The Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina rise abruptly from the Piedmont, the state's central plateau, and include the ranges of the Balsam, Black, Blue Ridge, Great Smoky, and Nantahala Mountains. The region is home to several of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi River. The rugged geography of these mountains delayed the arrival of European settlers to the area, slowed the pace of development, and for many years preserved a distinct regional culture.

While development and change were slow in coming to the Mountain Region, the last half a century has seen a surge in both. This site focuses on the story of Madison County, North Carolina. Listen to members of the community candidly discuss tradition, growth, loss, and balance as you experience the story of change in the North Carolina mountains.

The political landscape in the South underwent significant change during the twentieth century. Political and social change in Southern states was directly connected to some of the landmark events of American history, particularly the Civil Rights Movement. An understanding of the role of politics in the South is essential to comprehension of the history and culture of the region.

The oral histories in this site illuminate changes in Southern politics from the end of the Civil War up to the present day. The recollections and opinions of the important political figures interviewed in these oral histories help form an impression of the role of Southern politics in the tumultuous events of the twentieth century in America. Listen as eyewitnesses recount the effects of politics and changing political beliefs on the story of the American South.

This lesson plan introduces students to changes that have occurred in western North Carolina, through two hundred years of national and regional development. Students will learn about the geographical, political, and technological issues that have influenced change in mountain communities using oral histories by Madison County residents. They will learn about the history of road building in the North Carolina mountains, and the relatively recent decision to connect two halves of interstate highway in Madison County. They will compare and contrast the negative and positive changes that road construction has brought to the region, and listen to oral histories of locals who have experienced both good and bad effects. Through discussion with classmates, they will create a list of the advantages and disadvantages of both tradition and development. After collecting and reviewing information about the construction of Interstate 26 through Madison County, students will write an editorial. In this editorial, students will clearly state their position on the Interstate 26 debate, and will support their argument with evidence from the oral histories.

In this lesson, students will learn about the use of child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They will learn what life was like for a child worker: how much the workers made, how many hours they worked each day, what their homes were like and what they did for fun. Students will then write an investigative news report exposing the practice of child labor in the mills, using quotations from oral histories with former child mill workers and photographs of child laborers taken by social reform photographer Lewis Hine.

Students will compare and contrast "Civil Disobedience" and "Nonviolent resistance" during the Civil Rights era in N.C.. They will analyze changes in North Carolina during the postwar period to the 1970's and assess the political and social impact of the Civil Rights movement on local, state and national levels.

In this lesson, students will work in cooperative groups to compare and contrast the following presidential elections: 1876, 1896, 1948, 1964, 1972, 1980, and 2008 through the creation of political maps. In addition, each group will provide explanations of campaign platforms for different political parties, voting patterns, and why the election is important for understanding changes in Southern Politics. Students will then present their map and detailed explanations to the class.

For many years scholars have recognized that late nineteenth-century Durham, North Carolina makes an ideal case study for examining emancipation, industrialization, immigration, and urbanization in the context of the New South. "With its tobacco factories, textile mills, black entrepreneurs, and new college," the historian Syd Nathans observes, "Durham was a hub of enterprise and hope." By the early twentieth century, Durham became renowned for its vibrant entrepreneurial spirit. Both W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington wrote articles for the national press about their visits with members of Durham's African-American community. After his visit in 1910, Booker T. Washington dubbed Durham the "City of Negro Enterprises."

The Digital Durham website offers students, teachers, and researchers a range of primary sources with which they can investigate the economic, social, cultural, and political history of a post-bellum southern community. Letters from mothers to daughters, parents to children, and husbands and wives give insight into the domestic lives of some of Durham's elite citizens. Entries from Atlas Rigsbee's general store ledger together with data from the 1880 census provide a view into the social experience of those Durham citizens who have not left written documents. Taken together the new materials on Digital Durham touch on over 600 topics including African American business enterprise, the emergence of textiles, tobacco production and marketing, child labor, prohibition, evangelical revivalism, nineteenth-century medical practices, women's experience of childbirth, and public and private education.

