Monroe, NC
| Monroe, North Carolina | |
|---|---|
| City | |
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Union County Courthouse in downtown Monroe
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| Motto: "a heritage of progress" | |
 Location of Monroe, North Carolina |
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| Coordinates: 34°59′20″N 80°32′59″W / 34.98889°N 80.54972°WCoordinates: 34°59′20″N 80°32′59″W / 34.98889°N 80.54972°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | North Carolina |
| County | Union |
| Area | |
| • Total | 24.9 sq mi (64.4 km2) |
| • Land | 24.6 sq mi (63.6 km2) |
| • Water | 0.3 sq mi (0.7 km2) |
| Elevation | 591 ft (180 m) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 32,797 |
| • Density | 1,067.5/sq mi (412.1/km2) |
| Time zone | Eastern (EST) (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
| ZIP codes | 28110-28112 |
| Area code(s) | 704 |
| FIPS code | 37-43920 |
| GNIS feature ID | 0990144 |
| Website | www |
Monroe is a city in and the county seat in Union County, North Carolina, United States. The population increased from 26,228 in 2000 to 32,797 in 2010. It is within the developing Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC Metropolitan area. Monroe has a council-manager form of government.
Monroe was founded by European Americans as a planned settlement. In 1843, the first Board of County Commissioners, appointed by the General Assembly, selected an area in the center of the county as the county seat, and Monroe was incorporated that year. It was named for James Monroe, the country’s fifth president. It became a trading center for the agricultural areas of the Piedmont region, which cultivated tobacco.
Since the early 20th century, Ludwig drums and timpani have been manufactured in Monroe. The Ludwig brothers developed a hydraulic action timpani. In 1916 they invented a spring mechanism, which is the basis for the current Balanced Action Pedal Timpani.
Racial segregation established by a white-dominated state legislature after the end of the Reconstruction era persisted for nearly a century into the 1960s. Following World War II, many local blacks and veterans, including Marine veteran Robert F. Williams, began to push to regain their constitutional rights after having served the United States and the cause of freedom during the war. At this time, the city had a population estimated at about 12,000; the press reported an estimated 7500 members of the Ku Klux Klan in the city.
Williams was elected as president of the local chapter of the NAACP; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been founded in the early 1900s. He began to work to integrate public facilities, starting with the library and the city's swimming pool, which both excluded blacks. He noted that not only did blacks pay taxes as citizens that supported operations of such facilities, but they had been built with federal funds during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
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