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Today In North Carolina History, Raleigh, NC (2026)

09/02/2026

📜 September 1, 1870 — Remembering Abraham Galloway
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On this day in 1870, Abraham Galloway died in Wilmington, North Carolina, at just 33 years old.
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Born enslaved in Smithville (now Southport), Brunswick County, in 1837, Galloway escaped slavery at age 20, eventually reaching Canada. But rather than remain safely there, he returned to the United States and dedicated his life to fighting slavery and securing freedom and equal rights for Black Americans.
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During the Civil War, Galloway became a Union spy, recruiter and political organizer, gathering intelligence and helping recruit Black soldiers for the Union Army. In 1864, he joined a delegation of Black leaders who met with President Abraham Lincoln to press for equality and citizenship rights.
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After the war, Galloway emerged as one of North Carolina’s most influential Black political leaders. He organized freedmen, fought for equal rights and was elected to the North Carolina Senate during Reconstruction, where he supported the 14th and 15th Amendments.
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Galloway died unexpectedly from illness on September 1, 1870, shortly after being reelected. An estimated 6,000 people attended his funeral, a testament to the impact he made in only 33 years.
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📚 Learn more about Abraham Galloway:
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Click Link https://amzn.to/4iHirZh to Order or View The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War
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📚 More North Carolina Black History:
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https://amzn.to/3yJNp8u — Race and Politics in North Carolina,

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The Black Second
https://amzn.to/3mY4fOQ
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Visualizing Equality
https://amzn.to/3kS6bFE — Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina’s Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era

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08/30/2026

August 28, 1974 workers at the J. P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, NC (Halifax County) voted to unionize. The vote to affiliate with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union was the culmination of efforts by Crystal Lee Sutton, who worked for $2.65 per hour folding towels in the plant. The vote was an important one in North Carolina, which was the least unionized state in the nation at the time.

Click Link https://amzn.to/3X6KRPU to View Norma Rae

The story of Crystal Sutton is depicted in the 1979 film, Norma Rae.

“Management and others treated me as if I had leprosy,” she later recalled. The turning point, in real life as in the film, was when Sutton wrote “UNION” on a scrap of cardboard and stood atop her work station.

One by one coworkers cut off their machines and the plant became quiet. Sutton was fired by J. P. Stevens but later, under court order, was rehired with reinstated back wages. She soon left, however, to become a full-time organizer.

August 28, 1978, the 3,133 workers at the Roanoke Rapids plant voted to allow The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) to represent them by a slim 237 vote margin. However, because of the intractability of J.P. Stevens, workers at the plant continued without a contract until 1980.

Thanks to a coalition of black and white women employees of the mill, Sutton's national speaking tour, and local organizing on behalf of workers among religious groups, J.P. Stevens and ACTWU agreed to a settlement in 1980. Sutton became a paid organizer for the ACTWU and went on a national speaking tour as "the real Norma Rae."

Sutton was the 13th recipient of the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award in 1980. The honor was named after a 1963 encyclical letter, Pacem in terris (Peace on Earth), by Pope John XXIII, that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations.

Sally Field won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Sutton. The movie is based on the 1975 book by New York Times reporter Henry "Hank" Leifermann Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

Her papers and memorabilia are located at Alamance Community College in North Carolina, where she took classes in nursing in 1988

The real Crystal Sutton, was born Crystal Lee Pulley in Roanoke Rapids on December 31, 1940. She died on September 11, 2009, of inoperable brain cancer at a Hospice Home in Burlington, North Carolina.

Click Link https://amzn.to/2ErZ5qB to Order Your North Carolina State Freedom Flag.

08/30/2026

✊🏿 AUGUST 29, 1951 — FIVE MEN WHO CHANGED UNC FOREVER ⚖️

August 29, 1951, five Black men walked through the doors of the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill and helped bring an end to segregation at the university.
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Their names were Harvey Beech, James Lassiter, J. Kenneth Lee, Floyd McKissick, and James Robert Walker.
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Their enrollment followed a legal battle that began in 1949, when students at what is now North Carolina Central University challenged the state’s segregated system of legal education. They argued that the separate law school provided for Black students was not equal to the opportunities available at UNC.
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Their legal team included Thurgood Marshall, then counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and, years later, the first Black justice of the United States Supreme Court.
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⚖️ In 1951, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in McKissick v. Carmichael that UNC could not deny qualified Black students admission to its law school because of race.
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The doors had to open.
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Floyd McKissick already held a law degree from North Carolina College and enrolled at UNC during the summer session. Harvey Beech, J. Kenneth Lee, and James Robert Walker went on to graduate from UNC Law in 1952, while James Lassiter completed his legal education elsewhere.
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Their impact reached far beyond the law school. Their enrollment helped break the racial barrier at UNC and opened the way for Black students to enter other graduate and professional programs and, eventually, undergraduate programs.
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Harvey Beech later reflected:
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“I just felt like we ought to open up all the windows and doors and air it all out. If I hadn’t, some other child would have had to. Something had to be done.”
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Five men. One law school for all. ✊🏿⚖️
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Click https://amzn.to/4y7N9zh yo Ordet or View Light on the Hill- History of UNC-Chapel Hill

