The U.S. is almost a magical place; like Hong Kong, it was built by immigrants and refugees who arrived with nearly nothing and faced with an uncertain future. With determination and grit, they resolved to make this a meritocracy where they believed anyone can make it with hard work. The Read more
Only a half-hour south of Charlotte in North Carolina, Fort Mill was the last place the Confederacy had its last cabinet meeting in 1865. The town has a Confederate Park at one end of he historic area established in 1891 to remember those who died in the Civil War. The Read more
All car museums are laid out the same way, I’ve been to enough of them to know. There’s always a big entranceway with a two-tiered display of a couple of dozen cars angled toward the visitor. The whole thing started when the depression-era bootleggers needed to run from the law. Read more
Charlotte is the headquarters of NASCAR, so its racetrack is naturally the American home of speed. The Charlotte Speedway doesn’t just host races, it also has a star-studded history of being on the silver screen. Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, Burt Reynolds in Stroker Ace, and Elvis Presley in Read more
This free-admission museum in uptown Charlotte only features temporary exhibitions. It focuses on post-Civil War racial justice issues to the modern day. The exhibition I saw was on climates of inequality about how climate change disproportionately affects poorer people and racial minorities. The government forced racial segregation by redlining zones Read more
Harvey Bernard Gantt was the first black student at Clemson University, the first black mayor of Charlotte where this center is and became an architect after completing a graduate degree at MIT. The center has three temporary exhibits that rotate out about every three months. Nearly all the works are Read more
The largest city in North Carolina was named after King George III’s wife, giving it the name Queen City, but the state capital is two hours away in Raleigh. It’s most well-known for being the home of NASCAR and the Charlotte Speedway. But the true reason why Charlotte is so Read more
It’s the only museum worth visiting in Greensboro is pretty good. The third floor has an exhibit on the relationship between freedom and democracy, with a focus on the Civil Rights Movement. It also has a mock-up town square with historical buildings around it showing how people lived during Taft’s Read more
I was excited to visit the International Civil Rights Museum, but it’s a waste of time if you ask me. The whole thing takes two hours and most of it is a guided tour or video of a guided tour, the contents of which you could watch at home on Read more