circa
8000
B.C. |
Creation legends in the Tuscarora, Algonquian,
Cherokee, Siouan, and Catawba cultures identify women in four significant
roles: life givers, intermediaries between the natural and spiritual worlds,
indispensable components of the earth and its processes, and people different
from but equally important to men. |
| 1587 |
August 18: Virginia Dare becomes the first
English child born in the New World. |
| 1774 |
October 25: Fifty-one “patriotic ladies”
gather in Edenton to announce in writing their boycott of East Indian tea
as long as it is taxed by the British. This protest, known as the Edenton
Tea Party, is one of the first political activities in this country staged
by women. |
| 1774 |
Flora MacDonald, famous for saving the
life of Bonnie Prince Charlie, arrives in Wilmington, North Carolina. After
urging her fellow Highland Scots to fight for England and then suffering
financial and personal loss during the Revolutionary War, she leaves the
state in 1778. |
| 1809 |
North Carolina native Dolly Madison becomes
First Lady when James Madison is inaugurated as the fourth president. She
remains one of the most popular First Ladies in the nation’s history. |
| 1812 |
The Newbern Female Charitable Society
is founded to help “destitute female children.” |
| 1826 |
The General Council of the Cherokee Nation
goes against tribal tradition of gender equality by drafting a constitution
patterned after that of the United States which excludes women from holding
office and denies them franchise. |
| 1833 |
Frankie Silver is convicted for the murder
of her husband in present-day Mitchell County. She becomes the first woman
in North Carolina to be executed by hanging. |
| 1838 |
Greensboro College, North Carolina’s first
chartered college for women, is opened and operated by the Methodist Church. |
| 1842 |
Harriet Jacobs, an Edenton slave, is smuggled
aboard a ship to escape slavery after spending seven years hiding in a
tiny attic room in her grandmother’s house. She escapes to New York, where
she buys the freedom of her children. She later writes Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl. |
| 1848 |
Dorothea Dix spends three months in North
Carolina studying the treatment of the unfortunate and lobbying the state
government to build a hospital for the mentally ill. Her persistence and
persuasion are rewarded in 1856, when the state legislature makes its first
appropriation to a hospital for the insane. |
| 1862 |
March 20: Sarah Malinda Pritchard Blalock
cuts her hair, dons men’s clothing, and enlists with her husband in the
Confederate army, becoming North Carolina’s only known female Civil War
soldier. |
| 1862 |
Mary Jane Patterson, a free black from
Raleigh, becomes the first African American woman to receive a bachelor
of arts degree. She obtains the degree from Oberlin College in Ohio. |
| 1862 |
Congress passes the Morrill Act, establishing
land grant colleges in rural areas. Millions of women will earn low-cost
degrees at these schools. In North Carolina, this act results in the founding
of North Carolina State University. |
| 1863 |
March 18: During what has become known
as the Salisbury Bread Riot, several dozen women armed with axes and hatchets
storm speculators’ stores demanding flour, molasses, and salt in Salisbury.
