The history of North Carolina from prehistory to the present covers the experiences of the people who have lived in the territory that now comprises the U.S. state of North Carolina.
Before 200 AD, residents were building earthwork mounds, which were used for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the ancient Mississippian culture established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont, continued to build or add on to such mounds. In the 500–700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built large, complex cities and maintained far flung regional trading networks. Historically documented tribes in the North Carolina region included the Carolina Algonquian-speaking tribes of the coastal areas, such as the Chowanoke, Roanoke, Pamlico, Machapunga, Coree, Cape Fear Indians, and others, who were the first encountered by the English; Iroquoian-speaking Meherrin, Cherokee and Tuscarora of the interior; and Southeastern Siouan tribes, such as the Cheraw, Waxhaw, Saponi, Waccamaw, and Catawba.
England was the primary European nation to settle the area, starting with a charter in 1584. Sir Walter Raleigh began two small settlements in the late 1580s, but they failed—the mystery remains as to what happened to the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island. By colonists from the Virginia moved into the area of Albemarle Sound. In 1663 the king granted a charter for a new colony named Carolina in honor of his father Charles I.[1] He gave ownership to the Lords Proprietors[2]
North Carolina had developed a system of representative government and local control by the early 18th century, and resented British attempts after 1765 to levy taxes without representation in parliament. The colony was a Patriot base during the American Revolution, and its legislature issued the Halifax Resolves, which authorized North Carolina delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote for independence from Britain. Loyalist elements were suppressed and there was relatively little military activity until late in the war.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, North Carolina remained a rural state, with no cities and few villages. Most whites operated small subsistence farms, but the eastern part of the state had a growing class of planters, especially after 1800 when cotton became highly profitable when using slave labor. Politically the state was highly democratic, as heated elections (among adult white men) pitted the Democratic east versus the Whiggish west. After the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 North Carolina seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America. More soldiers from North Carolina fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, than any other state, but few major battles were fought there. During the early years of Reconstruction, strides were made at integrating the newly freed slaves into society, however these were quickly overturned and North Carolina became a firm part of the Jim Crow South.
The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s had many connections to North Carolina. Events such as the sit-in protest at the F.W. Woolworth's store in Greensboro would become a touchstone for the movement, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a central organization in the movement, was founded at Shaw University in Raleigh. In 1973, Clarence Lightner was elected as the first African-American mayor of a major southern city, also in Raleigh.
Contents |
The earliest discovered human settlements in what eventually became North Carolina are found at the Hardaway Site near the town of Badin in the south-central part of the state. Radiocarbon dating of the site has not been possible. However, based on other dating methods, such as rock strata and the existence of Dalton-type spear points, the site has been dated to approximately 8000 BC.[3]
Spearpoints of the Dalton type continued to change and evolve slowly for the next 7000 years, suggesting a continuity of culture for most of that time. During this time, settlement was scattered and likely existed solely on the hunter-gatherer level. Towards the end of this period, there is evidence of settled agriculture, such as plant domestication and the development of pottery.[4]
From 1000 BC until the time of European settlement marks a time period known as the "Woodland period". Permanent villages, based on settled agriculture, existed throughout the state. By about 800 AD, fortified towns appeared throughout the Piedmont region, suggesting the existence of organized tribal warfare.[5] An important site of this late-Woodland period is the Town Creek Indian Mound, an archaeologically rich location occupied by the Pee Dee culture of the Mississippian tradition.[6][7]
The earliest exploration of North Carolina by a European expedition is likely that of Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. An Italian from Florence, Verrazzano was hired by French merchants in order to procure a sea route to bring silk to the city of Lyon. With the tacit support of King Francis I, Verrazzano sailed west on January 1, 1524 aboard his ship La Dauphine ahead of a flotilla that numbered three ships.[8] The expedition made landfall at Cape Fear, and Verrazzano reported of his explorations to the King of France,
"The seashore is completely covered with fine sand [15 feet] deep, which rises in the shape of small hills about fifty paces wide... Nearby we could see a stretch of country much higher than the sandy shore, with many beautiful fields and planes[sic] full of great forests, some sparse and some dense; and the trees have so many colors, and are so beautiful and delightful that they defy description."[9]
