Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
“The ILD [International Labor Defense] sent Karl Marx Reeve, editor of its monthly paper, the Labor Defender…. Reeve stayed for less than two months, but later he would considerably inflate his role in the strike.”
— From “Gastonia 1929: The Story of the Loray Mill Strike” by John A. Salmond” (2014)
Communist activist Karl Marx Reeve was also known in this ACME Newspictures caption and elsewhere as Carl Reeves.
“The original O. Henry Hotel was built in downtown Greensboro in 1919 at the southwest corner of Bellemeade and North Elm Streets. The first of the city’s modern hotels, the O. Henry was built through local stock subscriptions….
“Within six weeks after opening, it could not accommodate all the guests. An adjoining tobacco warehouse was converted to take care of the overflow. Having 300 rooms, the O. Henry was one of the largest and finest hotels in the state for many decades.
“As interstates were built and the city grew away from downtown, business declined and the hotel closed in the ’60s. The original O. Henry Hotel was razed in 1979.”
— From “Original O. Henry Hotel.”
This luggage label is from the O. Henry’s time (1936 on) as a link in the Atlanta-based Dinkler Hotels chain.
In 1998 a new O.Henry Hotel with 131 rooms opened 3 miles west of the original site.
“When World War II started, Douglas Municipal Airport was renamed Charlotte Army Air Base. It had been taken over by the Army just months before Pearl Harbor. At the dedication Fiorello H. La Guardia, mayor of New York City, told about 10,000 visitors, “We are challenged by Adolf Hitler now.”
“In 1942 the airport was renamed Morris Field, in honor of Harrisburg native William Colb Morris, who had served as a World War I flier and instructor. Over the course of the war the federal government spent $6 million to create and operate a pilot training base.
“In 1946 the airport was turned back to local officials. Renamed Charlotte Municipal Airport, it would eventually grow into Charlotte Douglas International Airport.”
— From “Morris Field” by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library
Coined in early 1941 to promote Army recruitment, “Keep ‘Em Flying!” became a popular homefront rallying cry (and the name of an Abbott and Costello comedy).
The 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte included a record 486 LGBT delegates, 13 of whom were openly transgender.
In this photo the delegate on the right is wearing one of these oversized (3.5 inch diameter) pinback buttons.
“At first, the trial was, as murder cases go, pretty straightforward. William Hall and Andrew Bryson were friends in their early 20s who lived near each other in the mountains north of Murphy. When the moonshine still that the two of them used went missing, they blamed each other. Then Hall, accompanied by a friend, John Dockery, hunted down Bryson. And on a warm summer day in July 1892, way up on a ridge, they confronted each other. Hall raised his Winchester rifle and shot Bryson dead.
“Hall and Dockery found themselves some good lawyers who brought up an interesting point. The ridge, it turned out, formed the state line between North Carolina and Tennessee….”
— From “How a Tar Heel Moonshiner Got Away with Murder (in 1892)” by
