Posted on 02/22/2006 4:46:13 AM PST by TaxRelief
As is often the case, (Jan 8, 2006) the Charlotte Observer carried an interesting article that left out significant facts. Still, I have to give Jack Betts some credit for even admitting the fact that his employer, the Charlotte Observer, along with the Raleigh News and Observer and the Wilmington paper, provided much of the impetus for the racist campaign that led to the "Wilmington Riot" and brought the Democratic Party to power at the end of the 1800's, a power they have held ever since.
Since few people have even heard of the "Wilmington Riot," permit me to quickly review some history. Prior to the Civil War, North Carolina politics was strongly influenced, if not completely controlled, by the plantation owners. After the Civil War, there was a brief period known as Reconstruction in which the wealthy insiders lost control, but they quickly regained control and resumed their racist ways.
By the end of the 1800's, the blacks, who were mostly Republicans, the farmers (many of whom were members of an organization known as the Grange), the small business owners and the general public were pretty fed up with being ripped off by a government dominated by a few wealthy individuals. They formed what was known as the Fusion party. The supporters of the Fusion party didn't necessarily like each other, but the Democrats were their common enemy so they worked together, and they worked together so successfully that they were rapidly gaining power by the end of the 1800's. The Democrats fought back with what was known as the Red Shirt Campaign. Think of the KKK in crimson. They used carrots and sticks and deception. The big carrot was the promise of public schools. The stick was the threat, and the fact, of violence. The dishonesty took many forms. A fascinating book titled Race and Politics in North Carolina, 1872-1901: The Black Second talks about how they even brought in people from South Carolina to teach them how to stuff ballot boxes.
The "Wilmington Riot," as the recently released report of The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission makes abundantly clear ( http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc/ ), wasn't a riot. It was the carefully planned "violent overthrow of a legally elected Republican municipal government." "…Those responsible for the deaths of an unknown number of black citizens, wounding of many others, burning of a black newspaper, firing of black workers or the running out of town of a number of black leaders" got away with their crime by calling their planned violence a riot, and the press helped them sell their big lie. The press didn't reveal the deception until it no longer mattered. They helped instigate the violence, and they helped those responsible escape justice.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Betts failed to answer some obvious questions. If those papers actively supported the Democratic Party a century ago, why should anyone think they're doing anything different now? If those papers and the Democratic Party were thoroughly racist at the end of the 1800's, where is the evidence that anything changed by the end of the 1900's? If those papers were partisan and willing to deceive the public in support of people who broke the law then, why should they be trusted now?
Every time Governor Jim Hunt praised "good Governor Aycock who started our public schools," it occurred to me that either he knows very little history or he must be very secure in his belief that North Carolina's public schools no longer teach much North Carolina history. Every time he "compared his goals with those of Governor Aycock," I cringed. Governor Aycock was a racist, and he used the promise of public schools to trick blacks into voting the Democrats into power. As soon as the Democrats seized power, they disenfranchised thousands of black voters.
Betts summarized the results of Aycock's deceit as follows: "It put state government into the hands of Democrats, made Republicans a nearly permanent minority and bolstered the power of the wealthy. Not until 1972 would Republicans regain a major state office . . .." His statement, while accurate, was incomplete. The press has done a great job of hiding the extent to which their Democratic friends have controlled every aspect of North Carolina's government, thus permitting their friends to escape responsibility for the problems in education, transportation, and ethics that are growing to crisis proportions.
Not too long ago I overheard a black lady in New Bern blasting the Republicans in Raleigh for the sad state of our public schools. I asked her why she blamed the Republicans, and she said because they were the ones in charge in Raleigh and passed all the laws and handed out the money. When I told her that the Republicans hadn't been able to pass a law in Raleigh without the permission of the Democratic Party in over 100 years, she really didn't believe me at first.
