On this day in 1775, so legend has it, a committee of citizens here in Mecklenburg County gathered together and issued a declaration of independence from their mother country of Great Britain. This would be the first official act by anyone in the Thirteen Colonies calling for independence from Britain—a date so momentous that we celebrate it each year and even honor it on our state’s flag.
There’s just one problem: it probably didn’t happen.
The story of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is a fraught one. Later that same month, there was a set of resolutions passed in Mecklenburg County declaring all of King George III’s laws null and void and recognizing the colony’s legislature and the Continental Congress as the supreme lawmaking bodies of the land—it just stopped short of declaring full independence.
Modern historians are pretty sure that the “Mecklenburg Declaration”, or Meck Dec as we affectionately call it, is a misremembering of the real (and still groundbreaking!) Mecklenburg Resolves. But even knowing that, Meck Dec Day is still the date on the state flag and it’s still the date we celebrate here in Charlotte, because at the end of the day? It’s a better story.
The truth is, North Carolina was a hotbed—or a “hornet’s nest”, if you ask General Cornwallis—of resistance against the tyranny of the British crown. Our state was founded on strong values of self-government, religious tolerance, and opportunity, and the story of the Mecklenburg Declaration is one people latched onto because it reflected the things we value most in ourselves.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the campaign trail thinking about our values as a state and who we are. The stories we choose to tell about ourselves matter, because what we honor about our past showcases what we care about in the present. The fact that we continue to honor the Mecklenburg Declaration—even now, years after historians have discovered the truth at its core—tells us that, yes, we value our independence and our freedom and our fighting spirit here in North Carolina.
But it also tells us that we value being first. First in freedom. First in flight. And I think that tells us a lot about our path forward.
Because the story of North Carolina is one of leadership, but over the last decade of Republican governance, we’ve fallen behind. There are still places in our state that see great prosperity—namely, our big metro areas—but this used to be a place where any of us could get ahead, no matter their background or their ZIP code.
And if we want to be first again—if we want to be a leader in the 21st-century economy—then we need to start investing in every corner of our state and uplifting our communities again. We need to start telling a better story about who we are as North Carolinians, and that starts here, with this campaign, in this election.
But telling that story is going to take resources, and for that, I could really use your support. We’re going to be up against a lot this year, but we’ve seen firsthand on the campaign trail that North Carolinians want to be able to tell a different story about themselves. They just need to know it’s an option. Let’s give them that option. Can I please count on you to make a contribution of any amount we can afford today? Every dollar helps.