Verrazzano continued north along the Outer Banks, making periodic explorations as he sought a route further west towards China. When he viewed the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds opposite the Outer Banks, he believed them to be the Pacific Ocean; his reports of such helped fuel the belief that the westward route to Asia was much closer than previously believed.[8][10]
Just two years later, in 1526, a group of Spanish colonists from Hispaniola led by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón landed at the mouth of a river they called the "Rio Jordan", which may have been the Cape Fear River. The party consisted of 500 men and women, their slaves, and horses. One of their ships wrecked off the shore, and valuable supplies were lost; this coupled with illness and rebellion doomed the colony. Ayllon died in October, 1526 and the 150 or so survivors of that first year abandoned the colony and attempted to return to Hispaniola. Later explorers reported finding their remains along the coast; as the dead were cast off during the return trip.[11]
Hernando de Soto first explored west-central North Carolina during his 1539-1540 expedition. His first encounter with a native settlement in North Carolina may have been at Guaquilli near modern Hickory. In 1567 Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition from Santa Elena at Parris Island, South Carolina, then the capital of the Spanish colony in the Southeast, into the interior of North Carolina, largely following De Soto's earlier route. His journey was ordered to claim the area as a Spanish colony, pacify and convert the natives, as well as establish another route to protect silver mines in Mexico (the Spanish did not realize the distances involved). Pardo went toward the northwest to be able to get food supplies from natives.[12][13]
Pardo and his team made a winter base at Joara (near Morganton, in Burke County), which he renamed Cuenca. They built Fort San Juan and left 30 men, while Pardo traveled further, establishing five other forts. He returned by a different route to Santa Elena. After 18 months, in the spring of 1568, natives killed all the soldiers and burned the six forts, including the one at Fort San Juan. The Spanish never returned to the interior to press their colonial claim, but this marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior. Translation in the 1980s of a journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera have confirmed the expedition and settlement. Archaeological finds at Joara indicate that it was a Mississippian culture settlement and also indicate Spanish settlement at Fort San Juan in 1567-1568. Joara was the largest mound builder settlement in the region. Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540.[12][13][14]
The earliest English attempt at colonization in North America was Roanoke Colony of 1584–1587, the famed "Lost Colony" of Sir Walter Raleigh. The colony was established at Roanoke Island in the Croatan Sound on the leeward side of the Outer Banks. The first attempt at a settlement consisted of 100 or so men led by Ralph Lane. They built a fort, and waited for supplies from a second voyage. While waiting for supplies to return, Lane and his men antagonized the local Croatan peoples, killing several of them in armed skirmishes.[15][16] The interactions were not all negative, as the local people did teach the colonists some survival skills, such as the construction of dugout canoes.[17]
When the relief was long in coming, the colonists began to give up hope; after a chance encounter with Sir Francis Drake, the colonists elected to accept transport back to England with him. When the supply ships did arrive, only a few days later, they found the colony abandoned. The ship's captain, Richard Grenville, left a small force of 15 men to hold the fort and supplies and wait for a new stock of colonists.[18][19]
In 1587 a third ship arrived carrying 110 men, 17 women, and 9 children, some of whom had been part of the first group of colonists that had earlier abandoned Roanoke. This group was led by John White. Among them was a pregnant woman; she gave birth to the first English subject born in North America, Virginia Dare. The colonists found the remains of the garrison left behind, likely killed by the Croatan who had been so antagonized by Lane's aggressiveness.[20] White had intended to pick up the remains of the garrison, abandon Roanoke Island, and settle in the Chesapeake Bay. White's Portuguese pilot, Simon Fernandez, refused to carry on further; rather than risk mutiny, White agreed to resettle the former colony.[21]
The Spanish War prevented any further contact between the colony and England until a 1590 expedition, which found no remains of any colonists, just an abandoned colony and the letters "CROATOAN" carved into a tree, and "CRO" carved into another. Despite many investigations, no one knows what happened to the colony.[22][23][24]
The Province of North Carolina developed distinctly from South Carolina almost from the beginning. The Spanish experienced trouble colonizing North Carolina because it had a dangerous coastline, a lack of ports, and few inland rivers by which to navigate. In the 1650s and 1660s, settlers (mostly British) moved south from Virginia, in addition to runaway servants and fur trappers. They settled chiefly in the Albemarle Borderlands region.[25]
