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History & Culture
Explore Indigenous history, Black history, civil-rights landmarks, state history, museums, and arts across North Carolina.
Across the state
Explore the listings
97 results
State & local history · Raleigh
A planned capital
Raleigh was selected as North Carolina’s permanent capital in 1792 and built around Union Square, now home to the State Capitol.
State & local history · Raleigh
Growth and reinvention
Government, higher education, research, and technology have successively shaped the city’s growth while older neighborhoods preserve earlier chapters.
Black history & culture · Raleigh
Shaw University
Founded in 1865, Shaw is among the nation’s earliest HBCUs; Estey Hall was built for the higher education of Black women.
Black history & culture · Raleigh
Saint Augustine’s legacy
Saint Augustine’s University and its historic campus reflect Raleigh’s long role in Black education and civic leadership.
Black history & culture · Raleigh
South Park and East Raleigh
Historic neighborhoods southeast of downtown hold generations of Black institutions, churches, homes, and community memory.
Arts & culture · Raleigh
North Carolina Museum of Art
Statewide collections meet large-scale outdoor installations.
Arts & culture · Raleigh
Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh
CAM connects contemporary exhibitions with the Warehouse District.
Arts & culture · Raleigh
Performing arts
Memorial Auditorium and downtown stages support theater, dance, and music.
Museum · Raleigh
North Carolina Museum of Art
Free general admission plus a 164-acre park with trails and outdoor art west of downtown.
Museum · Raleigh
North Carolina Museum of History
State history galleries sit on the downtown government campus.
Museum · Raleigh
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
The Southeast’s largest natural-sciences museum, free to enter, faces Bicentennial Plaza.
Museum · Raleigh
Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh
CAM presents rotating contemporary exhibitions in the Warehouse District.
Museum · Raleigh
Marbles Kids Museum
Hands-on galleries and an IMAX theater anchor the children’s museum downtown.
State & local history · Durham
Tobacco and textiles
Tobacco manufacturing powered Durham’s industrial rise and left a landscape of brick factories now adapted to new uses.
State & local history · Durham
A new economy
Medicine, research, technology, education, and entrepreneurship now share the city with its industrial inheritance.
Black history & culture · Durham
Black Wall Street
Parrish Street became nationally known for Black finance and enterprise, including North Carolina Mutual and Mechanics and Farmers Bank.
Black history & culture · Durham
Hayti
The post-Civil War community grew into a center of Black business, education, worship, and culture before urban renewal disrupted it.
Black history & culture · Durham
North Carolina Central University
Founded by Dr. James E. Shepard, NCCU is a central institution in Durham’s Black intellectual and cultural life.
Arts & culture · Durham
Hayti Heritage Center
A home for performance, film, visual art, and Black cultural memory.
Arts & culture · Durham
Durham Performing Arts Center
A major touring theater venue downtown.
Arts & culture · Durham
Full Frame
Durham is closely associated with documentary film through the Full Frame festival and community.
State & local history · Charlotte
Trade to banking
A regional trading center grew through rail, textiles, and finance into North Carolina’s largest city.
State & local history · Charlotte
A changing skyline
Bank consolidation and sustained migration transformed Uptown and the wider metropolitan region.
Black history & culture · Charlotte
Historic West End
The area around Johnson C. Smith University and Beatties Ford Road remains central to Black Charlotte.
Black history & culture · Charlotte
Brooklyn remembered
Urban renewal displaced a major Black neighborhood and business district in Second Ward.
Black history & culture · Charlotte
Harvey B. Gantt Center
The center presents art, history, and culture of African-descended people.
Arts & culture · Charlotte
Harvey B. Gantt Center
A defining institution for African-American art and culture.
Arts & culture · Charlotte
Blumenthal Arts
Uptown stages host theater, dance, and touring performances.
Arts & culture · Charlotte
NoDa
Murals, galleries, and music venues sustain the district’s arts identity.
State & local history · Greensboro
A planned county seat
Greensboro was established in the early nineteenth century and named for Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene.
