NC America 250 effort aims for lasting historical legacy
North Carolina continues to mark America’s 250th anniversary this year with many events and celebrations still to come, along with many items commemorating the occasion.
Kicking off the week leading up to July 4, state Sen. W. Ted Alexander, R-Cleveland, co-chair of the state’s America 250th Committee, told Carolina Journal in a recent interview that the state Senate will hold a ceremonial session in the old state Capitol building on June 30 at 10am.
In addition to past events, like Halifax Resolves Day and the First in Freedom Festival, many events are still to come, like the Celebrate America 250 Concert, which will take place at 7:30pm on July 3 at the High Point Theatre, High Point, featuring North Carolina Brass Band, North Carolina Baptist Choir, and IBMA stars Darin and Brooke Aldridge.
The concert was organized by the General Assembly’s America’s Semiquincentennial Committee and the Celebrate America Foundation.
“We anticipate this to be a very exciting musical patriotic experience which we hope will present unity for our state during this time, to celebrate the good things about our state and our country,” Alexander said. “It will feature the North Carolina Brass Band, the North Carolina adult choir Brooke and Darin Aldridge, who are right now at the currently at the top of the charts in both the bluegrass and gospel music charts. And I’m proud that they’re from my district and North Carolina. We have invited all members of the legislature the public, anybody can come. The tickets are free.”
He also said that PBS North Carolina will be recording the concert that will be a part of what he says is a “landmark program.”
“When you celebrate somebody’s birthday, you’re celebrating the best, celebrating all the good things, the positive things, the great characteristics of that person,” Alexander said. “You’re wanting to celebrate the very best that we are, and I hope that through some of the efforts that we have done we can in engender that.”
There will also be the “First in Freedom” July 4th Parade which is scheduled to take place from 9:30 to noon on Fayetteville Street in Downtown Raleigh. Approximately 70 entries will be in the parade, from marching bands to various organizations.
Capitol 250: NC Freedom Fest will also take place that day at the State Capitol building and grounds in Raleigh from 10am to 4pm. The free event will feature live music, vendors, food trucks, exhibits, living history, and other things for the family.
There are also many different ways in which America’s 250th is being commemorated in the Tar Heel State.
Alexander said a license plate for America’s Semiquincentennial is in the works and American Battlefield Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving endangered historic battlefields and educating the public in various ways, including heritage tourism, is installing nine interactive heritage tourism kiosks in every welcome center in the state.
The first kiosks, also known as the North Carolina History Explorer, debuted in the I-77 South Carolina Welcome Center, outside of Charlotte, and in the Kings Mountain/I-85 Welcome Center on Wednesday.
According to a press release from the organization, The North Carolina History Explorer is organized around three major eras of North Carolina’s early history: “Our Revolutionary Journey” (1771-1783), which focused on the state’s role in the Revolutionary Era; “From Statehood to Secession” (1784-1861), which covers North Carolina’s early years as a state through the antebellum period; and “A State Divided” (1861-1865), which examines the state’s Civil War experience.
They will be installed in all other state welcome centers in the coming weeks and will remain in perpetuity.
An inaugural flagship kiosk was installed in the Legislative Building in Raleigh in April and will be on display through the end of 2026.
Alexander told CJ that they have been promoting Foundation Forward, a nonprofit organization, which installs Charters of Freedom monuments in different states across the country. The monuments highlight the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Civil Rights Amendments with full size replicas.
Charters of Freedom was started by Vance and Mary Jo Patterson with the first being placed in Burke County in 2014.
They currently have 40 monuments erected in the state and hope to have them in each of the state’s 100 counties, which may take several years to complete.
“Part of the legislation that set up the Semiquincentennial Committee also provided grants through the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NC DNCR) to any county that formed a Semiquincentennial committee and then allow them to apply for those grants [to help set up the monuments],” he said.
It’s unclear if the committee will continue operations past Aug. 1, its current end date, but Alexander told CJ that he and fellow co-chair, state Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, hope to leave a lasting historical legacy for generations of North Carolinians to come.
“We’ve been working as a committee to help identify lands and properties that are of historic value throughout the state that we can either help in the preservation thereof, or get other groups to preserve, or to take advantage of the lands that we already own, and use them for more historical interpretation,” he said. “So even if it doesn’t continue, we hope that the program that we’re going to create on July 3 will be a perpetual kind of program available to the public. These monuments that we’ve been promoting will be carried forward throughout North Carolina on the lands and the properties that we’re hoping to preserve, and we’ll be able to leave a lasting legacy and then the interpretive aspects that we’ve been pushing for will also go beyond just a one-day celebration.”
“NC America 250 effort aims for lasting historical legacy” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.
