#OnThisDay: Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 1775

Every year on May 20 or sometime that week I blog about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. It was signed on May 20, 1775 – a full year before the national declaration.

Unfortunately, the original copy was lost when John McKnitt Alexander’s house burned. The writers and signers got together after the fire and reconstructed the document from memory.

Since the original copy was lost, there are naysayers today. I don’t know what their motives are, but they insist on seeing the original in order to believe it existed. A newspaper account in the Raleigh Register on April 30, 1819 does not suffice as proof for them.

There has never been any love lost between Raleigh – the State Capital – and Charlotte (in Mecklenburg County), so I find it surprising that a Raleigh newspaper ever acknowledged the document. For a newspaper in Raleigh – of all places – to do so only indicates to me a level of certification.

May 20, 1775 was added to the North Carolina state flag in 1861, so there must have been a high degree of belief that the document was real. Again, with the historical seat of power in North Carolina being in the eastern part of the state, the legislators would not have been quick to given Mecklenburg County any credit on the state flag.

Here is the wording of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, as it was recreated after being lost in a fire, and as it is found in The Hornet’s Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, by LeGette Blythe and Charles Raven Brockmann, published in 1961:

That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted or in any way, form or manner countenanced the unchartered & dangerous invasion of our rights as claimed by G. Britain is an enemy to this County – to America & to the inherent & inaliable rights of man.
We the Citizens of Mecklenburg County do hereby desolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country & hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British crown & abjure all political connection, contract or association with that nation who have wantonly trampled on our rights & liberties & inhumanely shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.
We do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people – are & of right ought to be a sovereign & self-governing association, under the control of no power other than that of our God & the general government of the congress, to the maintainence of which independence civil & religious we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes & our most sacred honor.
As we now acknowledge the existence & control of no law or legal officers, civil or military, within this County, we do hereby ordain & adopt as a rule of life, all, each & every of our former laws – wherein nevertheless the crown of great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.
It is also further decreed that all, each & every military officer in this County is hereby reinstated in his former command & authority, he acting conformably to these regulations. And that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz, a Justice of the peace in the character of a “Committee-man” to issue process, hear & determine all matters of controversy according to sd. Adopted laws – to preserve peace, union & harmony in sd. County & to use every exertion to spread the love of country & fire of freedom throughout American until a more general & organized government be established in this province. A selection from the members present shall constitute a Committee of public safety for sd. County.
That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted by express to the President of the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, to be laid before that body.

Ephraim Brevard

Hezekiah J. Balch

John Phifer

James Harris

William Kennon

John Foard

Richard Barry

Henry Downs

Ezra Alexander

Charles Alexander

Zaccheus Wilson

Waightstill Avery

Benjamin Patton

Matthew McClure

Neil Morrison

Robert Irwin

John Flennegin

David Reese

William Graham

John Queary

Hezekiah Alexander

Adam Alexander

John Davidson

Richard Harris

Thomas Polk

Abraham Alexander

John McKnitt Alexander

Recreation of the May 20, 1775
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence

Captain James Jack rode horseback from Charlotte to Philadelphia to deliver a copy of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and a copy of the May 31, 1775 Mecklenburg Resolves to the Second Continental Congress. It is disputed that he made it to Philadelphia with the Declaration, but he did get there with the Mecklenburg Resolves.

Archibald and Maggie Sellers McCurdy lived in the part of Mecklenburg County that became Cabarrus County in 1792. Mr. McCurdy stood on the steps of the Mecklenburg County courthouse in Charlotte on May 20, 1775 and heard the declaration read.

He came home and told his wife, Maggie, that they needed to make a list – perhaps written, perhaps mental – of all the people in the community that they could trust. The community was dominated by patriots, but they needed to evaluate which of their neighbors and associates could be trusted in the coming inevitable war for independence.

I wrote a story about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the McCurdy’s, “Whom Can We Trust?” and included it in my book, Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories.

My book is available in paperback and e-book on Amazon, and the paperback is available sometimes at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC.

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local

Attacks on Nature are Never-Ending

Some of my blog readers have dropped by the wayside. I suppose they got tired of my rants about the corruption in the Trump Administration. It’s a free country. Each individual is free to bury their head in the sand. Each individual is free to say, “I don’t watch the news any more. It upsets me.”

To that I say, “I’m glad it upsets you. It should upset you, but do you think that by ignoring it you are making things any better?” (If you are more than 90 years old, I will give you a pass. You have already done your part to try to preserve our democracy.)

The news upsets me, but the people who choose to ignore it upset me more. But, like I said, it is a free country. You don’t have to participate. You don’t have to care about the rest of us. You don’t have to care about future generations. You don’t have to do your part.

Today, I will draw your attention – if you’re still with me – to just three things that you might not have heard about, if you have stopped watching the news. Even if you still watch the news, you probably did not hear about these actions.

Bureau of Land Management

The Bureau of Land Management quietly removed “conservation” as a use for public lands. Let that sink it.

What uses are approved?

Grazing, mining, and energy development.

The Public Lands Rule (also known as the Conservation & Landscape Health Rule) was finalized in 2024 to conserve and restore federally-owned public lands that had been damaged by drought, development, wildfires, and invasive species.

