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A daily look at some of The News & Observer’s headlines on this date in past years.
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On this day in 2018, Raleigh artist Dare Coulter began painting over the graffiti scrawled across the mural she had created on South Salisbury Street — touch-up work that started by covering over the Confederate flag.
The mural “Dare to Dissent” lasted more than a year in downtown Raleigh before vandals scrawled racist messages across it using red markers.
Donations poured in to help Coulter restore her images of protest topped with a “We the People” banner.
“I don’t want this to be the lasting impression, or for people to feel bad or negative,” she told The N&O. “I want to go back to the love there was before.”
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A sample of other historical happenings on July 19:
After a winless year, NASCAR superstar Richard Petty dropped his Dodge for a new Chevrolet Monte Carlo, declaring after a loss at Daytona, “The car just wouldn’t do what we wanted it to do down there.”
A 24-year-old Burlington man sank while swimming in the Haw River and survived despite spending 20 minutes underwater. A power line employee, who also held a Red Cross certificate, dove in after the drowning man, pulled him to safety and kept him alive by artificial respiration until the ambulance arrived — two hours later.
In 1926, a busy week of amateur baseball games included a matchup between the Prisoners and the Highwaymen at what was then called State’s Prison. The Prisoners, it should be noted, had a 4-month old bear cub named Rosie for a mascot, and they fed it candy and soda pop.
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