Days after NC march to polls ended with pepper-spray and arrests, group marches again

Three days after 200 people participating in a march to the polls was pepper-sprayed by law enforcement in Graham, a group more than twice as large convened for a do-over.

With marchers walking by two’s and three’s, the procession snaked through neighborhoods on sidewalks and road shoulders, past one polling place and toward the early voting site that had been the planned endpoint of Saturday’s march.

Several Black families came out of their houses to watch the blocks-long column of people pass by. Some raised their fists. Others live-streamed the march.

Clinton Morrow, 95, watched from a riding lawnmower parked in front of his granddaughter’s house.”I admire it,” Morrow said. “I just pray every night that God will make a way for us.”

Bernice Cole, 71, stood in her driveway holding her dog, Booty Boo. She called what happened to the marchers on Saturday “uncalled for.”

“If we would only listen and pay attention, we would be doing better,” she said.

Traci Lee, 54, said the procession gave her cold chills. “My parents would never have believed this could happen,” she said. “They did well. It’s nonviolent. Nobody’s fussing.”

Some people in cars along the procession’s path voiced their disapproval.

“Don’t you people have jobs?” a man yelled. A woman called out, “Vote Donald Trump!”

The drivers in other cars honked their horns and raised a fist in the air in solidarity. Organizers were heartened by the turnout.

“I love it,” Maurice Wells said. “This is power.”

Like Saturday, children and elderly people joined the march. Chris Ringwalt, 71, said he had worried the Election Day march would be met with a police show of force. But he was called to come nonetheless. The energy of the march was similar to when he heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak in the 1960s, Ringwalt said.

”I came here with considerable apprehension, given, the events of last weekend,” he said. “And all I found is joy.”

After a short rally near the early voting site that few marchers arrived at on Saturday, the crowd proceeded toward Court Square, where Saturday’s march dissolved in pepper spray.

This time, a group of counter-protesters met them near the Confederate monument with Confederate flags held aloft. Sheriff’s deputies and Graham police officers were waiting.

The Rev. Greg Drumwright, the Greensboro pastor and organizer who led Saturday’s march, guided the group to the pavement in front of the courthouse steps, where he was taken away in handcuffs on Saturday.

Around 6 p.m., a Black Lives Matter flag waved in front of the courthouse. The crowd sang, “We’re ready for change.”

As the event wound down Drumwright reminded the crowd to stay on the sidewalk.

”We came in peace,” he said. “We leave in peace.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 6:53 PM with the headline "Days after NC march to polls ended with pepper-spray and arrests, group marches again."