North Carolina was once known–and not affectionately–as the Rip van Winkle state. For most of the 19th century, the state lolled about in a mire of ignorance and stasis, its illiteracy rates high, its population large but stagnant and not on the move. National observers scorned it as an outlier from the great century of American progress. Few of the state’s slaveholding leaders extracting wealth from African Americans like vampires of the tobacco patch, could bring themselves to care about the mass social failure that surrounded them in this, one of the original 13 states.
Something shifted around the fin de siecle. Suddenly cotton mills began to spring up in the rolling hills of the Piedmont; notably, these factories were erected by homegrown companies, not Northern industrial concerns seeking an economic colony. By the turn of the 20th century, North Carolina was the second-most industrialized state in the South after Texas. While its leaders committed terrible crimes in the name of establishing white rule, the state had begun its journey toward joining the American mainstream and the modern world.
The chief ideology was education. A state that had once allowed 26% of its white population and nearly all of its Black people to live lives of illiteracy would invest in public schools and trust in the power of education to lift people toward a fuller life. North Carolina was one of the only states to keep its schools open throughout the Great Depression. Governor Terry Sanford broke new ground with his Quality Education Program and North Carolina Fund, which would become the model for the national Head Start program. Jim Hunt capped off the century with a dizzying array of initiatives that earned him the title America’s Education Governor. By the time Hunt left office, our students were performing above the national average on math and reading.
The results of this long crusade were impressive to behold. The state grew by 21% in the 1990s and 19% in the 2000s. Blue-chip companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Nortel built huge campuses in the Research Triangle Park and the once-modest North Carolina National Bank became NationsBank and then Bank of America. Standing in contrast to most of the South with their fetishization of the Confederacy and stubborn commitment to a failed way of life, North Carolina was a destination for the world. and, in the words of Chuck Todd, a “future state.”
This was the promise of North Carolina: a state founded on slavery and long resistant to the march of progress would lift itself up into the realm of national accomplishment. We almost got there. But things began to regress even as parts of the state stood on the cusp of success. Between 2000-2010, North Carolina lost 42% of its manufacturing base. Textile employment was cut in half. Changing attitudes toward smoking decimated the revenues of tobacco farmers, to the point where more people worked for IBM in RTP than grew the golden leaf in North Carolina. Rural N.C. fell first, fastest, and farthest, and it was just the canary in the coal mine.
The promise of North Carolina was dealt a mortal wound in the 2011 budget. Fundamentally walking away from 100 years of civic religion, the state’s Republican majority cut education at all levels. The state’s prized university system saw its budget cut by 15-18% depending on the campus, with tuition at Chapel Hill eventually doubling. SmartStart and More at Four, nationally recognized for their excellence in pre-K education, barely escaped being completely eliminated. We have now had almost an entire student cohort attend public schools under austerity conditions.
The state’s status as haven for transplants and businesses followed public schools into obsolescence. Having been the sixth-fastest growing state in the Union from 2000-2010, it fell over the last decade to 11th. North Carolina missed out on numerous economic-development prizes because of a perceived intolerance in its political climate. No business survey was complete without noting the state’s entrenched problems with accommodating diversity. Personal income growth lagged the national average by a large margin. Fifty-one counties lost population. A great state known for its beautiful scenery now more closely resembled an old factory, dilapidated, silent, and locked.
I believe one of the points the author made is we may have added 900, Walmart type jobs, but we drove away thousands of quality jobs with benefits and good pay through lack of insight. Jobs that that went to other southern states.
There are some valid points here, but you totally ignore the fact that NC still added over 900,000 people over the last decades, and attracted global tech giants Google and Apple for major offices. At the same time, UNC is ranked about as high as it has been right. The problem is that there are two NC’s: one declining and depressed, the other prosperous and growing.
Been here all my life. Your constant referencing slavery dies nothing but show your ignorance. North Carolina is fine just like she is. Oh yea it seems you’re just like the rest of the Yankee transplants that have invaded our great state. Let’s make NC just like the shit holes they just left. Would that make you happy. Hey don’t like it here, pack your ass up and move. I can assure you that you will not be missed!!!!!
Yankee transplant”, got to love that designation. Well, here is something that may shock your notion of reality, that “those who are not from around here should go back to where they are from” is beyond ridiculous, it is primitive. Not every person living in this state is from Yankee land, nor did they come here to escape what you refer to as offensive living conditions.
If I choose to raise and educate my kids in a new residency or environment that is my right as a citizen. A right many of my family an others forfeited their lives to protect.
Under the constitution, every citizen is a resident of the state they live, not a citizen of that state. The state is not empowered to grant citizenship. The right to move freely between states is a right guaranteed by the constitution to every US Citizen. They do not need your permission or approval.
Here is a basic constitutional principle: the fact an individual is from a state that was not part of the confederacy does not mean that person is to be shunned and treated like an outsider. They are US Citizens empowered with inalienable rights to life liberty and pursuit of happiness. They pay taxes and serve in the military just like any other citizen can and has done for years to preserve this democracy and the common good.
There is no such thing as a southern American or northern American or Western American. We are just Americans. The sooner you adopt that notion the better person you will be. We are all in the same boat with only one course that is to make this country stronger and better for everybody. The key thought here is “Unity” I don’t believe you grasp the notion and meaning of unity but through it all things are possible. Moreover, if you have traveled and seem what other states are like you would not be inclined to make such a ridiculous statement.
Well said. I 1000% agree