List of People From North Carolina - Public/military Figures

Public/military Figures

• William Blount (1749–1800), first North Carolina signatory of the United States Constitution; played a role in the creation of the State of Tennessee (Windsor)
• Erskine Bowles (born 1945), White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton and two-time Democratic candidate for the US Senate; currently the President of the University of North Carolina system (Greensboro)
• William G. Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under President George W. Bush and retired Lieutenant General for the U.S. Army (New Bern)
• Braxton Bragg (1817–1876), General in the Confederate States Army; led the Confederate Army of Tennessee in the battles of Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and the Third Battle of Chattanooga against Union General Ulysses Grant (Warrenton)
• Jim Broyhill (born 1927), Republican former U.S. Representative and Senator from North Carolina; youngest son of North Carolina furniture magnate J. E. Broyhill.
• James Burnley (born 1948), U.S. Secretary of Transportation under President Ronald Reagan (Greensboro)
• Robert Byrd (1917–2010), U.S. Senator from West Virginia; longest-serving Senator in American history (North Wilkesboro)
• Julius L. Chambers (born 1936), civil rights attorney who successfully argued the 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education school busing case before the US Supreme Court (Mount Gilead, North Carolina)
• Levi Coffin (1798–1897), abolitionist and educator known as the "President" of the Underground Railroad; credited with helping over 2,000 slaves escape to freedom in the North before the Civil War (Greensboro)
• Josephus Daniels (1862–1948), US Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1921 under President Woodrow Wilson; also was a journalist and founder of the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper (Washington)
• William Dodd (1869–1940), ambassador of the USA to Nazi-Germany from 1933 to 1938 under Franklin Roosevelt (Clayton)
• Elizabeth Dole (born 1936), former U.S. Senator and former Secretary of Transportation under President Ronald Reagan; wife to former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (Salisbury)
• Sam Ervin (1896–1985), four-term U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Watergate Investigation Committee; started the legislative process which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon (Morganton)
• Charles A. Gabriel (1928–2003), US Air Force General, 11th chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. Lincolnton
• Richard Jordan Gatling (1818–1903), physician and inventor of the Gatling gun (Hertford County)
• The Greensboro Four, male African-American students at the North Carolina A&T State University who in 1960 started the first civil rights sit-in; their action eventually led to lunch counters and restaurants being desegregated throughout the Southern United States
• John H. Hager (born 1936), Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.
• Caleb V. Haynes, USAF major general, air pioneer
• Jesse Helms (1921–2008), retired five-term Senator from North Carolina and national spokesman for right-wing causes (Monroe)
• James Pinckney Henderson (1808–1858), United States and Republic of Texas lawyer, politician, soldier, and the first Governor of the State of Texas (Lincolnton)
• James B. Hunt, Jr. (born 1937), former NC governor who served a record four terms, also engaged Jesse Helms in a race for the U.S. Senate in 1984 that was the most expensive Senate campaign up to that time (Wilson)
• Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 (Waxhaw It should be noted his birth records are not at all complete and he very well could be from the South Carolina side.)
• Andrew Johnson (1808–1875), seventeenth President of the United States from 1865 to 1869 (Raleigh)
• Joseph Lane (1801–1881), United States Army general and member of the United States Senate from Oregon (Buncombe County)
• Dolley Madison (1768–1849), wife of President James Madison (Guilford County)
• Daniel McFadden (born 1937), economist, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in economics (Raleigh)
• Walter Hines Page (1855–1918), U.S. ambassador to Britain during the First World War (Cary)
• James K. Polk (1797–1849), 11th President of the United States from 1845 to 1849 (Mecklenburg County)
• Hiram Revels (1822–1901), first African-American member of the United States Senate (Fayetteville)
• Hugh Shelton (born 1942), retired US Army General, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001 (Tarboro)
• Richard Dobbs Spaight Sr (1758–1802), second NC signatory of the US Constitution and the eighth NC Governor (New Bern)
• Robert F. Williams (1925–1996), civil rights activist who advocated using black armed guards to protect African-American neighborhoods from white supremacist groups (Monroe)