State & local history · Greensboro
Textiles and transportation
Rail access and manufacturing drove expansion across the twentieth century.
Black history & culture · Greensboro
The Greensboro Four
On February 1, 1960, four NC A&T freshmen began a sit-in at the segregated Woolworth lunch counter.
Black history & culture · Greensboro
NC A&T
The nation’s largest HBCU is a center of scholarship, engineering, agriculture, activism, and Aggie tradition.
Black history & culture · Greensboro
Civil Rights Center
The former Woolworth now houses the International Civil Rights Center & Museum.
Arts & culture · Greensboro
Weatherspoon Art Museum
A free university museum with a strong modern collection.
Arts & culture · Greensboro
Carolina Theatre
A historic downtown performing-arts venue.
Arts & culture · Greensboro
Elsewhere
An internationally known experimental art environment.
State & local history · Winston-Salem
Salem and Winston
Moravians established Salem in the eighteenth century; industrial Winston grew beside it, and the municipalities consolidated in 1913.
State & local history · Winston-Salem
Tobacco city
Manufacturing shaped the skyline, workforce, philanthropy, and neighborhoods for generations.
Black history & culture · Winston-Salem
Winston-Salem State University
Founded by educator Simon Green Atkins in 1892, WSSU anchors Black academic and cultural life.
Black history & culture · Winston-Salem
Happy Hill
One of the city’s oldest Black communities carries a long history of family, faith, and neighborhood advocacy.
Black history & culture · Winston-Salem
Delta Arts Center
The center advances Black visual art and cultural programming in the Triad.
Arts & culture · Winston-Salem
Delta Arts Center
A key home for African-American visual arts.
Arts & culture · Winston-Salem
SECCA
The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art presents changing exhibitions.
Arts & culture · Winston-Salem
UNCSA
The conservatory adds film, dance, music, theater, and design to city life.
State & local history · Fayetteville
Two towns become Fayetteville
Campbellton and Cross Creek united in the eighteenth century and took the name Fayetteville.
State & local history · Fayetteville
Military transformation
The nearby Army installation reshaped the city’s population, economy, and global connections through the twentieth century.
Black history & culture · Fayetteville
Fayetteville State University
The institution traces to the Howard School, founded in 1867, and became one of North Carolina’s public HBCUs.
Black history & culture · Fayetteville
Murchison Road
The corridor connects FSU, Black enterprise, churches, neighborhoods, and generations of city life.
Black history & culture · Fayetteville
A global Black community
Military migration has connected Fayetteville’s Black community to the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Arts & culture · Fayetteville
Cape Fear Regional Theatre
A long-running professional theater serves the region.
Arts & culture · Fayetteville
Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County
Downtown programs support public art and local creators.
Arts & culture · Fayetteville
FSU arts
University galleries and performances add an important Black cultural platform.
State & local history · Asheville
Mountain crossroads
A regional trading center expanded rapidly after the railroad arrived in the nineteenth century.
State & local history · Asheville
Boom, bust, and preservation
A 1920s building boom and long debt repayment helped preserve much of downtown’s architecture.
Black history & culture · Asheville
YMI Cultural Center
Founded in 1893, the YMI became a central institution for Asheville’s Black community.
Black history & culture · Asheville
The Block
The downtown district around Eagle and Market streets historically concentrated Black business and culture.
Black history & culture · Asheville
East End/Valley Street and Southside
These communities hold deep histories of Black homeownership, faith, commerce, displacement, and resilience.
Arts & culture · Asheville
YMI Cultural Center
Exhibitions and programs connect history with contemporary Black creativity.
Arts & culture · Asheville
River Arts District
Hundreds of artists work across a broad studio district.
Arts & culture · Asheville
The Orange Peel
A nationally known live-music room anchors downtown nightlife.
State & local history · Wilmington
Port on the Cape Fear
River trade, rail, naval stores, and maritime industries drove Wilmington’s growth.
State & local history · Wilmington
1898
White supremacists overthrew the elected biracial city government on November 10, 1898, in the only successful coup d’état in United States history.