It is beyond sad that the Trump Administration hates nature so much. We, the American people, own these lands. They were supposed to be held in trust for future generations – you know… like previous generations put them in trust for us. Ever hear of the National Park system? It did not happen by accident.

This is what you get when you put a New York City alleged-businessman in the White House, and then blindly approve everyone he nominates to Cabinet positions and judgeships.

In repealing the 2024 Rule, the Bureau of Land Management says that by removing conservation as a legitimate use of land, “balance” will be restored as grazing, mining, and energy development will be prioritized.

They really think we are stupid.

The EPA and toxic coal wastewater

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rolling back the rules governing the release of toxic wastewater from coal plants. In the old days, like April 2026, coal plants were required to treat wastewater before it could seep into rivers, lakes, and streams.

Why, you may ask?

Because those rivers, lakes, and streams eventually provide drinking water for millions of Americans. Also, beings like fish and salamanders also live in those waters. They are part of our ecosystem. They are not beings to be trashed.

Why do reasonable people not want coal waste in their drinking water?

Because it contains such things as arsenic, mercury, and lead.

The policy put in place by the Biden Administration to restrict coal wastewater release was projected to keep 660 million pounds of toxic waste from reaching our waterways per year.

Why is the Trump Administration pushing to end this policy?

The official reason is to “bolster the power grid.”

Trump likes to talk about “clean coal.” I’m not sure what “clean coal” is. Trump hates wind power and solar power, but he loves coal-burning plants. He loves toxic black coal and calls it “clean.” Calling it “clean” does not make it so.

Ever heard of Black Lung? Anyone in your family want to be a coal miner? Anyone in Trump’s family want to be a coal miner?

I knew Trump hated the natural world’s beauty. The concept that the world’s natural beauty holds value just by being, well, natural and beautiful, is a concept he was obviously not taught at home or in the expensive private schools he attended.

The natural world allows us to breathe clean air and drink clean water, but Trump’s hatred for such things for the American people is overwhelmingly complete. In his eyes, the natural world only holds value when a dollar sign can be attached to it.

What a sad man. He is to be pitied for his narrow-minded short-sightedness and worship of the almighty U.S. dollar. Oh… and gold. The tackier the better!

Trump’s Triumphal Arch

I have had the privilege of visiting Washington, DC several times. Those visits always left me awestruck and proud… and wanting to visit again.

One thing that never crossed my mind was, “What our nation’s capital needs is a 250-foot-tall arch to block the view of the Lincoln Memorial from parts of Arlington National Cemetery.”

View of Arlington National Cemetery and the Washington Monument
Photo by J. Amill Santiago on Unsplash

Never crossed my mind.

Trump is hellbent on building this monstrous arch. He brags that it will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and will be 30 feet taller than the world’s tallest arch – the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City.

In the process, he is attempting to skip the permitting process and the competitive public bidding process (like he did when he gave one of his buddies the $7 million contract to paint the bottom of the Reflecting Pool bright blue like a swimming pool.)

He bypassed the legal requirement of public competitive public bidding by claiming that painting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool bright blue was “an emergency.”

The way the Reflecting Pool was designed and built, government buildings such as the Washington Monument were reflected in the water. The beautiful blue sky was reflected in the water.

Trump said in one speech that some people call it a pond. He thought it was funny and said it could be called many things. I’ve always heard it called the Reflecting Pool.

Trump has no respect for its name or purpose. He has a better idea. Let’s paint it a gaudy bright blue so it will resemble a swimming pool! And while we’re at it, let’s not put the project out for competitive bids. I know a guy. He does not build pools, but I know a guy who might know how to paint. He can pocket $7 million and be beholding to me.

I’m glad I’m old and will never visit Washington, DC again. I want to remember it the way it was before Trump arrived. Before he tore down the East Wing of the White House without permission and lied about how “the ballroom will not touch the White House.” Surely you remember when he said, “It won’t touch the White House.” He failed to mention that he was going to demolish the East Wing.

I want to remember Washington, DC without a golden Trump arch.

To those of you who still worship Trump & his 20-foot Golden Statue at Doral Golf Club

I pray you will see the light before it’s too late and we lose everything.

I know your stock portfolio is brilliant. I’m sure your 401(k) is secure and soaring.

You preach the love of Trump from your church pulpits every Sunday and again on Wednesday night.

Do you really believe you and Trump are “doing the Lord’s work?”

Do you really believe Trump was “sent by God” to destroy the environment and break all our laws?

I pity you.

I hope your children and grandchildren will enjoy seeing all your money, because chances are they won’t ever see a national park, or breathe clean air, or drink clean water.

They are going to smell the waste that is dumped in our streams – like I smelled back in the 1950s and 1960s in the textile mill belt in the piedmont of North Carolina. They are going to breathe the dirty air in their cities like I saw first-hand in Charlotte in the early 1970s when I started working.

With the repeal of the laws and policies governing pollution, that’s what we are going back to. Young people don’t understand that, because they haven’t seen it. They didn’t smell Buffalo Creek in Concord, North Carolina before it was even in sight. They haven’t seen 20-story buildings shrouded in brown air.

