The MeckDec - North Carolina's Favorite Myth (1775) w/ Jeremy Markovich
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's May 20th. This day in 1775, the town of Mecklenburg, North Carolina went ahead and declared independence from Britain, before anywhere else in the country had formally done so. Or, at least, that's the story that North Carolina likes to tell about itself.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Jeremy Markovich to discuss the Mecklenburg Declaration, what we really know about its origins -- and why North Carolina loves to be first.
Be sure to check out Jeremy's excellent newsletter "North Carolina Rabbit Hole."
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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to This Day, a history podcast from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:10.5 | This day, May 20th, 1775. We are continuing to check in with some 250th anniversary stories. A month ago, |
| 0:18.9 | we talked about Lexington and Concord and some of the lesser |
| 0:21.8 | known battles around that time. And today, one month after those skirmishes in Massachusetts, |
| 0:27.1 | we cut to North Carolina, where Colonel Thomas Polk decides to declare that that colony is |
| 0:33.6 | free of British rule. Or so the story goes. The so-called Mecklenburg declaration was a |
| 0:39.1 | useful story throughout the fight for independence and continues to be a big source of pride for |
| 0:43.6 | Tar Heels to this day. The official seal and flag of North Carolina display the date May 20th, |
| 0:49.2 | 1775. But we love a compare and contrast on this show between the story of history and what actually |
| 0:55.7 | went down. And this is a good one. Here to help us do that is our special guest. Jeremy Markovic, |
| 1:02.6 | writer and journalist based in North Carolina, who writes a newsletter and hosts a podcast called |
| 1:07.4 | North Carolina Rabbit Hole. Jeremy, thank you for doing this. Yeah, thanks for having |
| 1:12.5 | me. And here's always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. |
| 1:17.8 | Hello, Jody. Hey there. Kelly battling a little bit of a cold here, but we appreciate you going down |
| 1:24.6 | the rabbit hole with us. Jeremy, let's start with the, what, the most |
| 1:29.2 | apocryphal, simple, rah-rah, fifth grade history class version of this story. Basically, |
| 1:34.7 | like, you're standing at the top of the rabbit hole and you haven't jumped in. No research, |
| 1:39.2 | no controversy. What do North Carolinians like to tell themselves about the Mecklenburg |
| 1:43.5 | Declaration? We just like to say we about the Mecklenburg Declaration? |
| 1:45.5 | We just like to say we were first. |
| 1:47.3 | Oh, yeah? |
| 1:47.7 | That's kind of the thing, you know? |
... |
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