Description:
The poverty that so frequently accompanies educational deficiency marked our development as
well. Economic studies indicate that heading into the twentieth century, North Carolina was “the
least productive state” in the nation, with a productivity level less than 25 percent of that in states
like California and New York.8 In the 1920s, North Carolina ranked forty-first in per capita income.
9 Rural poverty was particularly pronounced: only 0.9 percent of farming families could
boast running water and only 9 percent had telephones.10 As late as the early 1960s, approximately
one-third of North Carolinians lived below then-developing federal poverty standards.11
Dramatically altered public and private investments and policies, massive migration, opened
channels of equality and participation, potent commitments to educational attainment and industrial
development, changed national commercial patterns, and other sanguine economic and
social transformations over the course of a half-century have led North Carolinians to leave the
disparaging “Rip Van Winkle State” moniker far behind. In recent decades, the state has been
one of the fastest growing in the nation. Poverty, though still troubling, has been markedly
reduced—now at least approaching national averages. Changes in educational accomplishment, at
both K-12 and higher education levels, have been among the most impressive in the country.
And the state can claim metropolitan and intellectual centers that are the envy of much of the
world.
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