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A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years.
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On this day in 2010, police arrested 19 people protesting the switch to “neighborhood schools,” a move they believed would resegregate Wake County.
Led by the Rev. William Barber II, activists marched downtown and arrived at the Wake County schools building arguing that ending school assignment based on economic background would end decades of racial progress.
Some chanting “Forward ever! Backward never!” would be dragged out of a school board meeting in handcuffs after refusing to leave the lectern.
“We should not be in the position that we have to have students, parents, grandparents and community leaders arrested to make sure our schools are not resegregated,” said Yevonne Brannon, former Wake County commissioner.
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Raleigh planted 550 dogwoods along the I-440 Beltline to beautify the urban corridor but more than half of them died by mid-July, victims of heat, tardy planting and incompatible space. “I was pulling off at Wade and I started looking,” said Councilwoman Mary Watson Nooe, “and I thought, ‘That’s a dead tree, that’s a dead tree, that’s a dead tree.’“
Construction began on the Velvet Cloak Inn, the New Orleans-style hotel on Hillsborough Street that would one day boast crystal chandeliers, a black-tile jacuzzi and a doorman out front in gold cufflinks and a black top hat. Though it hosted the likes of Rod Stewart and Van Halen, the venerable hotel met the wrecking ball in 2017.
In 1926, Raleigh investigated the sudden death of J.W. Best, who crawled 50 feet from his house on New Bern Avenue and expired at the edge of a creek.
His widow offered this grim explanation: Best had recently consumed an entire can of pork and beans.
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Cause of death, as ruled by the coroner: acute indigestion.