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Read the Desegregating Carolina booklet
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https://www.epidemiolog.net/sjae/publib/orgs/UNCCH/History/Materials/Desegregating%20Carolina%20Program%20Booklet.pdf

08/23/2026

August 23, 1982, Ga***rd Perry of Williamston, NC, was ejected for the first and only time in his 21 year career for throwing his illegal spitball pitch.
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Click Link https://amzn.to/3Mj1FOD View Me and the Spitter;: An Autobiographical Confession
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Phillips, who was the crew chief and home plate umpire, tossed Perry from a game between the Seattle Mariners and the Boston Red Sox on Aug. 23, 1982 at The Kingdome.
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“I didn’t do it because I was trying to be a hero,” Phillips said. “It wasn’t one of my most pleasant evenings. We were in Seattle and I vaguely remember that it was cushion night. I think I had more cushions to go home with than anybody else. They didn’t appreciate my ejection of someone who was one of their favorites at the time.
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“I’ll say this about Ga***rd. I didn’t mind him personally but he was a pain in the butt to work with as an umpire. You had to check the ball 30 or 40 times a game and you always knew that was part of it when you umped the plate with Ga***rd. It was problematic.”
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Phillips had to perform one of those ball checks as Perry was warming up for the fifth inning that night. Boston’s Reid Nicholls was waiting for the inning to start when he noticed one of Perry’s pitches dancing.
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“Jim Essian was catching and I said to him let me see the ball,” Phillips said. “The only reason I said that was because I could see the batter coming up and he pointed to me to check the ball. I thought let me see it now and get it over with. Jim flipped me the ball and I gave it the once over to make sure the batter knew I was checking it and when I did it had grease on it.
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“I could see my fingerprint and it kind of surprised me. I looked out at Perry and he’s waiting for a ball to continue warming up and our eyes met. I started to walk and got maybe five feet when Perry says I didn’t put anything on the ball. I walk out further then [Seattle manager] Rene [Lachemann] comes out and I show him the ball.
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I said I don’t know why this is on here but I want to make one thing perfectly clear –if you throw a ball that I deem illegal or if I find anything on the ball, you will be ejected. Consider this a warning. And I walked away.”
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Phillips added that Perry seemed happy that he was only issued a warning. But then came the seventh inning and Perry found himself with two men on and two out with Rick Miller at the plate. Lachemann made a mound visit and it seemed like that would be the end of Perry’s night but Lachemann returned to the dugout alone.
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And then Perry threw a pitch that seem to defy the law of physics.
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“Rene came into our dressing room the next night and I said to him I thought you were going to take him,” Phillips said. “Rene told me that Perry said he could get him out. I’m assuming that when he made that comment about getting him out he had a particular pitch in mind. Sure enough he throws a pitch to Rick that Essian knows, I know, Rick knows and everyone in both dugouts probably know, he couldn’t hit. It was a grease ball.
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It comes in like a straight fastball and just about the time you’re going to swing, it clearly drops six-to-eight inches to the ground.
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“Now either I can turn my head and say I didn’t see it or do what I told him I was going to do. So I walked out and said that’s it. He puts his hands up like what happened. It didn’t make me a big guy or a good guy.
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It was just a miserable nightmare. I had to talk to the press and the next two or three days I am getting phone calls. It was just the way I was raised and mentored. I didn’t try to make things up but I didn’t ignore things, either.”
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It was certainly difficult to ignore Perry when he was on the mound. His catchers, and the umpires, were usually in for quite a game.
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Click Link https://amzn.to/31SRCZj to Order or View The Farmers' Game: Baseball in Rural America
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https://ballnine.com/2021/05/14/catching-greased-lightning/