To the rest of you

I wish I could ignore the rampant corruption in the Trump Administration and spend my time writing historical fiction. That’s what I would rather be doing instead of watching our beautiful environment and democracy crumble.

In my early adulthood, I worked for several city and county governments. Much of my job in each position was putting projects out for bid. It was… and is… the law. It was not up for debate or question. I just did it. I did it many times. I never considered trying to circumvent the law or the spirit of the law.

My upbringing and my education in political science and public administration grounded me in following the law. Those laws were there to protect the taxpayer. Those laws were there to protect our democracy.

Those laws are in place to protect the American taxpayer from the likes of Donald Trump, but the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have torn down the guardrails. Donald Trump has been left to ignore and trample such laws into the dirt.

The laws are still there, but Trump thinks he is above the law.

November 3, 2026 is election day for EVERY member of the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the U.S. Senators. Things could change with the November 3 election.

“We, the people….”

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

#OnThisDay: Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 & Lessons for Us

Plessy v. Ferguson is one of those landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases we would like to forget. Put it behind us. Consider it ancient history from the 19^th century.

Not so fast.

We have something to learn from Plessy v. Ferguson today, 130 years after the ruling.

Background

To refresh your memory from history or political science class, Homer Plessy was a man of mixed race. That meant, under the law in the United States, he was considered Black. Though reportedly seven-eighths white, he was not permitted to ride in a “whites-only” railroad car in New Orleans. The Louisiana State Legislature had passed a Separate Car Act in 1890. That law required separation train cars for white and Black passengers.

In 1891, a group of Black men in New Orleans formed “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” Bolstered by a May 15, 1892 ruling by the Louisiana State Supreme Court in favor of the Pullman Company, the Committee decided to test the law in interstate travel. On June 7, 1892, Mr. Plessy purposely took a seat in a whites-only rail car on the East Louisiana Railroad to test the law.

What happened to Mr. Plessy

Mr. Plessy was arrested for boarding a “whites-only” train car. His defenders in court argued that the Separate Car Act of 1890 violated the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Section 1, 13th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution

When Mr. Plessy’s case went to District Court, the judge was John H. Ferguson. Judge Ferguson denied a request to dismiss the case and then ruled that the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890 was constitutional because the State had the authority to regular public accommodations.

The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision, and Mr. Plessy took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Surely, that august body would see that the Louisiana law was unjust, discriminatory, and unconstitutional.

After all, the 13^th Amendment had abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, and Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment, which was ratified in 1866, not only extended citizenship to former slaves but also state, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Mr. Plessy and his lawyers maintained that the Separate Car Act on 1890 was unconstitutional under the last phrase in Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment.

Section 1, 14th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution

The ruling

In a 7-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 18, 1896, that the State law in Louisiana was constitutional because it provided “separation but equal” accommodations for white and Black passengers.

That famous “separate but equal” wording is what took the United States down a terrible road of discrimination for the next 70 years.

It paved the way for “Jim Crow” laws. It made racial segregation in public education, in public conveyances, restaurants, lodging, etc. lawful.

The “separate but equal” doctrine stood until the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s. (The Brown v. Board of Education ruling, ironically, was handed done in a 9-0 decision on May 17, 1954, just one day shy of the anniversary of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.)

We all know now that “separate but equal” was never equal; it was just separate. That doctrine became the umbrella and shield for untold acts of discrimination and violence until the late 1960s.

Who cast the dissenting vote?

Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter in the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. Although he came from a slave-holding family in Kentucky, Justice Harlan often cast the dissenting vote in civil rights cases that went before the U.S. Supreme Court. He sat on the Court from 1877 until 1911.

Lessons to be learned from Plessy v. Ferguson in 2026

If I had penned this blog post a couple of years ago, it probably would have ended there. Just a nice little history lesson. Just the facts of the case and the final ruling.

But I’m writing this in mid-May 2026, and that 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case has taken on a whole new significance.

As in 1896, in 2026 we have a U.S. Supreme Court majority who tend to be constitutional textualists or literalists, meaning they usually view the Constitution and laws as the people at the time of a law’s enactment would have interpreted it and not necessarily taking into account the spirit of the law.

In my six years of studying political science in college, I was taught to study the time and letter of the law but to look for the spirit of the law.

I offer a current example of how some people now want to interpret the 14^th Amendment as applying only to the people who had been slaves prior to and during the American Civil War. They argue that the 14^th Amendment does not grant citizenship to everyone who just happens to be born in the United States. They don’t want the 14^th Amendment to apply to the children of undocumented immigrants. Trust me. We have not heard the last of that argument.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially dismantled the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a result, state legislators are falling all over each other to redraw Congressional District boundaries. They feel emboldened to eliminate majority Black or Democrat districts before this November’s mid-term elections.

This is history repeating itself. The hurried gerrymandering and shifting of Congression District lines in 2026 is in many ways a mirror image of the Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s.

Why is it that we don’t learn from history? Or perhaps a more accurate question is “Why do we only learn how to repeat the harmful things from our history?”

The Roberts court is taking us down a road of easier corruption in politics (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010), less accountability for the U.S. President (Trump v. United States, 2024), and an attempted erasure of all the progress our country made in racial relations and equality in the 60 years following the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Louisiana v. Callais, April 29, 2026).

