Editing Rowan County, North Carolina (section)

===20th century===
At the turn of the 20th century, after losing to Republican-Populist fusionist candidates, Democrats regained power and passed laws erecting barriers to voter registration to [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchise most Blacks]]. Together with the passage of Jim Crow laws, which suppressed Blacks socially, these measures ended the progress of African Americans in the state, after Republican men had already been serving in Congress. [[Charles Aycock]] and [[Robert Broadnax Glenn|Robert Glenn]], who were elected as state governors in 1900 and 1904, respectively, ran political campaigns to appeal to Whites. Six [[Lynching in the United States|lynchings of African Americans]] were recorded in Rowan County from the late 19th into the early 20th centuries. This was the second-highest total of killings in the state, a number of extrajudicial murders that two other counties also had.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf|title=Lynching in America'', 3rd edition, Supplement: Lynching by County, Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative|year=2017|access-date=June 8, 2018|archive-date=October 23, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The racial terrorism of lynchings enforced White suppression of African Americans. In 1902, brothers James and Harrison Gillespie, aged 11 and 13, were lynched by a White mob for allegedly killing a young White woman working in a field.<ref name="wood">[https://southernspaces.org/2012/lynching-and-local-history-review-troubled-ground Amy Louise Wood, "Lynching and Local History: A Review of 'Troubled Ground'"], ''Southern Spaces'', May 8, 2012; accessed June 8, 2018</ref> In August 1906, six African-American men were arrested as suspects in the murder of a farm family. That evening, a White mob stormed the county jail in Salisbury, freeing all the White prisoners, interrogating the Black ones, and taking out Jack Dillingham, Nease Gillespie, and his son John. The mob hanged the three men from a tree in a field, mutilated and tortured them, and shot them numerous times.<ref name="wood"/>

A center of textile manufacturing spanning from the late 19th to the late 20th century, the county has worked to attract new industries, after many textile manufacturing occupations moved offshore to lower wage markets during the late 20th century.