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archived: 29 May - 4 Jun, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: May 31, 2005 CAROLINA! CAROLINA! Unfortunately, in recent days North Carolina has soared back into international prominence making it more visible than it has been at any time since the erstwhile career of Jesse Helms. Regrettably, North Carolina’s recent fortunes have been highly unfavorable, and its prominence is becoming more disreputable and notorious than realized by William Gaston, the composer of the state anthem, “The Old North State.” Over the weekend, the international press reported a sordid tale of three disturbing cross burnings in Durham, North Carolina. The shocked citizenry included the Mayor, Bill Bell, who was nonplussed to explain the origin of the apparent resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in his fair city of 200,000 peaceable citizens, equally divided between white and black. Mr. Bell was not alone. Kammi Michael, a spokesman for the Durham Police Department, said that they were currently at a loss to explain the hate crime, and they were relying heavily on the FBI to conduct the investigation for them. In sharp contrast to the confused responses in Durham, Mr. Joe Roy of the Investigative Unit of the Southern Poverty Law Center stated that North Carolina was simply brimming with hate groups. Mr. Roy informed the world press that North Carolina has 37 documented hate groups including: neo-Confederates (read, Aryan supremacists and white power advocates), American Nazis and the KKK. The KKK is responsible for burning 30-50 crosses across America per year in their campaign of racial intimidation and social oppression aimed at Afro-Americans, ethnic minorities, Roman Catholics and Jews. The KKK has a long and ominous presence in Carolina. I can clearly recall many incidents of their atrocities from my 29 years in the state. For example, in 1979 the Greensboro Massacre took place when 35 heavily armed American Nazis and Klansmen joined forces to open fire on a group of anti-Klan marchers. The ramifications of the Greensboro Massacre swiftly multiplied and caused the international reputation of North Carolina to plummet to new depths. The police handling of the incident in Greensboro was troubling and suspicious to say the very least. According to the official record, the Greensboro Police had agreed to protect the marchers in exchange for their pledge to march unarmed. The police agreed to meet the marchers at 10.00 am, but none of them appeared to honor their commitment to keep the peace. At 11.18 am, the Nazi-Klansmen opened fire on a totally defenseless group of unarmed and peaceful marchers staining the reputation of North Carolina forever. When the police did arrive at the scene, well after the massacre had taken place, they had the clear-minded audacity to arrest the marchers rather than pursuing the heavily armed Klansmen. Eight cars and vans laden with Nazis and Klansmen and their firearms escaped police detection, while they found one single solitary straggling van only because it had tarried far behind the speeding caravan of hate criminals. Due to the circumstances in the case, many believe to this day that there was collusion between the Klan, the Nazis and the police in Greensboro to massacre the marchers. During the same period, rumors of official conspiracy swirled around the case of the Wilmington Ten which became an international cause celebre. Eventually, it became public knowledge that the Wilmington Ten had been prosecuted under deeply suspicious and troubling circumstances. The KKK was involved in that case as well. The Sheriff of New Hanover County had interrogated the prosecution witnesses in his home, and he had been the prominent and upstanding Grand Dragon of his klavern in the KKK. A huge amount of public pressure forced the former governor, James Hunt, to investigate the case of the Wilmington Ten and to seek the counsel of his closest advisors. One person invited to advise the governor about the Wilmington Ten was the late, Charles Herbert Smith. Charlie Smith was then serving as the Senior Deputy Attorney General for Administrative Affairs under Rufus Edmisten, and he had been a longstanding political advisor and personal friend of Governor Hunt. In their private meeting, Smith solemnly advised the governor that – if it were in his power - he would commute the sentences and close the chapter on the Wilmington Ten forever. However, Governor Hunt received much contrary counsel, and he made a deeply unpopular decision against the commutation of their sentences that would haunt him in years to come. After a massive international outcry, and a second FBI investigation, a federal court ordered a new trial – a decision that led to the freedom of the Wilmington Ten when Attorney General Rufus Edmisten announced that the state of North Carolina would not retry the defendants. In the late 1970s, Raleigh became the international headquarters of NSDAP, the international Nazi Party, the direct political descendant of Adolf Hitler and his coterie of anti-semitic Aryan supremacists. Harold Covington, an American Nazi had been elected to head the cause of