08/21/2026

August 15, 1975, a North Carolina jury delivered a verdict that would reverberate far beyond the courtroom. Joan (pronounced Jo-Ann) Little, a 21-year-old Black American woman, was acquitted of murdering a white jail officer Clarence Alligood, whom she testified had attempted to r**e her. The decision made history: Little became the first woman in the United States to successfully claim self-defense against sexual assault in a homicide case.
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Click https://amzn.to/4mGLOtp to Order or View Free Joan Little: The Politics of Race, Sexual Violence, and Imprisonment
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Little’s ordeal began in 1974 while she was serving time in Beaufort County Jail. Early one morning, Alligood entered her cell and forced her into a sexual encounter at knifepoint. Little seized the icepick he wielded and stabbed him, escaping the jail in fear for her life. When she surrendered a week later, she faced not only a charge of first-degree murder but also the prospect of ex*****on in North Carolina’s gas chamber.
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The trial captured national attention, laying bare the intersecting injustices of race, gender, and power in America’s criminal justice system.
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Prosecutors painted Little as manipulative, suggesting she lured Alligood into her cell to escape. The defense countered with compelling evidence of Alligood’s history of abusing women prisoners and presented forensic testimony supporting Little’s account. Crucially, activists from across the country rallied around her cause. Civil rights leaders, feminists, anti–death penalty advocates, and grassroots organizers raised funds, protested, and drew public scrutiny to her case.
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The jury—six Black and six white members—deliberated for less than two hours before acquitting her. Their decision was more than a personal victory for Little; it affirmed that women, including incarcerated Black women, had the right to defend themselves against sexual violence.
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Joan Little’s trial exposed systemic failures in protecting vulnerable women behind bars and sparked broader movements for prison reform and gender justice. Nearly fifty years later, her acquittal remains a milestone, reminding us that justice is never guaranteed but can be won through courage, solidarity, and relentless advocacy.
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Click https://amzn.to/4mjUYwp to Order or View The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery
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Full Story https://www.workers.org/2006/us/joann-little-0316
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From the America's Black Holocaust Museum

08/02/2026

Click Link https://amzn.to/3wSOmKE to Order or View Belles of Liberty: Gender, Bennett College And The Civil Rights Movement

August 1, 1873 Bennett College opened in Greensboro, NC. Bennett College is a private Historically Black liberal arts college for women in Greensboro, North Carolina.

It is one of two historically Black colleges that enroll only women, the other Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga. The College was Original Named "Normal College" with the purpose of educating Black Teachers.

The school was founded through the motivation of newly freed Black Americans and financially supported by the Freedman’s Aid and the Southern Education Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The first seventy students met in the unplastered basement of the Warnersville Church. [After the Civil War, a Pennsylvania Quaker named Yardley Warner purchased 35½ acres of land south of Greensboro, North Carolina, and divided it into plots to be sold to Black Americans. That was the area that was known as Warnersville.

During the institution’s early years, Lyman Bennett, a wealthy philanthropist from New York, gave the school $10,000, which was used to purchase land and erect a building to house classrooms and serve as a dormitory. Shortly after making that generous donation, Bennett died, and the institution was called Bennett Seminary in his honor.

The seminary achieved college status in 1889. Later (abt. 1926), its name was changed to Bennett College.

In 1888, Bennett Seminary elected its first Black-American President, the Reverend Charles N. Grandison. Grandison spearheaded a successful drive to have the school chartered as a four-year college in 1889.

Two of the first Black-American bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church were graduates of the college, including Robert Elijah Jones, a 1895 graduate.

Now a college for women, Bennett originated as a coeducational academy of higher education for Black American men and women.

Since 1930, Bennett has graduated more than 7,000 students, affectionately known as "Bennett Belles."

Bennett College prepares women of color through a transformative liberal arts education to lead with purpose, integrity, and a strong sense of self-worth. Bennett provides educational access to students while promoting inquiry, civic engagement, social justice, lifelong learning, and equity for all.

Vision
Bennett College is renowned for its intimate, engaging learning community that produces phenomenal women scholars and global leaders.

Philosophy
Bennett College’s undergirding philosophy is that a high quality college experience should provide its women students with strong academic and co-curricular programs that encourage their personal development, endorse life-long learning, and prepare them to meet the needs of an ever-changing society.

Bennett College values and respects every member of its community. As a United Methodist Church-related institution, the College believes that education should be related to humanitarian ends.

Click Link https://amzn.to/3eydb8z to View I Want to be a Bennett Belle: A Tribute to a Historically Black College

For more info view Schools website https://www.bennett.edu

08/02/2026

The Tar River Near Tarboro, NC Edgecombe County
August 1, 2025

08/02/2026

Click Link https://amzn.to/3C4DvkM to Order or Review Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson-- a patient assigned to Cherry Hospital who was not mentally ill.

August 1, 1880, the first patient enrolled at what is now Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, NC (Wayne County) The hospital was set up to serve North Carolina’s mentally ill black population.

In 1877, the North Carolina General Assembly appointed a committee to recommend the selection of a site for a facility for the Black mentally ill which would serve the state. Part of the purpose was for the free labor for plantation owners and for the state.

