The North Carolina Award is the highest civilian award bestowed by the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 state of North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

. It is awarded in the four fields of science, literature, the fine arts, and public service.
Sometimes referred to as the "Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 of North Carolina", the award has been given to up to nine individuals each year since 1964. The awards, provided for by chapters 140A and 143B of the North Carolina General Statutes, are chosen by the North Carolina Awards Committee appointed by the Governor of North Carolina

Governor of North Carolina

The Governor of North Carolina is the chief executive of the State of North Carolina, one of the U.S. states. The current governor is Bev Perdue, North Carolina's first female governor.-Powers:...

 and supervised by the North Carolina Secretary of Cultural Resources.

The award itself was designed by sculptor Paul Manship

Paul Manship

Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...

 and was one of the last commissions he completed before his death.

1960s

• 1964:
  • Literature: Inglis Fletcher
  • Science: John Couch
  • Fine Arts: Francis Speight
  • Public Service: John Morehead
    John Motley Morehead III
    John Motley Morehead III was a chemist whose work provided much of the foundation for the business of Union Carbide Corporation. He was a noted philanthropist who made major gifts to his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also served as mayor of Rye, New York and...
    
    , Clarence Poe
• 1965:
  • Literature: Paul Green, Gerald Johnson
  • Science: Frederick Wolf
  • Fine Arts: Hunter Johnson
  • Public Service: Frank Porter Graham
    Frank Porter Graham
    Frank Porter Graham was a president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and, for a brief period, United States Senator.-Early life:...
    
    
• 1966:
  • Literature: Bernice Kelly Harris
  • Science: Oscar Rice
  • Fine Arts: A.G. Odell, Jr.,
  • Public Service: Luther Hodges
• 1967:
  • Literature: Jonathan Worth Daniels
  • Science: Carl Gottschalk, Hiram Houston Merritt
  • Fine Arts: Benjamin F. Swalin
  • Public Service: Albert Coates
• 1968:
  • Literature: Vermont C. Royster, Charles Russell
  • Science: Stanley Stephens
  • Fine Arts: Hobson Pittman
  • Public Service: Robert Lee Humber
• 1969:
  • Literature: Ovid Pierce,
  • Science: Kenneth Brinkhous
    Kenneth Brinkhous
    Kenneth Merle Brinkhous was a professor and chairperson in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Brinkhous remained active in research until shortly before his death.-Education:...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Charles Stanford, Jr.
  • Public Service: May G. L. Kellenberger

1970s

• 1970:
  • Literature: Frances Gray Patton
    Frances Gray Patton
    Frances Gray Patton was an American short story writer and novelist. She is best known for her 1954 novel Good Morning Miss Dove....
    
    
  • Science: Philip Handler
    Philip Handler
    Philip Handler was an American nutritionist, and biochemist. He was President of the United States National Academy of Sciences for two terms from 1969 to 1981. He was also a recipient of the National Medal of Science....
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Henry C. Pearson
    Henry C. Pearson
    Henry C. Pearson was an American abstract and modernist painter. Pearson was born in Kinston, North Carolina, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1938, and studied theatrical design at Yale University. He served in the U.S...
    
    
  • Public Service: Terry Sanford
    Terry Sanford
    James Terry Sanford was a United States politician and educator from North Carolina. A member of the Democratic Party, Sanford was the 65th Governor of North Carolina , a two-time U.S. Presidential candidate in the 1970s and a U.S. Senator...
    
    
• 1971:
  • Literature: Guy Owen Novelist
  • Science: no award
  • Fine Arts: James Semans & Mary Semans
  • Public Service: Capus Waynick, James E. Webb
    James E. Webb
    James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as the second administrator of NASA from February 14, 1961 to October 7, 1968....
    
    
• 1972:
  • Literature: John Ehle
    John Ehle
    John Marsden Ehle, Jr. is an American writer known best for his fiction set in the Appalachian Mountains of the American South.-Biography and literary career:...
    
    
  • Science: Edward David, Jr., Harold Hotelling
    Harold Hotelling
    Harold Hotelling was a mathematical statistician and an influential economic theorist.He was Associate Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University from 1927 until 1931, a member of the faculty of Columbia University from 1931 until 1946, and a Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Sidney Blackmer
    Sidney Blackmer
    Sidney Alderman Blackmer was an American actor.Blackmer was born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina. He started off in an insurance and financial business but gave up on it. While working as a builder's laborer on a new building, he saw a Pearl White serial being filmed and immediately...
    