The racial discrimination the U.S. Supreme Court is fomenting by its Louisiana v. Callais decision a couple of weeks ago is far-reaching and should send chills done the spine of every American.

The lesson for us to learn from the last 16 years of U.S. Supreme court decisions, un-checked Presidential powers, and a U.S. Congress that acts more like a lap dog than a co-equal branch of the federal government is that our rights and the “guarantees” we have in our laws and U.S. Constitution are no more secure than the paper they are written on.

Every week I learn that more protected federal lands set aside generations ago for wildlife and the preservation of the natural world are being trashed by our own elected officials. It’s being done quietly, of course, because they don’t want us to know. If they were proud of what they’re doing, they’d be making grand announcements.

I assumed the East Wing of the White House would be there forever. I assumed national parks and wildlife refuges were permanently protected.

The U.S. Constitution is a living and breathing document. It will always be up for discussion, debate, and amending. That’s the beauty of it, but it also makes it fragile and vulnerable to the whims of Presidents and others who wish to test it.

Democracy is more fragile than I realized.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Clean energy backlash on a state level

I started writing this blog post almost exactly a year ago, when it looked like a law was going to change in North Carolina. NC House Bill 729 is still being debated, and it is a direct result of Donald Trump’s hatred of solar power.

The state legislature in North Carolina is known for quietly doing its work and voting on legislation under the cover of darkness. You know, those wee hours of the night when most taxpayers are asleep. That’s not a good thing.

Being in the Metro Charlotte TV news region and not in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill TV broadcast region puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to keeping up with bills under consideration in Raleigh.

That’s the way state legislators like it, since the center of power has always been in the eastern part of the state due to how the colony was settled in the early 1700s.

But that’s not the point of my blog post today. I offer today’s post as an example of how the Trump anti-clean energy policies can and have sifted down to the state level. If your state legislature hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon, just wait!

I was pleased to see WSOC-TV in Charlotte report this particular bill. Michelle Alfini pinned the station’s online report on this. Joe Bruno does a yeoman’s job reporting on the General Assembly, though based in Charlotte.

I lived in Raleigh for two years. The difference in news coverage of the state legislature there and in Charlotte is like night and day. The TV stations in Charlotte pretty much ignore what’s happening in the state capital some 125 miles away, and the media in Raleigh ignore what’s happening in the state’s largest city. It’s a tug-of-war as old as colonial North Carolina. But I digress.

The Farmland Protection Bill (NC House Bill 729)

The Farmland Protection Bill is slowly moving through committees in the North Carolina State House. It was introduced on April 30, 2025. That’s not a typo. It was introduced more than a year ago and was supposed to take effect on July 1, 2025.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? The Farmland Protection Bill. Who among us wouldn’t want to protect farmland? (Except real estate developers and state legislators!)

But this bill is the undoing of earlier legislation that gave farmers income options when it was becoming more and more difficult for them to make ends meet.

It’s sort of like the Farm Bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives. The name of the bill sounds like a good thing, but in the fine print it decreases money for SNAP (i.e., food for children and poor people.) That’s a topic for a different blog post.

NC House Bill 729 is a case of the North Carolina General Assembly – if the bill is passed – pulling the rug out from under farmers effective July 1, 2026.

It seems there are some members of the NC House of Representatives who are alarmed that too much of the state’s farmland is disappearing. Instead of blaming the real threats – urban development approved by local government boards and councils like a bunch of drunken sailors and the challenges that small farmers face as their profits cannot keep pace with their expenses – the NC House of Representatives has chosen to blame solar energy.

It’s a bill right out of the Trump playbook

The original bill, as reported in May 2025, would have repealed an 80% tax abatement on utility scale solar projects over a four-year period. At the end of four years, farmers who had invested in solar energy generation projects on their land would no longer receive a tax break.

After a full year of haggling and working its way through committees, the current substitute bill under consideration as of April 30, 2026, gives farmers a sliding scale of tax abatements per year until it is repealed – completely disappears – in 2029.

As reported by WSOC-TV last May, “Stakeholders with the sustainable energy industry and farmers who have chosen to lease to solar companies expressed their concerns that the bill would unfairly penalize a single industry for farmland loss, which occurs primarily through housing development, while interfering with agreements property owners and solar companies entered in good faith.”

We aren’t talking about huge solar farms here. We’re talking about farmers who own 100 acres of land who signed on to put a few feet of solar panels on their land. There’s one just up the road from my house.

Legislators are touting this bill as a windfall for local governments because counties are poised to receive a huge property tax increase from the affected farmers.

It is, apparently, beside the point that the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association reported in 2022 that solar energy apparatus only covered 0.28% of agricultural land in the state.

NC Secretary of Agriculture Steve Troxler supports the bill, as does the North Carolina Farm Bureau; however, having come from a family of small farms, I tend to identify with the individual farmers who took advantage of a way to survive financially a few years ago and are now facing the repeal of the program and income they have come to depend on.

The May 2025 WSOC-TV report highlights the following example:

“Joel Olsen, who runs an agrivoltaics facility in Montgomery County that Channel 9 visited earlier this month, spoke at the committee hearing, taking issue with the idea that he is not paying his fair share in taxes.”

