The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence no longer attracts much attention from professional historians, who generally regard the document as spurious. If the declaration is mentioned in scholarly works, it is usually to discount it. Professor William S. Powell, in his standard history "North Carolina through Four Centuries" (1989) relegates the Mecklenburg Declaration to a skeptical footnote; Professor H.G. Jones, in his "North Carolina Illustrated" (Chapel Hill: University of N.C. Press, 1983), pointedly places ironic quotation marks around the name of the declaration. The "Harvard Guide to American History" (1954) lists the Mecklenburg Declaration under the heading of "spurious declarations." Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Allan Nevins wrote in 1938 "Legends often become a point of faith. At one time the State of North Carolina made it compulsory for the public schools to teach that Mecklenburg County had adopted a Declaration of Independence on May 20, 1775—to teach what had been clearly demonstrated an untruth."