Gov. Mike Easley's budget includes $1 million for a Freedom Monument.

The proposed monument in downtown Raleigh would honor the places where plantation slaves came together to learn. According to this account, it would be located next to the state Archives building across the street from the General Assembly.

A design team of multimedia artist Juan Logan, art historian Lyneise Williams and architect David Swanson, all of Chapel Hill, was selected by organizers in 2006. 

Their design includes a serpentine wall depicting the Jim Crow era with a large crack symbolizing the Wilmington race riots, a "weeping wall" representing slavery and an auction block with well-worn footprints.

The monument project was started in 2002 by the Paul Green Foundation of Chapel Hill. The group plans to spend $2.5 million with private donations and public money.

Organizers say except for an anonymous black soldier in the N.C. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, blacks are not represented on the Capitol grounds. 

The N.C. Freedom Monument Project's Web site says it has already received support from the N.C. Humanities Council, the N.C. Arts Council and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.

J. Williams Thorne was definitely a carpetbagger.

According to the 1883 book "A History of the Underground Railroad in Chester County," the Pennsylvanian—later expelled from the N.C. legislature—was a member of the "Liberty Party," which sought to abolish slavery at the ballot box before the Civil War.

At a political debate in 1850, Thorne was asked if he would help escaped fugitives (p. 131):

"Yes," replied Thorne promptly, "there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent it. The very spirit of the preamble commands that I shall do it."

Author Robert Clemens Smedley says that Thorne "gave assistance to all who came" to his station on the Underground Railroad.

Interestingly, an 1861 book, "The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims," (p. 131) describes the kidnapping of a free man who was living in a tenant house owned by Thorne in 1860.