International Civil Rights Museum Open On 50th Anniversary of Woolsworth Sit-in

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Earl Jones doesn’t hesitate to tell it like he perceives when it come to his journey in building the International Civil Rights Museum.

The former Woolsworth Five & Dime will open its doors as the International Civil Rights Museum on Monday February 1, 2010.

On Feb. 1, 1960, the dime store was the site of a sit-in by four N.C. A&T students who opposed the store’s policy of serving only white people at the lunch counter. A six-month protest ensued, triggering similar demonstrations across the South and helping to usher in the nationwide movement that ultimately ended the Jim Crow era of segregation.

Fourteen years ago, Jones a North Carolina General Assembly representative and County Commissioner Skip Alston came up with the idea to turn the closed store into a museum when word circulated that the building would be torn down and converted into a parking lot.

The two created a foundation and the fundraising began.

Initially donations coming by way of an annual banquet trickled in after a failed bond referendum. Jones himself was able to secure funds from the State for the project.

However last year an agreement was struck between the foundation and two investment groups to purcahse $10 million in tax credits linked to the project.

In addition to $10 million from the sale of tax credits, local foundations and a variety of corporations made $4 million in new pledges to help complete the project.

Tax credits are purchased by private investors who use them to reduce their state and federal taxes on profits made in other business ventures.

A Gala will preceed the ribbon cuting festivities om Monday. Julian Bond and Tom Joyner will receive awards during the banquet.

A panel discussion headed by Ed Gordon with Jesse Jackson Sr., Al sharpton and Bennet College President Julianne Malveaux will be the highlight on the A&T campus.

Yolanda Adams will headline a spiritual gospel event on Sunday leading up to the ribbon cutting on Monday.

For more information you can click on http://www.sitinmovement.org

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What’s Up With the Guns?

Last week, Tavis Smiley and Whining Joe Scarborough discussed the gun totters showing up at President Obama’s healthcare town hall meetings.

Healthcare reform comes under President Obama’s Campaign pledge of change. You might say that we are experiencing a reconstruction.

We should take note as to what happened during the reconstruction after the civil war.

The KKK was created and they harassed and terrorized African Americans from taking advantage of their newly acquired rights. Black codes were developed and carried out under fear talks and we soon came to know the separate but equal doctrine sanctioned by our Supreme Court and stayed in place even after the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The civil rights movement eradicated the doctrine, but at the sacrifice of many a life.

Now we have the gun totters who under fear talk by the likes of Sarah Palin showing up at town hall meetings presided over by our President Barack Obama. We all know that we have had two Presidents assassinated. Further, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.s had theor lifives cut short when they were mortally wounded from a gun shot.

Weapons dealers in much of the United States reported sharply higher sales after Barack Obama won the presidency.

According to FBI figures for the week of November 3 to 9, the bureau received more than 374,000 requests for background checks on gun purchasers — a nearly 49 percent increase over the same period in 2007. Bernie Conatser owner of Virginia Arms Company, said his store ran out of some models — such as the AR-15 rifle, the civilian version of the military’s M-16 — and continued running low on others.

The fear brigade now armed has taken it’s hate talk on the road under the disquise of being against healthcare reform. Further it has now been joined by White Supremist who took their show to Greensboro, N.C. where four North Carolina A&T Sate University freshmen students changed America by staging a sit-in to obtain service at the Woolsworth lunch counter.

Over the weekend, the group from Detroit Michigan conducted a business meeting inside an undisclosed hotel in western part of the city.

The following article outlines the event.

White Supremacists, Protesters Stick To Different Parts Of The City
Sunday, August 30, 2009
By Taft Wireback,
Joe Killian
Greensboro News & Record Staff Writers

Greensboro- The white-supremacist National Socialist Movement held a daylong business meeting Saturday in a location kept secret from counter-demonstrators who decried the movement’s racist ideology in a largely peaceful gathering downtown.

The movement’s “regional conference” occurred at a hotel in western Greensboro. The News & Record is not identifying the location at the request of city police, who fear violence if the group’s more aggressive foes learn where its members are staying through this morning.

“It went as well as could be expected,” said Capt. Janice Rogers, noting that police successfully kept the two sides apart while closely shadowing both events.

By mid-afternoon, about 200 anti-NSM demonstrators crowded onto the corner of McGee and South Elm streets. The college students, senior citizens and families with small children said they wanted to show the neo-Nazi group that they are not welcome in Greensboro.

“My mother is a Holocaust survivor,” said Arieh Salzman, 60. “Because of what these neo-Nazis believe, because of that hatred, I never had grandparents and my mother, who was in a concentration camp for four years, did not have a childhood.”