In 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions. In 1710, due to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony began to split into North Carolina and South Carolina. The latter became a crown colony in 1729. Smallpox took a heavy toll in the South. The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one-half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally.[26] There were only about 5,000 settlers in 1700 and 11,000 in 1715.[27] While mostly British, the settlers included a few African slaves and a colony at New Bern composed of Swiss and German settlers.[27]
As early as 1689, the Carolina proprietors named a separate governor for the region of the colony that lay to the north and east of Cape Fear. By 1712, the term "North Carolina" was in common use. In 1728, the dividing line between North Carolina and Virginia was surveyed. In 1730, the population was 30,000.[27] By 1729, the Crown bought out seven of the eight original proprietors, making North Carolina a royal colony. The proprietor who refused to sell was John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, who in 1744 received rights to the vast Granville Tract, constituting the northern half of North Carolina.
The colony grew rapidly from a population of 100,000 in 1752 to 200,000 in 1765.[27] By 1760, enslaved Africans constituted one quarter of the population and were concentrated along the coast. This happened just as the tide of immigration to North Carolina from Virginia and Pennsylvania began to swell.[27] Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish from what is today Northern Ireland were the largest non-English immigrant group before the Revolution and English indentured servants were overwhelmingly the largest immigrant group prior to the Revolution.[28][29][30][29][30][31] On the eve of the American Revolution, North Carolina was the fastest-growing British colony in North America. The small family farms of the Piedmont contrasted sharply with the plantation economy of the coastal region, where wealthy planters grew tobacco and rice with slave labor.
Differences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the low country and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the eighteenth until the twentieth century. The Tidewater in eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from rural England and the Scottish Highlands. The upcountry of western North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish, English and German Protestants, the so-called "cohee". Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish from Ireland were the largest immigrant group before the Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, the English and Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain. The English, Welsh, Scots-Irish and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain.
Most of the English colonists arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as teenagers for a fixed period to pay for their passage.
With no cities and very few towns or villages, the colony was intensely rural and spread out. Local taverns provided multiple services ranging from strong drink, beds for travelers, and meeting rooms for politicians and businessmen. In a world sharply divided along lines of ethnicity, gender, race, and class, the tavern keepers' rum proved a solvent that mixed together all sorts of locals, as well as travelers. The increasing variety of drinks on offer, and the emergence of private clubs meeting in the taverns, showed that genteel culture was spreading from London to the periphery of the English world.[32] The courthouse was usually the most imposing building in the county. Jails were often an important part of the courthouse but were sometimes built separately. Tobacco warehouses were also built by some county governments.[33]
In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves was vague. Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status. Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from unions or marriages between free white women and enslaved or free African or African-American men. Because the mothers were free, their children were born free.[34] As the flow of indentured laborers slackened, more slaves were imported and the state's controls on slavery hardened. The economy's growth and prosperity was based on slave labor, devoted first to the production of tobacco. The oppressive and brutal experiences of slaves and poor whites in led to the moral acceptance among many of these people of criminal activities, such as escape from slaveowners, violent resistance, and theft of food and other goods in order to survive.[35]
In the late 1760s, tensions between Piedmont farmers and coastal planters welled up in the Regulator movement. With specie scarce, many inland farmers found themselves unable to pay their taxes and resented the consequent seizure of their property. Local sheriffs sometimes kept taxes for their own gain and sometimes charged twice for the same tax. Governor William Tryon's conspicuous consumption in the construction of a new governor's mansion at New Bern fuelled the movement's resentment. As the western districts were under-represented in the colonial legislature, it was difficult for the farmers to obtain redress by legislative means. Ultimately, the frustrated farmers took to arms and closed the court in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Tryon sent troops to the region and defeated the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance in May 1771.