    
  • Public Service: William Herring
• 1973:
  • Literature: Helen Smith Bevington, Burke Davis
  • Science: Ellis Cowling
  • Fine Arts: Kenneth Ness
  • Public Service: Samuel J. Ervin
• 1974:
  • Literature: Thad Stem, Jr.
    Thad Stem, Jr.
    Thaddeus Stem, Jr. of Oxford, North Carolina was a poet, author and newspaper columnist. His work frequently appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer and The Pilot . He also wrote or co-wrote 16 books...
    
    
  • Science: James Wyngaarden
    James Wyngaarden
    James Barnes Wyngaarden is a U.S. physician, researcher and academic administrator. He is a co-editor of one of the leading internal medicine texts, and served as director of National Institutes of Health between 1982 and 1989. Has four daughters and one son.Wyngaarden is a member of the Royal...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: William Fields
  • Public Service: Ellen Black Winston
• 1975:
  • Literature: Doris Betts
    Doris Betts
    Doris June Betts is a short story writer, novelist, essayist and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill....
    
    
  • Science: John Etchells
  • Fine Arts: Robet Ward
  • Public Service: William Friday
• 1976:
  • Literature: Richard Walser
  • Science: C. Clark Cockerham
  • Fine Arts: Romare Bearden
    Romare Bearden
    Romare Bearden was an African American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage.-Education:...
    
    , Foster Fitz-Simons
  • Public Service: Juanita Kreps
• 1977:
  • Literature: Reynolds Price
    Reynolds Price
    Reynolds Price was an American novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist and the James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in ancient languages and Biblical scholarship...
    
    
  • Science: Reginald Mitchiner
  • Fine Arts: Joseph Sloane, Jonathan Williams
  • Public Service: Elizabeth Duncan Koontz
• 1978:
  • Literature: Manly Wade Wellman
    Manly Wade Wellman
    Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. He is best known for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains and for drawing on the native folklore of that region, but he wrote in a wide variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, detective...
    
    
  • Science: David Sabiston, Jr.
  • Fine Arts: Henry Kamphoefner
  • Public Service: Robert Garvey, Jr., Harriet Tynes
• 1979:
  • Literature: Harry Golden
    Harry Golden
    Harry Lewis Golden was an American Jewish writer and newspaper publisher. He was born Herschel Goldhirsch in the shtetl Mikulintsy, Ukraine, then part of Austria-Hungary. His mother was Romanian and his father Austrian.In 1904 his father, Leib Goldhirsch, emigrated to Winnipeg, Manitoba, only to...
    
    
  • Science: Walter Gordy
  • Fine Arts: Sam Ragan
    Sam Ragan
    Sam Ragan was a journalist, author, poet and champion of the arts from North Carolina.-Bio:He was born in Berea, North Carolina and was the son of William Samuel Ragan and Emma Clare Ragan. In 1936 he graduated from Atlantic Christian, now Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina and married...
    
    
  • Public Service: Archie Davis, John deButts

1980s

• 1980:
  • Literature: Fred Chappell
    Fred Chappell
    Fred Davis Chappell is an author and poet. He retired after 40 years as an English professor at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997-2002...
    
    
  • Science: George Hitchings
  • Fine Arts: Robert Lindgren
    Robert Lindgren
    Robert R. Lindgren is an American lawyer and educator, and the 15th president of Randolph-Macon College. The inauguration was held in the Blackwell Auditorium on October 27, 2006....
    
    
  • Public Service: Dan Moore
    Dan K. Moore
    Daniel Killian Moore was the 66th Governor of the state of North Carolina from 1965 to 1969. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Moore earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was a member of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity...
    
    , Jeanelle Moore
• 1981:
  • Literature: Glen Rounds, Tom Wicker
    Tom Wicker
    Thomas Grey "Tom" Wicker was an American journalist. He was best known as a political reporter and columnist for The New York Times.-Background and education:...
    
    
  • Science: Vivian Stannett
  • Fine Arts: Adeline McCall
  • Public Service: Ralph Scott
• 1982:
  • Literature: Willie Snow Ethridge
  • Science: Floyd Denny, Jr.
  • Fine Arts: Selma Burke
    Selma Burke
    Selma Hortense Burke was an American sculptor.Born in Mooresville, North Carolina to a farming family, she demonstrated an early interest in art. Her parents insisted she study a more marketable profession, and she graduated from the St. Agnes Training School for Nurses in Raleigh in 1924...
    
