and their legal rights were restricted.

E.2.

Civil War

Slavery was one of the most divisive political issues in the Congress of the United States in the first half of the 19th century. Many Congress members from the Northern states pressed to end slavery, both because it was considered immoral and because white labor could not compete with unpaid black labor. Members from the Deep South (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida) believed that slavery was essential to their cotton-centered agricultural system and that the North was trying to dominate the national economy. By the 1850s, Southerners saw their power slipping in Congress, the clamor for abolition of slavery was at a high pitch, and many in the South came to believe that secession from the Union was the only way to protect “Southern rights,” including the right to own slaves.

As secession sentiment in the South increased, North Carolina supported the Union. In 1860, however, Abraham Lincoln was elected president as the candidate of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery. South Carolina had threatened to secede if the Republicans won, and in December 1860 it did so. Other Southern states followed, and in February 1861 they organized as the Confederate States of America and began mobilizing for war. The American Civil War (1861-1865) began officially on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery bombarded a federal fort in Charleston harbor.

When South Carolina seceded, North Carolina worked for compromise. However, after Lincoln sent out a call for troops, opinion solidified among North Carolinians that they would not take up arms against fellow Southerners. A state convention voted for secession on May 20, 1861.

As a member of the Confederate States, North Carolina furnished more than its share of troops and in the fighting lost 40,275 men, about one-fourth of all Confederate casualties. At the same time, however, under the leadership of Governor Zebulon B. Vance, the state resisted the central control by the Confederate government that was essential to efficient conduct of the war.

Most of the fighting occurred in other states. The most significant events of the war in North Carolina included the battles of Fort Hatteras, Plymouth, New Bern, Fort Fisher, and Bentonville; the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston to General William T. Sherman near Durham on April 26, 1865; and General George Stoneman’s raid in the western counties.

E.3.

Reconstruction

Devastated and under military occupation at the end of the war, North Carolina was eager for reunion, restoration of order, and rehabilitation of the economy. In accordance with the plan of President Andrew Johnson for restoration, or Reconstruction, of the Union, a state convention in 1865 declared slavery abolished, repealed the ordinance of secession, and repudiated the state war debt. However, the Southern legislatures, including North Carolina’s, adopted the Black Codes that restricted blacks to second-class citizenship.

Partly because of these acts by the Southern legislatures, the Radical wing of the Republican Party in Congress wrested control of Reconstruction from President Johnson and imposed the harsher regime called Radical Reconstruction. In March 1867 Congress put all the ex-Confederate states except Tennessee under military rule. As a condition for returning to the Union, the Southern states were required to ratify the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which made the former slaves citizens. In addition, each state was required to hold elections, in which black men would be allowed to vote, for delegates to state constitutional conventions. The Republican Party of North Carolina, formed in 1867, dominated the constitutional convention and the elections of 1868. The new legislature ratified the 14th Amendment, and Congress admitted North Carolina’s congressional delegation on July 20, 1868.

The constitution of 1868, with significant modifications, remained in effect for a century. It provided for voting by all adult men, eliminated property qualifications for voting and officeholding, permitted anyone who did not deny the existence of God to hold public office, established a system of popular election of local government officials, required four months of public school education per year, and extended the governor’s term to four years.

E.4.

Resurgence of the Democrats

For many reasons, including the participation of blacks and Northerners, derogatorily called carpetbaggers, the Republican administration was disliked by most whites. Extravagance, waste, and corruption were widespread; taxes increased enormously, and the state debt doubled. The Democratic, or Conservative, Party publicized these abuses and regained control of the legislature in the elections of 1872 under the leadership of a group of conservatives called Bourbons. Victory was aided by the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret terrorist organization that kept blacks and Republicans away from the polls by a campaign of threats, whippings, and occasional murders. In 1871 the Bourbon legislature impeached and convicted Republican Governor William W. Holden for abuses of power, and he was removed from office.

