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Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On July 9, 1945, Foster McKenzie III, known to punk music fans as Root Boy Slim, was born to a fishmonger in Asheville.
The family moved to Washington D.C. while McKenzie was still a boy. He was in and out of private academies, including the Sidwell Friends School, throughout his youth before being accepted at Yale University. While studying in New Haven, McKenzie formed his first band, Prince La La and the Midnight Creepers.
On July 8, 1979, members of the communist Greensboro Workers Viewpoint Organization (WVO) protested a screening of the white supremacist film Birth of a Nation held by the Ku Klux Klan at the town hall of small Rowan County town of China Grove.
The Greensboro communist group opposed the Klan because it divided working people by their race, thereby, in their view, distracting them from the struggle for workers’ rights. When the WVO learned of the screening, they immediately began to organize a protest march.
John Romulus Brinkley rose to fame in 1922 with his development of an operation whereby the sex glands of goats were transplanted into the bodies of impotent men.
On July 7, 1863, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation to create the Home Guard.
On July 7, 1833, Sir Archie, arguably the greatest thoroughbred in North Carolina history, died at the age of 28.
John Ellis was elected governor in 1858 and 1860, and was in command at the onset of the Civil War when North Carolina seceded from the Union. On July 7, 1861, Governor Ellis died of tuberculosis and Henry Toole Clark was elevated to fill the position.
On July 6, 1896, textile industrialist J. Spencer Love was born in Massachusetts.
Though Love’s family roots were in North Carolina, he remained in New England until finishing his studies at Harvard and serving a brief stint in the Army during World War I. After he was unable to find work in Boston, Love moved to Gastonia and joined his grandfather and uncle in the textile business.
On July 6, 1935, an ostrich race was held on Main Street in downtown Brevard.
The race pitted two ostriches against each other. Each bird was ridden by a young woman. According to the Transylvania Times, a local newspaper, the two jockeys, Billie Dean and Amie Register, rode without a bridle, saddle or any other sort of equipment.