So you think you know North Carolina…. No. 3

1. True or false: Among the crimes requiring the death penalty in early 19th-century North Carolina were burglary, bigamy, sodomy, highway robbery, dueling where death occurs and hiding a slave with intent to free him.

2. In three years FDR’s Works Progress Administration built 63,311 of these in North Carolina — what were they?

3. In 1932 a crowd of 15,000 turned out in Goldsboro to watch what event?

4. The otherwise obscure Ervin T. Rouse, a native of Dover in Craven County, wrote what has been called the best-known fiddle tune of the 20th century. What was it?

5. In 1895 after the N.C. legislature passed a resolution honoring the recently deceased abolitionist Frederick Douglass, protesters demanded a $10,000 loan for what purpose?

Answers below….

 

 

 

 

 

1. True. One explanation for such an extensive list: The lack of a state penitentiary left no suitable alternative to capital punishment.

2. Outhouses. Typically built with concrete floors and ventilation shafts, they were an effective deterrent to hookworms and other public health concerns.

3. A “Hoover Cart Rodeo,” a parade of 300 cannibalized, mule-powered automobiles. Hoover carts, like shanty-town Hoovervilles, linked the Depression to President Herbert Hoover. Each parade entrant received a three-pound bag of grits and a pass to see the Marx Brothers in “Horsefeathers.”

4. “Orange Blossom Special,” composed in 1938, along with the less successful “(I’ve Got Those) Craven County Blues.”

5. To build a Confederate monument on the Capitol grounds. After organizing first to bring home and rebury the state’s dead from Gettysburg, Confederate widows broadened their cause to building monuments and otherwise glorifying the Lost Cause.