Salzman and a small group of friends wore homemade T-shirts with slogans like “Remember Nuremberg” and small rainbow ribbons provided by Temple Emanuel. Salzman said he knew some people who opposed Saturday’s neo-Nazi gathering but didn’t want to come out to a protest, didn’t want to make a fuss.

“We don’t believe in staying home,” Salzman said. “The reason the Nazis rose to power in 1939 is because people stayed home.”

The National Socialist Movement drew 50 to 70 people for a meeting ostensibly to train members from Pennsylvania to Florida in recruiting and other growth tactics.

“It’s just going to be a closed-door meting, members only, just kind of going over tactics and what we want to accomplish on the East Coast,” said Steven Boswell, a Missouri resident who described himself as the leader of the group’s “SS, that’s for security services.”

The Detroit-based group is estimated to have only a few hundred members but still qualifies as the nation’s largest neo-Nazi organization, said Marilyn Mayo, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s center on extremism.

NSM is one of the more flamboyant of such groups and has its highest membership in the Midwest, Mayo said. The Southeast is its second-strongest bastion, but a recent Anti-Defamation report counted only 58 known members across the region.

“These guys are really out there,” said Mayo, whose group fights anti-Semitism and other bigotry. “When you see them at a rally, you’re going to see people who proudly display the Nazi swastika.”

Though small, the National Socialist Movement is like a number of other white-supremacy or white-separatist groups that are trying to attract new members from people who avoided extremist groups in the past but now are perturbed by the election of the nation’s first African American president, the economic downturn and such issues as illegal immigration, Mayo said.

The hallways of the Greensboro hotel presented a strange scene Saturday as NSM members milled about, some clad all in black, some with shaved heads, many wearing T-shirts, jewelry or tattoos displaying Nazi symbols.

One man had a swastika tattooed into the back of his shaven head. T-shirts bore such messages as “White Pride World Wide.”

Meanwhile, the hotel staff served its more usual multiracial clientele of airline crews, end-of-summer vacationers and other travelers, some of whom looked askance at the NSM members before continuing about their business without comment.

A strong police presence was evident, with plain-clothes officers deployed inside the hotel and patrolling outside.

Downtown later in the day, the mostly white crowd was made up of college students and older Greensboro residents who said they simply wanted to make sure the group knew just how strong an opposition they face in the Gate City.

Some of the protesters were from organized groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Equality Coalition of North Carolina. Local City Council candidate Jorge Cornell was on hand flanked by members of his Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation group.

Political literature was handed out as speakers on a megaphone talked about racism, the health care debate and police brutality.

“In Greensboro We Sit-In, Stand-Up and Speak Out Against Hate,” read one of the protest signs, referencing the Civil Rights-era sit-ins at a whites-only lunch counter just blocks from the protest.

But with some signs like “I Love Dead Nazis” and “Die Racist Scum,” some in the crowd predicted a confrontation should any neo-Nazis show up. They were proven right when two men wearing Nazi garb rolled past the protest in their car.

Police said the men got into a heated back-and-forth with protesters that led to one of the protesters denting their car door. Dozens of protesters chased after the car as it sped away. The two men called the police after leaving the scene to file a complaint, but no arrests were made.

Rogers said the two may have been Nazi sympathizers, but they were not National Socialist Movement members.

The manager of the hotel where the group met Saturday said the group had not fully disclosed its political focus or plans when it booked rooms and meeting space with the hotel chain’s groups and tours division.

He learned that on his own “by researching the name,” he said.

But the hotel could not refuse to accommodate the group simply because of its extreme political views, he said.

The hotel has a racially diverse staff including African Americans and Hispanics. Management spoke to them about the National Socialist Movement to “educate them about the group,” he said.

The business meeting lasted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the hotel’s meeting room with several breaks. A two-hour “meet and greet,” including a speech by the group’s leader, Jeff Schoep , followed.

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Harold Martin Returns Home As N.C. A&T’s Newly Named Chancellor

GREENSBORO — N.C. It is said that you can never go home again. Try telling that to Harold Martin . North Carolin A&T State University welcomed back alumnus and former faculty member Harold Martin on Friday morning, as its new chancellor.

“It is a great pleasure to come home,” Martin told the crowd assembled at the UNC Board of Governors meeting held on A&T’s campus.

The board unanimously approved Martin, whom system President Erskine Bowles called a mentor, colleague and friend.
He said he could not imagine a better man to lead A&T.

“Harold Martin is a proud Aggie,” Bowles said. “He personifies Aggie pride. He is not only a graduate of A&T; he has also been a faculty member, dean and provost at A&T. He knows this institution inside and out. He is of North Carolina A&T.”

Franklin McCain, who led the chancellor search committee, said this was one of the fastest searches in UNC history, leading Bowles to joke that “we didn’t have to look far.”