The demand for independence came from local grassroots organizations called "Committees of Safety". The First Continental Congress had urged their creation in 1774. By 1775 they had become counter-governments that gradually replaced royal authority and took control of local governments. They regulated the economy, politics, morality, and militia of their individual communities. After December 1776 they came under the control of a more powerful central authority, the Council of Safety.[36]
In the spring of 1776, North Carolinians, meeting in the fourth of their Provincial Congresses, drafted the Halifax Resolves, a set of resolutions that empowered the state's delegates to the Second Continental Congress to concur in a declaration of independence from Great Britain. In July, 1776, the new state became part of the new nation, the United States of America.
In 1775 the Patriots easily expelled the Royal governor and suppressed the Loyalists. In November 1776, elected representatives gathered in Halifax to write a new state constitution, which remained in effect until 1835.[37] One of the most prominent Loyalists was John Legett, a rich planter in Bladen County. He organized and led one of the few loyalist brigades in the South (the North Carolina Volunteers, later known as the Royal North Carolina Regiment). After the war, Colonel Legett and some of his men moved to Nova Scotia; the British gave them free land grants in County Harbour. The great majority of Loyalists remained in North Carolina and became citizens of the new nation.[38]
Local militia units proved important in the guerrilla war of 1780-81, and even more important were the soldiers who enlisted in George Washington's Continental Army and fought in numerous battles up and down the land.[39]
With a weak tax base, state officials used impressment to seize food and supplies needed for the war effort, paying the farmers with promissary notes. To raise soldiers, state officials tried a draft law. Both both policies created significant discontent that undermined support for the new nation.[40] The state's large German population, concentrated in the central counties, tried to remain neutral; the Moravians were actively pacifist because of strong religious beliefs, while Lutheran and Reformed Germans were passively neutral. All peace groups paid triple taxes in lieu of military service.[41]
Well the British were punctual in paying their regulars and their Loyalist forces, American soldiers went month after month in threadbare uniforms with no pay and scanty supplies. Belatedly, the state tried to make amends. After 1780 soldiers received cash bounties, a slave "or the value thereof," clothing, food, and land (after 1782 they received from 640 to 1,200 acres depending on rank). Since the money supply, based on the Continental currency was subject to high inflation and loss of value, state officials valued compensation in relation to gold and silver.[42]
After 1780 the British made a major effort to rouse and arm the Loyalists—who they supposed were a very large group. The result was fierce guerrilla warfare between units of Patriots and Loyalists. Often the opportunity was seized to settle private grudges and feuds. A major American victory took place at King's Mountain along the North Carolina–South Carolina border. On October 7, 1780 a force of 1000 mountain men from western North Carolina (including what is today part of Tennessee) overwhelmed a force of some 1000 Loyalist and British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. The victory largely ended British efforts to recruit more Loyalists.
