The Saturday before we arrived in
Raleigh, Rob and I went to a great concert at the House of Blues in Myrtle
Beach. After a really fun night, we retreated to our hotel, which was less than
a quarter mile away from the venue. Sunday morning while we were checking out,
we bumped into the opening band, Gentleman Hall, who had performed at the
concert the previous night. They had just finished their tour with our favorite
band, Third Eye Blind, and were about to drive back to Boston. They were a very
friendly and talented group of guys, and they gave us a few free CDs before we
parted ways and rejoined the road.
The drive from Myrtle Beach to Raleigh was
relatively short and scenic compared to some of the other drives we’ve done. It
wasn’t long before we arrived at the hotel in Durham, a suburb of Raleigh, and settled
in for the evening. Monday morning we woke up and went to Barry’s Café before
driving to the Capitol to begin the day’s research. The café was a small
breakfast spot in a strip mall, and at 11am on a Monday it was empty. As soon
as we stepped in inside, we felt right at home. It was one of those breakfast
cafes that makes you feel like a local, even if you aren’t actually one. The
waitress was an older, talkative woman who filled our coffee cups to the brim
before taking our order. She made the meal much more enjoyable, and it was
great to find a place that was so welcoming. I ordered the usual, a bacon, egg,
and cheese sandwich, while Rob got a two egg breakfast with bacon and potatoes.
Everything was cooked to order and delicious, and the meal gave us the energy
we needed to get through the day. Before long, we were on our way to the
Capitol, fully fed and satisfied.
North Carolina’s Capitol is one
of the oldest, intact examples of neoclassical architecture in the nation. It
was built 1833-1840 by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis of New York, the
primary architects, and David Paton who designed the interior. The final cost
was $532,682.32, which was three times the state’s annual revenue at the time.
All branches of government occupied the Capitol until 1888, when the Supreme
Court and the State Library moved to another building close by. In 1962, the
North Carolina Legislative Building was completed, and the General Assembly
(both the Senate and the House of Representatives) moved to the modern
building. One of the things that many older Capitols lack is adequate office
space, so the move made practical sense. The Lieutenant Governor and staff
moved to the Hawkins-Hartness House in 1969 when the state purchased the historic
home from the family, leaving only the Governor’s office and immediate staff to
occupy the original Capitol.
The building was on the small
side, which is typical of state Capitols built before 1900. This was the 9th
oldest state Capitol in the country, surpassed only by the State Houses in Maryland,
Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Ohio.
The grounds were lush and well kept, with many different statues paying tribute
to many different things. The most common theme was honoring North Carolinians
that lost their lives in the major wars of the last 150 years. There were
memorials for the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. In front of
the visitor’s entrance on the side of the building, there was also a statue of
all of the Presidents from North Carolina, including Andrew Jackson, Andrew
Johnson, and James Polk.
I entered the quiet building, and
after checking in with the security guard, I began exploring. The rooms had
that old wooden smell that seems to exist in almost all pre-Civil War
buildings. If you don’t know what smell I am referring to, visit a building
that was constructed in the early 1800s, and you’ll smell exactly what I mean.
The odor is similar to that in antique books or other ancient paper products.
As I explored, I soon understood why the state government outgrew the building
so quickly. Although the chambers were large, and the building had three
floors, there was a severe lack of office and storage space. I found the room
which housed the State Library until 1888, when the collection exceeded 40,000
volumes and was scattered throughout the Capitol. When the Supreme Court moved,
the State Library followed. Today, it is housed in the Archives and History
building.
There was another room very
similar to the old library, which was set up to display the Geological Survey of
North Carolina. The project was started in 1852, and this room became the first
natural history museum in North Carolina. No other Capitol that I have visited has
anything similar, so the geological survey of the state is a unique feature
setting North Carolina’s Capitol apart from the others I have visited. The
displays in the room explained that during the evacuation of the Confederacy,
the Union troops agreed to spare the Capitol building, complete with its
library and museum. Considering the level of destruction that South Carolina’s
Capitol sustained, Raleigh is immensely lucky that their building wasn’t
damaged in the slightest.
Next, I moved on to the Senate
and House Chambers. The Senate’s gallery was no longer structurally safe for
visitors, so I looked in from the hallway. As usual, the rooms were each
decorated in a similar style, and the main difference was their size. The House
Chamber’s gallery was structurally sound, so visitors can still walk across it.
The rooms are still furnished with the old desks and chairs that were once
occupied by legislators, despite the fact that the legislature has not met in
this building in over 50 years.
The rotunda spanned three
stories, and it wasn’t especially ornate. The walls were painted a single
color, reflecting the natural light shining down from the skylight at the peak
of the dome. It was a tranquil space with a calming glow, and it was refreshing
to see the relatively simple design of the rotunda. This space proved that it
is possible to create a beautiful rotunda that isn’t ostentatious or
excessively decorated. All around the space, there were historical displays
about the various busts and statues. One of the more interesting pieces was a
statue of George Washington depicted as a Roman philosopher. It was by far the
most unusual portrayal of Washington that I have ever seen, as well as the most
creative statue in any Capitol that I have visited. This statue and the
Geological Survey are the features of this Capitol that makes it stand out from
the rest.
After exploring the state house,
I went across the street to the North Carolina Museum of History. It was a
large, distinguished building, and I couldn’t believe that a museum this
extensive was free! In my opinion, state museums, libraries, and all other
educational resources should receive much more funding than many of them do, so
it was really encouraging to see that this museum was not as starved for funds
as those in many other states.