In 1875 the legislature called a constitutional convention that adopted 30 amendments, the most important of which returned local government to the control of the legislature and thus to the Democratic Party. All these amendments were ratified by popular vote. In 1876 the Democratic candidate for governor, Zebulon B. Vance, defeated the Republican candidate by a small majority.

The Bourbons controlled the legislature from 1872 to 1893 and the governorship from 1877 to 1897. Government was generally honest and economical, but all tactics were aimed at keeping the party and the white people in power. Voting and officeholding by blacks were permitted only within closely guarded limits. Public education was provided for blacks, but not on an equal basis with whites. Democratic leaders tended to follow a policy that favored the railroads and business interests over the farmers. Cotton textiles, tobacco, and furniture industries grew rapidly. The Democrats, who had difficulty perceiving the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, generally ignored the growing desires for aid to agriculture, equitable taxation on the new concentrations of wealth, regulation of the new economic power, and popular control of local government.

E.5.

Agricultural Distress and Populism

A sharecropping and tenant farming system grew up as a replacement of the old plantation system. A sharecropper raised part of a landowner’s crop and was paid a share of the profit after deductions for living expenses and the cost of tools and supplies. A tenant farmer sold what he raised and paid the landlord a share of the profit as rent. If the profit was low, the landlord got his share first. The cropper or tenant took what was left or, if none was left, got an advance to keep going until the next harvest. Because farm prices fell after the war and stayed low, most tenants and sharecroppers sank into an endless cycle of debt. Not until World War II (1939-1945), when widespread mechanization of agriculture made sharecropping unprofitable, did the system begin to disappear.

Farmers in general experienced a sharp decline in income in this period, while their living and operating costs continued to rise. Farmers began to organize in the 1870s, and, during the ensuing two decades, many joined the National Grange and the Farmers’ Alliances. The Alliances were cooperative organizations that hoped to lower farmers’ costs by selling supplies at reduced prices, loaning money at rates below those charged by banks, and building warehouses to store crops until prices increased. Dissatisfied with the Democratic Party, about half of the farmers of the state, already organized in the Alliance, formed the People’s Party in 1892. This political movement, called populism, had as its principal objectives the unlimited coinage of silver and large amounts of paper money, which were inflationary measures intended to raise farm prices and help farmers pay off their debts. Populists also sought a national cooperative system like the local Alliances; lower freight rates under state-run railroads; a graduated income tax to distribute the cost of government more widely; direct popular elections of U.S. senators; and an eight-hour workday.

The elections of 1892 demonstrated that the populists could win some offices but could not become the majority party. Therefore, in the elections of 1894 the populists cooperated with the Republicans, supporting in many instances a Fusion (Republican and Populist) ticket. The Fusionists won control of the legislatures of 1895 and 1897 and in 1896 elected a Republican, Daniel L. Russell, to the governorship. Russell was the only Republican to hold the governorship of North Carolina between the end of Reconstruction and 1973.

The Fusionists liberalized the election laws. As a result, a larger percentage of men voted in the presidential election of 1896. The Fusion administration improved the public schools and stimulated interest in education. Partly out of political necessity, the Fusionists also initiated a major experiment in political equality. Blacks voted freely. Ten blacks served a total of 12 terms in the legislature, and one black, George H. White, was, from 1897 to 1901, the last person of his race to represent a Southern state in the U.S. Congress until 1973.

E.6.

White Supremacy

Toward the end of the 1890s a younger group assumed the leadership of the Democratic Party, drew up a broad platform designed to attract people of all classes, and waged a campaign exploiting the race issue. The Democrats gained control of the legislature in 1898, and in 1900, with Charles Brantley Aycock as their nominee, won the governorship on a platform of education and white supremacy. In the same election, the voters approved a constitutional amendment mandating a literacy test that Aycock promised would remove blacks temporarily from politics; eventually, he contended, universal education would lead to universal suffrage. Blacks were indeed a disproportionately small minority of North Carolina voters from 1900 to the 1960s.

