Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
Be sure to check out the new This Month in North Carolina, in which Harry McKown examines the Colored Industrial Association Fair. The Colored Industrial Fair occurred occurred on November 18, 1879, in Raleigh and displayed the achievements of the African American population in North Carolina.
… This makes an interesting follow-up to last month’s essay on the history and origins of the NC State Fair, which you can read about here.
“A bespectacled, priggish-looking former editor of the Biblical Recorder, [Sen. Josiah Bailey of North Carolina] had supported FDR in 1932 and 1936 but had recently soured on the New Deal, mainly because of its trespasses against states’ rights. He had been preparing this speech [against FDR’s plan to “pack” the Supreme Court] for weeks, and as he rose to begin, senators summoned their colleagues from the cloakroom.
“Bailey held forth with his customary melodramatics, shouting his points, banging his desk, shaking a preacher’s finger. The Southerner was offering an argument calculated to appeal to his colleagues from the North — that ‘the Negroes in the South feel secure tonight because they know there is a Constitution and an independent Court.'”
— From “FDR v. the Constitution” (2009) by Burt Solomon