The road to American victory at Yorktown led through North Carolina. As the British army moved north toward Virginia the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them. Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British under Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from Cornwallis's base of supply in Charleston, South Carolina. This campaign is known as "The Race to the Dan" or "The Race for the River."[2]
Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781. Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior American Army were crippling. Comwallis has a poor strategic plan which had failed in holding his heavily garrisoned positions in South Carolina and Georgia, and had failed to subdue North Carolina. By contrast, Greene used a more flexible adaptive approach that negated the British advantages and built an adequate logistical foundation for the American campaigns. Greene's defensive operations provided the Southern Army the opportunity to later seize the strategic offensive from Comwallis and eventually reclaim the Carolinas. The weakened Cornwallis headed to the Virginia coastline to get rescued by the Royal Navy.[43] There the Navy was repulsed and Cornwallis, surrounded by American and French units, surrendered to George Washington, effectively ending the fighting.
In 1786, the population of North Carolina had increased to 350,000.[27]
The United States Constitution drafted in 1787 was controversial in North Carolina. Delegate meetings at Hillsboro in July 1788 initially voted to reject it for anti-federalist reasons. They were persuaded to change their minds partly by the strenuous efforts of James Iredell and William Davies and partly by the prospect of a Bill of Rights. Meanwhile, residents in the wealthy northeastern part of the state, who generally supported the proposed Constitution, threatened to secede if the rest of the state did not fall into line. A second ratifying convention was held in Fayetteville in November 1789, and on November 21, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
North Carolina adopted a new state constitution in 1835. One of the major changes was the introduction of direct election of the governor, for a term of two years; prior to 1835, the legislature elected the governor for a term of one year. North Carolina's current capitol building was completed in 1840.
In mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a 129–mile (208 km) wooden plank road, known as a "farmer's railroad", from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem).[2]
On October 25, 1836 construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad[44] to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1849 the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte. During the Civil War the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad would be vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington would be moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
During the antebellum period, North Carolina was an overwhelmingly rural state, even by Southern standards. In 1860 only one North Carolina town, the port city of Wilmington, had a population of more than 10,000. Raleigh, the state capital, had barely more than 5,000 residents.
The majority of white families comprised the Plain Folk of the Old South, or "yeoman farmers." They owned their own small farms, and occasionally had a slave or two. Most of their efforts were to build up the farm, and feed their families, with a little surplus sold on the market in order to pay taxes and buy necessities.[45]
Most of North Carolina's slave owners and large plantations were located in the eastern portion of the state. Although North Carolina's plantation system was smaller and less cohesive than those of Virginia, Georgia or South Carolina, there were significant numbers of planters concentrated in the counties around the port cities of Wilmington and Edenton, as well as suburban planters around the cities of Raleigh, Charlotte and Durham. Planters owning large estates wielded significant political and socio-economic power in antebellum North Carolina, placing their interests above those of the generally non-slave holding "yeoman" farmers of Western North Carolina.
While slaveholding was slightly less concentrated than in some Southern states, according to the 1860 census, more than 330,000 people, or 33% of the population of 992,622 were enslaved African-Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the eastern Tidewater. In addition, 30,463 free people of color lived in the state. They were also concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially at port cities such as Wilmington and New Bern where they had access to a variety of jobs. Free African Americans were allowed to vote until 1835, when the state rescinded their suffrage.
Besides slaves, there were a number of free people of color in the state. Most were descended from free African Americans who had migrated along with neighbors from Virginia during the eighteenth century. After the Revolution, Quakers and Mennonites worked to persuade slaveholders to free their slaves. Some were inspired by their efforts and the language of men's rights, to arrange for manumission of their slaves. The number of free people of color rose markedly in the first couple of decades after the Revolution.[46]
In 1860, North Carolina was a slave state, in which about one-third of the population of 992,622 were enslaved African Americans. This was a smaller proportion than many Southern states. In addition, the state had just over 30,000 Free Negroes.[47] there were relatively few large plantations or old aristocratic families. North Carolina was reluctant to secede from the Union when it became clear that Republican Abraham Lincoln had won the presidential election. With the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, in Lincoln's call for troops to march to South Carolina, the unionist element virtually collapsed in both of the state, and North Carolina joined the Confederacy.