I started on the main floor which
began with the Native Americans in the region and the European colonization of
the land that would become North Carolina. One of my favorite areas of this
exhibit was the one dedicated to Blackbeard the Pirate. Blackbeard is one of
the most iconic pirates of all time, appearing in many modern-day movies and
cartoons. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, he plundered the Caribbean and
southern Atlantic coast of the American colonies. It was easy for piracy to thrive
because legally imported goods were rare and expensive, so colonists were
always looking for cheap ways to acquire the goods they needed. Blackbeard’s
flagship vessel, Queen Anne’s Revenge, is
as famous as its Captain, and the museum displayed a huge model ship to show what
it may have looked like. Perhaps Blackbeard’s most famous act of piracy was
when he and his crew, in the Queen Anne’s
Revenge, commandeered a number of
other ships, and then formed a massive fleet that blockaded the port of
Charleston, South Carolina. After this
episode, he traveled to North Carolina,
where he stayed for several months. In November 1718, Royal Navy Lieutenant
Robert Maynard killed Blackbeard during a shipboard fight at Ocracoke Inlet. To
discourage any other pirates from taking Blackbeard’s place, Maynard displayed
Blackbeard’s severed head on his ship’s bow.
I continued through the museum
and discovered an enormous section dedicated to the Civil War and the
reconstruction era. One of the events that really stood out to me was the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. During reconstruction, African American and white
Republicans dominated the state and local governments of the southern states.
As soon as the federal troops left the region, white Democrats vowed to seize
power once again. During this time of immense tension, a white newspaper
published a letter written a year earlier by Rebecca Felton, a Georgia feminist:
"If it requires lynching to protect woman's dearest possession from
ravening, drunken human beasts, then I say lynch a thousand negroes a week ...
if it is necessary." Alex Manly, a black newspaper editor who worked for
the black-owned Daily Record, was enraged by the letter, and he wrote a
sarcastic news article that said many of the lynchings described as
retaliations for rapes were actually cover-ups for consensual inter-racial
sexual relations. The article fanned the flames of an already heated conflict,
and when Election Day came around white Democrats throughout the state stuffed
the ballot boxes and regained political control. This ‘victory’ wasn’t good
enough for the separatist whites in Wilmington, and they rioted through the
black neighborhoods, killing an unknown amount of blacks and dumping their
bodies in the river. The rioters also burned down the headquarters of The Daily Record, and forcibly removed
blacks and sympathetic whites from all positions of power, putting them on a
train and banishing them from the town. It was one of the most extreme, violent
acts of hate during this unstable period, and because of the corruption in
positions of power, there is no exact record of how many blacks were killed.
Despite social turmoil, the
tobacco, textile, and furniture industries boomed in post-reconstruction North
Carolina. With new technology, manufacturing became a much faster and cheaper
process, and the age of factories began. Young people from rural farming
communities began migrating closer to the cities and the higher paying factory
jobs, and activism regarding worker safety and child labor began to dominate
the social commentary. It was a time of immense social change, but in North
Carolina and many other southern states, Jim Crow laws maintained social
inequality. Jim Crow laws marginalized African Americans and Native Americans,
labeling them second-class citizens and preventing them from using the same
services as whites. The most famous protest during the Civil Rights Movement in
North Carolina was the 1960 Greensboro sit-in at Woolworth’s. When African
American college students sat down at the white lunch counter and politely
asked for service, they were declined and asked to leave. They refused to
budge, despite hostile reactions from white onlookers, including threats of
physical violence, counter protests, and at one point, a bomb threat. Still, more
and more students continued to stage their sit-ins every day with increasing amounts
of resistance. Within 2 months, there were similar demonstrations in almost
every other Jim Crow state. In Greensboro, their peaceful protest had ignited a
trend of student driven nonviolent resistance that slowly changed the social
dynamic in North Carolina and other southern states. If it wasn’t for the
college students that kept this movement alive, who knows how effective the
Civil Rights Movement would have been. The Greensboro sit-in was just the
beginning of North Carolina’s part in a social revolution that changed the
United States forever.
As I left the main portion of the
exhibits, I noticed a small exhibit on Watergate just off the main hallway.
Although there isn’t a specific connection between Watergate and North
Carolina, this was the only museum that I have been to that had an exhibit
dedicated to the scandal, so the display was one of the unique features of this
museum. It was a little odd that it was in the hallway separated from all of
the other exhibits, but it was an interesting look at an event that is not
often addressed by state history museums. The scandal involved the arrest of 5
burglars that were caught trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National
Committee in the Watergate hotel and office complex. A high-level military
analyst, Daniel Ellsberg, had been urging disclosure of the Pentagon Papers,
the Defense Department’s secret record of the conflict in Vietnam including
secret attacks on the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. As Ellsberg’s
concerns increased, he began leaking some of the information to the press. It
eventually came to light that government-connected individuals broke into the
offices of Mr. Ellberg’s psychiatrist hoping to get information to discredit
him. The Watergate scandal eventually led to Nixon’s resignation, and the event
has become the archetype of politicians that use criminal methods to seize and
maintain their power. Now, whenever a politician is accused of illegally
sabotaging a competitor, the suffix ‘–gate’ is added by the media to illustrate
its controversy. The most recent example is the “bridge-gate” scandal plaguing
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is accused of conspiring with his staff
to close 3 lanes of traffic on the George Washington Bridge to punish Fort
Lee’s Mayor for not supporting Christie during his landslide reelection.
Personally, I don’t think that the two scandals are comparable in their level
of criminal activity and corruption, but that doesn’t stop the media from
trying to label it as such.
Before leaving the museum, I
stopped by the gift shop to purchase a keychain and a postcard, which I buy in
every state that I visit. Then, I drove west back to the hotel in the beams of
the setting sun. I loved visiting the Capitol building and the North Carolina Museum
of History, The next day Rob and I would be driving up to Berryville, Virginia
to visit my Grandmother before traveling to Richmond to continue my research.
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