GOP group to protest Vance Aycock

These "Know Nothings" of the modern age have to go back over 100 years to find a mistake the North Carolina Democratic Party made on the issue of race relations! Reasonable people only need to read the daily newspapers to see lies about, mistakes made, and outright abuse of race relations in our nation made by the racist Republican Party!

It's not where you've been, it's where you are that counts.

As an African-American woman, I'm deeply offended by Republican attempts to use race baiting in the absence of substantive ideas to win voters, particularly black voters.

In April, 51 state House Republicans voted against a bill to recognize and apologize for the 1898 Wilmington Race Riots.

Republican presidential candidates refused to appear in a debate hosted by Tavis Smiley, a noted African American journalist, to argue their case in front of a mostly African American audience. What are they afraid of?

The Carolina Stompers also have a photo of Klansmen on their website, not a welcome image for African Americans to join their cause.

Finally, I'll say this...I am a testament to how far things have changed in this state. After the General Assembly passed resolutions to apologize for the 1898 race riots and the government's role in institutional slavery, I wrote the press release...an African American woman, a direct descendant of slaves spoke for the North Carolina Democratic Party.

That speaks to the power of change in our country.

Oh yeah, FYI...

reportedly, things ARE progressing toward forming West Carolina, the 17-24 most Western NC counties are exploring establishing the 51st state!

Hell YES!!!

Alright Stompers!!!

Even though Im not a 'stomper' I had already planned to be out there protesting with my "Corrupt democrackkks have RUINED our State!" SIGN!
GLAD to have some company!!!

THRILLED to see this great news!

Democrackkks are NOT welcom in WNC! Stay your lieberals selves out of Asheville!

Before the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution (1787-1790), when the United States was operating its general government under the Articles of Confederation, Thomas Jefferson introduced a Western Ordinance (1784) which would have prohibited the introduction of slavery in all new states to be added to the original Union--both in the North and in the South.

Jefferson's comprehensive slavery prohibition measure for all new states after the original thirteen came within one vote of successful passage and implementation. Tragically, the measure did achieve majority support among the congressional representatives, but under the Articles of Confederation, a three-quarters vote proportion was required for a measure to become law.

Despite substantial support from representatives from states outside the South, besides Jefferson himself, only one other Southerner cast a vote in favor of prohibiting the introductory of slavery to all new states in the Union--Hugh Williamson of Edenton, N.C., one of North Carolina's later signers of the U.S. Constitution itself as drafted in Philadelphia in 1787.

A second "western" measure in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, approved with the necessary additional votes in 1787, did empower the general government to exclude slavery from all new states north of the Ohio River. This became known as "the Northwest Ordinance," but because of opposition in many parts of the South, the young Nation failed to enact a ban on slavery in new states added to the Union from south of the Ohio River, thus setting the stage for the decade-by-decade struggle to bring slavery and servitude to an end in the United States culminating in President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the approval of the several amendments to the Constitution later on in the 1860s.

But if Thomas Jefferson of Virginia and Hugh Williamson of North Carolina had succeeded in passing the Western Ordinance of 1784 in the earliest sessions of Congress, then the American heartland, including the future states of Kansas and Missouri, would not have had to become the political battlefields for fighting out the controversies which led to the temporary split in the Union in 1860.

As for North Carolina in the early 20th Century, it would be interesting to know if the Republican Party would wish to jettison the entire record of public education improvements for persons of all backgrounds which were begun during Gov. Charles B. Aycock's term (1901-1905) and built upon through half a century of legislative and administrative support, albeit under the old "separate but equal" doctrines which were for that period the law of the land, until the eventual landmark ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 in the Brown decision in Kansas declaring an end to the previously presumed constitutionality of racial segregation in public education.

David P. McKnight