Before reconciliation, we must come to grips with NC’s history on race

Not since the eve of the Civil War has America been this polarized. Certainly there have been other moments of severe division – in 1968, anti-Vietnam war protests, the Black Power movement, Women’s Liberation, gay rights activism, and angry “Middle-Americans,” fragmented the country. But today’s division is more severe. We cannot survive without confronting this polarization – and if possible, find a way to overcome it with a new affirmation of the values that unite us.

Since 1619, racism has been fundamental in tearing us apart. Whether it be slavery, Jim Crow segregation, or the ongoing devaluation of Black lives (Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd), attitudes towards race have shaped our national economy, behavior and ethics. While many white Americans believe they solved the issue of racial injustice with the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, racism remains a central reality of American life.

Nowhere is that more true than here in North Carolina. White leaders in the state have long projected the image of North Carolina as a “progressive” state, courteous and respectful toward all its citizens; this is more myth than reality.

During Reconstruction, a bi-racial government instituted public education for the first time, and created social welfare programs – only to be overturned when white Republicans in Washington returned political power to the old ruling class. In the 1890s, another alliance of white and black Populists created the “Fusion” regime which ruled the state from 1894 to 1898. With Blacks and white sharing police power and economic initiatives, the state prospered. Until the “best white men” of the state – prominent Democrats like soon-to-be governor Charles Aycock, and Josephus Daniels of the Raleigh News and Observer – circulated the charge that Black men were seeking to rape white women. Their propaganda campaign led to a coup d’etat, widely referred to as the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 which filled the Cape Fear River with Black bodies, brought an end to Fusion rule, and led to the disenfranchisement of African-American voters.

The same pattern has persisted in the modern era. Although many white North Carolinians declared that they approved of the Supreme Court’s Brown decision ordering the desegregation of schools, two decades later North Carolina had one of the lowest rates of desegregation in the South.

To be sure, there have been moments of “true” progress. Under Governors Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt, Black North Carolinians moved forward. And protest movements led by African-American students in the Greensboro sit-ins helped spark the direct action civil rights movement of the 1960s. But inequality has remained, with race the driving force behind it.

We must come to grips with our history. We need to name the problem, explore the way it infiltrates our lives, talk to each other about it, and – together – find a course of action that will move to eliminate it.

Nothing is more needed in America today than a series of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commissions. We have to be honest about how race and class inequality have persisted throughout our history. Every community in our state has a story to tell. If we can begin honest conversations with each other, and confront the institutions that have made racial oppression happen, we can take the first step toward creating a society committed to justice and equality.