Mr. Olsen said, “When I bought the land, we paid $972 a year in property taxes,” he said. “Once we completed the solar farm, we paid three years of back taxes. We paid 100% of the real property taxes, and we paid over $100,000 in personal property taxes.”

The report stated, “He said he built his solar project with agriculture in mind, with sheep grazing alongside the panels. Olsen said this bill and rhetoric pitting solar against farming doesn’t take farms like his into account.”

In conclusion

I admit that I don’t know the minute details of the history of this issue, but it sems to me that a compromise could be worked out so there’s not an “either/or” outcome.

It seems to me that solar energy panels and farming could co-exist, but politicians had to get involved and ruin a thing that appeared to be working well.

At a time now in May 2026 when farmers in North Carolina are battling drought conditions and skyrocketing costs for diesel fuel and fertilizer due to Trump’s short-sighted war with Iran, perhaps this is not a good time for the legislators to remove an optional stream of income some of them had taken advantage of under the law. Perhaps legislators will remember this is an election year and put the Farmland Protection Bill on the back burner or in the trash can.

If you wish to read the current wording in NC Bill 729 or keep up with its status, you can do so by visiting https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewBillDocument/2025/5298/0/H729-PCS30424-TQxf-20.

Janet Morrison

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Revisiting Julian Francis Abele, Black Architect of Duke University’s West Campus

In honor of one of my great-nieces, who is graduating this weekend from Duke University, I am reblogging (with some different photographs and an updating of the reference to a birthday anniversary) my post from April 25, 2022 about Julian Francis Abele, the black architect who never got the recognition he deserved for designing the university’s iconic West Campus.

Everyone reading my blog has probably heard of Duke University. It’s a world-renowned university located in Durham, North Carolina. You might not know of its meager beginnings, and you might not know that the architect responsible for its magnificent West Campus was a black man.

I’ve lived in North Carolina my entire life, and I only recently l learned who Julian Francis Abele was.

First, here’s a very brief early history of the university.

In 1838, a subscription-supported school called Brown’s Schoolhouse was established in the Randolph County community of Trinity. The school’s name changed a couple of times over the years but was settled as Trinity College in 1859.

In 1892, Trinity College moved to Durham, North Carolina. With heavy financial support from Washington Duke and Julian S. Carr – both Methodists – the name was changed to Duke in December 1924. That was then James B. Duke, son of Washington Duke, established The Duke Endowment. It was a $40 million trust fund set up for its interest to be divided between various hospitals, orphanages, the Methodist Church, three colleges, and the university to be built around Trinity College. In today’s dollars, the $40 million endowment would be equivalent to more than $630 million.

But what did Julian Francis Abele have to do with this?

Julian Francis Abele was born April 30, 1881 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – so Thursday of last week would have been the 145th anniversary of his birth. In 1902, Abele was the first black graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. All four years of undergraduate school there, Abele worked in the mornings as a designer at the Louis Hickman Architectural Firm and took afternoon and evening classes at the university.

Horace Trumbauer, a nationally-recognized Philadelphia architect, hired Abele. He sent Abele to study abroad for three years. Upon returning from Europe in 1906, Abele joined Trumbauer’s firm and by 1909 had become the company’s chief designer. When Trumbauer died in 1938, Abele became head of the company.

The company designed numerous buildings in Philadelphia, a number of mansions in Newport and New York, and the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University.

But my interest in writing about Julian Francis Abele today is his contributions to the gorgeous English Gothic and Georgian buildings at Duke University. Over the 30-year period of 1924 to 1954, he was the primary designer of the university’s West Campus.

If you’ve not had the pleasure of visiting Duke University…

Photographs of the buildings on the Duke University campus don’t do justice to the beauty of the architecture. The centerpiece of the campus and grandest example of Julian Francis Abele’s work is Duke Chapel.

Duke Chapel.
Photo by Charles Givens on Unsplash

“Chapel” in this case is an understatement, for the chapel is more of a cathedral than a chapel in the common sense of the word. The chapel interior is 63 feet wide, 291 feet long, and the nave proper is 73 feet tall.

Inside Duke Chapel.
Photo by Charles Givens on Unsplash

Standing on the highest point on the planned campus in 1925, James B. Duke said that it was on that place that the chapel should be built. It would be the highest point and the center of the campus. The cornerstone was laid in 1930, and it is said that students enjoyed watching the stone cutters and the progression of construction of the chapel over the next two years. Little did those white students know that the chief designer of the edifice was a black man.

In fact, it wasn’t until Julian Francis Abele’s granddaughter, Susan Cook, brought to public light in 1986 that a person of color had designed the magnificent focal point of the Duke campus. While students protested apartheid in South Africa, Susan Cook wrote a letter to the student newspaper to make it known that her grandfather had designed their beloved West Campus.

Portraits of Abele now hang in the main administration building on campus and in the Gothic Reading Room in Rubenstein Library alongside those of former Duke presidents and board chairs. In 2016, and the main quadrangle on campus, which stretches from the Clocktower Quad to the Davison Quad – and to the Chapel Quad – was named the Abele Quad.