Mental health care in North Carolina can be traced to Dorothea Dix’s appeals to the legislature in 1848 and the opening, in 1856, of the hospital in Raleigh that bears her name. In 1883, the state opened what is now Broughton Hospital in Morganton to serve the western region.

Many of the patients that were sent to the hospital such as Junius Wilson were not mentally ill. The were alleged of committing crimes but were later found not guilty. In retaliation, the police departments and/or city officials had the person classified as mentally ill and sent to Cherry Hospital.

While at Cherry Hospital many were not allowed visitors nor were they allowed to challenge the mental health finding in court as they had not been charged of a crime.

By assigning patients to hospitals such as Cherry Hospital, the patients had to do work to stay busy. That work became free farm labor. Many patients spent their entire lives in the hospital and they were not mentally ill nor did they commit any crime. Yet they were forced to work for free for their entire lives. A new way to get enslaved labor for plantation owners.

Junius Wilson who was born in Castle Hayne, NC (New Hanover County), spent seventy-six years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including six in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. Mr. Wilson was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South a perfect target to be a candidate to be declared mentally ill and be forced back into slavery.

Junius Wilson was 28 years old when he was jailed, charged with assault with intent to r**e. He was declared insane and sent to North Carolina's mental hospital for blacks. Then he was castrated. That was in 1925. Decades later, the charges were dropped, but Mr. Wilson remained in a locked ward. Black men were commonly charged with attempt to assault and r**e, white women which were part of the Black Codes instituted after the Civil War. If sentence these men would be incarcerated for the rest of their lives which produced free labor for the state and plantation owners.

The 13th amendment did not end slavery but guaranteed the continuance of Slavery through the pe**al sentence as slavery was and is still allowed once a person is incarcerated. The pe**al system section of the 13th Amendment was added so that plantation owners could lease the free labor --politcally known still as the convict leasing program or just a fancy name for slave labor.

The site in Goldsboro was selected in part because it was near the center of the state’s black population. Originally known as the “Asylum for the Colored Insane,” the institution’s name was changed in 1959 to Cherry Hospital to honor former governor R. Gregg Cherry.

A commission study in 1937 sharply criticized care at the mental hospitals in the state, and most of the older buildings were replaced in the 1930s and 1940s.

The hospital remained segregated until 1965 when, to comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the state’s mental institutions were integrated. Today Cherry Hospital maintains an association with the School of Medicine at East Carolina University and serves patients from 38 eastern counties.

In the fall of 2016, the old Cherry Hospital facility closed and was replaced by a new psychiatric facility of the same name, located at 1401 West Ash Street, Goldsboro, North Carolina, on a site approximately one-half mile from the old hospital.

Click Link https://amzn.to/3fm91kt to Order or View Caring for the Mentally ill.

07/23/2026

🌄 Sunbeams in the Storm 🌄
📍 Blue Ridge Mountains –
July 22, 2026
📸 Photography by Thomas Mabry
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There is something magical about watching the sun break through storm clouds over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Moments like this remind us why these ancient peaks continue to inspire photographers, artists, hikers, and travelers from around the world.
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Did you know?
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⛰️ The Blue Ridge Mountains are among the oldest mountain ranges on Earth, with rocks that are more than one billion years old. The mountain-building events that created the range occurred hundreds of millions of years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the planet. (irma.nps.gov)
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🏔️ The Blue Ridge stretch approximately 550 miles through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, with North Carolina home to some of their highest and most breathtaking peaks. (nps.gov)
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📍 Mount Mitchell, located in North Carolina, rises to 6,684 feet, making it the highest point east of the Mississippi River. (nps.gov)
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🦌 The region is one of the most biologically diverse in North America and is home to black bears, white-tailed deer, elk, bobcats, wild turkeys, over 225 bird species, and countless wildflowers that paint the mountains with color throughout the year. (home.nps.gov)
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🚗 Tourism is the lifeblood of many mountain communities. Millions of visitors travel the Blue Ridge Parkway, hike scenic trails, visit waterfalls, enjoy vibrant fall foliage, and explore charming mountain towns each year. The Parkway connects Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina, making it one of America’s most iconic scenic drives. (govinfo.gov)
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For North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Mountains are more than a beautiful landscape—they are a symbol of our state’s natural heritage, rich Appalachian culture, Cherokee history, outdoor adventure, and enduring beauty.
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Thank you, Thomas Mabry, for capturing this unforgettable moment when sunlight and storm met over one of North Carolina’s greatest treasures.

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Planning a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains? 🌄 Before you hit the trails, check out some of our favorite hiking and photography essentials:
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Today In North Carolina History

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