DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 2016
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VOLUME 95 - NUMBER 22
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Attorney General Loretta Lynch: Civil
Rights Key to Suit Against L GB T Law
By Emery P. Dalesio
FAYETTEVILLE (AP) - Civ
il rights laws exist for anyone
victimized because of a physical
characteristic they can’t control,
and that’s why the U.S. Justice
Department challenged a North
Carolina law that blocks some
legal protections for LGBT citi
zens, U.S. Attorney General Lo
retta Lynch said May 24.
Lynch’s comments came in
response to criticism hours ear
lier by conservative black pas
tors and civil rights leaders.
They blasted the attorney gen
eral for comparing House Bill 2
to Jim Crow laws that segregated
blacks to inferior education and
opportunities for nearly a cen
tury.
Lynch was visiting her native
One of the families enjoying food at Union Baptist
Church Youth Day. See photos on pages 8 and 9. Mt.
Gilead held its Youth Day also on May 14.
Chinese detergent maker sorry
for harm done by racist ad
BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese laundry detergent maker apologized
for the harm caused by the spread of an ad in which a black man
“washed” by its product was transformed into a fair-skinned Asian
man.
Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics Ltd. Co. said it strongly shuns and
condemns racial discrimination but blamed foreign media for ampli
fying the ad, which first appeared on Chinese social media in March
but was halted after it drew protests this week following media re
ports.
“We express regret that the ad should have caused a controversy,”
the statement issued late Saturday (May 28) read. “But we will not
shun responsibility for controversial content.”
“We express our apology for the harm caused to the African peo
ple because of the spread of the ad and the over-amplification by the
media,” the company said. “We sincerely hope the public and the
media will not over-read it.”
The ad for Qiaobi laundry detergent drops shows a black man en
tering a room and attempting to flirt with an Asian woman. He is
carrying a pail of paint, wears dirty clothes and has a soiled face.
She feeds him a detergent drop and stuffs his body into a top-loading
washer. When the cycle completes, a fair-skinned Asian man in a
clean white T-shirt emerges to the delight of the woman.
When speaking to the Chinese nationalist newspaper The Global
Times, a Mr. Wang of Leishang said the critics were “too sensitive,”
and the issue of racial discrimination never came up during the pro
duction of the video.
The ad’s content rekindled discussions on racial discrimination
in China, where prejudices against blacks are likely to be dismissed.
Legislators agree to study
moving Confederate Relic Room
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Legislators aren’t spend
ing any money next fiscal year to display the Confeder
ate flag sent to a museum last summer as they await an
analysis on moving the entire museum to Charleston.
A legislative panel negotiating a final spending plan
for 2016-17 approved a budget clause that requires an
analysis of available museum space in Charleston and
a cost estimate for moving the state’s military history
museum there. A report is due Jan. 10.
The law that removed the rebel flag from the State-
house’s front lawn sent it to the Confederate Relic
Room and Military Museum in Columbia.
A separate measure directed the museum to recom
mend plans for a permanent display.
But legislators balked at the $3.6 million cost of the
museum board’s proposal for the display and additional
exhibit space.
state for the first time since the
Justice Department and North
Carolina’s top Republican lead
ers filed competing lawsuits two
weeks ago.
North Carolina’s new law
excludes lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender people from
state anti-discrimination protec
tion and bars local governments
from adopting their own anti-
bias measures. The Justice De
partment lawsuit and the law’s
supporters focused largely on
provisions requiring transgender
people to use public restrooms
and showers corresponding to
the gender on their birth certifi
cate.
Defenders of the law have
argued that it is needed to pro
tect people from being molested
in bathrooms by men posing as
transgender women. Lynch said
earlier this month supporters of
the law invented a problem “as
a pretext for discrimination and
harassment.”
While pushing for equal civil
rights in North Carolina has his
torically meant ending discrimi
nation against black Americans,
civil rights laws are meant to
cover everyone, Lynch said.
“So certainly I respect the
experience of those who have
toiled in the vineyards of the
civil rights movement,” she said,
“when you look at the nature
and purpose of the movement,
the nature and purpose of the
message of those who led it, it is
about civil rights, human rights
and equality for all.”
Clarence Henderson was one
of those criticizing Lynch. Hen
derson was involved in the first
days of the 1960 sit-in at a Wool-
worth lunch counter in Greens
boro that energized the civil
rights movement. He said trans-
gender people are acting on their
self-expressed sense of gender,
not the unchangeable facts of
how they were born.
(Continued on Page 6)
Howard Clement Stood Firm Against Durham, State
Republicans For Statements Against Jesse Helms
This Associated Press story published in January 1990,
we think, exemplifies the strength of conviction that Mr.
A.J. Howard Clement, III was known for. Agree or dis
agree with him, we think a part of his legacy is that you
ALWAYS knew where he stood on issues.
(AP) - A prominent black Republican and Durham City
Council member says he “does not intend one whit to re
tract” statements that U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms is a menace
to the party.
Howard Clement said Tuesday (Jan. 23, 1990), he
would not apologize even though Durham County GOP
leaders are taking him to task for what they say is a verbal
assault on Helms.