The holdings of the website provide access to a wide range of manuscript and printed materials from the 1870s through the 1920s. The site also features a new collection of maps that depict Durham from the late 1860s to the present day. Digital Durham offers its users a selection of manuscript letters taken from the Southgate-Jones family papers and James Southgate papers, accounts from Atlas M. Rigsbee's general store ledger, photographs, ephemera, census data, printed works as well as a rich collection of maps. The site also includes audio postcards created by Duke students in an undergraduate research seminar on the history of Durham and the New South. Additionally, the site includes resources for K-12 educators--a reference section with glossary of terms used in the 1880 census and lesson plans that tie to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.

In this lesson, students will learn about the labor union movement in the U.S., specifically the union influence on the cotton mills of North and South Carolina. Students will listen to oral histories from former mill workers explaining why they did or did not become involved with the union, and then will be asked to make that decision themselves. They will provide an explanation for their decision by giving a speech to convince their classmates to join or not join, drawing on the oral histories and what they’ve learned.

This site offers more than 250 memoirs, autobiographies, and narratives from individuals who were slaves. An African king who was sold into slavery, the dress maker for Mary Todd Lincoln, the servant of Robert E. Lee during the Civil War, and the nurse of George Washington are included, as are stories of Sojourner Truth, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, and others. These firsthand accounts describe the conditions and sufferings of slaves and a number of escapes to freedom.

In this unit, students will research the history of school desegregation, and bring that history to life by listening to oral histories of North Carolinians who lived through desegregation. Students will then become historians, recording their own oral histories with relatives or community members, and reflecting on the experience through writing. The oral histories will be collected into a final project and placed in the school’s library for students and teachers to study in the future.

Often our impression of slavery is one of slaves toiling in the fields of a large plantation, but slaves in North Carolina had diverse experiences. Although some North Carolina slaves did work on large plantations, many more worked on small farms. Others labored as skilled artisans, performed domestic work, worked in the shipping industry near the coast, or were able to “hire out” their time and work for themselves. In this lesson, students will read excerpts from slave narratives written by North Carolinians from different parts of the state. Taking what they’ve learned from the narratives, students will then create a map illustrating the differing types of labor associated with each region.

The twentieth century was a time of great social change in America. One example of remarkable change was in the role of women in American society. Across the country, and particularly in the South, traditional ideas defined acceptable roles and behavior for women. However, some women challenged these norms by pursuing higher education or professional careers at a time when the accepted role for a woman was wife and mother. These trailblazers contested accepted views about women’s abilities and paved the way for continuing change in women’s roles in society.

This site uses oral histories to trace ways in which ideas about women’s abilities and social roles changed in the South over the course of the twentieth century. Listen as these accomplished women recall the opportunities, challenges, changes, and triumphs they experienced as trailblazers in academic and professional careers.

The textile industry spread like wildfire across the South in the years following Reconstruction. Dozens of mills across North and South Carolina drew workers from rural and mountain farms, who traded in farm life for life in the mill village. There, workers lived in homes rented out by the mill, shopped in stores run by the mill, and went to church and school in structures built by the mill. The mill owners often tried to cultivate a sense of family in the mill village. This "family" included the children of the village, who very often left school to work in the cotton mills alongside their parents and siblings.

In the 1970s, the public school system of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County in North Carolina was ordered by the federal courts to desegregate. The district then faced busing, lawsuits, protests, and riots during its struggle with the issue of racial quotas. The district is currently coping with the controversial plan to end busing for racial balance and return to a geographically-based student assignment plan.

Listen to members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community candidly discuss race, desegregation, busing, and education as you experience the story of race in Charlotte's schools.

Throughout the tobacco-growing regions of the American South during the Great Depression, individuals and families earned much-needed income by sewing drawstrings into small cotton tobacco bags. The images in this collection are from a report in the North Carolina Collection documenting tobacco bag stringing work in North Carolina and Virginia in 1939.