This Week in Robeson County History

The following appeared 100 years ago, in the June 25, 1925 Robesonian: 9 ACCREDITED HIGH SCHOOLS IN ROBESON COUNTY NOW; Parkton and Red Springs Added to List Friday Lumber Bridge May be added later.

Superintendent J. R. Poole received Friday morning from the State Department of Education official notice that two more Robeson County schools had been added to the accredited high school list, these being Red Springs and Parkton making a total of nine accredited high schools in the county. Fiv of these schools, Fairmont, Orrum, Maxton, Red Springs and Parkton have been added since the completion of school work this year.

This Week in North Carolina History

William Claudius Chance Protested Segregated Rail Cars, 1948: On June 25, 1948, Parmele native William Claudius Chance was ejected from an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad passenger train car in Emporia, Virginia, for refusing to move to a car for black passengers.

Chance was a well-respected educator in Martin County, having established and operated the Parmalee Industrial Institute. He was returning home to Parmele from the Republican National Convention, held in Philadelphia that year, when he was instructed to leave a “white car” at the stop in Emporia. When he refused, Chance was placed under arrest for disorderly conduct.

After the incident, Chance sued the Atlantic Coast Line and conductor Alva S. Lambeth for $25,000. A jury in Richmond initially determined the railroad had committed no crime in ejecting Chance from the train, but awarded him a sum of $50 for wrongful arrest.

With the support of the NAACP, Chance appealed the case to the Fourth U. S. Circuit Court where the initial decision was overturned in January 1951. The court determined that the Atlantic Coast Line’s enforcement of Jim Crow laws on their passenger lines was an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce.

Chance’s case served as a foundation for later cases desegregated interstate travel.

Nation and World History

On June 24, 1497, the first recorded sighting of North America by a European took place as explorer John Cabot spotted land, probably in present-day Canada.

On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. Colonel George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.

On June 25, 1947, “The Diary of a Young Girl,” the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, was first published.

On June 26, 1997, the first Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling, was published in the United Kingdom (it was later released in the United States under the title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”).

On June 27, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its strongest defense of abortion rights in a quarter-century, striking down Texas’ widely replicated rules that sharply reduced abortion clinics.

On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY’) was signed in France, ending the First World War