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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 2020, North Carolina canceled the State Fair for the first time since World War II, a painful concession to the COVID-19 pandemic.
NC Agriculture Secretary Steve Troxler announced the news more as a business decision than a public health warning, noting that North Carolina could not afford to throw a party nobody would attend.
He cited survey results showing 65% of people would feel misgivings about being in such a large gathering, a sure sign the fair would not make profits.
“We have hoped and we have prayed and we have schemed and we have thought and thought and thought,” Troxler said. “But at the end of the day, we have to make the best decision we can make with the information we have at hand.”
More than 10,000 people marched in downtown Raleigh to boost education spending in North Carolina, the largest of the Moral Monday demonstrations held that year. Busloads of educators emptied into Halifax Mall, where demonstrators held signs declaring, “First in Flight, 48th in Education” and “I Don’t Want a Tax Cut, I Want Good Schools.”
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Raleigh’s Beltline finally became a complete circle when the State Highway Commission laid out plans for the last northern link, connecting what is now Glenwood Avenue with what is now Capital Boulevard. That stretch of Raleigh was undeveloped enough at the time that planners used Wilson’s Store on Six Forks Road as a landmark.
A jury in Albemarle acquitted a chain gang boss of murdering two convicts, deliberating for 40 minutes after two weeks of testimony.
Jurors heard lengthy stories of cruelty coming from Nevin C. Cranford, accused of beating the victims to death, including that he had forced one prisoner to whip another for claiming to be sick.
Defense attorneys countered with Cranford’s good Christian character. One of them, B.M. Covington of Wadesboro, offered this argument to jurors:
“He suggested that some of the soft sentimentalists would, if they had their way, make a summer resort of prison camps,” The N&O reported, “and dress the prisoners in purple and fine linen by day and furnish them with silk pajamas in which to sleep at night.”
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