NAACP leader challenges new Republican leadership in Raleigh

The Rev. William Barber II visited Greensboro today.

The Rev. William Barber II made a stop in Greensboro today to drum up support for the NC NAACP’s upcoming Historic Thousand on Jones Street assembly on Feb. 12 and to lend support to the cause of a group of black officers who have been fired after complaining about employment discrimination.

“We are in full support of bringing a just conclusion to these unjust racial firings and wrong that have gone on in Greensboro’s police department. There will be no turning back on that matter until there is justice,” Barber said at a noontime program at Faith Community Church.

Five years ago, the state NAACP committed to redressing “ugly chapters in North Carolina’s racist history,” including Klan-Nazi shootings in Greensboro in 1979.

“Until you address that, we continue to see new manifestations of the same things,” Barber said. “That is why we must stand strong, and we must stand clear and we must stand firm. Because anytime you have a breakage, a breakdown of trust within your police department, it actually undermines public safety, because where there is no public trust, there can be no public safety.”

He added later: “Right in this city, again, they want to violate fundamental civil rights and protections. You can’t just fire people because you don’t like them. You can’t just fire them because they’re black. You can’t intimidate people on the job, run them off their job. There are laws against those kinds of things.”

The rallying cry of Historic Thousands on Jones Street, an annual gathering lead by state NAACP and comprised of a broad coalition of progressive groups, this year is, “Forward together, not one step back.” Barber pledged to fight rather than accommodate the conservative policies of the new Republican majority in the General Assembly, including pledges by legislative leaders to make up a budget shortfall entirely through spending cuts.

“We’re doing it this year [gathering] particularly in the face of the ultra-conservative, extreme right-wing tea party elements that are trying to infiltrate both parties with the regressive politics that is rooted in the politics of yesterday rather than in the politics of tomorrow,” Barber said.

The civil rights leader noted the irony of observations about the Republicans taking power for the first time in a hundred years, considering that the Republican Party of the 19th century in North Carolina occupied the opposite end of the political spectrum.

“A hundred years ago the Republicans were Lincoln Republicans,” Barber said. “They were Republicans that were pro civil rights and pro labor rights and pro educational funding and pro lifting up from the bottom. Those were the Lincoln Republicans. And it’s yet to be seen if this crowd is in the same historical genre as the Lincoln Republicans. They can’t claim that history easily. The Lincoln Republicans formed fusion politics with blacks and whites. The Lincoln Republicans worked together, and between 1868 and 1898 there were more African Americans and whites working together in the General Assembly than we have today.

“The Lincoln Republicans and African Americans rewrote North Carolina’s constitution, and removed race and white supremacy from, and placed equal protection laws in our constitution,” he continued. “The Lincoln Republicans, that’s a different group. That’s a different history. And they were put out of office in 1902 after the Wilmington riots. And then you had the Dixiecrats come in, and they reinstituted white supremacy. So we say to the current Republican Party and the ultraconservatives and extreme white wing: We know history. And you can’t just claim that you’re back in office after a hundred years. The proof will be in the bills you pass.”