Shots Fired At Inter-Racial Party in Small-town NC, 1969 Echo Through The Years

As part of my ongoing series on how baby boomers are processing or reconciling their formative experiences on race, I stumbled upon Holydiscomfort.com, by Karen Bryant Shipp, "love letters to the church" (on) religion, social justice, anti-racism. In the summer of 1969 near Wake Forest, NC, shots were fired into her home, the Baptist Church …

First Footers in Integrating Schools in the South Recall Their Seminal Experiences in the 1960s, Early 1970s

The generation that graduated high school in the late 1960s or early 1970s has now reached retirement age. Many have attended their 50th reunions, and begun to recall what the culture was like then, different from now. Several articles have crossed my desk in the last year or so. Among them: Rocky Mount (NC) High …

Galifianakis, Greek Immigrant Family to NC, Have Made Mark on Acting, Politics

My old UNC History Professor, John Semonche, born in 1933, has been teaching since the 1960s. In 2016, he produced the book "Pick Nick: The Political Odyssey of Nick Galifianakis From Immigrant Son to Congressman." You probably know the actor Zach Galifianakis. His father Harry was an actor. But Harry's brother Nick, Zach's uncle, a …

Why Is There A North Carolina and a South Carolina?

Geography By Geoff and Geography Is Everything on Substack: A newsletter about geography, urbanism, and how the world is connected. By Geoff Gibson (host of the popular YouTube channel: Geography by Geoff) and geography professor Hunter Shobe. "North Carolina and South Carolina. Two states began their life as a single province and colony of England. …

Young Voters Are Turning Out in Large Numbers…

And they are far more progressive than their elders. The PBS News Hour reported: "This midterm cycle, young voters turned out in historic numbers and helped Democrats stave off the Republican red wave. They were still a small portion of the electorate, but voters under 30 have shown increased participation in the last few elections. …

Gerrymandering and Redistricting Tilt Political Power and Affects Democracy

Retro Reports: "Both parties play the redistricting game, redrawing electoral boundaries to lock down power. The lesson plan for educators also features our gerrymandering webinar : https://bit.ly/RRgerrymandering. " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwHiuMVGtyA

Slave Records Are Being Digitized, and Are Searchable

"People Not Property — Slave Deeds of North Carolina" is housed at the University of North Carolina Greensboro Digital Library on American Slavery. It offers a searchable database of slave deed. It's part of the Digital Library on American Slavery, which includes slave deeds, slave notices, and race and slavery petitions. So far, however, the …

Re-Examining What Happened to Cherokee Land in NC, Other States

Drew Reisinger, Register of Deeds of Buncombe County, NC, and his staff in Asheville, as well as most citizens of the county, didn't have a firm grasp on how the county was formed from mostly Cherokee lands. So they "set out to take a deeper look at that origin story using primary sources to tell a …

Consequential NC Governor & Senator Terry Sanford: A Video Biography from Duke U

He is best remembered for a progressive approach to civil rights in the Southern United States when other Southern governors were declaring "segregation now, segregation forever." And for a massive expansion of education funding to build a statewide community college system available to every North Carolinian at low cost. Terry Sanford (1917-1998) served as the …

Frank Porter Graham Helped Transform North Carolina from Backwater to Leading Progressive State

It's easy to stereotype the history of the Southern US before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as backward, bigoted, and isolated from the wider world. But that's an over-generalization. "Southern liberal, Citizen of the World" is the subtitle of University of Florida History Professor William A. Link's 2021 biography of Frank Porter …