Posted on 05/31/2005 4:42:25 PM PDT by Libloather
ACK!! Yje=The
Wrastling a 7 month old! LOL
Not a whole lot of folks are. But the Klan is still around. Durham has it's problems - as well as any other city...
If the Klan is there and if they are breaking the law, put them in jail.
Obvisouly, Durham has it's share of rascist. But Durham is about 60% african american.
Downtown Durham is rough. When I was I kid I would go to grandparents house and play. That area of Durham is pretty dangerous now.
Yep. But if they aren't, they don't go anywhere.
That area of Durham is pretty dangerous now.
I've heard a few folks refer to it as a 'cauldron'...
When I lived there it was Northern and Southern High Schools. And racism ran deep. I attended an Independent Baptist church and it was all white. We were instructed that if we went on visitation and cold called a house and the inhabitants were black, we were to say we had knocked on the wrong door. I hope things have changed there as well. They may have - I am just stating what actually happened to me. My folks let me know that this was NOT right as far as they were concerned. But they didn't know what to do. We had a boy who lived down the street from us who my brothers played with and he was black. You could have heard a pin drop when we walked into VBS with him in tow. It was like living in the 60s. Un-real.
The last I heard about the KKK before this cross burning crap, the Aclu and Southern Poverty Law Center had won so many suits against the Klan, that it had been added to the endangered species list.
It seems a little asinine and a whole lot disingenuous, when the residents and city officials of a city such as Durham, beset by murderous halfwitted gang members, shooting it out day and night with complete disregard of how many innocent people they kill, completely lose it over three cross burnings-regardless of who the hell did the burning.
Burning three crosses with no casualties whatsoever, ain't diddly sh*t compared to the crimes reported daily in Durham. Pull your head out people!!!!!
I grew up and went to Jordan High School ('84) and things have changed. Race isn't the issue in most cases, that was the Old South. The New South, is about one thing and only one thing, money.
There are bad people everywhere, but I wouldn't call Durham a hot bed of racism.
I worked for a number of years around downtown and Brightleaf Square. If this is the work of the Klan then they are outta-towners, not Durham residents. The only white Durham residents are students and professors and your basic artsy-fartsy, bohemian types.
Never saw a Klan hood standing on the corner but every couple of weeks they still have the anti-Bush protestors on Saturday morning standing on the corner of Main Street and Gregson.
I'm not saying that the Klan doesn't exist in NC, but I'm suspicious of anything that goes on with Durham. The town is a drain on the state but they do have some pretty cool old buildings and neighborhoods.
I live in the area as well and have been watching the news, especially Channel 11. I agree wholeheartedly with you. The Klan in Durham?!? Only if they had a deathwish. The only place you'll find out what really happened will probably be on page C-19 of the News and Observer down in the far left corner when they admit it was a hoax
I wonder how that priest that 'blessed' the ground where the cross was will feel then
Sorry but bull$hit. I live in Pittsboro and have yet to see a hood. Especially in our little downtown.
How do you explain a series of letters received by a college against their black students that struck such fear in the students and administrators that they moved the black students off campus and put them in hotels?
Klan activity or fellow black student?
Answer: Black student
How do you explain a lesbian being attacked and the word Dyke being carved into her arm? Gay bashers or self inflicted wound?
Answer: Self inflicted wound.
Time after time after time these supposed hate crimes turn out to be committed by the very people who were supposedly the targets of the attack or intimidation.
I will be very surprised if it turns out these cross burnings were actually the work of Klan members. Very surprised.
The other aspect of Durhams problems, the daily uncovering of more and more fraud, mismanagement, and fiscal shenanigans leads me to believe the cross burnings were a planned distraction to replace the headlines.
I worked in downtown Durham in the Teer Building for a little over 3 years from 1999 to 2002. Racism abounded but the city is more of a city of crime and violence.
We are in Granville County and the Klan is here. They are listed in the phone book.
Watch it, my dad is from Granville Co.
The causes were numerous, but, statistically, there was no racially inspired "rash of church burnings."
Check out some history of your beloved town. Looks like this piece was written in 2000. From http://www.hsl.unc.edu/phpapers/pittsboro01/PHistory.htm
The Chatham Record, the town's primary newspaper, was founded in 1878 by London, a prominent resident and a Democrat-Conservative (Chatham Record, 1962), and became a mouthpiece for his strong political views. The newspaper continues to this day.
Older copies of this newspaper reveal some of the tension between White and African American residents of Pittsboro which has existed since its founding. There is hardly an issue of the Chatham Record from the first six months of 1900 that does not contain editorials and other printed rhetoric promoting white supremacy and supporting the July "illiteracy" amendment which would effectively bar most newly-freed African Americans from voting (illiterate White residents would still be allowed to vote if their fathers or grandfathers had been registered). A March 1, 1900 paper calls for white supremacy clubs to be formed in every township and county of North Carolina. One of these clubs was formed in Pittsboro and over 3000 people from the surrounding area joined it. The "suffrage" amendment limiting African Americans from voting was passed in July in the state of North Carolina to the sound of great rejoicing in the newspaper. An interesting fact not mentioned in the Chatham Record was that Chatham County was one of the few in the state to vote against the amendment. Despite the strong white support, enough African Americans and Quakers rallied around the issue that they formed the voting majority (Hadley et al, 1971).
This story is only one of many which illustrate the long history of racial inequalities and tensions in Pittsboro, a town in which slavery was a reality from the time of its founding up until the Civil War (though there were fewer slaves in Chatham than in many other North Carolina counties). While a published history of Chatham County reports that after the Civil War, good relationships existed between Blacks and whites from a social standpoint (Hadley et al, 1971), stories such as the one above suggest differently.
Though schools are now integrated, Chatham residents can vote regardless of literacy or race, and the school system employs a Director of Minority Affairs, racism remains an ambiguous and pervasive issue in the community; something which exists and has deep roots in history but is usually hidden beneath the surface and not often spoken of in public forums. Racism occasionally surfaces in more blatant forms, such as the "Pittsboro Community Pool", a privately owned pool that will not admit African Americans to its membership, and in isolated incidences. Last year David Duke formed a Ku Klux Klan rally in the county to protest the rapid influx of Latino residents. Around the same time, a Chatham Central high school yearbook picture depicting boys with nooses around their necks appeared and was not adequately dealt with by school administrators, leading to the forming of an advocacy group for minority students in county schools (Offen, 2000). When asked about the need for a proposed diversity training, one Pittsboro community member responded, "I think it's needed in any community that has the kind of history Pittsboro has."
And yes, I did witness a Klan rally - white hoods and all - which occurred around the downtown traffic circle...
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