North Carolina was the site of few battles, but it provided at least 125,000 troops to the Confederacy— far more than any other state. Approximately 40,000 of those troops never returned home, dying of disease, battlefield wounds, and starvation. North Carolina also supplied about 15,000 Union troops.[48] Confederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army. The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865.[2] In April 1865 after losing the Battle of Morrisville, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham, North Carolina. This was the next to last major Confederate Army to surrender. North Carolina's port city of Wilmington was the last major Confederate port for blockade runners; it fell in the spring of 1865 after the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher.
Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
The Union's naval blockade of Southern ports and the breakdown of the Confederate transportation system took a heavy toll on North Carolina residents, as did the runaway inflation of the war years. In the spring of 1863, there were food riots in North Carolina as town dwellers found it hard to buy food. On the other hand, blockade runners brought prosperity several port cities, until they were shut down by the Union Navy in 1864-65.
Even after secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. This was particularly true of non-slave-owning farmers in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region. Some of these farmers remained neutral during the war, while some covertly supported the Union cause during the conflict. Approximately 2,000 white North Carolinians from western North Carolina enlisted in the Union Army and fought for the North in the war, and two additional black Union regiments were raised in the coastal areas of the state that were occupied by Union forces in 1862 and 1863.
During Reconstruction, African American leaders came both from those free before the war, from men who had escaped to the North and decided to return, and from migrants from the North who wanted to help in the postwar years. Many of these had escaped from slavery and got some education before they came back to the state. In general, however, illiteracy was a problem shared by most African Americans and about one-third of the whites in the state.
A number of white northerners migrated to North Carolina to work and invest. While feelings in the state were high against carpetbaggers, of the 133 persons at the constitutional convention, only 18 were Northern carpetbaggers and 15 were African American. North Carolina was readmitted to the Union in 1868, after ratifying a new state constitution. It included provisions to establish public education, prohibited slavery, and adopted universal suffrage. It also provided for orphanages, public charities and a penitentiary.[49] The legislature also ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1870 the Democratic Party came to power in the state. Governor William W. Holden had used civil powers and spoken out to try to combat the Ku Klux Klan's increasing violence. Conservatives accused him of being head of the Union League, of believing in social equality between the races, and of being corrupt. When the legislature voted to impeach him, however, it charged him only with using and paying troops to put down insurrection (Ku Klux Klan activity) in the state. Holden was impeached and turned over his duties to Lieutenant Governor Tod R. Caldwell on December 20, 1870. The trial began on January 30, 1871, and lasted nearly three months. On March 22, the North Carolina Senate found Holden guilty and ordered him removed from office.
After the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 went into effect, the U.S. Attorney General, Amos T. Akerman, vigorously prosecuted Klan members in North Carolina. During the late 1870s, there was increased violence in the Piedmont area, where whites tried to suppress minority black voting in the election.
As in other Southern states, after white Democrats regained power, they worked to re-establish white supremacy. Nonetheless, in the 1880s, black officeholders were at a peak in local offices, elected from black-majority districts.[50] In 1894 after years of agricultural problems, an interracial coalition of Republicans and Populists won a majority of seats in the state legislature. White Democrats worked to break up the coalition and reduce black and poor white suffrage.
