After the war, North Carolinians hit the road on gasoline that’s newly cheap and plentiful. Sleek cars in a kaleidoscope of colors carry families to drive-in theaters and restaurants, where they watch and dine under the stars.
The Our State Decades Series Keeps Rolling with the ’50s
By 1950, The war that defined the previous decade is just a painful memory. The boys have long since come home, and people are moving fast and optimistically toward a bright future.
The 1940s: The Devil Dogs Find a Home
As war tensions ratchet up, the Marine Corps needs a training ground on the East Coast, and the military finds what it’s looking for near Jacksonville.
The 1940s: A Man For His Time
North Carolina’s wartime governor takes office with a desire to help the state he loves.
The 1940s: Learning, the Black Mountain Way
An experiment with innovative teachers and a nontraditional curriculum yields a controversial educational experience.
The 1940s: Workers Unite
A group of black women in Winston-Salem takes a stand to demand better wages and safer working conditions. The movement they start grows into a short-lived, but effective, labor union.
The 1940s: A Mighty Storm
A late summer hurricane slams the Outer Banks, leaving a path of destruction like nothing North Carolina’s coast has ever seen before.
The 1940s: The Miracle of Hickory
When polio strikes children in the Piedmont, doctors, nurses, and volunteers rise to the occasion to build an emergency quarantine hospital.
The 1940s: Field of Dreams
At a rural crossroads in Halifax County, black farmers chart a new destiny for their families through the Tillery resettlement program.
