On November 13, 1989, award-winning artist Francis Speight died at age 93 in his Greenville home.Speight grew up on a Bertie County plantation before enrolling in college at Wake Forest. While there he took art lessons at Meredith College. After briefly serving in the Army during World War I, Speight studied and taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he would remain for more than 40 years.
Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On November 12, 1903, the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association appointed a committee to investigate and report on the various claims made about North Carolina’s involvement in the Civil War.The following spring the group received the committee’s report, boasting that North Carolinians indeed had been “First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg, Farthest at Chickamauga, and Last at Appomattox,” as a popular saying coined by editor and state Supreme Court Justice Walter Clark suggested.Specifically, the saying refers to claims that:
On November 12, 1836, Phineas Taylor " P.T." Barnum arrived in Rocky Mount after leaving Aaron Turner’s Traveling Circus. Barnum convinced some of the Turner acts to join his own traveling circus.
Each November 11, Americans celebrate Veterans Day, which was once called Armistice Day. The date marks the end of World War I, fought by America in 1917 and 1918.
On November 11, 1949, the Memorial Belltower, a prominent landmark on the campus of North Carolina State University, was dedicated. Gov. Gregg Cherry was one of the many dignitaries in attendance.Conceived as a memorial to those alumni who died in service to the country during World War I, the Belltower is a symbol of the university and a gathering point for the campus community. The cornerstone was laid in 1921, with sections added in 1924, 1925 and 1926.
On November 11, 1976, WRAL-TV broadcast the last segment of Viewpoint, a nightly series of political editorials, which ran on the station for nearly 16 years.
On November 10, 1898, the year’s white supremacy campaign culminated with a violent political coup in Wilmington, marking the onset of the Jim Crow era of segregation in the state. Though traditionally termed a “race riot,” many have called the event a massacre.
On November 10, 1945, Yvonne Vaughan, better known by her later stage name Donna Fargo, was born in Mount Airy.After growing up in North Carolina, Vaughan moved to California, where she finished college and began teaching English by day and singing in Los Angeles clubs by night. She met Dan Silver who agreed to be her manager and, shortly, her singing career took off.
On November 10, 1739, Wilmington merchant James Murray wrote his friend Henry McCulloh about the promising prospect for settlement by Scots in the upper Cape Fear region. Murray himself had been in America for only four years and wished to see his fellow Scots populate the backcountry.
On November 10, 1903, Drexel Furniture was founded by six partners in the small Burke County town of Drexel. One of the partners, Samuel Huffman, managed the business until his death in 1935. At that time, his son Robert took control of the operation.