In 1896 North Carolina passed a statute that made voter registration more complicated and reduced blacks on voter registration rolls. In 1898 in an election characterized by violence, fraud and intimidation of black voters, white Democrats regained power in the state legislature. [51] They then passed a new constitution in 1900 with a suffrage amendment. Its provisions for poll taxes, literacy tests and similar mechanisms succeeded in reducing black voter turnout completely by 1904, and disfranchising many poor whites as well. Contemporary accounts estimated that 75,000 black men lost the vote.[51][52] In 1900 blacks numbered 630,207 citizens, about 33% of the state's total population.[53]
With control of the legislature, white Democrats passed Jim Crow laws establishing segregation in public facilities and transportation. It would take African Americans more than 60 years before they would regain full power to exercise the suffrage and other full rights of citizens. Without the abiliy to vote, they lost all chance at local offices: sheriffs, justices of the peace, jurors, county commissioners and school board members, which were the active site of government at the turn of the century.[54] Suppression of the black vote and re-establishment of white supremacy quickly overwhelmed people's memory and knowledge of the thriving black middle class in the state.[52]
Post-Civil War racial politics encouraged efforts to divide and co-opt groups. In 1885 the state created 12 separate school districts for "Indians".[55] The group changed their name to "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County" in 1913, "Siouan Indians of Lumber River" in 1934-1935, and were given limited recognition by the U.S. Congress as Lumbee Indians in 1956.[56]
As the Democrats solidified their position in the legislature. They also drew racial lines in areas where they had been blurred. In 1900 the state passed laws completing the disfranchisement process and the Republicans were no longer competitive in the state.
During the late 19th century, North Carolina's Piedmont region developed an industrial economy that included the cotton textile industry in close-knit company towns, and timber-based furniture and building supplies in villages such as High Point and Thomasville. The introduction of manufacturing helped to diversify North Carolina's chiefly agricultural economy. In the early decades, African Americans were rejected for textile industry jobs because of segregation.
Reacting to segregation, disfranchisement and difficulties in agriculture, tens of thousands of African Americans left the state for the North for better opportunities in the Great Migration, whose first wave was from 1910-1940. They went to Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia; and sometimes further north, where there was work.
The work patterns of elite white women changed radically, depending on their stage in the life cycle. Women over age 50 changed least, insisting that they needed servants and continuing their traditional managerial roles. The next generation comprising the young wives and mothers during the war depended much less on black servants, and displayed greater flexibility toward household work. The youngest generation, which matured during the war and Reconstruction, did many of their own domestic chores and sought paid jobs outside the household, especially in teaching, which allowed an escape from domestic chores and obligatory marriage.[57]
On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made the first successful airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In the early 20th century, North Carolina launched both a major education initiative and a major road-building initiative to enhance the state's economy. The educational initiative was launched by Governor Charles Aycock in 1901. Supposedly, North Carolina built one school per day while Aycock was in office. In addition, North Carolina was helped by the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which contributed matching funds for the construction of thousands of schools for African Americans in rural areas throughout the South in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1917-1919 the state's Democrats were in powerful positions in Congress, holding two of 23 major committee chairmanships in the Senate and four of 18 in the House, as well as the post of House majority leader. President Woodrow Wilson, a fellow Democrat from the South, remained highly popular during the war and was generally supported by the delegation. During the war, the decrepit ship building industry was suddenly revived with large-scale federal contracts. Nine new shipyards opened to build ships under contracts from the Emergency Fleet Corporation. For steamships were actually made out of concrete, but most were made of wood or steel. Thousands of workers rushed to high-paying jobs, as the managers found a shortage of highly skilled mechanics, as well as a housing shortage. Although unions were weak, labor unrest and managerial inexperience caused the delays. the shipyards closed at the end of the war.[58]
The state's road-building initiative began in the 1920s, after the automobile became a popular mode of transportation. During the early decades of the 20th century, several major U.S. military installations, notably Fort Bragg, were located in North Carolina. There were many usable trains in the town.
An important state government agency was the North Carolina Woman's Committee, headed by Laura Holmes Reilly of Charlotte. Motivated by the public service ideals of the Progressive Movement, it registered women for many volunteer services, promoted increased food production and the elimination of wasteful cooking and storage practices, helped maintain social services, worked to bolster moral well-being of white and black soldiers, provided ideas on improvements of public health and public schools, encouraged black participation in its programs, and helped with the terrible Spanish flu epidemic that struck worldwide in late 1918. Of the committee was generally successful in reaching middle-class white and black women, but it was handicapped by condescension by men, limited funding, and tepid responses from women on the farms and working-class districts.[59]
The state's farmers were badly hurt in the early years of the United States, but benefited greatly by the New Deal programs, especially the tobacco program which guaranteed a steady flow of relatively high income to farmers,[60] and the cotton program, which raised the prices farmers received for their crops.[61] The textile industry in the Piedmont region continued to attract cotton mills relocating from the high-wage North.