    , R. Philip Hanes, Jr.
  • Public Service: Nancy Chase
• 1983:
  • Literature: Heather Miller
  • Science: Frank Guthrie
    Frank Guthrie
    Frank Edward Huntingdon Guthrie was an England born South African international rugby union half-back. Although born in Notting Hill, London, Guthrie was educated at Diocesan College in Cape Town, where he also played provincial rugby for Western Province...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Mary Dalton
    Mary Dalton
    Mary Dalton is a Canadian poet and educator. She is currently a Professor of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's. She was born at Lake View, Conception Bay, Newfoundland in the 1950s....
    
     & Harry Dalton
    Harry Dalton
    Harry I. Dalton was an American front-office executive in Major League Baseball. He served as general manager of three American League teams, the Baltimore Orioles , California Angels and Milwaukee Brewers , and was a principal architect of the Orioles' dynasty of 1966–1974 as well as the only AL...
    
    
  • Public Service: Hugh Morton
    Hugh Morton
    Hugh MacRae Morton was a photographer and nature conservationist who developed Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina.-Personal life:...
    
    
• 1984:
  • Literature: Joseph Mitchell, Lee Smith
    Lee Smith (author)
    Lee Smith is an American fiction author who typically incorporates much of her home roots in the Southeastern United States in her works of literature. She has received many writing awards, such as the O. Henry Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, and the North...
    
    
  • Science: Robert Hill
  • Fine Arts: Maud Gatewood, Andy Griffith
    Andy Griffith
    Andy Samuel Griffith is an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. He gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's epic film A Face in the Crowd before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead...
    
    
  • Public Service: George Watts Hill
    George Watts Hill
    George Watts Hill was an American banker, hospital administrator and philanthropist who played a key role in the socioeconomic development of Durham, North Carolina, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Research Triangle Park...
    
    
• 1985:
  • Literature: Wilma Dykeman
    Wilma Dykeman
    Wilma Dykeman Stokely was an American writer of fiction and nonfiction whose works chronicled the people and land of Appalachia.-Biography:...
    
    
  • Science: Irwin Fridovich
    Irwin Fridovich
    Irwin Fridovich is an American biochemist who, together with his graduate student Joe M. McCord, discovered the enzyme superoxide dismutase . He is currently Professor emeritus of Biochemistry at Duke University. Superoxide dismutase is a central enzyme for the detoxification of harmful oxygen free...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Claude Howell
  • Public Service: J. Gordon Hanes, Jr.
• 1986:
  • Literature: A.R. Ammons
  • Science: Ernest Eliel
  • Fine Arts: Doc Watson
    Doc Watson
    Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson is an American guitar player, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music. He has won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Watson's flatpicking skills and knowledge of traditional American music are highly regarded...
    
    
  • Public Service: Joseph M. Bryan
    Joseph M. Bryan
    Joseph McKinley Bryan was an American insurance executive, broadcast pioneer, and philanthropist.Born in Elyria, Ohio, Bryan was the second son of Bart and Caroline Ebert Bryan. After serving overseas in World War I, he returned to New York City to take a job with a cotton firm. In 1923 he became...
    
    , Billy Graham
    Billy Graham
    William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for...
    
    
• 1987:
  • Literature: Maya Angelou
    Maya Angelou
    Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...
    
    
  • Science: Robert Lefkowitz
    Robert Lefkowitz
    Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D. is an American physician-scientist best known for his work with G protein-coupled receptors.-Biography:...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Harvey Littleton
    Harvey Littleton
    Harvey Littleton is an American educator and glass artist. Born in Corning, New York, he grew up in the shadow of Corning Glassworks, where his father headed Research and Development during the 1930s...
    
    
  • Public Service: John T. Caldwell
    John T. Caldwell
    John Tyler Caldwell was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He received a B.S. from Mississippi State College in 1932, an M.A. from Duke University in 1936, and a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University in 1939 as a Julius Rosenwald Fellow...
    
    , Charles Kuralt
    Charles Kuralt
    Charles Kuralt was an American journalist. He was most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and later as the first anchor of CBS News Sunday Morning, a position he held for fifteen years.Kuralt's "On the Road"...
    
