The Research Triangle. William M. Rohe
industry continued to expand. In the 1930s both the American Tobacco Company and Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company expanded their production facilities, building no less than eighteen new tobacco warehouses. Tobacco auction facilities were also expanded, and with each of these expansions came new jobs. The demand for cigarettes during World War II helped to maintain the expansion. During the war years Durham's two major companies supplied the nation with more than a quarter of its cigarette supply.85 The war also bought many new residents to the Durham area. In 1941 the U.S. Army chose a site fifteen miles northeast of Durham for a thirty-thousand-acre training facility named Camp Butner. Over sixteen thousand employees were hired to construct the camp's facilities. By mid-1942 the first of thirty-five thousand soldiers and civilian army personnel began to fill the camp. Durham became the locus of most off-base activities: “Stores in town stayed open late Friday evenings hoping to catch in their tills as much of the $500,000 weekly payroll as possible.”86 After the war, Durham benefited from another important federal investment. With the support of Duke University, the city was able to attract a veterans' hospital, built across the street from its own hospital on Erwin Road.
THE REST OF THE TRIANGLE AREA IN THE LATE 1800S AND EARLY 1900S
Durham's rapid growth and development during the late 1800s and early 1900s was not typical of other cities in the state or in the Triangle area. North Carolina lost over forty thousand men in the Civil War and its economy was left in shambles. Economic suffering was widespread, particularly among the one-third of the North Carolina population made up of freed slaves, many of whom migrated to nearby towns and cities in search of work that was not agricultural.
During the initial period of Reconstruction, progressive reforms were introduced by the Republican Party, which was largely made up of freed blacks, northern transplants, and antisecession whites. A new constitution “provided for universal manhood suffrage and basic legal rights for whites and blacks alike.”87 During this time, blacks were elected to local public offices and an effort was made to provide equal, albeit, separate facilities, including public schools, for blacks and whites. These progressive reforms were cut short, however, as the Conservative Democrats regained control of the General Assembly in 1870, and the governor's office in 1876. These changes soon brought about the disenfranchisement of the state's black population. Particularly hard hit was funding for public education: “Illiteracy was greater in 1880 than it had been in 1860, and the state had the dubious distinction of having the highest illiteracy rate in the nation.”88 A new system of appointing county officials was instituted, rather than having them elected at the local level, so that Republicans and blacks could not regain political power.
As reflected in the history of Durham, between 1880 and 1900 the textile industry expanded rapidly in the Piedmont. Although some of those mills were built in cities such as Durham, mill locations largely followed the “Rhode Island Model” whereby individual mills were built along rivers and streams to utilize water power, and close to rail lines to receive raw materials and to ship finished products. Small mill villages were constructed around these mills to house at least a portion of their workers, while others commuted from surrounding farms. From the mill owners' perspective, an advantage of this pattern was that, because of these mills' dispersed locations, there was little competition for employees, which made it difficult for workers to organize. This decentralized industrial pattern also helped to reinforce North Carolina's already dispersed settlement pattern and keep its cities, including those in the Triangle area, relatively small.
The pro-business Democrats remained in control of state politics until 1894 when the Populist and the Republican Parties joined together to put forth a “Fusion Platform,” calling for “fair elections, improved education for all children, lower interest rates and regulation of the railroads.”89 Once in control of the General Assembly, the Fusion coalition raised taxes on the railroads and businesses, funded public schools for both blacks and whites, and reinstituted the election of county officials. Once again, however, Democrats—with the assistance of the Ku Klux Klan—were soon using the specter of black domination to undermine support for these reforms. Thus, they regained power in 1900, and held on to it for the next seventy-two years.
In the early 1900s the business-friendly, antiunion policies of the state's leaders led to rapid industrial growth. By 1920 North Carolina was the premier industrial state in the Southeast, but it ranked forty-fifth in the nation in average factory wages. The Depression hit North Carolina as hard as other states, but the Triangle area fared somewhat better given its heavy concentration of government and university employees. World War II led to the expansion of many industries in the state, including textiles in the Piedmont and shipbuilding on the coast. It also led to the creation and expansion of military bases: Fort Bragg, sixty miles south of Raleigh, and Camp Butner.
During this time, community leaders in Raleigh continued efforts to diversify the economy of the city and to improve its infrastructure. One approach was to establish a land grant university in the city. In 1875 the General Assembly used the interest from its Morrill Act fund to create an experimental agricultural station at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Soon after, Leonidas L. Polk, the state commissioner of agriculture, began a campaign to move that station to Raleigh.90 He also suggested that the agricultural station include an industrial college. Raleigh boosters picked up on this idea and formed the Watauga Club, whose purpose was to create in Raleigh a school similar to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Walter H. Page, a local newspaper editor and member of the club, argued that “our people need it and have sought it because they wish to see Raleigh a place of manufacture and this she must be if anything more than a seat of government.”91
The efforts of the Watauga Club paid off. In 1885 the General Assembly authorized an agricultural and industrial college to be constructed in a city that would donate land for the school and contribute to its construction. Raleigh's government and business leaders raised $8,000, agreed to donate thirty acres of land west of downtown, and aggressively lobbied the General Assembly to select Raleigh as the site of this new school. In 1887, the General Assembly did choose Raleigh as the site of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, and the area had what would become its third major research university.
Figure 12. The N.C. State campus in 1909 (courtesy of the North Carolina Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries).
The college accepted its first students in 1889 and by 1900 it had a student body of 250.92 Although engineering was its most popular subject, a department of agricultural extension was added in 1909, and expanded in 1914, as federal funding became available to support this activity. Over the next fifteen years the college added programs in business, textiles, forestry, and education. After World War II the student body grew rapidly as the returning soldiers took advantage of the educational support provided by the GI Bill. In 1947 the college had over 5,000 students, more than twice its pre-war enrollment. In 1965 the school's name was changed to North Carolina State University to reflect its size, national stature, and comprehensive curriculum. Today North Carolina State University has a full range of well-respected liberal arts and science, engineering, agriculture, architecture, and other programs. Its student enrollment has grown to over 30,000.
During this time two black educational institutions were founded in Raleigh, establishing it as a center for the education of blacks in the South. St. Augustine's Normal and Collegiate Institute was founded in 1867 by the Protestant Episcopal Church, with support from the Freedman's Bureau, on a site ten blocks east of the state Capitol.93 Its original curriculum focused on technical and trade-related knowledge and skills but this was quickly expanded to include liberal arts. In 1919 it began to offer postsecondary education and its name was changed to St. Augustine's Junior College and in 1927 it expanded again to offer four-year college degrees. Officially incorporated in 1875, Shaw University was the first historically black college or university in the South. It grew out of theology classes taught by a former Union Army chaplain, H. M. Tupper, with support from the American Baptist Home Mission Society. By 1881 Shaw had added a women's college and a medical school. Over their long histories both St. Augustine's College and Shaw University have produced many notable alumni