Stay up to date with WRAL’s Slavery news and reporting coverage
Full of modern day coffee shops, trendy restaurants and boutiques, it may be hard to imagine a time when downtown Raleigh was instead full of sprawling fields, plantation houses - and hundreds of enslaved individuals.
Heather Leah, WRAL multiplatform producer
Gloria Feimster's grandmother, Emma Blalock, was interviewed in 1937 for the WPA Slave Narratives. There's just one problem -- what was recorded almost 90 years ago is full of inaccuracies.
An African American buys a nice piece of land in Henderson, expecting to retire peacefully, only to find it was once a thriving slave plantation. He has uncovered evidence of its cruel past but rather than hide from it, he wants people to know of the history.
Saturday, May 25, 2025 -- John S. Jacobs was a North Carolina fugitive, an abolitionist and the brother of canonical author Harriet Jacobs. His own fierce autobiography has re-emerged.
Dare Coulter won the prestigious award for her illustrations in Kwame Alexander's "An American Story." The 30-year-old is one of the youngest artists to receive this distinction.
WRAL staff
The Wake County Register of Deeds first began the Enslaved Person's Project in 2021. Over nine months, volunteers began compiling this into an online database, giving Black families across Wake County a chance to find their roots.
Lora Lavigne, WRAL anchor/ reporter
Vice President Kamala Harris drew wide attention when she called a section about slavery in Florida's new middle school social studies standards an "insult."
Sofia Bliss-Carrascosa, Louis Jacobson, and Amy Sherman, PolitiFact reporters
William Peace University, a private school in downtown Raleigh, announced on Tuesday that they would be removing a statue of its founder on campus.
Charlotte historians are hoping to save a building that was once home to slaves who lived and worked in the area.
Historians in the Charlotte area hope to save a building that was once home to slaves who lived and worked there.
This is one of few such schools left standing in America. It's in Smithfield and was built to educate newly-freed Black Americans after the Civil War. Smithfield plans to restore it and use it as an educational tool once again.
This past year has been a time for many to reflect and learn about the systemic racial barriers created by slavery in our country.
Lora Lavigne, WRAL reporter
Fox News host and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused others of "getting the facts wrong" about the Founding Fathers and slavery -- all while getting some facts wrong herself.
Bill McCarthy, PolitiFact reporter
An educational program that challenges the way students think and learn about slavery in the U.S. continues to create controversy, both nationally and in North Carolina.
Keely Arthur, WRAL reporter
The 1619 Project isn't widely taught in North Carolina schools, but the reporting project that examines U.S. history through the lens of slavery is the focus of lawmakers who want to prohibit its instruction and has caused controversy at UNC-Chapel Hill over the hiring of the prize-winning journalist who oversaw the project.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis on Monday helped throw another log on the raging fire of how to teach the nation's racial history.
Matthew Burns, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones might sue the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over a delay by the Board of Trustees to make her new position at the school a tenured one.
Matthew Burns, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor, & Julian Grace, WRAL anchor/reporter
After days of protest and pressure, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Board of Trustees will consider tenure for a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is scheduled to start working at the university in July. When any decision will be made is uncertain, however.
Thursday, May 27, 2021 -- Don't let the ideologues win. Take the job to be the next Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at UNC. Don't let the legislative leadership and their minions show they've wrested control of a nation-leading system of higher education that's taken a century to build. Take the job. Teach your students to identify facts, understand complicated nuance and to have the skills to be independent thinkers.
More than 200 people signed onto an open letter released Tuesday in support of Nikole Hannah-Jones, calling the recent controversy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill part of a "rising tide of suppression" and a "threat to academic freedom."
Faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Monday demanded that the school's Board of Trustees "immediately" consider tenure for a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is scheduled to start working at the university in July.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New York Times Magazine, was denied a tenured position at the University of North Carolina after the university's board of trustees took the highly unusual step of failing to approve the journalism department's recommendation.
Katie Robertson, New York Times
UNC-Chapel Hill faculty members want an explanation for the school's decision to back away from offering a journalist tenure after her work on a project documenting slavery in America.
A man and a woman recently discovered a link in their family history. His ancestors were slave owners, and her ancestors were their slaves.
