Willie (pronounced “Wylie”) Person Mangum was a white lawyer, judge, and politician. He was born in what is now Durham (then Orange) County, North Carolina, in 1792. He was educated in Hillsborough, Fayetteville, and Raleigh, and attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following his education, he practiced law before beginning a career in politics and public service as a member of the Whig Party. Mangum served as a superior court judge, represented Orange County in the North Carolina General Assembly, and represented North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Notable activity included his role in preparing the legislation that established the public school system in North Carolina while serving as the education committee chairman in the North Carolina State Senate in 1840, and his service as president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate from May 1842 to March 1845.
After losing re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1853, Mangum returned to his plantation, called Walnut Hall, in present-day Durham, where he continued to practice law. He was an enslaver, and his son, William Preston Mangum, was a soldier in the Confederate military. The younger Mangum was an early casualty of the Civil War in 1861. The elder Mangum passed away shortly thereafter, in September of that same year, and was buried on the Walnut Hall property.