The Rise and Fall of the Branchhead Boys
The Rise and Fall of the Branchhead Boys

Author: Rob Christensen

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2019-03-28

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 146965105X

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Louisiana had the Longs, Virginia had the Byrds, Georgia had the Talmadges, and North Carolina had the Scotts. In this history of North Carolina's most influential political family, Rob Christensen tells the story of the Scotts and how they dominated Tar Heel politics. Three generations of Scotts—W. Kerr Scott, Robert Scott, and Meg Scott Phipps—held statewide office. Despite stereotypes about rural white southerners, the Scotts led a populist and progressive movement strongly supported by rural North Carolinians—the so-called Branchhead Boys, the rural grassroots voters who lived at the heads of tributaries throughout the heart of North Carolina. Though the Scotts held power in various government positions in North Carolina for generations, they were instrumental in their own downfall. From Kerr Scott's regression into reactionary race politics to Meg Scott Phipps's corruption trial and subsequent prison sentence, the Scott family lost favor in their home state, their influence dimmed and their legacy in question. Weaving together interviews from dozens of political luminaries and deep archival research, Christensen offers an engaging and definitive historical account of not only the Scott family's legacy but also how race and populism informed North Carolina politics during the twentieth century.

The Rise and Fall of the Branchhead Boys
The Rise and Fall of the Branchhead Boys

Author: Rob Christensen

Publisher:

Published: 2025-02

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781469688459

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Louisiana had the Longs, Virginia had the Byrds, Georgia had the Talmadges, and North Carolina had the Scotts. In this history of North Carolina's most influential political family, Rob Christensen tells the story of the Scotts and how they dominated Tar Heel politics. Three generations of Scotts--W. Kerr Scott, Robert Scott, and Meg Scott Phipps--held statewide office. Despite stereotypes about rural white southerners, the Scotts led a populist and progressive movement strongly supported by rural North Carolinians--the so-called Branchhead Boys, the rural grassroots voters who lived at the heads of tributaries throughout the heart of North Carolina. Though the Scotts held power in various government positions in North Carolina for generations, they were instrumental in their own downfall. From Kerr Scott's regression into reactionary race politics to Meg Scott Phipps's corruption trial and subsequent prison sentence, the Scott family lost favor in their home state, their influence dimmed and their legacy in question. Weaving together interviews from dozens of political luminaries and deep archival research, Christensen offers an engaging and definitive historical account of not only the Scott family's legacy but also how race and populism informed North Carolina politics during the twentieth century.

The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics
The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics

Author: Rob Christensen

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2010-10-04

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0807899631

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How can a state be represented by Jesse Helms and John Edwards at the same time? Journalist Rob Christensen answers that question and navigates a century of political history in North Carolina, one of the most politically vibrant and competitive southern states, where neither conservatives nor liberals, Democrats nor Republicans, have been able to rest easy. It is this climate of competition and challenge, Christensen argues, that enabled North Carolina to rise from poverty in the nineteenth century to become a leader in research, education, and banking in the twentieth. In this new paperback edition, Christensen provides updated coverage of recent changes in North Carolina's political landscape, including the scandals surrounding John Edwards and Mike Easley, the defeat of U.S. senator Elizabeth Dole, the election of the state's first woman governor, and voters' approval of an African American candidate for president. The book provides an overview of the run-up to the 2010 elections and explains how North Carolina has become, arguably, the most politically competitive state in the South.

Terry Sanford
Terry Sanford

Author: Howard E. Covington (Jr.)

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 9780822323563

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Sanford was an important public figures of postwar South. First as North Carolina's governor and later as president of Duke University, he demonstrated a dynamic style of leadership marked by creativity, helping transform Southern life. 87 photos.

Fragile Democracy
Fragile Democracy

Author: James L. Leloudis

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2020-08-06

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1469660407

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America is at war with itself over the right to vote, or, more precisely, over the question of who gets to exercise that right and under what circumstances. Conservatives speak in ominous tones of voter fraud so widespread that it threatens public trust in elected government. Progressives counter that fraud is rare and that calls for reforms such as voter ID are part of a campaign to shrink the electorate and exclude some citizens from the political life of the nation. North Carolina is a battleground for this debate, and its history can help us understand why--a century and a half after ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment--we remain a nation divided over the right to vote. In Fragile Democracy, James L. Leloudis and Robert R. Korstad tell the story of race and voting rights, from the end of the Civil War until the present day. They show that battles over the franchise have played out through cycles of emancipatory politics and conservative retrenchment. When race has been used as an instrument of exclusion from political life, the result has been a society in which vast numbers of Americans are denied the elements of meaningful freedom: a good job, a good education, good health, and a good home. That history points to the need for a bold new vision of what democracy looks like.