international Nazism at their annual party conference in Germany, and he had moved the party headquarters to his home in Raleigh. Under Covington’s ruthless rule, the profile of American Nazism soared. Rufus Edmisten was Attorney General at that time, and I served on his administrative staff. I vividly recall Attorney General Edmisten ordering his legal staff and the State Bureau of Investigation to conduct a strict monitoring of the activities of American Nazis and the KKK in order to focus on potential hate crimes. In direct retaliation against Edmisten’s bold policies, Covington announced his candidacy for Attorney General in the 1980 Republican primary. In an interview with the Durham Herald-Sun, Covington explained his strategy when he stated explicitly that the game plan of the American Nazis was, “to infiltrate” the Republican Party in order to destroy the progressivism that they loathed so deeply, a characteristic that he identified in the law enforcement policies of his political nemesis, Attorney General Rufus Edmisten. Although there was a crowded field of several candidates in the Republican primary, Covington placed a strong second and forced a runoff against Keith Snyder, the hand-picked man of the moderate Holshouser political machine. In the runoff, Snyder narrowly defeated Covington. Edmisten crushed Snyder in the general election, and he has never been heard of again in NC politics. Eventually, Covington left North Carolina, and he has been sought by international police agencies for inciting hate crimes in Europe. This past weekend, another news story of injustice in North Carolina has gripped the world media. Junior Allen, a black migrant worker from Georgia, was finally released after 35 years in North Carolina’s prison system. His crime? The theft of a $140 black and white television set in 1970. “Why did the state of North Carolina need to spend circa $3.5 million incarcerating Junior Allen for petty theft?” You might well ask. The answer is deeply troubling. The late and unlamented Judge Pou Bailey gave the young offender a deeply unjust sentence for what was nothing more than a petty crime. Many of you of a certain age might well recall Judge Pou Bailey. He was notorious for his signature habit of placing a loaded revolver on the bench during open sessions of court. Known as a hanging judge for good reason, Pou Bailey habitually ordered harsh sentencing for those unfortunate enough to be convicted in his court. On one occasion, during the closing arguments of a murder case, Bailey was detected dangling a noose he had fashioned out of paper in front of the jury immediately prior to their private deliberations on the verdict. This outrageous conduct resulted in a broadside of editorials against the antics of a man who had become a serious embarrassment to a state bedeviled by Jesse Helms, the Wilmington Ten, the KKK and the international headquarters of the Nazi Party. Pou Bailey’s victim, Junior Allen, was finally released, and this event did not go unnoticed by the world press. After making a brief statement, Junior Allen said that he had done too much time for his crime and that he would not feel comfortable until he saw a sign stating that he was no longer in North Carolina. He got into a car driven by friends, and he swiftly sped away to his sister’s home in Georgia, where he will be reporting to parole authorities for at least another five years to come. To underline the enormity of the injustice, North Carolina correction officials involved with Junior Allen have joked, “How much time would he have gotten if he had stolen a color TV?” That is a good question, one that should be posed to the ghost of Pou Bailey who is still haunting North Carolina’s notoriously prejudiced criminal justice system. It is time to exorcise the ghost of Pou Bailey and others like him who have sought to oppress minorities through the criminal justice system of the old north state. A final uplifting article in the international press reports that North Carolina’s Erskine Bowles has been assisting former president Clinton to deliver aid pledged for the rebuilding of damaged areas of Indonesia after the disastrous tsunami that struck the day after Christmas.
While the ghost of Pou Bailey still violates the spirit of North Carolina’s anthem,
“Though
she envies not others their merited glory, Erskine Bowles is doing his part to realize the uplifting lyrics of Gaston’s magnum opus.
“Plain
and artless her sons, but whose doors open faster, Carolina! Carolina! Sources
Burning crosses signal
return of Ku Klux Klan
TV thief freed - after 35
years in North Carolina Clinton cancels visit to tsunami-hit island, comment by Erskine Bowles, Deputy to President Clinton for UN tsunami relief http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1495207,00.html __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC, European Business News, NPR and many European television broadcasts examining American politics and culture. In addition to his column for The Political Junkies, he is a regular contributor to the Moving Planet weblog. See: www.planetarymovement.org and http://planetmove.blogspot.com/
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