Black history & culture · Wilmington
1898 Memorial Park
The memorial honors the people and community targeted by the Wilmington coup.
Black history & culture · Wilmington
Black enterprise before 1898
Wilmington had a substantial Black professional, political, and business class before the attack.
Black history & culture · Wilmington
Williston legacy
Williston Industrial High School and its alumni hold an important place in Black education and civic life.
Arts & culture · Wilmington
Cameron Art Museum
Regional history and contemporary art meet in changing exhibitions.
Arts & culture · Wilmington
Brooklyn Arts District
Performance and creative spaces occupy historic buildings.
Arts & culture · Wilmington
Film community
Production work supports actors, crew, and visual storytellers across the region.
State & local history · Cary
Indigenous homelands
The wider Piedmont was home to Indigenous peoples long before European settlement; local interpretation should begin with that longer history.
State & local history · Cary
Railroad crossroads
The community grew around a nineteenth-century rail junction and was incorporated in 1871.
State & local history · Cary
Regional growth
Research Triangle Park and the wider technology economy accelerated Cary’s late-twentieth-century expansion.
Black history & culture · Cary
Shared Triangle history
Cary’s Black history is connected to rural Wake County communities, churches, schools, and migration across the Triangle.
Black history & culture · Cary
Contemporary community
Black residents, entrepreneurs, artists, and civic groups are part of the town’s increasingly diverse identity.
Arts & culture · Cary
Cary Arts Center
A repurposed historic school supports performance and visual arts.
Arts & culture · Cary
The Cary Theater
The restored downtown theater presents film, music, and community programs.
Museum · Cary
Page-Walker
Local history and rotating exhibitions occupy the historic railroad hotel.
Museum · Cary
Cary Arts Center
Classes, galleries, and performances animate a restored school.
State & local history · Chapel Hill
Indigenous Piedmont
Indigenous peoples lived across this region for millennia before colonial settlement.
State & local history · Chapel Hill
University town
The town developed around the University of North Carolina, chartered in 1789.
State & local history · Chapel Hill
Civil rights
Local Black students and residents organized against segregation in businesses and public life.
Black history & culture · Chapel Hill
Northside
A historic Black neighborhood shaped by university workers, churches, educators, and community organizing.
Black history & culture · Chapel Hill
Pine Knolls
The neighborhood carries an important history of Black homeownership and civic life.
Black history & culture · Chapel Hill
Freedom movement
Chapel Hill’s sit-ins and demonstrations belong in the wider North Carolina civil-rights story.
Arts & culture · Chapel Hill
Ackland Art Museum
A free museum presents global collections and exhibitions.
Arts & culture · Chapel Hill
PlayMakers Repertory Company
Professional theater is based on the UNC campus.
Museum · Chapel Hill
Ackland
The university art museum is open to the public.
Museum · Chapel Hill
Morehead
The planetarium connects science history with public programming.
State & local history · Asheboro
Indigenous region
The Uwharrie and Piedmont landscapes carry Indigenous history predating European settlement.
State & local history · Asheboro
County seat
Asheboro was established as Randolph County’s seat near the end of the eighteenth century.
State & local history · Asheboro
Manufacturing economy
Textiles, furniture, hosiery, and later diversified manufacturing shaped local growth.
Black history & culture · Asheboro
Community institutions
Black churches, schools, families, and businesses form an essential part of Asheboro and Randolph County history.
Black history & culture · Asheboro
Editorial work ahead
Drake is developing sourced reporting on local Black civic and business history rather than publishing unverified names.
Arts & culture · Asheboro
Sunset Theatre
The historic downtown theater hosts community arts programming.
Arts & culture · Asheboro
Local makers
Pottery, craft, and visual art connect Asheboro to the wider Randolph County tradition.
Museum · Asheboro
Aviation Museum
Aircraft and memorabilia document regional aviation.
Museum · Asheboro
Randolph County history
Check local institutions for current exhibitions and access.
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