Martin, chancellor of Winston-Salem State University from 2000 to 2006, was widely considered the best candidate for the job by Aggies alumni. They have been frustrated by the short tenure and abrupt resignations of the school’s last two chancellors.

Martin was passed over for the job in 1999 and did not apply when it opened again two years ago. Bowles said he asked Martin to join him at UNC general administration instead, where he was chief academic officer.

Many Aggies cried openly when Martin was officially announced as their new leader.

“It’s great to see him come back home,” former student body president Marcus Bass said. “Every year at graduation they challenge us to come back to A&T and give back to the school. There’s no better way he could do that than this.”

Many Aggies said they trusted Martin with the school’s future, citing his work at Winston-Salem State. While chancellor there, Martin saw the school’s average incoming SAT score increase nearly 70 points. The school’s enrollment doubled, and he helped create some of its most successful programs.

“His being an Aggie isn’t the most important thing,” said Kitty Harrigan, a 1978 graduate who high-fived friends as the crowd gave Martin a standing ovation. “This is a man who is qualified to lead this university into the 21st century.”

Martin said he plans to continue the academic progress of outgoing Chancellor Stanley Battle, who resigned in February citing family and personal reasons.

“I want to say publicly that I thank Chancellor Battle and his staff for the progress that was made under his leadership,” Martin said.

Battle has not spoken about his resignation since it was announced in February. But some close to the chancellor and the faculty senate said Battle’s push to make sweeping changes and raise standards caused tension.

Chancellor Battle will collect his chancellor’s salary during a six-month sabbatical after he resigns — and then take a tenured faculty position at the school.

There is much work to do at the school, which has struggled financially and academically, Martin said. He expects cooperation from the staff, he said, and thinks they will trust him to make the necessary changes.

“Being a product of the institution and knowing so many people associated with the institution, I don’t believe there will be as much anxiety about trust,” Martin said. “That, I think, is a critical part of what’s needed to communicate effectively, to engage with people.”

Martin said he has high expectations for the school but knows that realizing them won’t be easy.

“No, I don’t walk on water,” Martin said jokingly to the crowd. “And yes, I will need the help of each of you.”

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RENICK, HUFF EXONERATED IN NORTH CAROLINA STATE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION PROBE

An investigation ordered by Guilford County North Carolina District Attorney Doug Henderson, concluded that neither former A&T Chancellor James C. Renick nor Anna Anita Huff, a program manager who was fired in September 2006, violated any laws or enriched themselves with misused funds discovered in a 2007 audit of the university’s finances.

In September 2007, Henderson asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into a public released auditor’s report that found hundreds of thousands of dollars in university funds had been used inappropriately under the UNC accounting system.

The investigation focused on two funds: the Future Engineering Faculty Fellowship Program, funded by a grant from the Office of Naval Research that Huff managed, and a Pepsi vending contract. Money from that contract was intended for student financial aid and campus debt.

Investigators looked at nearly $400,000 from the Pepsi vending contracts that had been transferred into Renick’s discretionary fund.

Although audits found that money from the contracts purchased a $150,000 retirement annuity for a faculty member, travel and artwork, Henderson found the expenditures all benefited the university. Henderson wrote in a news release that Renick didn’t understand the restriction on the vending funds. “We find that former Chancellor James C. Renick did not act in bad faith or with criminal intent,” according to the news release.

Auditors also found that grant money from the Office of Naval Research used in the fellowship program had been spent on a stipend for Huff’s husband, a student in the program, and wages and travel expenses for her daughter, a student employee of the program. The Office of Naval Research approved all the spending and found it to be within the grant’s guidelines, according to the release.

Huff had no influence over the selection committee that chose her husband to participate in the program, and the committee could not have known they were married, according to the release.

Program equipment the audit found missing has been located, and hiring her daughter “was not on its face illegal,” Henderson said, adding, “the university received benefit from her services.”

Renick, left A&T in 2006 to take a position at the American Council on Education in Washington. Under Dr. Renick’s leadership, the University grew by leaps and bounds in enrollment, funding and physical plant.

Prior to the criminal investigation, a building under construction on campus was originally to bear Renick’s name, but a university spokeswoman said it would be named the School of Education Building instead. Whether the University will do the right thing and rename the building in his honor was not addressed by Mabel Scott.

Scott, a special assistant to the vice chancellor for Development and University Relations, declined to comment on Henderson’s decision Tuesday but said: “We are very proud of N.C. A&T State University. … We’re ranked third in research within the UNC system with over $40 million in research and (are) a top producer of graduates in engineering, psychology and accounting.” Scott failed to give credit to Renick’s leadership which elevated A&T to the status of which she speaks. For this reason it might be a great gesture to rename that Education Building in Renick’s honor thus removing the mud from his name.