The North Carolina Department of Transportation said this week that it will conduct continuous lane closures on a major Beaufort County bridge over the next two years.

On Monday, crews are to begin preservation work along a portion of U.S. Highway 17 that connects Washington to Chocowinity. The 16-year-old bridge crosses over U.S. 17 Business and the Tar River.

This preservation work is part of routine maintenance to maximize the lifespan of the structure, officials noted in the announcement.

Crews are to begin by altering the existing pavement markings. Once installed, the inside lanes in both directions will close first, leaving the outside lanes open to traffic. Once interior lane work is completed, the outside lanes will close and the inside lanes will open to traffic.

Through traffic will be maintained for the duration of the project, officials said. Work is expected to last until summer 2028.

Drivers should use caution when traveling through the work zone and plan for increased travel times.

You can get real-time travel information at DriveNC.gov or by following NCDOT on social media.

Millions will be awarded to broadband providers across rural North Carolina to connect homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions to high-speed internet access.

The governor’s office announced last week that $26 million will go to bring 5,161 rural homes, businesses and community anchor institutions in 66 counties access to high-speed internet infrastructure by the end of the year through the Stop-Gap Solutions program.

A part of the North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity, the program administers funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to coverage gaps in internet access. This is done by targeting broadband line extensions to reach individuals and small pockets of homes and businesses in hard-to-reach areas.

“These broadband projects will ensure more families can soon access telehealth, students can complete their homework, businesses can compete in larger markets, and communities can thrive,” Gov. Josh Stein said in the release. “I am committed to improving broadband access across the state and making sure no community is left behind.”

On the coast, FOCUS Broadband, also known as Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative, has been selected to receive $1.65 million to connect 145 locations in Duplin and Pender counties.

Connect Holding II, LLC, doing business as Brightspeed, will be awarded $1.68 million to connect 2,439 locations in Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Tyrrell and Washington counties on the coast. Other counties to benefit from this award are Alamance, Bladen, Caldwell, Caswell, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Franklin, Greene, Halifax, Harnett, Hoke, Johnston, Jones, Martin, Montgomery, Moore, Nash, Northampton, Orange, Person, Pitt, Randolph, Rockingham, Sampson, Stokes, Surry, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne and Wilson counties.

HarvestBeam Inc., a broadband provider for rural North Carolina, will receive $413,260 for 95 locations in Craven and Pitt counties.

Roanoke Connect Holdings, operating as Fybe internet provider, will be awarded $2.4 million to connect 826 locations in Bertie, Chowan, Gates, Granville, Halifax, Hertford, Martin, and Northampton counties. 

Wilkes & RiverStreet Networks has been selected to receive $959,828 to connect 306 locations in Camden, Currituck, Stokes and Wilkes counties.

Other providers to be awarded serve customers in Alexander, Bladen, Buncombe, Durham, Henderson, Hoke, Iredell, Forsyth, Jackson, Macon, Orange, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Swain, Transylvania and Yadkin counites.

“High-speed internet access is the foundation for health care delivery, public safety operations, workforce development, and economic growth in our state,” Teena Piccione, NCDIT secretary and state chief information officer, said. “This program allows us to move with urgency and precision to connect more North Carolinians.”

Donate your flounder carcass and you could win a prize.

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries will collect flounder carcasses from recreational anglers during the season, which runs Sept. 1-14 this year, for research purposes.

Anyone who donates their flounder carcass and fully completes the required catch-card will be entered to win one of two rod and reel combinations.

Cards and donation supplies are available at year-round donation sites in the following locations:

• Frisco Rod & Gun, Frisco.
• Jennette’s Pier, Nags Head.
• Eastside Bait & Tackle, Washington.
• Cape Pointe Marina, Harkers Island.
• N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Headquarters, Morehead City.
• Tex’s Tackle, Wilmington.
• Clem’s Seafood, Southport.

Additional temporary donation locations have been established at the following:

• Quarter Deck, 503 Carteret St., Bath.
• Chasin Tails Outdoors Bait & Tackle, 709 Atlantic Beach Causeway, Atlantic Beach.
• Pelagic Hunter, 104 James St., Sneads Ferry.
• Intracoastal Angler, 6332 Oleander Drive, Wilmington.
• Carolina Beach Municipal Docks, Carl Winner Drive, Carolina Beach.
• Ocean Isle Fishing Center, 65 Causeway Drive, Ocean Isle Beach.

Anglers are asked to leave the fish head and tail intact when cleaning and, if possible, the guts/reproductive organs. Fishers on charter or head boats should let the fish cleaner know the carcass will be donated.

The division’s biologist measure each fish, determine the sex of each when possible, and remove the otoliths, or ear bones, to determine the age of each fish. This information will used in future flounder stock assessments.

