Under the Dome: A new book tells the story of The N&O and its impact on politics
Good morning and welcome to the Under the Dome newsletter.
Former News & Observer political columnist Rob Christensen’s latest book on North Carolina history is out. And this one chronicles the history of The N&O itself.
For decades, the Daniels family owned the newspaper, and the first member of the family to own and edit the paper, Josephus Daniels, turned it into a crusading voice for white supremacy at the turn of the 20th century.
Today we’re giving you a preview of what you’ll find in Christensen’s “Southern News, Southern Politics: How a Newspaper Defined a State for a Century.”
The following are selected passages from the book.
Leading the charge for white supremacy
Although the News and Observer under Daniels had used racist tactics since 1895, the race-baiting reached a fever pitch in the 1898 campaign.
Even forty-three years later, Daniels did not disavow the campaign. As he wrote in his 1941 memoir, “The News and Observer was the printed voice of the campaign. The News and Observer was relied upon to carry the Democratic message and to be the militant voice of white supremacy, and it did not fail in what was expected, sometimes going to extremes in its partisanship.”
Daniels made the paper a propaganda tool — filled with a toxic mix of manufactured stories, unproven rumors, gross distortions, and outright lies.
The paper “led in a campaign of prejudice, bitterness, vilification, misrepresentation, and exaggeration to influence the emotions of the whites against the Negro,” wrote historian Helen Edmonds.
The News and Observer used two main devices to stir racial prejudice. Starting on August 12, 1898, the paper began running racist cartoons on the front page most days. Beginning on September 21 it also ran front-page stories highlighted with black borders — usually two daily — outlining some purported “outrage” by African Americans.
If one believed the Raleigh paper’s news stories, Black people were preparing for a race war against whites, were planning to turn North Carolina into an independent territory for African Americans, and were engaged in a Black-on-white crime spree — none of which was true.
The N&O under Josephus Daniels crusades for public education improvements
There was a lot to improve. While the national average for elementary and secondary education spending at the turn of the century was $21.14 per student, in North Carolina it was just $4.56. Illiteracy for both North Carolina whites and Blacks was among the nation’s worst. Four-month school terms were typical, and most children were not even enrolled.
The education push, like much else, was tied to racial politics. The 1900 state constitutional amendment requiring a literacy test for voting included the so-called grandfather clause exempting anyone whose descendants had voted prior to 1867 — a move designed to make sure whites could vote. But starting in 1908, the law required all voters to pass such a test, and Democrats had promised during the campaign to improve education to make sure that whites in the future would not be disenfranchised.
Starting further behind, North Carolina led what historian C. Vann Woodward called “the great educational awakening in the South.” In 1913, the paper helped push through the legislature an expansion of the school year to six months — prior to that it had the nation’s second-shortest school year. But it took years of editorials to help convince the legislature to extend it to eight months in 1933 and nine months in 1943.
In editorial after editorial, the paper called for increasing school appropriations, hiring more teachers, building more schools, creating rural high schools, and making education compulsory. The paper backed local school bonds and supported an equalization fund to help poorer rural counties.
Starting in 1939, the paper supported federal aid for education, and it championed adding the twelfth grade to high school in 1942. During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the News and Observer published a special annual education edition.
Despite decades of championing improvements by the paper, North Carolina’s public schools remained among the worst-funded systems in the country — a reflection of North Carolina’s comparative poverty, its stinginess, and its racial politics.
Josephus Daniels serves as Navy secretary — with FDR as his assistant
But it was not until the inauguration that Daniels offered FDR, then a New York state legislator, the post of assistant secretary. Considered a shrewd judge of talent, Daniels was drawn to one of the most famous names in politics, FDR’s progressive anti-Tammany views, and his charisma. Washington insiders cautioned him that FDR was so strong-willed and ambitious that he would try to run the department. Daniels replied, “A chief who fears that an assistant will outrank him is not fit to be chief.”
If FDR was grateful for the appointment, he did not show it. FDR privately described Daniels as “a hillbilly,” sometimes mimicking his boss before his friends at the Metropolitan Club. As gossip about FDR’s frequent patronizing remarks made the rounds on the DC social circuit, Interior secretary Franklin Lane warned Roosevelt that he should either be respectful or resign. After that, FDR toned down his sarcasm, and he was usually deferential in Daniels’s presence. FDR looked for ways to please his boss, whether by attending a prayer meeting at Daniels’s home or speaking at what is now North Carolina State University in Raleigh, declaring himself “a hayseed.”
Daniels understood that his golden boy deputy was the future of his beloved Democratic Party. There is a photograph of the two men on the balcony of the Executive Office Building looking down on the White House. Later, Daniels, whose smile is subdued in the photo, asked FDR why he was grinning. FDR said he always tried to look good in photographs. But Daniels said, “I will tell you. We are both looking down on the White House, and you are saying to yourself, being a New Yorker, ‘Someday I will be living in that house’ — while I, being from the South, know I must be satisfied with no such ambition.”
From Southern News, Southern Politics: How a Newspaper Defined a State for a Century.
By Rob Christensen. Copyright © 2025 by Rob Christensen. Published by the University of North Carolina Press.
More on a dark period in our history
There’s much more in Christensen’s book, which continues to trace the history of The N&O and its impact on politics through the decades. And for more on The N&O’s role in the white supremacy campaigns at the turn of the 20th century, you can read the newspaper’s 2006 exploration of that history in a special section focused on the 1898 insurrection and massacre in Wilmington.
A note to readers: Starting Monday, we’ll bring you a weekly edition of the Under the Dome newsletter spotlighting all the ways the Trump administration is having an impact on North Carolina. There’s so much happening that we’re bringing it together in one place. Our edition previewing the week’s Under the Dome podcast episode — along with the podcast itself — is moving to Tuesdays.
Today’s newsletter was by politics editor Jordan Schrader. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol.
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This story was originally published March 18, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