Prosperity largely returned during World War II, as the state sent hundreds of thousands of young men and a few hundred young women into the military, and supplied the armed forces with more textiles than any other state in the nation.
Political scientist V. O. Key analyzed the state political culture in depth in the late 1940s, and concluded it was exceptional in the South for its "progressive outlook and action in many phases of life", especially in the realm of industrial development, commitment to public education, and a moderate pattern segregation that was relatively free of the rigid racism found in the Deep South.[62]
North Carolina invested heavily in its system of higher education. also became known for its excellent universities. Three major institutions compose the state's Research Triangle: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (chartered in 1789 and greatly expanded from the 1930s on), North Carolina State University, and Duke University (rechartered in 1924). conditions and the public elementary and high schools were not as noteworthy, however. In the 1960s Governor Terry Sanford, a racial moderate, called for more spending on the schools, but Sanford's program featured regressive taxation that fell disproportionately on the workers. In the 1970s Governor James B. Hunt Jr., another racial moderate, championed educational reform
Reformers have stressed the central role of education in the modernization of the state and economic growth. They have also aggressively pursued economic development, attracting out-of-state, and international corporations with special tax deals and infrastructure development. Charlotte became the nation's number two banking center, after New York.
In 1931 the Negro Voters League was formed in Raleigh to press for voter registration. The city had an educated and politically sophisticated black middle class; by 1946 the League had succeeded in registering 7,000 black voters, an achievement in the segregated South.[63] The work of racial desegregation and restoration of civil rights for African Americans continued throughout the state.
Durham's Black newspaper Carolina Times, edited by Louis Austin, took the lead in promoting the "Double V" strategy during World War II among civil rights activists. the strategy was to energize blacks to fight victory abroad against the Nazis and Japs, while fighting for victory at home against white supremacy and racial oppression. Calling for a war against racism abroad and at home, activists demanded an end to racial inequality in education, politics, economics, and the armed forces.[64]
In 1960 nearly 25% of the state was African American: 1,114,907 citizens who had been living without full rights.[65] African-American college students began the sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro on February 1, 1960, sparking a wave of copycat sit-ins across the American South. They continued the Greensboro sit-in sporadically for several months until, on July 25, African Americans were at last allowed to eat at Woolworth's. Integration of public facilities followed.
Together with continued activism in states throughout the South, African Americans' moral leadership gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Throughout the state, African Americans began to participate fully in political life. In October 1973, Clarence Lightner was elected mayor of Raleigh, making history as the first popularly elected mayor of the city, the first African American to be elected mayor, and the first African American to be elected mayor in a white-majority city of the South.[63]
In 1979 North Carolina ended the state eugenics program. Since 1929 the state Eugenics Board had deemed thousands of individuals 'feeble minded' and had them forcibly sterilized.[66] In 2011 the state legislature debated whether the estimate 2,900 living victims of North Carolina's sterilization regime would be compensated for the irreparable harm inflicted upon them by the state. The victims of the program were disproportionate minorities and the poor.
In 1971, North Carolina's third state constitution was ratified. A 1997 amendment to this constitution granted the governor veto power over most legislation. The state became a Republican stronghold in national elections starting in 1968, although Barack Obama did carry the electoral vote in 2008.
During the last 25 years, North Carolina's population has increased as its economy has grown, especially in finance and knowledge-based industries, while agriculture has declined sharply because of mechanization, and the textile industry has steadily declined because of globalization.[67] Most of the growth has taken place in metropolitan areas of the Piedmont, in Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Greensboro.[68]
|
||||||||||||||