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VOLUME 93 - NUMBER 31 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2014 TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 30
Moral Monday Comes To Durham
Flanked by Rev. Jimmie Hawkins of Covenant Presbyterian Church and Rev. Curtis Gatewood of HJK on
J, Rev. William Barber tells the crowd that voting is a must for 2014.
Moral Monday Brings Together People from across NC to Talk Voting and Vot
er Registration at Second Moral March to the Polls Rally in Durham
Hundreds of people from across the state joined the North Carolina NAACP and the Forward Together Movement for the second Moral
March to the Polls rally in Durham today where speakers from the local community pressed the crowd to organize their communities, register
new voters and vote in November.
“I bring you a message of hope from a strange place,” said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the NC NAACP, as he took the
stage. “This morning, I stood with the Republican mayor of Belhaven and the community in Washington D.C. to say enough to states refus
ing the Medicaid expansion on the basis of partisan ideology. If a white Republican mayor and a fast-food worker and a doctor and the black,
independent president of the NC NAACP can come together on expanding Medicaid, then we can certainly come together to take North
Carolina to higher ground.”
It was the first time Moral Monday had come to Durham, and the crowd was fired up, chanting and cheering along with the speakers.
Nearby, Moral Freedom Summer volunteers manned the voter registration table. From its start at 5:30 pm to the last song around 7 pm, the
rally focused on the vote.
“One year after the Voting Rights Act was passed, two older women denied the right to vote in Mississippi,” Dr. Barber told the crowd.
“They went down to Jackson for a hearing to get back their vote. On the way back from Jackson, they were killed. I met the niece of one of
those ladies. She told me, ‘When I hear people trying to go back on voting rights, it breaks my heart. My aunt died for that right.’ It was the
blood that shamed the nation and forced people to do the justice that they said they could not do.”
Moral leaders then stressed the fundamental importance of the vote to representative government, particularly for African Americans.
“The fight for justice is never irrelevant,” said Rev. Curtis Gatewood, HKonJ Coalition Coordinator with the NC NAACP. “We are not
going to have the old Jim Crow. We are not going to have the new Jim Crow. We’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt. The ballot is our
ticket on the midnight train to justice, and we are not going to back down now.
Rabbi John Frieman of the Judea Reform Synagogue told the story of his great-grandmother and her discovery of democracy when she
moved to America from Lithuania.
“When my grandmother found out that she could vote in America, she fell in love with this country,” Frieman said. “Whether you were
Democrat or Republican, it was American to vote. In North Carolina today, our government doesn’t see it that way.”
Young people brought front and center as they spoke about the NCGA’s attempts to suppress their votes through HB 589. Cuts to early
voting, the elimination of same-day and pre-registration, the requirement of a photo ID but barring student IDs, the shift of polls off of col
lege campuses - all of these make it harder for college students to vote, UNC student Elizabeth Brown told the crowd. (Continued On Page 2)
Historically black
colleges face
uncertain future
Jerome Bailey Jr.
(AP) - Three days before Payton Wilkins returned home to Detroit
last May with a bachelor’s degree, his cousin was arrested for selling
heroin and crack cocaine.
“Before I came to college I was hanging out with him so it’s a
really good chance I would be in prison right now,” said Wilkins,
24, the first person in his family to graduate from college. He had no
college plans until his mom made him apply to Dillard University, a
private historically black school in New Orleans.
For generations, such colleges and universities have played a key
role in educating young African-Americans like Wilkins.
But facing often steep declines in enrollment, these schools are
struggling to survive. In the last 20 years, five historically black col
leges and universities - or HBCU’s - have shut down and about a
dozen have dealt with accreditation issues.
South Carolina State University, that state’s only public histori
cally black higher education institution, had its accreditation placed
on probation last month after the school was cited for financial prob
lems.
Morris Brown College, a 133-year-old private institution in At
lanta, filed for bankruptcy in August 2012 and has received court
approval to sell some of its property.
Last year, North Carolina elected officials flirted with the idea of
merging Elizabeth City State University, a public historically black
college, with another institution after its enrollment had dropped by
900 students in three years.
An outcry from supporters saved the school and stirred up support
from the state’s Legislative Black Caucus last month.
Historically black colleges once were the only option for most
black students, who made up almost 100 percent of their enrollment
in 1950. That began to change in the 1960s, as many doors that once
were shut to blacks were opened.
Now that black students have a much wider choice of schools,
only 11 percent of African-American college students choose a his
torically black college or university.
(Continued On Page 3)
NC budget hole
grows based on new
tax cut analysis
RALEIGH (AP) - North Carolina income tax collections
for 2014 are expected to fall $205 million short of earlier
projections following Republican-backed tax cuts approved
last year.
A memo from the legislature’s Fiscal Research Division
says the wages of North Carolina’s workers haven’t grown
as fast as originally forecast, resulting in the projected cost
of the 2013 tax cuts rising from $475 million to $680 mil
lion. The analysis did not include projected sales tax rev
enues, which could climb to offset the less than expected
money from sales taxes.
The new estimate comes as Republican leaders are try
ing to negotiate an end to the state’s budget impasse while
searching for the millions needed to raise salaries for public
school teachers. The 2013 reform plan lowered the individ
ual tax rate for all earners to 5.8 percent, with the biggest cut
going to the state’s wealthiest taxpayers. Top income earn
ers had paid 7.75 percent under the old tiered tax system,
while working class taxpayers paid 6 percent.
Rep. David Lewis, chairman of the finance committee in
the state House, said the changing projections should not be
used to infer whether the GOP-backed tax cuts are working.
When approved last year, Republican leaders confidently
predicted the tax cuts would stimulate the state’s economy,
generating greater tax revenues in the long run.
“I think that eight months into tax reform is a little too
early to judge,” said Lewis, R-Harnett. “It’s going to take
some time.”
Legislators were supposed to have a new budget in place
by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year. But negotiations
between GOP leaders in the House and Senate have dragged
on for weeks with few indications of progress.
Speaker Thom Tillis dismissed the state House on Friday
saying that the chamber was not expected to hold any ses
sions next week, a strong indicator no deal is imminent.
Many of the state’s top GOP leaders are scheduled to
attend the annual conference of the American Legislative
Exchange Council that starts Tuesday in Dallas, Texas, and
lasts into the weekend. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory
is on the agenda to speak at the opening luncheon of the
conservative group.