But the fact is that in over a century there have only been two Republican Governors, and they didn't have a veto. The Republicans only controlled the House for four years in the last century, and they still couldn't pass a law without the permission of the Senate. And for over 100 years, the Democratic Party has controlled the North Carolina Senate so thoroughly that in recent years the Republicans haven't even bothered running a candidate for President Pro Tem against Marc Basnight; last year, every Republican Senator except Hugh Webster even voted for the clincher amendment designed to insure Marc's continued power.
Since the Democratic Party has controlled North Carolina's public schools for over a century, how have they treated their black supporters? Since there are many neighborhoods in which black children are more likely to go to prison than college, I'd say there is a lot of room for improvement.
When I was elected in 1994, phonics had been removed from North Carolina's public school curriculum, despite the extensive research showing that explicit phonics instruction is essential for disadvantaged children. While those responsible deny this ever happened, the legislature would not have passed a law mandating phonics instruction if the "experts" in the executive branch had not stealthily removed phonics from the curriculum. The press permitted, and even aided, the cover-up of the phonics scandal, leaving the enemies of literacy in charge of our reading curriculum.
Has anything really changed in North Carolina politics in the last hundred years? In my opinion, the major papers are still covering-up the misdeeds of their Democratic friends.
As Originally Printed in The County Edge
My youngest started with phonics as our school system (Cumberland County) was pushing it out.
You can see the results reflected at below, at and above averages for each school.
In 1996 to 1999, we spent our summers home-schooling to make sure the children were on grade level (since little was taught in school). We finally gave up and moved them into private school. (In fairness, the program at Brunson Elementary in Winston-Salem was excellent.)
Our youngest has been in private school all of his life. He used Abeka (sp?) for reading and Shirley Grammar for sentence structure and diagramming. His annual Stamford Achievement Test scores are perfect (no errors).
fan the flames in just the right way to keep a majority of poor folks thinking that any change is an attempt to take something away from them.
Dumb argument. Every single person involved in the misdeeds a hundred years ago has been long dead.
This theory of corporate guilt is the same one used to extort funds from banks and insurance companies with corporate ancestors that "benefited" from slavery. It is also pretty much the same theory used by those who think we should blame today's American whites for slavery, today's Germans for the Nazis, or today's Jews for the murder of Christ.
If this theory is accepted, we probably should pay reparations to blacks.
This theory of corporate guilt is the same one used to extort funds from banks and insurance companies with corporate ancestors that "benefited" from slavery. It is also pretty much the same theory used by those who think we should blame today's American whites for slavery, today's Germans for the Nazis, or today's Jews for the murder of Christ.
If this theory is accepted, we probably should pay reparations to blacks.
If she were indeed making such an argument I would agree with you. What I hear the the writer saying is that behavior of the papers today is no less contemptuous than it was a century ago. The press is marching in partisan lockstep with the dems and assisting in harming NC blacks.
There has been no corporate effort within the newspaper industry in NC to put ethics policies in place. Ergo, nothing has changed, and the legacy of corruption continues.
Charlotte Observer? I thought it was the Charlotte Disturber
IMHO, what happened 100 years ago is quite irrelevant to what happens today. Criticize people and institutions for today's actions, not those long before any of the people were born.
Your evidently not alone in that opinion. Note the widespread subversion of the teaching of history to propagandizing. We've all fallen under the lure of the liberal conceit that we're progressing: "everyday getting better in every way."
Stuff that happened in previous centuries infuses and colors the attitudes of the present, both good and bad. Unless you are aware, you are subject to their influence.
Take the point here, that the Democratic party of today has deep roots to the agricultural South, and that its purpose was to protect the interests of landholders, ie the wealthy.
It puts a lot into perspective, the curiosities and contradictions: for example that some of the wealthiest in this country support the party that denounces them, that this party would institutionalize an antebellum, slaveholder's attitude towards people it claims to be trying raise from poverty, and most important, that there is no coherent philosophic principle at the core of their ideology. This is because their single purpose was the maintenance of their power and property; during reconstruction this led to adaptations that are too familiar today, even after a century of supposed progress: coercion, corruption, calumny whenever possible, and cooperation, co-option and concession whenever necessary.
The Democrat party should be paying reparations to Blacks.
Fern ping!
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