The earliest evidence of human occupation in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years, found at the Hardaway Site. North Carolina was inhabited by Carolina Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan speaking tribes of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans. King Charles II granted eight lord proprietors a colony they named Carolina after the king and which was established in 1670 with the first permanent settlement at Charles Town (Charleston). Because of the difficulty of governing the entire colony from Charles Town, the colony was eventually divided and North Carolina was established as a royal colony in 1729 and was one of the Thirteen Colonies. The Halifax Resolves resolution adopted by North Carolina on April 12, 1776, was the first formal call for independence from Great Britain among the American Colonies during the American Revolution.
On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the United States Constitution. In the run-up to the American Civil War, North Carolina reluctantly declared its secession from the Union on May 20, 1861, becoming the tenth of eleven states to join the Confederate States of America. Following the Civil War, the state was restored to the Union on July 4, 1868. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully piloted the world's first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina's Outer Banks. North Carolina often uses the slogan "First in Flight" on state license plates to commemorate this achievement, alongside a newer alternative design bearing the slogan "First in Freedom" in reference to the Mecklenburg Declaration and Halifax Resolves. (Full article...)
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Clarence Everett Lightner (August 15, 1921 – July 8, 2002) was an American politician and mortician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as Mayor of Raleigh, North Carolina from 1973 to 1975. He was the first popularly elected Mayor of Raleigh since 1947, and the first African American elected mayor of a mostly-white, major Southern city in the United States.
Lightner was born in 1921 in Raleigh. He attended North Carolina Central College, where he played as a quarterback on the school football team. After graduating, he enlisted in the United States Army and served on a tour of duty during World War II. He subsequently enrolled in the Echols College of Mortuary Science, and in 1959 he assumed control of his father Calvin E. Lightner's funeral home. He was elected to the Raleigh City Council in 1967. During his council tenure he chaired a committee tasked with studying mass transit and for one term acted as Mayor pro tempore. In 1973 he launched his candidacy for the office of Mayor. Backed by a coalition of blacks—who comprised less than 16% of all registered voters—and white suburban residents who were growing increasingly concerned about urban sprawl, Lightner won the November election, surprising observers and garnering national media attention. During his mayoral tenure the city council bolstered floodplain construction regulations, rejected large road construction projects, and instituted a mass transit system. (Full article...)
The state of North Carolina has 42 official state emblems, as well as other designated places and events. The majority is determined by acts of the North Carolina General Assembly and record in Chapters 144, 145, and 149 of the North Carolina General Statutes. The state's nicknames – "The Old North State" and "The Tar Heel State" – are both traditional, but have never been passed into law by the General Assembly.
The first symbol was the Seal of North Carolina, which was made official in 1871. The original seal also contained the future state motto. It served as the state's only emblem for 14 years until the adoption of the state flag in 1885. Enacted by law in 2013, the newest symbols of North Carolina are the state art medium, clay; the state fossil, the megalodon teeth; the state frog, the Pine Barrens tree frog; the state marsupial, the Virginia opossum; and the state salamander, the marbled salamander. (Full article...)
Image 10Map of North America by Vesconte Maggiolo after an earlier map made on the Verrazzano expedition of 1524. The narrow isthmus of land separating "Tera Florida" from "Francesca" is the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Cape Fear is labeled "C. de la Forest". (from History of North Carolina)
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