    
• 1988:
  • Literature: Charles Eaton
    Charles Edward Eaton
    -Life:He was born in Winston-Salem, N.C. Eaton received his B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina in 1936, studied at Princeton, and received his M.A. degree from Harvard, where he worked with Robert Frost, who later recommended him to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.Eaton served as...
    
    
  • Science: Pedro Cuatrecasas
    Pedro Cuatrecasas
    Pedro Cuatrecasas is an American biochemist and an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology & Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.- Birth and education :...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Edith London
  • Public Service: David Brinkley
    David Brinkley
    David McClure Brinkley was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997....
    
    , William Lee
    William Lee
    -Miscellaneous:*William Lee , Roman Catholic bishop*William Lee , Roman Catholic bishop*William Lee , colonial writer and ship's captain...
    
    
• 1989:
  • Literature: Ronald Bayes
  • Science: Gertrude Elion
  • Fine Arts: Loonis McGlohon
  • Public Service: Roy Park
    Roy H. Park
    Roy Hampton Park was an American media executive and entrepreneur. -Biography:Park was born in Dobson, North Carolina, the son of a tenant farmer...
    
    , Maxine Swalin

1990s

• 1990:
  • Literature: Leon Rooke
    Leon Rooke
    Leon Rooke, CM is a Canadian novelist. He was born in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina in the United States. Educated at the University of North Carolina, he moved to Canada in 1969. He now lives in Toronto, Ontario....
    
    
  • Science: H. Keith Brodie
  • Fine Arts: Bob Timberlake (artist)
    Bob Timberlake (artist)
    Bob Timberlake is an internationally-acclaimed realist artist known primary for his watercolor paintings as well as for designing and licensing lines of home furnishings, clothing and various other products. He began his career as an artist in 1970 and began his home furnishings line in 1990. He...
    
    
  • Public Service: Dean Colvard, Frank Kenan
• 1991:
  • Literature: Robert Morgan
    Robert Morgan (poet)
    -Life:He studied at North Carolina State University as an engineering and mathematics major, and University of North Carolina Greensboro.He teaches at Cornell University beginning in 1971.-Awards:...
    
    
  • Science: Mary Ellen Jones
    Mary Ellen Jones
    Mary Ellen Jones is an educator and politician most notable for having served as New York State Senator. She is a Democrat.Jones graduated with a bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Rochester. She served as a first-grade teacher in the Greece, New York school district for 26...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: William Brown
    William Brown (tenor)
    William Brown was an African-American operatic tenor. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Jackson State University in 1960 and a Masters of Music degree from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in 1962. He later earned a doctorate of music from the Peabody Institute in 1971...
    
    
  • Public Service: Elizabeth Dole
    Elizabeth Dole
    Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole is an American politician who served in both the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush presidential administrations, as well as a United States Senator....
    
    , Jesse Meredith
• 1992:
  • Literature: Louis Rubin, Jr.
  • Science: John Madey
    John Madey
    John M.J. Madey is a professor of Physics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, a former director of the Free Electron Laser Centre at Duke University, and formerly a tenured professor at Stanford University....
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Chuck Davis
  • Public Service: William Cochrane
    William Cochrane
    William Cochrane was a Scottish MP in the British Parliament.He represented Wigtown Burghs 1708-1713.-References:...
    
    , Maxwell Thurman
• 1993:
  • Literature: John Hope Franklin
    John Hope Franklin
    John Hope Franklin was a United States historian and past president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. Franklin is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and...
    
    
  • Science: Oliver Smithies
    Oliver Smithies
    Oliver Smithies is a British-born American geneticist and Nobel laureate, credited with the invention of gel electrophoresis in 1955, and the simultaneous discovery, with Mario Capecchi and Martin Evans, of the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA, a much more...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Joe Cox, Billy Taylor
    Billy Taylor
    Billy Taylor was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and since 1994, he was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in...
    
    
  • Public Service: Eric Schopler
    Eric Schopler
    Eric Schopler was an American psychologist whose pioneering research into autism led to the foundation of the TEACCH program.-Early life:...
    
    
• 1994:
  • Literature: Elizabeth Spencer
  • Science: Marshall Edgell
  • Fine Arts: Sarah Blakeslee
  • Public Service: Richard Jenrette
    Richard Jenrette
    Richard Hampton Jenrette was one the founders of the Wall Street firm, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette .-Education and Business Career:...
    