When shop owners refuse to turn over the goods, the women take them by
force. |
| 1868 |
The North Carolina legislature passes
a new constitution that secures a woman’s personal property acquired before
or after marriage. |
| 1872 |
Dr. Susan Dimock becomes the first female
member of the North Carolina Medical Society, although she never practices
in the state. Earlier Dimock is forced to go abroad to find a medical school
that will accept women, then practices at a hospital in Boston as one of
the nation’s first licensed female doctors. |
| 1878 |
Tabitha Ann Holton passes the North Carolina
state bar to become the first licensed female lawyer in the South. |
| 1883 |
The first Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union chapter is established in the state in Greensboro. Within a year,
11 more chapters are established and in 1903 the state has 65 chapters
and 3,000 members. With the passing of state prohibition in 1908, membership
dwindles to 1,000. |
| 1887 |
Dr. Annie Lawne Alexander, born in Mecklenburg
County, returns to the state several years after her graduation from Women’s
Medical College in Philadelphia to become the state’s first licensed female
doctor. |
| 1889 |
African American members of the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Movement secede and form WCTU No. 2. Like the original
group, the spin-off reports directly to the national organization. North
Carolina is the only state to have a black woman’s temperance union, and
by 1891 WCTU No. 2 will have 400 members in 19 chapters. |
| 1891 |
The General Assembly charters the State
Normal and Industrial College as the first state-supported institution
of higher education for women. Known as Women’s College, the school will
evolve into the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. |
| 1893 |
March 4: The North Carolina General Assembly
passes a law allowing women to cash checks and withdraw money from their
personal accounts without obtaining their husbands' permission. |
| 1894 |
The United Daughters of the Confederacy
is established. By 1901 North Carolina will have 33 chapters. |
| 1897 |
The first petition to the North Carolina
General Assembly for woman suffrage is referred to the committee on insane
asylums. |
| 1898 |
Sallie Walker Stockard becomes the first
woman to graduate from the University of North Carolina. Women have been
allowed to attend the summer teachers’ institute in Chapel Hill since 1879,
but Stockard is the first female student to earn a degree from the university. |
| 1902 |
The North Carolina Federation of Women’s
Clubs is organized. |
| 1914 |
The first meeting of the Equal Suffrage
League of North Carolina is held in Charlotte. |
| 1918 |
Harriet Morehead Berry is appointed head
of North Carolina’s Road Commission and soon becomes known as the “Mother
of Good Roads in North Carolina.” |
| 1920 |
Lillian Exum Clement of Buncombe County
becomes the first woman elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives. |
| 1920 |
In October Equal Suffrage League president
Gertrude Weil and other suffragists gather in Greensboro to plan how to
use the right to vote to focus on women’s issues and to transform the North
Carolina Equal Suffrage League into the North Carolina League of Women
Voters. |
| 1921 |
Kate Burr Johnson of Morganton becomes
the first woman in the country to serve as state commissioner of public
welfare and the first woman in the state to head a major department. |
| 1928 |
Annie Wealthy Holland of Gates County
forms the North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, the
first such organization for African Americans in the state. |
| 1929 |
Ella May Wiggins, one of the most outspoken
union activists in North Carolina, is killed during a labor dispute at
the Loray Mill. |
| 1937 |
North Carolina initiates a birth control
program, funds maternal and infant health programs, and licenses midwives. |
| 1947 |
Elreta Alexander becomes the first African
American woman licensed as a lawyer in North Carolina. |
| 1949 |
Susie Sharp becomes North Carolina’s first
female superior court judge. |
| 1962 |
Judge Susie Sharp becomes first woman
to serve on the North Carolina Supreme Court. |
| 1968 |
Margaret Taylor Harper enters the race
for lieutenant governor of North Carolina, becoming the first woman to
run for statewide office. |
| 1971 |
The North Carolina General Assembly ratifites
the Nineteenth Amendment after 51 years. |
| 1977 |
The North Carolina General Assembly declines
to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. |
| 1977 |
Isabella Cannon is elected mayor of Raleigh,
becoming the first female mayor of a major North Carolina city. |
| 1988 |
Gertrude B. Elion and research partner
George H. Hitchings win the Nobel Prize for medicine for their pioneering
research in drug development at Burroughs Wellcome in Research Triangle
Park. |
| 1992 |
November: Eva M. Clayton is elected to
the United States House of Representatives. She is the first woman and
the first African American woman to represent North Carolina in Congress. |
| 1993 |
North Carolina natives Sadie and Bessie
Delaney, at ages 104 and 102, publish their book, Having Our Say: The
Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years. Their story becomes a successful Broadway
play. |
| 1996 |
Elaine F. Marshall is elected North Carolina's
first female secretary of state. |
| 2000 |
Beverly Purdue is elected North Carolina's
first female lieutenant governor. |
| 2002 |
Elizabeth Dole is elected North Carolina's
first female United States senator. |