At 18, a Massachusetts-raised teacher stayed in rural Guilford County after her school closed. She built Palmer Memorial Institute into a nationally known school.
Read the storySummary: A date on North Carolina's flag says Charlotte declared independence on May 20, 1775. Jefferson called the document spurious. The documents tell a more complicated tale.
Within four days in February 1862, a Union amphibious force took Roanoke Island, wrecked the Confederate "Mosquito Fleet" and opened North Carolina's coast.
Dug by hand through a Virginia–North Carolina swamp, the Dismal Swamp Canal opened in 1805. Enslaved workers built it, and fugitives hid in the swamp around it.
Four college freshmen sat down at a Greensboro lunch counter and refused to leave. Within weeks, the protest had spread across the South.
In the 1950s, a Greensboro contractor, a governor and three universities bet that thousands of acres of pine woods could keep North Carolina's graduates at home.
Hazel hit the Carolina border at high tide on October 15, 1954, destroying or severely damaging most of Brunswick County's coastal dwellings and then racing inland with startling force.
A battleship built in Brooklyn survived a torpedo hit and the Pacific war, then escaped the scrapyard thanks to a state that refused to let her go.
On a freezing morning in 1903, two Ohio bicycle makers flew four times on the Outer Banks. Here is how they got there and how a lifesaver took the photo.
Weeks after Greensboro, Ella Baker gathered sit-in students in Raleigh and urged them to stay independent. Her idea of leadership shaped SNCC from the start.