    , Freda Nicholson
• 1995:
  • Literature: James Applewhite
    James Applewhite
    James Applewhite is an American poet, and Professor Emeritus in creative writing at Duke University.He graduated from Duke University with a B.A., M.A...
    
    
  • Science: Clyde Hutchison, III, John Mayo
    John Mayo
    John Mayo was a Puritan minister in pre-revolutionary Boston, Massachusetts. He was the first minister of Old North Church, also known as Second Church or Paul Revere's Church...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: John Biggers, Kenneth Noland
    Kenneth Noland
    Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
    
    
  • Public Service: Banks Talley, Jr.
• 1996:
  • Literature: Betty Adcock
    Betty Adcock
    Elizabeth "Betty" Sharp Adcock is an American poet and a 2002–2003 Guggenheim Fellow. Author of six poetry collections, she has served as a faculty member in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in Asheville, NC and in the Writer-in-Residence program at Meredith College in...
    
    
  • Science: Joseph Pagano
  • Fine Arts: Joanne Bath
  • Public Service: Martha McKay, John L. Sanders, Robert Scott
    Robert W. Scott
    Robert Walter "Bob" Scott was the 67th Governor of the state of North Carolina from 1969 to 1973. He was born in Haw River, North Carolina.The son of North Carolina Governor W...
    
    
• 1997:
  • Literature: Clyde Edgerton
    Clyde Edgerton
    Clyde Edgerton is an American author and English literature professor.Born in Durham, North Carolina, his books are known for endearing characters, small-town Southern dialogue and realistic fire and brimstone religious sermons...
    
    
  • Science: Robert Bruck
  • Fine Arts: M. Mellanay Delhom
  • Public Service: Thomas Kenan, III, Elna Spaulding
• 1998:
  • Literature: Kaye Gibbons
    Kaye Gibbons
    Kaye Gibbons is an American novelist. Her 1987 debut, Ellen Foster, received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, and the The Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Prize in Creative Writing from...
    
    
  • Science: Martin Rodbell
    Martin Rodbell
    Martin Rodbell was an American biochemist and molecular endocrinologist who is best known for his discovery of G-proteins. He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alfred G...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Robert Gray
    Robert Gray (poet)
    Robert William Geoffrey Gray is an Australian poet, freelance writer, and critic.-Biography:Gray grew up in Coffs Harbour and was educated in a country town on the north coast of New South Wales. He trained there as a journalist, and since then has worked in Sydney as an editor, advertising...
    
    , Marvin Saltzman
    Marvin Saltzman
    Marvin Saltzman is an American painter. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Southern California graduating with a BFA and MFA in 1959. His teaching career started in 1962 at Eastern Oregon College, 1966 University of Southern California and 1967-1997 at...
    
    , James Taylor
    James Taylor
    James Vernon Taylor is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000....
    
    
  • Public Service: Emily Harris Preyer, L. Richardson Preyer
    L. Richardson Preyer
    Lunsford Richardson Preyer , who typically went by 'Richardson' or 'Rich,' was a jurist and a U.S. representative in Congress from North Carolina. He was the grandson of inventor Lunsford Richardson...
    
    
• 1999:
  • Literature: Allan Gurganus
    Allan Gurganus
    Allan Gurganus is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work is often influenced by and set in his native North Carolina. His writing has been compared to the work of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, who also were identified with the American South.-Biography: Gurganus was...
    
    , Jill McCorkle
    Jill McCorkle
    Jill Collins McCorkle is an American short story writer, and novelist.She graduated from University of North Carolina, in 1980, where she studied with Max Steele, Lee Smith, and Louis D...
    
    
  • Science: Robert Parr
    Robert Parr
    Robert Ghormley Parr is a theoretical chemist. He is a chemistry professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.-Career:...
    
    , Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
    Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
    Knut Schmidt-Nielsen was a prominent figure in the field of comparative physiology and Professor of Physiology Emeritus at Duke University.-Background:...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Frank Horton, Herb Jackson
    Herb Jackson
    Herb Jackson is an artist and is the William H. Williamson Professor of Art at Davidson College. In 1999 he was awarded the North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor in the state, by Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina.-Life:...
    