As quoted from https://today.duke.edu/2016/03/abele, upon the naming of the Abele Quad in 2016, Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead said, “Julian Abele brought the idea of Duke University to life. It is an astonishing face that, in the deepest days of racial segregation, a black architect designed the beauty of this campus. Now, everyone who lives, works, studies and visits the heart of Duke’s campus will be reminded of Abele’s role in its creation.”

Shocking to our 21^st century minds, is the fact that the racial prejudices of the early- and mid-20^th century deterred Mr. Abele from visiting the Duke University campus to see his designs come to fruition and caused him not to be admitted to the American Institute of Architects until 1942.

Mr. Abele died in Philadelphia on April 23, 1950, which was 72 years ago this past Saturday.

Visit Duke University in person or virtually

If you’re ever zipping along on Interstates 40 or 85 in Durham, take several hours to leave the hustle and bustle behind and visit the Duke University campus. Duke Chapel is open every day from 10:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. Stroll around the campus and be sure to visit the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. (Visit https://gardens.duke.edu/ for information about parking and what’s in bloom.)

Visit https://chapel.duke.edu/about-chapel/history-architecture/ to take a virtual tour of the Duke University campus and to watch a tour of Duke Chapel. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the links to various aspects of the chapel to learn more about the 77 stained-glass windows, the portal, the carillon, and the four pipe organs (including the diminutive 2014 153-wooden pipe positive organ that can be moved about within the chapel for small concerts.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

“Magic Paint” and Other Trump Administration Plans

Here are a few random things Trump and his administration have going on this week, in case you have turned off the news.

Bison

The Trump Administration wants to move more than 1,000 bison off federally-owned grazing lands in Montana so the land can be sold to individuals. We’ll be lucky if we have 100 acres of federal land left when Trump vacates the White House.

Ballroom

After telling us for more than a year that the ~~$100 million~~ ~~$200 million~~ $400 million ballroom would not cost the American taxpayer one cent (if you don’t count maintenance – which apparently doesn’t count), Trump now has supporters in Congress proposing that we pay $1 billion for it. Don’t forget that Trump sees the White House as his personal property and tore down the East Wing almost overnight without permission from anyone. If I so much as wrote graffiti on a federal government building, I would be fined and imprisoned. Must be nice to be above the law.

“Magic Paint”

President Trump wants to use some selicate-based “magic paint” to brighten up the granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, ignoring some experts who have said it might not be compatible with granite.

The War in Iran

Trump flipflops between saying we won the war, the war is over, the ceasefire is working, the Strait of Hormuz is open, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the price of gasoline isn’t up, the price of gasoline will plummet when the war is over. (Wait! I thought in March you said it was over.) He even said this week that the war started six weeks ago, although it started ten weeks ago. Perhaps he stopped calling it “an excursion” and started calling it a war six weeks ago. No one knows what he means or what he thinks. He says he’s talking to the leadership in Iran. The Iranian leadership says they haven’t talked to him. When both parties deal regularly in lies, we are left with no one to believe.

Another key problem, in addition to Trump getting us into this war without Congressional approval or a forthright reason for going to war, is that he insists on talking about the ending of the war as “a deal.” Mr. Trump, it takes diplomacy to end wars in which there will be no military victory. That’s what the U.S. Department of State did for almost 250 years. It’s called diplomacy. It’s called negotiations. It is not and has never been called “a deal.” It is not a business transaction. It is international relations. Perhaps you should have stayed out of politics and continued to just try to enter business deals. You obviously don’t know the difference. A few civics and history classes would serve you well.

After weeks of this “excursion,” all we have accomplished is the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and probably gaining more enemies around the world.

Continued Oil Embargo of Cuba

Trump is almost silently enforcing an oil embargo in Cuba. Although he seems to think it will bring the Cuban government to its knees, what it is accomplishing so far is an almost complete lack of electricity on the island nation and $40-a-gallon gasoline. And Americans are complaining about $4.50-a-gallon gasoline. I guess the endgame is to take Cuba in as part of the United States. One must wonder if the Cubans who survive the embargo will desire to become citizens of a country that elected Donald Trump as President … twice.

Children in the Oval Office

This week Trump regaled a group of children with details of the murder of 42,000 protesters in Iran. Seems like unusual behavior for someone who brags about making a perfect score on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test three times. Just because he can identify a horse, a tiger, and a duck and draw the face of a clock doesn’t mean he should be turned lose unfiltered to talk to children. He went on to brag that his doctor gives that test for a living and told him that he rarely sees someone ace it.

A note about my Congressman

I occasionally mention my Congressman’s e-newsletters in my blogs. I’m not a fan of his, so I thought it was appropriate that his weekly newsletter last Saturday went to my spam box with a bright red warning: “This message might be dangerous. It contains a suspicious link that was used to steal people’s personal information. Avoid clicking links or replying with personal information.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Another blogger’s explanation of Cinco de Mayo

164 Years of 5 de mayo

Books I Finished Reading in April 2026

May is Get Caught Reading Month, Mystery Month, National Share a Story Month, and Latino Book Month, so I wish you a happy May in all those ways and the other ways you celebrate it.

