Harbinger of South’s reaction on race? Not exactly

“As North Carolina Democrats go to the polls this Saturday to pick a candidate for United States Senate, the politicians here will be looking for the first clue to the political impact on the South of the Supreme Court’s ruling against public school segregation.”
— From “North Carolina Poll Will Be First Hint of South’s Reaction” in the Wall Street Journal (May 27, 1954)
That “first clue” to response to Brown vs. Board of Education turned out to be misleadingly positive: In the Democratic primary, incumbent Sen. Alton Lennon, a hardline segregationist, narrowly lost to moderate former Gov. Kerr Scott. 
In Triumph of Good Will: How Terry Sanford Beat a Champion of Segregation” (2000), John Drescher casts the race as both a rematch of Frank Porter Graham vs. Willis Smith in 1950 and a precursor to Sanford vs. I. Beverly Lake in 1960.
 

Fewest foreign-born? Let’s not brag about it

“[In 1952] Senator Willis Smith hailed ‘the people of Greek ancestry’ who had come to North Carolina and ‘conducted themselves in a businesslike way.’ Smith was sure there were ‘no better citizens’ of his state. But, of course, their successful absorption reflected the fact that ‘the percentage of foreign-born in my state is the smallest of any state in the union.’ ”

— From “American Crucible: Race and Nation in the 20th Century” (2001) by Gary Gerstle

Fifteen years earlier, Dr. Frederick Hanes of Duke University, appointed by the General Assembly to head a committee on mental illness, brought back a message legislators may not have expected: “There is considerable pride in this ‘100 percent American stock,’ but it is possible that some new stock, especially from northern European countries, would have been beneficial….These population facts have a direct relation to the incidence of mental illness….”