The history of North Carolina is inextricably intertwined with the history of its Black residents. From the initial presence of slavery in 1663 to the ongoing struggle for racial equity, African Americans have profoundly shaped the state's cultural, economic, and political landscape. This timeline highlights key events and milestones in the history of African Americans in North Carolina.
Slavery and Resistance (1663-1865)
Slavery was present in North Carolina from its inception as a colony in 1663 and foundational to the colony’s economy. The colonial slave population was mainly concentrated in the eastern part of the colony where a relatively small number of wealthy planters established plantations reliant on slave labor. White settlers in the backcountry of colonial North Carolina lacked the economic means to procure large numbers of enslaved persons. North Carolina’s slave system was not as advanced as those of Virginia and South Carolina during the colonial era.
Chattel slavery in North Carolina relied on violence, coercion, and negotiation - including whippings, threat of sale, sexual violence, and an ever-changing legal framework - to control enslaved communities. Yet, despite the extraordinary lengths slaveowners went to preserve this racial hierarchy, the enslaved resisted, in acts that can be seen in virtually every aspect of life. Subtle examples included feigning illness, breaking tools, playing dumb, or working slowly, while more extreme examples included arson, running away, and revolt.
One of the most threatening acts of resistance - and a serious threat to the social order - was the education of both enslaved and free black people. Literacy brought opportunities for slaves to forge passes and free papers, to access and spread abolitionist literature, and to read the Bible, which was thought to encourage visions of freedom.
During the 1830s, whites in North Carolina cracked down on slave literacy and free black education. Under a law enacted at the time, “Any free person, who shall hereafter teach, any slave within this state to read or write, the use of figures excepted, or shall give or sell to such slave or slaves any books or pamphlets, shall be liable to indictment in any court of record in this State.” Neither could slaves teach each other to read or write.
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Despite the risk, many enslaved people secretly taught themselves. The rare opportunities for free blacks to receive an education in North Carolina existed most transparently in the apprentice system.
| Group | Population |
|---|---|
| Whites | 553,028 |
| Free Persons of Color | 27,463 |
| Enslaved Persons | 288,538 |
| Total Population | 869,039 |
Much of eastern North Carolina fell under Union occupation early in the Civil War. Enslaved people across the eastern portion of the state flocked to Union-occupied territory for protection and to aid in the war effort for the North. One of the first aspects of free life for formerly enslaved people in Union-occupied North Carolina was access to education, which helped them distance themselves as much as possible from their former status.
Northern teachers almost immediately entered eastern North Carolina. Many of them had never seen a person of African descent before and were astounded at the efforts of freedpeople to further education and establish their own places of learning. In May 1862, military governor Edward Stanley ordered black schools in New Bern to close, citing state slave codes forbidding teaching blacks to read or write. The schools were closed, but later reopened. Despite such setbacks and racist attacks, the Union army’s presence largely allowed black communities in occupied eastern North Carolina to thrive.
In 1865 and the years that followed, freedpeople in the South began constructing their new lives and communities - like Freedom Hill, later Princeville - enabled by emancipation. One of the first things they did was to build schools.
Reconstruction and Its Aftermath (1865-1900)
In the summer of 1865, newly liberated enslaved people from all corners of Edgecombe County gathered on a knoll just outside of Tarboro, North Carolina. There, Union officers informed them the Civil War had ended - their Day of Jubilee had finally come. They immediately decided to create their own settlement, separate from their former owners, just across the Tar River from Tarboro. Named after the hill where they’d learned of their emancipation, the community of Freedom Hill was born. Initially a refuge from intolerant and potentially hostile white society across the river, Princeville grew to symbolize a legacy of black autonomy in a state still struggling with the cultural and institutional legacy of slavery.
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Other than land ownership, freedpeople in the South just after the Civil War considered education perhaps the most critical vehicle towards autonomy; both rights had been denied them for centuries. Indeed, the storyline of Princeville, with its elements of resilience, self-reliance, outside aid, segregation, racism, and white backlash, reflects the dynamics of racial inequity and education in the state.
Along with the efforts of freedpeople themselves, the Freedmen’s Bureau and organizations such as the AMA provided crucial aid to black education in the South during the early months of Reconstruction. Using violence to maintain control, white Democrats often resorted to violence and intimidation directed towards freedpeople. Whites burned down four schoolhouses in early 1866 and two more the following year. Also in 1866, two black men in Duplin County were forced to close their school after whites threatened to burn it to the ground.
Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act in 1867, ushering in a new era of Reconstruction in the South. North Carolina was required to draft a new constitution and adopt the Fourteenth Amendment, giving black men the right to vote. The state constitutional convention of 1868 proved to be a revolutionary moment for public education in North Carolina, officially adopting black education and creating a new universal public school system for blacks and whites to operate at least four months out of the year.
By 1869, as the Ku Klux Klan infiltrated North Carolina, racial violence targeting black education exploded. White teachers were beaten and threatened. Freedpeople grew warier of sending their children to school, especially at night. In 1870, the conservative Democrats gained control of the North Carolina legislature. School segregation was a topic of heated debate during the Constitutional Convention of 1875. White Republicans abandoned African American legislators in the state General Assembly, leaving them no choice but to acquiesce in order to preserve the rights they had.