    
  • Public Service: Julia Jones Daniels, Frank Daniels, Jr., Henry Shelton

2000s

• 2000:
  • Literature: William S. Powell
    William S. Powell
    William S. Powell is an American historian, writer and academic. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, having retired in 1986.He received the North Carolina Award for literature in 2000...
    
    
  • Science: William Fletcher
    William Thomas Fletcher
    William Thomas Fletcher is an American mathematician.He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from North Carolina Central University , Durham, NC in 1956 and 1958 respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of Idaho in 1966. In 1957 Dr...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: S. Tucker Cooke
  • Public Service: Henry Bowers, Harlan E. Boyles
    Harlan E. Boyles
    Harlan E. Boyles was a politician and public servant in North Carolina, who served as North Carolina State Treasurer from January 1977 to January 2001....
    
    , James Goodmon
• 2001:
  • Literature: Kathryn Stripling Byer, Shelby Stephenson
  • Science: Royce Murray
  • Fine Arts: Arthur Smith
  • Public Service: W.W. Finlator, Robert Jordan, III
• 2002:
  • Literature: Romulus Linney
    Romulus Linney (playwright)
    Romulus Zachariah Linney IV was an American playwright and professor.-Life and career:Linney was born in Philadelphia, the son of Maitland Clabaugh and Romulus Zachariah Linney III. His great-grandfather was Republican Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Linney was raised in Boone, North...
    
    
  • Science: William Anlyan
  • Fine Arts: Cynthia Bringle, Martha Nell Hardy
  • Public Service: Julius L. Chambers
    Julius L. Chambers
    Julius LeVonne Chambers is an American lawyer, civil rights leader, and educator.-Early life:Julius Chambers grew up during the Jim Crow era in rural Montgomery County, North Carolina...
    
    , H.G. Jones, Edwin Wilson
• 2003:
  • Literature: Jaki Shelton Green
    Jaki Shelton Green
    Jaki Shelton Green is an American poet. In November 2008, she was named North Carolina's first Piedmont Poet Laureate.-References:...
    
    
  • Science: William E. Thornton
    William E. Thornton
    William Edgar Thornton is a former NASA Astronaut. Thornton was born in Faison, North Carolina, and is married with two sons to the former Elizabeth Jennifer Fowler of Hertfordshire, England.-Education:...
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Etta Baker
    Etta Baker
    Etta Baker was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina, United States.-Biography:...
    
    , Mary Ann Scherr
  • Public Service: Frank Borden Hanes, James B. Hunt, Jr.
• 2004:
  • Literature: Walter J. Harrelson, Penelope Niven
  • Science: Annie Louise Wilkerson
  • Fine Arts: William Ivey Long
    William Ivey Long
    William Ivey Long is an American costume designer for stage and film. His most notable work includes The Producers, Hairspray, Nine, Crazy for You, Grey Gardens and Young Frankenstein.-Early life and education:...
    
    , Elizabeth Matheson
  • Public Service: Voit Gilmore
    Voit Gilmore
    Voit Gilmore was an American Democratic politician from North Carolina.He was the first director of the United States Travel Service during the administrations of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He later served in the North Carolina Senate and as Mayor of Southern Pines, North Carolina.-Notes:...
    
    , LeRoy T. Walker
    LeRoy T. Walker
    LeRoy T. Walker was the first black president of the United States Olympic Committee. In the 1996 Olympics, Dr. Walker was delegated to lead a 10,000 member group of the most talented athletes in the world. His goal is to make sure that American citizens have a feeling of ownership in the program,...
    
    
• 2005:
  • Literature: Randall Kenan
    Randall Kenan
    Randall Kenan is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. Raised in a rural community in North Carolina, Kenan has focused his fiction on what it means to be black and gay in the southern United States. Among his books is the collection of short stories Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was...
    
    
  • Science: Mansukh Wani
  • Fine Arts: Bland Simpson
    Bland Simpson
    Bland Simpson is an American author and pianist from North Carolina. He grew up in Elizabeth City. He has written six books, two of which also feature photography by his wife, conservationist Ann Cary Simpson . Simpson has become an authority on Eastern North Carolina's mysteries, geography and...
    
    
  • Public Service: Joseph M. Bryan, Jr., Betty Debnam Hunt, Thomas Willis Lambeth
• 2006:
  • Literature: Emily Herring Wilson, Michael F. Parker
  • Science: Charles A. Sanders
  • Fine Arts: William T. Williams
    William T. Williams
    William T. Williams was born in Cross Creek, North Carolina, United States. He received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute in 1966 and studied at The Skowhegan School of Art. In 1968 he received an MFA degree from Yale University School of Art and Architecture...
    