“I do not intend one whit to retract any statements I
made, because what I said was, in my opinion, the truth,
he said.
The Durham County Republican Executive Committee
has taken the unusual step of summoning Clement to ex
plain on Feb. 20 why he said Helms is an embarrassment
to the party during a speech at Martin Luther King Jr. Day
events at Duke University last week.
“I do not intend to apologize for what I said, and I
would repeat them for emphasis,” Clement said. “Jesse
Helms is not interested in the wellbeing of North Caro
lina.”
The Helms campaign declined comment Tuesday.
Helms announcement that he would run for re-election
coincided the ceremonies in honor of the slain civil rights
leader and the inauguration of Virginia Gov. L. Douglas
Wilder, the first black elected governor in the country.
Clement has called the timing of three events ironic
Presidential race shows deep
seated strife toward minorities
By Jesse J. Holland
WASHINGTON (AP) - It started with Mexicans being publicly
accused by presidential candidate Donald Trump of being criminals
and rapists. It escalated to ejections, to sucker punches, to pepper
spray. And now violence and strife seems to be a commonplace oc
currence out on the campaign trail.
As the 2016 presidential campaign turns toward the rapidly di
versifying West, it has officially buried any thoughts of a post-racial
United States, with racial and ethnic groups at the center of the most
public strife seen in the political arena since the height of the civil
rights movement.
Much of the violence has revolved around the ascendancy of GOP
presidential candidate Donald Trump, first toward minorities and now
by minorities protesting his policies. On May 24, protesters in New
Mexico opposing Trump threw burning T-shirts, plastic bottles and
other items at police officers, injuring several, and toppled trash cans
and barricades. Police responded by firing pepper spray and smoke
grenades into the crowd outside the Albuquerque Convention Center.
Karla Molinar, 21, a University of New Mexico student, partici
pated in a planned disruption of Trump’s speech and said she had
no choice because Trump is sparking hatred ofMexican immigrants.
Trump, among other things, has called for a ban on Muslims enter
ing the United States and declared that he will build a wall along the
U.S.-Mexico border.
“Trump is causing the hate to get worse,” she said.
Earlier this year, demonstrators against Trump swarmed outside
the hotel near San Francisco airport, forcing the candidate Trump to
A.J. Howard Clement, III died May 24. Clement was a long-
time City Council member, attorney and civil rights leader. He
was was 82. Related stories on page 3.
since Helms actively opposed making King’s birthday a
federal holiday, the Greensboro News & Record reported.
Tuesday, Clement repeated his views and added that
Helms is not addressing issues facing North Carolina, in
cluding low scholastic Aptitude Test scores, high infant
mortality rates, low manufacturing and teachers’ wages.
“This is a free country and I carry in my pocket the
constitution, and the constitution says I have the right to
free speech,” he said. “They may view me as harmful to
the party, In my view Jesse Helms is harmful to the party.”
“He is an embarrassment, in my opinion, to the Re
publican Party,” Clement said of his fellow Republican.
“Jesse Helms represents a divisive, hostile element, and a
betrayal, in my opinion, of the American dream.”
Durham County GOP leaders say Clement should have
not spoken out publicly against the senator.
“The biggest concern we had was that Mr. Clem
ent would publicly attack Jesse Helms,” Dan McClary,
Durham County GOP chairman said. “To disagree is one
thing. To personally Mr. Helms, as he did, we have a
problem with that.
Several Durham County GOP activists called state
headquarters to complaion about Clement’s reparks, said
Tom Ballus, communications director for the state Re
publican Party.
But Ballus acknowledged that, except for a reprimand,
there is little Republicans can do about Clement’s state
ments.
Clement, an executive with N.C. Mutual Life Insur
ance, became a Republican in 1984. He was a delegate
to the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Or
leans.
crawl under a fence to enter the hotel where he met with local GOP
power brokers. Other protesters tangled with authorities and dam
aged police cars after a Trump rally in Orange County, California.
Earlier, the violence was aimed toward minorities. For example:
- A black woman was surrounded, cursed and shoved by white
onlookers at a Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky in March.
- Latino demonstrators Ariel Rojas was kicked and dragged by a
white Trump supporter at a rally in Miami in October.
- A black male protester, Rakeem Jones, was punched from behind
by white Trump supporter John McGraw as Jones was being ejected
from a rally by police in North Carolina. McGraw was later arrested.
- Video captured Trump supporters physically assaulting Mercutio
Southall Jr., an African-American activist, at a rally in Birmingham,
Alabama in November. Southall said afterward he was called several
expletives by the crowd and later compared them to a “lynch mob.”
While political violence is not unknown, like the 1968 violence
at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where 119 police
and 100 protesters were injured, rarely has it been targeted so spe
cifically at minorities, said Matt Dallak, a professor of political man
agement in the Graduate School of Political Management at George
Washington University.
He also laid much of the responsibility on Trump, who started
his political campaign by comparing undocumented immigrants from
Mexico to criminals and rapists. The crowds at Trump’s rallies are
feeding off him “demonizing particular segments of the population,
including racial minorities” he said.
(Continued On Page 6)