Here in the northern hemisphere, it is truly the month when we transition into summer. What’s not to love about that? (I know… humidity, snakes, and mosquitoes, but let’s not go there.)

As has been my practice (some months and years more so than others), I like to blog early in the month about some of the books I read the previous month.

I will point out (again) that I am not a book reviewer. There are people who do that as a profession, and I am not one of them. Occasionally, I receive an email from a stranger asking me to review their book. I don’t do that. My reading time is precious and I only read the books I choose to read.

My fiction reading has been sparse for several months now due to the brain fog that is part of ME/CFS, which I have lived with for 39 years.

This is frustrating, to say the least. I used to love to read and, as a fiction writer, it is especially difficult for me to admit that I have difficulty reading a novel and remembering what I’ve read on a page – much less to try to remember the plot of a story.

This makes for embarrassing times at book club, where I feel like an intruder in a group where everyone else knows the minute details of novels. All I can do is marvel at what extraordinary memories they have as I sit quietly and listen to the discussion.

You may wonder how and why I’m trying to write novels. I have spent years working on two novels, and I have no idea when either of them will be completed. It is only because I have worked with this story and these characters for so long that I am able to believe I can finish writing the book. It is challenging work, but writing brings me joy and a sense of accomplishment.

That said, I will share a little of what I read, or more accurately, finished reading in April.

40 Days of Decrease: A Different Kind of Hunger, A Different Kind of Fast, by Alicia Britt Chole

I’ve been a Presbyterian all my life, so fasting for Lent has never been a thing for me. There has been a growing emphasis on Lent in the Presbyterian Church USA in recent decades, but fasting or “giving up something for Lent” is not part of that emphasis.

I was drawn to the title of this book several years ago. I finally purchased a used copy of it and looked forward to reading it in the 40 days of Lent leading up to Easter this year.

I am a flawed human being and a flawed Christian. I read it “religiously” (pardon the pun) for the first 20 days. Then, I got distracted. I lost my focus and read the last 20 chapters on a hit-and-miss basis. That is not a reflection of the book. It is merely a reflection on me and my failings.

This book is excellent! If you want to give up eating chocolate or something for Lent, that’s quite all right, but this book takes a different approach. I believe it takes a deeper approach.

For each day during Lent, the book encourages the reader to give up something in their lives.

For instance, on Day 1, we are encouraged to give up Lent “as a project” with a beginning and ending date. On Day 2, we are encouraged to give up regrets. That is a huge one! Especially if you are in your later years. Another day we are encouraged to not speed up sorrow. Give yourself and others time to grieve. Don’t rush it.

As you can see, this book is packed with baggage we all have. Each day gave me something to ponder and to try to get rid of.

I highly recommend 40 Days of Decrease: A Different Kind of Hunger, A Different Kind of Fast, by Alicia Britt Chole. I don’t plan to wait until Lent 2027 to re-read it. Most of the topics in the book are things that I need to work on constantly. I think many of us could benefit from reading it throughout the year. Some of the daily topics could be dwelt on for a week.

Even though the book was designed to be read in daily increments during Lent, I refuse to feel guilty for taking several extra weeks to finish reading it. In fact, I think that’s perfectly okay.

It takes some of us longer than 40 days to get our lives straightened out. I’m a work in progress.

Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy,by Nathaniel Philbrick

I wanted to read the entire book, but I was unable to devote the time necessary to do that. My reading for pleasure tends to just be for the pleasure in the moment of reading a well-written, interesting novel. This book is not a novel but a retracing of George Washington’s 1791 tour of the southern states. I was especially interested in his travels in South Carolina and North Carolina in light of the novel I’m writing.

I enjoyed that part of the book and took some notes for future reference. I was disappointed, though, that the book jumped from Washington’s time with the Catawba Indians to “his next stop in Salisbury.”

Washington’s next stop was not Salisbury. He traveled to Charlotte, and spent the next night (May 29, 1791) as a personal guest of Red Hill Tavern owner Martin Phifer, Jr. near the present-day intersection of US-29 and Poplar Tent Road in Concord, Cabarrus County.

Mr. Phifer had served with Washington at Valley Forge, so they were more than acquaintances.

I’m puzzled over why the author skipped over Mecklenburg and Cabarrus counties and went directly to Rowan County.

Otherwise, what he covered that I got to read was very interesting and easy to follow. I think anyone interested in George Washington or his tour of The South in 1791 would enjoy this book.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have one or more good books that you’re reading! I’m reading The Mad Wife, by Meagan Church and Brawler: Stories, by Lauren Groff.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Tomorrow is World Press Freedom Day

The free press is under attack in the United States. President Trump and his followers never miss an opportunity to criticize journalists. Trump delights in telling falsehoods about specific news organizations, and one of his favorite pastimes is to publicly say nasty things to female reporters.

If you take time to watch his press conferences, speeches, and interviews, you know what I’m talking about.

We have not in my 73 years had any other U.S. President who had a personal vendetta against the free press. His contempt for the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is frightening to those of us who treasure freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

A meme with the words of the First Amendment with the American flag in the background — The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

To mark World Press Freedom Day tomorrow, I will give just two examples of what we were made aware of this week thanks to the free press.