Recreational flounder season opens this year at 12:01 a.m. Sept. 1 and closes at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 14. There is a one fish per one person per day limit through the season and the size limit is 15 inches total length.

Biologists will gather data from commercially caught flounder at fish houses. Carcasses caught by commercial fishers should not be left in the Carcass Collection Program freezers.

For more information, visit the Carcass Collection Program website or contact Amanda Macek, division sportfishing specialist, at 252 515-5537 or amanda.macek@deq.nc.gov.

City leaders in two coastal counties were recently elected to the N.C. League of Municipalities’ board of directors.

Beaufort Mayor Sharon Harker and Washington City Manager Jonathan Russell were sworn in May 1 with other newly elected board members during the league’s annual CityVision 2025 conference in Greenville.

The league’s board of directors are elected by representatives of cities and towns across North Carolina. The board represents and works with league members from those cities and towns “working for a better North Carolina,” according to a release.

Harker, Beaufort’s first Black mayor, is now representing district 2, which includes Carteret, Onslow, Jones, Craven, Pamlico, Beaufort, and Hyde counties. Her two-year term ends 2027, the same year her mayoral term ends.

“Serving in this type of leadership role will allow me to make a broader impact, inspire and motivate others, foster growth, and contribute to a positive environment and organizational success for the NCLM,” Harker said in a release. “As a board member, I will aim to contribute to the success of the League’s future visions. I understand the importance of growing municipal leaders in all areas of North Carolina.”

Russell now serves as an at-large manager of the board of directors.

“My goal is to assist municipalities to thrive amidst changing demographics, urbanization, and economic forces,” he wrote in a question-and-answer segment posted on the league’s website.

He goes on to say he will advocate “for policies that enhance local decision-making, promoting sustainable growth, and supporting innovative solutions to community challenges.”

An interdisciplinary team working to understand harmful algal blooms and the resulting human health risks has organized a chance for those working in coastal issues to meet others with the same focus.

North Carolina Center for Coastal Algae, People, and the Environment, or NC-CAPE, has scheduled “Connecting The Coast: Networking and Resource Swap” for noon to 4 p.m. April 11, at the Estuarium on the Pamlico River in Washington.

N.C. State University-based NC-CAPE is inviting community leaders, researchers, and organizations working on coastal issues to the Estuarium to discuss key issues affecting coastal communities, particularly harmful algal blooms, and to foster collaboration.

“This event offers an exciting opportunity to build connections, share resources, and discuss ways to strengthen our collective efforts in managing harmful algae blooms and other environmental challenges along North Carolina’s coast,” organizers said.

The Estuarium features more than 200 exhibits on estuaries and coastal rivers and offers special programs on natural and cultural heritage, aquariums with crabs and other estuarine life, art, interactive displays, artifacts from life on the Pamlico River, and information on hurricanes and sea level rise.

Email community engagement coordinator for NC-Cape, Vivian Taylor, at smtayl27@ncsu.edu for more information.

Discover more coastal celebrations and programs at Earth Day 2023.

Sound Rivers conservation group is partnering with Pitt Street Brewing on the Pamlico again this year for an Earth Day cleanup along the Pamlico River.

Volunteers are to meet at 9:30 a.m. April 22 at Havens Gardens in Washington for the cleanup scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon.

Sound Rivers is a nonprofit organization that guards the health of the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico River Basins.

Cleanup will be along the Pamlico River’s shoreline at Havens Gardens and Jack’s Creek, from the Pamlico to East Fourth Street. Volunteers will head down to Pitt Street Brewing on the Pamlico after the cleanup.

Pickers, bags and gloves will be supplied. Wear weather-appropriate clothing and closed-toe shoes, organizers said.

Washington Mayor Mac Hodges, 69, died Wednesday as a result of COVID-19 complications, city officials announced.

Hodges has served as mayor since 2013.

The Beaufort County native was a graduate of Washington High School and East Carolina University and was a former real estate agent who started Hodges Appraisals in 1990, the Washington Daily News reported.

City officials said on Facebook that they would work with Hodges’ family on plans to honor the mayor.

In the first of his series recognizing February as Black History Month, historian David Cecelski explores the roles two of eastern North Carolina’s black leaders played in the civil rights movement. Read more of Cecelski’s series at davidcecelski.com.

I love this billboard on the site of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. I saw it a few years ago, just before the museum opened, and I immediately lit up because it was so nice to see the faces of two extraordinary people from the North Carolina coast in such a place of prominence in the nation’s capital.

I recognized them immediately: Jacquelyn Bond, a 15-year-old civil rights activist from Williamston, and Golden Frinks, a legendary civil rights leader from Edenton, and a compatriot of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the photograph, they are singing at the famous March on Washington where Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech Aug. 28, 1963.

