After three years of lying low, the Democrats are finally taking the advice of the Carolina Stompers [
In this great struggle to escape Negro rule and restore our State governments to the control of those who made them, and whose ancestors had established their principles in their blood, we had both the aid and the sympathy of Northern Democrats everywhere. We had neither from you. [source]
In the fall of 2007, I joined with Richard Bernier of URTV's Sound Off Buncombe to cover the Democratic Fundraiser after Chad Nesbitt of The Carolina Stompers brought it to my attention that the event was named after a racist North Carolina Governor named Charles Brantley Aycock.
Here are some videos taken by Richard Bernier and me. The first four are mine, and the last four are Richard's.
And here is Mudcat Saunders giving the Keynote.
As far as I know, Richard and I are the only two people to ever provide extensive video coverage of the exclusive fundraiser. I would go and do this every year, but Asheville is a bit far for me to travel on a lark.
In an effort to downplay Governor Aycock's blatant racism, Democrats have tried to say that they have honored him for his educational reforms. Really? Either they are completely ignorant of the types of educational reforms he supported, and his thinking behind them, or they support them.
To make sure that to honor him for his educational reforms is still honoring his racism, here is the thinking behind North Carolina Governor Charles Brantley Aycock's educational reforms in the early 20th Century from a book I have on the subject:
In 1900, North Carolina's public education for both races was among the poorest in the nation. Democrat Charles B. Aycock, a racist educational reformer, was elected governor that year. He believed that the primary reason for improving education was to train white voters. Uncharacteristically, from 1895 through 1898 Fusionists - agrarian Populists (many former democrats) and Republicans (many of them african Americans) - had controlled state government. In 1900, Democrats used the Fusion period to justify white supremacy and African American disenfranchisement as safeguards against "Negro domination." It is no wonder, then, that Aycock, whose view on education for African Americans was limited, was chosen to rescue the state. He and other educational liberals cleverly used the race question despite opposition to their centralizing educational tendencies from white rural fundamentalists and blacks who recognized the inequities of public education. A related issue was the state's need to educate a cheap, docile, but effective African American labor force. Yet the political threat of African American voters was the center of the white supremacy campaign behind the school reform movement around 1900.Source: Charles W. Wadelington and Richard F. Knapp Charlotte Hawkins Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute: What One Young African American Woman Could Do (UNC Press 1999, p 7-8) [Amazon]
For more on the effort of the Carolina Stompers to protest the honoring of a White Supremacist by the North Carolina Democratic Party:
NC Dems Dinner Named After White Supremacist [Black & Right]
GOP Group to Protest Vance-Aycock [Under The Dome]
Carolina Stompers starting to get on Dems’ nerves [Mountain Xpress]
Pass the Vance, Hold the Aycock [BlueNC]
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