    
  • Public Service: Roy Parker, Jr., James E. Holshouser, Jr., Thomas K. Hearn, Jr.
• 2007:
  • Literature: William Leuchtenburg
    William Leuchtenburg
    William E. Leuchtenburg is William Rand Kenan Jr. professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at Chapel Hill and a leading scholar of the life and career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He is the author of more than a dozen books on 20th century history ,...
    
    
  • Science: Viney Aneja, Darrel Stafford
  • Fine Arts: Jan Davidson, Rosemary Harris
    Rosemary Harris
    Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...
    
    
  • Public Service: Jerry C. Cashion, Henry Frye
    Henry Frye
    Henry E. Frye is an American judge and politician who concluded his public-service career as the first African-American chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.He was born August 1, 1932 in Richmond County, North Carolina...
    
    , Burley Mitchell
    Burley Mitchell
    Burley Mitchell, Jr. is an American jurist and former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. At age 15, Mitchell dropped out of high school to join the United States Marine Corps, only to be kicked out when his age was discovered...
    
    , Charlie Rose
    Charlie Rose
    Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
    
    
• 2008:
  • Literature: Charles Frazier
    Charles Frazier
    Charles Frazier is an award-winning American historical novelist.Frazier was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1973. He earned an M.A. from Appalachian State University in the mid-1970s, and received his Ph.D. in English from the University...
    
    , Margaret Maron
    Margaret Maron
    Margaret Maron is an American writer, the author of award-winning mystery novels.-Biography:Maron was born and grew up in central North Carolina. She has also lived in Italy. She and her husband, artist Joe Maron, lived in Brooklyn before returning to her home state where they now...
    
    
  • Science: Maurice Brookhart
    Maurice Brookhart
    Maurice S. Brookhart is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina....
    
    
  • Fine Arts: Gerald Freedman
    Gerald Freedman
    Gerald Freedman is an American theatre director, librettist, and lyricist, and a college dean.Born in Lorain, Ohio, Freedman was educated at Northwestern University, where he received both BA and MA degrees. He began his career as assistant director of such projects as Bells Are Ringing, West Side...
    
    , Alexander M. Rivera Jr.
  • Public Service: Ann Goodnight, James G. Martin
    James G. Martin
    James Grubbs "Jim" Martin is the 70th Governor of the state of North Carolina. He served from 1985 to 1993. He was the second Republican elected to the office after Reconstruction, and the fifth overall. He is also the only Republican to serve two full terms as governor.-Early Life &...
    
    , Dean Smith
    Dean Smith
    Dean Edwards Smith is a retired American head coach of men's college basketball. Originally from Emporia, Kansas, Smith has been called a “coaching legend” by the Basketball Hall of Fame. Smith is best known for his successful 36-year coaching tenure at the University of North Carolina at Chapel...
    
    , Fred and Alice Stanback
• 2009:
  • Literature: Gerald Barrax
  • Science: Joseph M. DeSimone
  • Fine Arts: Mark Peiser, Bo Thorp
  • Public Service: Betty Ray McCain, Hugh L. McColl, Jr.

2010s

• 2010
  • Literature: Carole Boston Weatherford
    Carole Boston Weatherford
    Carole Boston Weatherford is an African American author and critic, now living in North Carolina, United States. She writes children's literature and some historical books, as well as poetry and commentaries.- Biography :...
    
    
  • Science: F. Ivy Carroll
  • Fine Arts: Robert W. Ebendorf, Donald Sultan
    Donald Sultan
    Donald Sultan is an American artist, known for large-scale still life paintings executed with bold contrasts of bright color and deep black forms, tight, nearly abstract compositions, and unorthodox media....
    
    
  • Public Service: R. Michael Leonard, Margaret S. "Tog" Newman

External links

• NC Awards page at the NC Dept of Cultural Resources
• NC Awards Collection at the State Library of North Carolina
• Oral History Interview with Ellen Black Winston from Oral Histories of the American South
• Oral History Interview with Willie Snow Ethridge from Oral Histories of the American South
• Oral History Interview with William W. Finlator from Oral Histories of the American South
• Oral History Interview with George Watts Hill from Oral Histories of the American South