The photograph of the two civil rights activists is one of many treasures at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that speak to the history of the North Carolina coast.

I’m back in Washington, D.C., and the museum is now open so I can explore its collections that shed light on North Carolina’s coastal history.

As my way of celebrating Black History Month, I’m going to feature stories about that photograph and eight other artifacts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

I’ll start with that photograph of Jacquelyn Bond and Golden Frinks.

Then, over the next few weeks, I’ll look at some of the museum’s other artifacts related to the history of the North Carolina coast. They’ll include another couple photographs, a postcard, a pin, an old book, a couple of famous lunch counter stools, a painting and a silk linen shawl worn by one of the most important freedom fighters in American history.

So let’s get started and explore the story behind our first photograph, the one of Jacquelyn Bond and Golden Frinks at the March on Washington in 1963.

The Williamston Freedom Movement

When the photograph was taken,  Jacquelyn Bond, later Jacquelyn Bond Shropshire, was only 15 years old. Her hometown, Williamston, was in the throes of a long civil rights struggle that would later be remembered as the Williamston Freedom Movement.

Bond later said that she first heard about the March on Washington while she was in jail in Williamston. She had been arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience when she protested Jim Crow racial segregation by using a “whites only” coin laundromat.

She had a reputation for fearlessness. She walked in the front of protest marches. She did not stop when she saw Klansmen.

When her teachers tried to stop her from joining a protest, she left school and just kept going.

During a civil rights protest earlier in 1963, a deputy sheriff had hit Bond in the stomach with an electric cattle prod. She bore the scar for the rest of her life, but she was undaunted.

That summer of 1963 Bond and other schoolchildren in Williamston stood up to drive-by shootings, Ku Klux Klan attacks and police brutality, including the electric cattle prod that struck Bond.

The young people were unrelenting. As soon as Bond was out of jail, she talked her father, a local grocer, into sponsoring one of three buses that carried Williamston civil rights activists to the March on Washington.

At the March on Washington, Bond, Golden Frinks and those three busloads of mostly black students were among the 250,000 people that witnessed Dr. King deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Golden Frinks also played a central role in the Williamston Freedom Movement.

Frinks worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the national civil rights group that Dr. King, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin and other black leaders founded in 1957.

Dr. King asked him to work with the SCLC after Frinks led successful civil rights protests in Edenton, his hometown, in 1960-1962.

As SCLC’s regional field secretary, Frinks seemed to be everywhere in eastern North Carolina in the 1960s and early 1970s.

I can’t even begin to list all of the towns where Frinks played a central role in local civil rights movements: right off the top of my head, in addition to the Edenton Movement ,I can think of Elizabeth City, Plymouth, Washington, Windsor, Bethel, Greenville, Ayden, Robersonville and of course Williamston, just to name a few.

There were 800 arrests of civil rights protestors just in Ayden, a town of only 3,800 people in Pitt County, and it was one of the smaller local movements with which Frinks was involved.

Frinks also played a key role in the Hyde County school boycott in 1968-69, the subject of my first book, Along Freedom Road.

During those civil rights struggles, Frinks was attacked and beaten many times. He saw thousands of protestors go to jail for nonviolent civil disobedience, and he went to jail himself more than 80 times.

He had gotten to know Jacquelyn and the rest of the Bond family during the Williamston Freedom Movement. Earlier that summer of 1963, Frinks and Sarah Small, the president of the local SCLC chapter, had led protest marches in the small town for 32 consecutive days.

Jacquelyn Bond and other young people were at the forefront of those protests.

In our photograph, she and Frinks are singing one of the Freedom Songs that the young activists sang to keep up their spirits during the civil rights protests back home in Williamston.

They sang them at protest meetings that were held in churches, and they sang them while they marched to the county courthouse. They sang them when they were in jail.

The photograph captures something important about where the power and drive of the civil rights movement was coming from in 1963.

Frinks looks watchful, ever vigilant. He looks mindful of all that is happening around the young activists whom he has shepherded to the March on Washington.

Jacquelyn Bond, on the other hand, is totally in the moment. She is holding nothing back. She is drawing from her deepest self, and she is giving it her all, as if God had told her that this, that moment, was her people’s time. That is a woman not afraid of anything on this Earth.

To learn more about the Williamston Freedom Movement, be sure to check out Amanda Hilliard Smith’s “The Williamston Freedom Movement: A North Carolina Town’s Struggle for Civil rights, 1957-1970.”

Coastal Review Online is featuring the work of historian David Cecelski, who writes about the history, culture and politics of the North Carolina coast. Cecelski shares on his website essays and lectures he has written about the state as well as brings readers along on his search for the lost stories of our coastal past in the museums, libraries and archives he visits in the U.S. and across the globe.