The Jim Crow Era and Civil Rights Movement (1900-1960s)
Black history is American history, and Black History Week, established as a precursor to Black History Month by the author and historian Carter G. Woodson, reminds us of this fact. It’s but a small sample of the contributions of so many over the centuries.
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The Mechanics and Farmers Bank was founded in 1907 by Physician and businessman Manassa Thomas Pope and partner M.A. Johnson to provide banking services to the Black community. In 1910, Dr. James E. Shepard, a businessman, opens the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua for the Colored Race; after changing names and ownership, the school is eventually recognized as N.C. Central University by the state legislature in 1969. It is the first state-supported university for Black people in the nation.
Louis E. Austin, fiery editor and publisher, establishes The Carolina Times, a Black weekly newspaper with the slogan “The Truth Unbridled.” The Times becomes one of the most influential newspapers in the state.
American fashion icon Andre Leon Talley was born in 1948. Durham’s John Hope Franklin publishes the landmark volume, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans in 1947. He will become a leading American historian.
The Supreme Court releases its landmark ruling desegregating schools in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Seven Black demonstrators are arrested for conducting a peaceful sit-in at the Royal Ice Cream Company in downtown Durham in one of the country’s first civil rights sit-ins on June 23, 1957.
Four Black students stage a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro on February 8, 1960. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses the congregation of the White Rock Baptist Church, delivering his history-making “fill up the jails” civil rights speech on February 16, 1960.
Ella Baker, a Shaw University valedictorian and the first national director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, forms The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on the Shaw University campus in 1960.
Businessman John Winters becomes the first African American elected to Raleigh’s city council in 1961. Black demonstrators are arrested at a peaceful sit-in at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Durham on May 18, 1963.
Attorney Floyd B. McKissick is named National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) in 1966. Basketball great Charles “Charlie” Scott becomes the first African American student athlete to receive a scholarship at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1967.
UNC-Chapel Hill cafeteria workers go on strike with the support of the Black Student Movement on February 23, 1969. Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel Hill, the first Black man to lead any predominantly white Southern town on May 6, 1969.
Civil rights activist Ann Atwater serves as co-chair of a charrette, along with local KKK leader C.P. Ellis, that eventually leads to the desegregation of Durham’s public schools in 1971.
Clarence Lightner is elected mayor of Raleigh, the first African American elected mayor of a majority-white, major Southern city in the United States in 1973. Raleigh’s John Winters and Fred Alexander of Mecklenburg County become the first Black Americans elected to the North Carolina state Senate since Reconstruction in 1974.
The Royal Ice Cream Parlor in Durham, NC, where one of the country’s first civil rights sit-ins took place.
Исторические Города Северной Каролины Belmont и Davidson
Recent History (1975-Present)
The Hayti Heritage Center, formerly the home of St. Joseph’s AME Church, is established in 1975. John H. Baker is elected Sheriff of Wake County, North Carolina’s first African American sheriff since Reconstruction in 1978.
Chester Jenkins is elected Durham’s first Black mayor; eight of the 13 city council members are Black in 1989. Dan Blue becomes the first African American to serve as speaker of the house in the General Assembly in 1991.
Following weeks of protests after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, anti-racist activists and Black Lives Matter supporters in Raleigh topple two Confederate statues from a monument at the State Capitol in Summer 2020.
NC State University Timeline
- 1953: NC State College hosted a dairy farm conference on campus. Chancellor Bostian declared that African American dairy farmers attending the conference could only eat in the west wing of the dining hall.
- 1954: State College admitted two African American graduate students into the School of Engineering: Robert Clemons and Hardy Liston. Clemons became the college's first black graduate.
- 1955: The first four African American undergraduates enrolled at North Carolina State College: Ed Carson (electrical engineering), and Manuel Crockett (electrical engineering) enrolled in summer.
- 1956: Walter Holmes joined the marching band and the concert band during his first semester at State College. Holmes's presence in the band complicated segregation laws in stadiums and dining halls throughout the south.
- 1960: African American student Irwin Holmes joined the men's tennis team making it the first integrated athletic team at State College.
- 1961: Edward Carson was the first African American student employed at the Libraries. He later served on the Board of Directors for the Friends of the Library.
- 1964: Doretha Blalock was hired as a "Typist II" for the library. She was later the first African American woman employed above the clerk level in a technical position processing books and was promoted to supervisor of the Collections Management Department.
- 1966: Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Reynolds Coliseum to a crowd of over 5,000 individuals as well as a television audience of WUNC-TV. At the same time as the event, Klu Klux Klan members marched in violent protest in downtown Raleigh. Despite this, King continued with his speech.
- 1967: Alfred "Al" Heartley and William Cooper became the first African American members of the freshman basketball team.
- 1970: Mary Evelyn Porterfield was elected the first African American "Miss NCSU."
This timeline represents just a fraction of the vast and complex history of African Americans in North Carolina. It is a history of struggle, resilience, and triumph, and it continues to shape the state today.