A Little Child Shall Lead Them
A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Author: Brian J. Daugherity

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 081394273X

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In the twentieth-century struggle for racial equality, there was perhaps no setting more fraught and contentious than the public schools of the American south. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1951, a student strike for better school facilities became part of the NAACP legal campaign for school desegregation. That step ultimately brought this rural, agricultural county to the Supreme Court of the United States as one of five consolidated cases in the historic 1954 ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Unique among those cases, Prince Edward County took the extreme stance of closing its public school system entirely rather than comply with the desegregation ruling of the Court. The schools were closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964, until the Supreme Court ruling in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County ordered the restoration of public education in the county. This historical anthology brings together court cases, government documents, personal and scholarly writings, speeches, and journalism to represent the diverse voices and viewpoints of the battle in Prince Edward County for—and against—educational equality. Providing historical context and contemporary analysis, this book offers a new perspective of a largely overlooked episode and seeks to help place the struggle for public education in Prince Edward County into its proper place in the civil rights era.

Anatomy of a Purple State
Anatomy of a Purple State

Author: Christopher A. Cooper

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2024-10-15

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1469681730

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North Carolina represents a perfect distillation of the promise and peril of modern American democracy: hyperpartisanship, gerrymandering, dissatisfaction with the two-party system, the urban-rural divide—these issues are all brought into sharp relief in the Tar Heel State. For that reason, North Carolina politics and government are increasingly of interest not just to North Carolina citizens but to journalists, political observers, and people across the country. Political scientist Christopher A. Cooper, to whom the national media go when they need a quote about North Carolina politics, offers a primer made for all people, no matter their political leanings. Readers will be introduced to everything that has made North Carolina the most purple of purple states—from the state constitution and the influence of think tanks to the growing racial diversity of the state and the limitations on the governor's power. By explaining how we came to be in the political situation we are in, Cooper shows us where we might go next. And, as many have said, "As North Carolina goes, so goes the nation."

Soul City
Soul City

Author: Thomas Healy

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1627798617

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A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice The fascinating, forgotten story of the 1970s attempt to build a city dedicated to racial equality in the heart of “Klan Country” In 1969, with America’s cities in turmoil and racial tensions high, civil rights leader Floyd McKissick announced an audacious plan: he would build a new city in rural North Carolina, open to all but intended primarily to benefit Black people. Named Soul City, the community secured funding from the Nixon administration, planning help from Harvard and the University of North Carolina, and endorsements from the New York Times and the Today show. Before long, the brand-new settlement – built on a former slave plantation – had roads, houses, a health care center, and an industrial plant. By the year 2000, projections said, Soul City would have fifty thousand residents. But the utopian vision was not to be. The race-baiting Jesse Helms, newly elected as senator from North Carolina, swore to stop government spending on the project. Meanwhile, the liberal Raleigh News & Observer mistakenly claimed fraud and corruption in the construction effort. Battered from the left and the right, Soul City was shut down after just a decade. Today, it is a ghost town – and its industrial plant, erected to promote Black economic freedom, has been converted into a prison. In a gripping, poignant narrative, acclaimed author Thomas Healy resurrects this forgotten saga of race, capitalism, and the struggle for equality. Was it an impossible dream from the beginning? Or a brilliant idea thwarted by prejudice and ignorance? And how might America be different today if Soul City had been allowed to succeed?

Frank Porter Graham
Frank Porter Graham

Author: William A. Link

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2021-10-14

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1469664941

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Frank Porter Graham (1886–1972) was one of the most consequential white southerners of the twentieth century. Born in Fayetteville and raised in Charlotte, Graham became an active and popular student leader at the University of North Carolina. After earning a graduate degree from Columbia University and serving as a marine during World War I, he taught history at UNC, and in 1930, he became the university's fifteenth president. Affectionately known as "Dr. Frank," Graham spent two decades overseeing UNC's development into a world-class public institution. But he regularly faced controversy, especially as he was increasingly drawn into national leadership on matters such as intellectual freedom and the rights of workers. As a southern liberal, Graham became a prominent New Dealer and negotiator and briefly a U.S. senator. Graham's reputation for problem solving through compromise led him into service under several presidents as a United Nations mediator, and he was outspoken as a white southerner regarding civil rights. Brimming with fresh insights, this definitive biography reveals how a personally modest public servant took his place on the national and world stage and, along the way, helped transform North Carolina.