In the last part of the 19th century, as throughout the South, racial segregation was instituted in North Carolina through laws providing separate public facilities for whites and blacks. Blacks had to live in a different part of town, go to separate schools, eat at separate restaurants, and use different laundries, restrooms, and even drinking fountains. The facilities provided for blacks were never as good as those provided for whites. Segregation became a basic rule in Southern society, helping to ensure that blacks would not present a serious challenge to the social order.

F.

The 20th Century

After 1900 the state’s farmers enjoyed an improved market. Because of this and the defeats of 1898 and 1900, the populist movement disappeared. The loss of the black vote reduced the Republican Party to impotence for many years. From 1901 to 1973 the Democratic Party maintained an unbroken record of dominance in state government. The Democrats also controlled both houses of the legislature by overwhelming majorities in every session. From the end of the Fusionists’ terms to 1973, every U.S. senator from North Carolina was a Democrat.

F.1.

Economic Development

By the 1920s North Carolina was a national leader in the manufacture of textiles, tobacco products, and furniture. The state suffered economic hardship during the Great Depression, the hard times of the 1930s, but after 1933 public works projects funded by the federal government provided jobs for thousands of people, and federal programs aided cotton and tobacco farmers. In World War II (1939-1945) the unemployment problem was significantly reduced as 362,000 North Carolinians went into the armed services and the federal government spent almost $2 billion in the state for war materials. Defense agencies were supplied by 83 industrial plants in the state; among these were the North Carolina Ship Corporation at Wilmington, which turned out 358 ships; and the Ethyl-Dow Plant at Kure Beach, which manufactured all the tetraethyl lead used by the United States in the war. After World War II many Northern businesses, attracted by North Carolina’s restrictions on labor unions, relocated in the state. Many people seeking jobs moved from the farms to the cities, and industry expanded.

By the 1970s an urban way of life and culture had emerged in North Carolina. Nevertheless, problems of poverty persisted, and labor still lacked effective bargaining power. However, in 1974 the right to unionize was won at eight plants belonging to the giant J. P. Stevens Textile Company after an 11-year organizing drive by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.

F.2.

The Civil Rights Movement

An important part of the civil rights movement—mass sit-ins—originated in Greensboro in February 1960. The tactic was this: A body of blacks and whites together would crowd into a segregated lunch counter and ask for service. If service was refused, they would remain in their seats, taking up most of the available space so that the counter could do little other business until the police came and removed the demonstrators. From Greensboro, this tactic spread throughout the South during the early 1960s. Some establishments closed down their lunch counters, some changed to a stand-up operation, and others began integrated service. Many of the larger cities of North Carolina began to serve blacks and whites together, but in many of the smaller towns, segregated service continued until it was outlawed by the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 decided, in Brown v. Board of Education, that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the state was less resistant than most Southern states to desegregation, but proceeded slowly. The legislature in 1955 voted to eliminate any reference to race from the laws of the state but would not go beyond that. By unanimous vote, the legislators approved a resolution stating that:

However, desegregation began in the fall of 1955 on the university undergraduate level, when three black applicants were admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These were the first in the university’s 160-year history, other than a few who had been specially admitted to the law, medical, and graduate schools. They were admitted under federal court order after the university’s board of trustees initially voted not to process their applications. Integration at lower levels began in the fall of 1957 with three school boards—Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro—and gradually spread. After some initial protests by white segregationists, the process was a peaceful one. Busing of pupils to achieve racial desegregation began in the early 1970s in several cities in the state, following a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving a Charlotte school district. In 1981 the U.S. Department of Education and North Carolina authorities agreed on a plan for the full desegregation of the state university system by 1986. The agreement ended an 11-year dispute.

Although North Carolina’s black citizens advanced in rights, opportunities, and influence after World War II, they suffered the effects of years of economic, social, legal, and educational inequality. Various organizations advocating white supremacy were still active in the state. In November 1979, five members of the Communist Workers Party were shot to death by a group of Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis while holding an anti-Klan protest rally in Greensboro. The six men accused in the killings were found not guilty by a state court jury in November 1980.

