1970
The Winston-Salem chapter of the Black Panther Party receives its charter from the national party. The chapter has its beginnings in the East Winston Organization of Black Liberation, a group of African American students advocating community activism to combat police brutality and racial discrimination. Other North Carolina cities also have Black Panther chapters.

Henry D. Marrow Jr.,  a 23-year old African American man, is murdered in Oxford, N.C.—the victim of an alleged hate crime—prompting the first major stirrings of the American Civil Rights Movement in Granville County.

1971
After a federal court in Charlotte orders cross-town busing to achieve integration of the public schools, the Supreme Court upholds the decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.

A march to save North Carolina’s historically black colleges and universities, which were threatened by the merger of all state-supported senior institutions into the University of North Carolina system, draws 3,000 students.

A white-owned grocery store is firebombed during racial violence in Wilmington. Nine African American men and a white woman, known as the Wilmington 10, are convicted of arson and other charges. They have their convictions overturned in 1980.

1973
Clarence Lightner becomes Raleigh's first African-American mayor. He serves until 1975.

1977
The North Carolina General Assembly repeals the state's ban on interracial marriage and declines to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

1979
Members of the Communist Party and the Ku Klux Klan clash during an anti-Klan rally in Greensboro. Klan gunfire kills five anti-Klan Communist supporters. Twelve Klansmen are charged with murder. A court later clears Klan members of murder charges.

1980
On February 1, 1980, the “Greensboro Four” (Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David Richmond) mark the 20th anniversary of their historic sit-in at a Greensboro Woolworth’s by returning to the North Carolina store. The four are served by Woolworth V.P. Aubrey C. Lewis.
 

Portions of this timeline are reprinted from the Tar Heel Junior Historian 44 (Fall 2004), © North Carolina Museum of History, Division of State History Museums, Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.