Defense Department Drone Deal

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Defense is going to purchase drones from a company owned by Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump.

You did not get that information from The White House or from the U.S. Department of Defense.

You got it from a free press.

1,000-Year-old UNESCO Site Damaged by Department of Homeland Security

The Washington Post reported that a bulldozer cut a 60-foot swath out of a 200-foot Native American archeological treasure on Friday, April 24, 2026.

Did The White House report it? Did the U.S. Department of Homeland Security report it?

No, the free press reported it.

The priceless site in in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) treasure that was partially destroyed was an etching in the desert sand known as an intaglio.

At least 1,000 years ago, ancestors of the Hia-ced O’odham Indigenous People scraped down to white soil under the desert sand to create a 200-foot long etching of a fish.

Thanks to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issuing waivers for the construction of Trump’s border wall, the Trump Administration does not have to abide by the federal laws protecting the environment or sacred Indigenous sites while building the wall.

Now, thanks to those waivers and a President’s administration devoid of respect for history, nature, or indigenous peoples, a 60-foot swath has been ripped through the etching as the construction of the Trump wall between the United States and Mexico continues at the rate of three miles per week.

The Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge is administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior. An anonymous employee of that department confirmed to The Washington Post that the damage had been done by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Tohono O’odham Nation was able to prevent the first Trump Administration from building the wall across its reservation. They were able to protect the intaglio and a sacred burial site then, but that protection has been ignored by the second Trump Administration.

Archaeologist Rick Martynec, who has studied the site over the last 20 years, reported that the Refuge had been in discussions with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure the intaglio was not damaged. When he visited the site a couple of weeks ago, he saw stakes in place that marked the boundaries of the etching.

Various people and groups were actively working to make sure the Department of Homeland Security did not destroy the site, but it was all to no avail.

And we would not know it if not for the free press.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

New nonfiction book about Regulator Movement in NC

This weekend I finished reading and taking copious notes from an excellent new nonfiction book, The Regulator Movement in North Carolina: Prelude to the Revolution, by Marcia D. Phillips.

Today is National Tell a Story Day, and this nonfiction book tells quite a story!

*The Regulator Movement in North Carolina: Prelude to the Revolution*,
by Marcia D. Phillips

If you want to know some of the little-known background leading up to the American Revolution, I highly recommend this book. As a native North Carolinian, I learned about the Regulators in North Carolina History classes; however, to read the details of it as an adult is to better grasp the terror that many residents of my state were living under in the late 1760s and early 1770s.

The author did an amazing job, like no one else I’ve read, of giving hundreds of years of history leading up to the Regulator Movement in North Carolina. She wrote about how the feudal system in Europe and even the Magna Carta laid the groundwork for what happened here in the mid-1700s!

I had never connected some of the dots that Ms. Phillips connected, but it all fits together now in my mind.

The book also does a great job of explaining the differences between the Regulator Movement in North Carolina and the Regulator Movement in South Carolina. That’s something important for me to keep in mind as I write my historical novels in progress.

Quoting from The Regulator Movement in North Carolina: Prelude to the Revolution, by Marcia D. Phillips,

“In a nutshell, the North Carolina Regulators were not attempting to overthrow the colonial government, just convince it to be the same one they had for years and true to British common law. Their actions were not intended to disrupt the law but to ensure the government’s actions were regulated, to promote uniformity and fairness. The issues of the day – excessive taxation and fees with limited recourse in the assembly, lack of justice in court rulings, and forced taxation for the Anglican Church, which none of the Regulators attended – were the sticking points but also indicative of underlying principles being violated. These discontented farmers were even willing to self-regulate if the colonial government would allow it.”

The Regulators signed petitions in an effort to get Governor Tryon to address their grievances. His appointed officials in the North Carolina Piedmont – particularly in the northern Piedmont part of the province owned by Lord Granville – were robbing the citizens blind and pocketing the money they collected.

They were sick and tired of paying tax to support the Anglican Church. They were Presbyterians and Baptists, and they wanted the right to pay their own clergy. Their clergy were not allowed to officiate over marriages or funerals. For people who had left Europe for religious freedom, this was unacceptable.

The Regulator Movement in North Carolina came to a head in Alamance County on May 16, 1771, when Governor Tryon ordered eight cannons to fire upon a group of Regulators who had asked to be heard. Under the Johnston Riot Act, Tryon gave them until noon to disperse; however, instead of arresting them at noon when they did not disperse, he turned eight cannons on them. It is called the Battle of Alamance, but it was really an ambush.

As the book gives in detail, that was not the end of Tryon’s reign of terror. He had a number of Regulators hanged and had many of their farms burned to the ground.

The book includes an extensive bibliography for readers wanting to do additional research. Thank you, Ms. Phillips, for giving us such a concise and well-researched account of the Regulator Movement in North Carolina.

Perhaps it is partly because of our current political environment that, but while reading this book, it struck me how similar Governor William Tryon of North Carolina was to Donald Trump. I’m not just referring to the fact that he built an extravagant palace for himself while in office.

Some leaders build palaces. Others build ballrooms and triumphal arches.

But it is the pattern of retribution demonstrated by Tryon and by Trump that hit me as an undeniable and frightening similarity between the two men.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

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