F.3.

End of One-Party Rule

In the 1960s the Republican Party became stronger in North Carolina, partly in reaction to the liberalism of the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress. In 1972 the Republicans elected a governor, James E. Holshouser, Jr. (1973-1977), their first since 1901, and a U.S. senator, Jesse A. Helms, their first since 1895. Many other Republican candidates have been elected to Congress since 1972. In 1992 Republicans won control of the state House of Representatives (formerly the house of commons) and many county courthouses. Also in 1992, however, Democrat James B. Hunt, Jr., was elected governor; and Representative Eva M. Clayton, a Democrat, became the first black U.S Congress member from North Carolina since 1901.

Two North Carolina senators got large shares of the national limelight in the late 20th century—Republican Jesse Helms and Democrat Sam J. Ervin, Jr. Helms was first elected senator in 1972 and served until 2003, when he retired. He was outspoken on his stands in favor of traditional moral values. The son of the police chief of Monroe, Helms stuck to his early convictions about law and order, respect for elders, religious faith, and patriotism. He was an opponent of abortion and an advocate of prayer in public schools. Sam Ervin was a North Carolina Supreme Court justice when he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1954 to serve the unexpired term of the deceased Clyde R. Hoey. Ervin, who served in the Senate until 1974, was a Democrat of the old school. He opposed most civil rights legislation, generally supported business over labor, and supported U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975). Ervin headed the Senate committee investigating the Watergate Affair (1973-1974) and fought President Richard M. Nixon’s efforts to withhold evidence and testimony on the ground of executive privilege.

North Carolina’s prominence in national politics continued in the 21st century as one of its two U.S. senators, John Edwards, ran for the presidency and eventually became the Democratic party’s vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 elections. Although the ticket of Edwards and presidential candidate John F. Kerry lost nationally and within the state, North Carolina reelected Democrat Mike Easley as governor. The Democrats’ effort to retain Edwards’ Senate seat for the party failed as Republican representative Richard Burr defeated Erskine Bowles, who won the Democratic nomination for the Senate after Edwards decided not to seek reelection.

F.4.

Economic Expansion and Diversification

As the 20th century came to a close, North Carolina was at an economic crossroads, as long-established industries slowed and were overtaken by new ones. Tobacco revenues, for years a major part of North Carolina’s economy, began to fall in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the state still led the nation in 1996 in tobacco production and sales, findings about the health hazards of smoking lessened profits, and the industry faced an uncertain future. At the same time, textile mills, once a mainstay of North Carolina’s economy, began to suffer from competition by foreign operators with lower production costs.

Many of these older industries began to be overtaken by high-tech and research and development industries in the 1990s. The driving force behind this change was the Research Triangle Park, which opened in 1959. The park was a cooperative research center created by three North Carolina universities—Duke University in Durham, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University in Raleigh. A unique complex for organizations engaged in institutional, governmental, and industrial research, the park employed in 1998 more than 42,000 people working for more than 100 companies and organizations. The largest single employer at the park in 1998 was International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), a leading manufacturer of computers, which employed about 14,000 people at its facility in the park. Other major employers included Nortel Networks Corporation, a telecommunications company; Glaxo Wellcome Inc., a pharmaceutical concern; and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a biomedical research institute. The Research Triangle Park has brought prosperity to Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh.

Largely because of the success of endeavors such as the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina’s economy has grown and diversified, and the number of professional and high-tech jobs has increased rapidly. From 1990 to 1997 the state’s economy grew by 31 percent, compared to 20 percent for the United States as a whole in the same period. The state seemed poised to continue its growth well into the 21st century, spurred in part by Dell Computer Corporation’s decision in 2004 to build a manufacturing plant in North Carolina.

This article, except for the history section, was contributed by W. Frank Ainsley.