Tag: NAACP

NAACP calls again on Hagan and Burr to help integrate the federal bench

February 21, 2013 at 4:33 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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Just released this afternoon….

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
21 February 2013

The NC NAACP once again urges Senators Burr and Hagan to help put an end to the historic exclusion of African American judges from the US District Court for the Eastern District in North Carolina with the pending appointment by the President. There has never been, in our history, a African American Judge on the bench in US District Court for the Eastern District of NC. The NC NAACP issued a letter to the Senators on October 25, 2011 urging the Senators to do the same. And on January 23, 2013 we wrote a private letter to the Senators, this time requesting a meeting to discuss the issue further. Senator Hagan has responded. However we are respectfully awaiting a response from Senator Burr’s office to schedule a meeting. We are now writing Senator Burr publicly with hopes that he will take the time to meet with civil rights leaders representing many of his constituents in NC before any decisions are made. 

We look forward to both a response for a meeting and for your efforts to right the historic wrongs when it comes to appointments to the US District Courts in North Carolina.

You can read the January letter by clicking here.

 

A loud chorus calls for a veto

February 15, 2013 at 8:54 amCategory:Uncategorized

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Pat McCrory 5Up until now, it’s mostly been talk. Now, Pat McCrory has to act and North Carolinians will soon learn what kind of new governor they have: A rational moderate who, as he often did as Mayor of Charlotte,  puts families above campaign contributions and extremist ideology or a far right tool of the state’s business lobby in the ilk of Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Florida’s Rick Scott.

Yesterday, the General Assembly sent the Governor a bill that devastates North Carolina’s unemployment insurance system and now he has 10 days to decide what to do with it.  A loud and compelling chorus has made it eminently clear why he should veto it.

On Wednesday, dozens of nonprofit advocacy groups representing people in need begged the Governor to think twice. In their letter they noted that: Read More…

NY Times: Pardon the Wilmington 10

December 24, 2012 at 7:22 amCategory:Uncategorized

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In case you missed it over the weekend, the Sunday New York Times included the following editorial specifically urging Governor Perdue to pardon the Wilmington 10:

Before leaving office next month, Gov. Bev Perdue of North Carolina should finally pardon the Wilmington 10, a group of civil rights activists who were falsely convicted and imprisoned in connection with a racial disturbance in the city of Wilmington more than 40 years ago. The convictions, based on flimsy evidence and perjured testimony, were overturned by a federal court in 1980. But by then, the lives of the convicted had been broken on the wheel of Jim Crow justice.

Wilmington was experiencing a bitter civil rights struggle in 1971 when a white-owned grocery store in a black neighborhood was firebombed. The police officers and firefighters who arrived to extinguish the flames came under gunfire. Nine black men and one white woman were railroaded to jail in connection with the event.

Years later, both the prosecutor and the state trial court were denounced in a blistering ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.   Read More…

Disturbing prosecutor misconduct unearthed in “Wilmington 10″ case

November 27, 2012 at 12:57 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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The North Carolina NAACP renewed its call for gubernatorial pardons in the infamous “Wilmington 10″ case again today and the evidence they advanced in support of the demand was disturbing and compelling.

The following is from a release that accompanied this morning’s press conference:

RALEIGH – Newly discovered racist jury profiling by the Pender County Prosecutor Jay Stroud, shows shocking racial hostility toward prospective Black jurors. In his first effort to select a jury to convict ten young activists who had been charged with burning a Wilmington store, District Attorney Stroud ended up with ten Blacks and two Whites. Stroud felt “sick,” and asked for a mistrial. The judge agreed, and the trial was rescheduled for Pender County. Stroud got a list of about 100 prospective jurors, and he wrote racial comments beside most of their names.

 ”We rarely get such direct evidence of prosecutorial racism in jury selection,” said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President of the North Carolina NAACP. Read More…

More on the Newby recusal complaint

November 21, 2012 at 1:45 pmCategory:Uncategorized

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In addition to reading Sharon McCloskey’s excellent summary, you can read all 42 pages of the Motion for Recusal of Justice Paul Newby in the legislative redistricting case by clicking here.  

It’s a pretty remarkable and damning story when all the dots get connected.

There are also 42 exhibits in a huge file that we’ll try to make available as soon as possible.