Notable events of the 1950s in North Carolina, the second book in this North Carolina history series.

This book is the second in a series of small, richly illustrated books about North Carolina history through the decades. Originally published as hugely popular serialized articles for Our State magazine, this book chronicles events in North Carolina in the 1950s?a decade which began with a postwar boom in transportation, travel, and progress while some North Carolinians also began to speak out for their rightful piece of prosperity and freedom. The volume is not a textbook overview of the state's history. Rather, each chapter focuses on a lively and illuminating set of events in the era such as the fight for recognition by the Lumbee Tribe, the opening of an art museum with a collection owned by the people of North Carolina, the formation of Research Triangle Park, and the birth of the civil rights era at a small lunch counter.

The book contains color vintage photographs and illustrations. The author?writer, professor, and musician, Philip Gerard?has published widely, including an iconic novel about the Wilmington coup of 1898, Cape Fear Rising, and is beloved in North Carolina, especially among Our State readers.

Philip Gerard is the author of five novels, eight works of nonfiction, and numerous essays on history, music, and writing craft, most recently The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina. He teaches in the BFA and MFA Programs of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he has won a number of awards for teaching excellence. He is coeditor with his wife, Jill Gerard, of Chautauqua, the literary journal of the Chautauqua Institution, and serves on the faculty of Goucher College's summer residency MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. Gerard, an avid musician, incorporates bluegrass, folk, country, and original compositions into his readings, playing six- and twelve-string guitar, dobro, banjo, and pedal steel guitar. He lives in Wilmington, NC, on Whiskey Creek near the Intracoastal Waterway.

Introduction: The 1950s—The Decade in Motion

1. Fast Food and Flicks: At the Drive-In
2. Seabreeeze: Rythm and Beach Music
3. UNC on the Air
4. A Man and His Mountain
5. Justice in Black and White
6. Piedmont Airlines Takes Flight
7. Long Live the Lumbee
8. The Shape of Things To Come
9. The Art of the Impossible
10. The Squire of Haw River
11. Last Train Out