Happy 250th Birthday to the MecDec, Which People Still Cannot Find
The O.G. Declaration of Independence was signed in Charlotte on May 20, 1775. Did it really exist? Probably? Here are a few stories about America's most underrated founding document.
Fifty years ago, when the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was a mere 200 years old, a NASCAR PR guy hired some dude, dressed him up like a cast member from Hamilton, put him on a horse, and sent him off on a 600-mile ride from Charlotte to Philadelphia. About halfway through, a local sheriff arrested the rider, Jerry Linker, for “overriding” his horse. Who tipped off the sheriff? Why, it was Humpy Wheeler, the same NASCAR PR guy who’d hired Linker in the first place. “Humpy only told him later that he was the one who had him arrested because the ride wasn’t getting enough attention,” Linker’s eighth (!) wife would remember.
Before the arrest, nobody cared about the ride. Afterward, it made headlines across the nation. They were all talking about Linker’s re-enactement of Captain James Jack’s ride from Charlotte to Philadelphia in 1775. Jack made the trip to deliver the newly-signed Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the most important founding document that most Americans have never heard of. Today, it turns 250 years old. At noon, the City of Charlotte held a big ceremony right at Trade and Tryon ,in the very center of center city.
The date is important enough to be on the North Carolina flag, and Charlotte’s May 20th Society has celebrated the MecDec every year. Here’s the problem though: Nobody has found the actual document. WELP!
Don’t consider this to be the comprehensive source on all things MecDec. For that, I’d read
’s excellent book, “Who’s Your Founding Father.” The Rabbit Hole ran an excerpt last year (which goes into more detail about Jerry Linker’s wild ride in 1975):
There’s also an interactive feature from the May 20th society, and the Library of Congress digitized a copy of the document as well. If you watched
’s live stream of the ceremony in Charlotte, you may have seen this big painting of the MecDec’s reading by Dan Nance. Another Charlotte artist Chas Fagan, who most recently created the statue of Billy Graham that sits in the U.S. Capitol, created the statue of Captain James Jack that sits on Charlotte’s Little Sugar Creek Greenway. And yes, Charlotte has a Captain Jack Pilsner.If you don’t have time to sit and read all of that, you can always listen to me and the folks at the This Day podcast discussing the MecDec and its impact:
Finally, two more Rabbit Hole-y asides:
To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the MecDec’s signing, North Carolina created “First in Freedom” license plates in 1975. They didn’t last all that long. Why? It may have been because people decided to protest against the ways they thought that North Carolina restricted their freedom by taping over the slogan. At least one man was arrested. “I suppose there’s some irony in saying that the state is first in freedom and arresting anyone who contests that notion,” a Duke law professor stated at the time. The state dropped the chargers, and then dropped the plates altogether in 1978 (although they finally came back in 2015).
Several presidents have come to Charlotte to recognize the MecDec, most recently Gerald Ford in 1975. During his visit, someone flew a large “Weiner King” hot air balloon in the skies above him. Local leaders were pissed, but the stunt marketing worked: People began asking where they might be able to get their own personal Weiner King balloons.
Enjoy the rest of your MecDec day everyone, and remember, just because nobody can find it doesn’t mean it doesn’t live on … in your heart.
Landis Wade wrote a super fun mystery, Deadly Declarations, set in a retirement home, using the Meck Dec as a plot point.
Too bad we can't fly that balloon over the White House now.