Pilgrimage for Truth and Justice in North Carolina
In late July, Jason Hurd of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and I had been on the road together for meetings with IVAW members and supporters in Fayetteville, N.C., and at Camp Lejeune, trying to do a little legwork for the IVAW Base Tour that was soon to come through. With a few extra hours on a Sunday night, we made for Chapel Hill. Jason called up Tamara Tal, an organizer with UNC Students for a Democratic Society, who quickly pulled together a few informal meetings with local activists and organizers. For the last meeting of the evening, Tamara, Jason and I went to Al McSurely’s. Al is a longtime white antiracist lawyer and organizer whose political work these days is primarily with the North Carolina NAACP and the Historic Thousands on Jones St. (HK on J) Coalition.
Al talked to us about the history of Wilmington (see below). He also described the racist eugenics-based sterilization program in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, which from 1947 to 1974 robbed thousands of women, mostly African Americans, of their right to bear children.
Al said that the NC NAACP and its HK on J Coalition partners were planning an October Pilgrimage for Truth and Justice to bring attention to these two ugly chapters of North Carolina’s history and to move forward the HK on J Coalition’s 14-Point People’s Agenda. One of the 14 points speaks directly to the horrific events at Wilmington and Winston-Salem, demanding redress.
The other points include a demand for quality education, living wages, affordable housing, and health care for all; same-day voter registration and public financing of elections; support for historically Black colleges; redress for 200 years of hiring discrimination; abolition of the death penalty and of mandatory sentencing; establishment of an environmental job corps; the right to collective bargaining for public employees; support for immigrant rights; strengthening of civil rights enforcement agencies; and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
I’d first heard about HK on J in November 2007 during my first trip to North Carolina. I’d been traveling the country interviewing organizers and activists for WRL’s Listening Process (see WIN Special Issue Spring/Summer 2008.)
When I first read the 14-Point People’s Agenda, I was impressed that organizers seemed to have brought together and connected constituencies that were focused on different issues. I was also impressed that the demand to withdraw troops from Iraq had made it onto the platform, with the explanation that “North Carolina cannot address injustice at home while we wage an unjust war abroad.” This reminded me of WRL’s emphasis on connecting the “war abroad” with the “war at home,” and the HK on J Coalition struck me as something we would want to be a part of.
The pilgrimage was to have two “legs,” one starting in Wilmington, one in Winston-Salem, both making stops in counties across the state and joining for a final pilgrimage to the Capital in Raleigh. Al invited us back to the area for some of the pilgrimage.
WRL’s National Committee supported the idea, and two days later I was in Raleigh at the North Carolina Justice Center, sitting down with Al and the NC NAACP president, Rev. Dr. William Barber II. Al had told me a lot about Rev. Barber — how his leadership has revitalized the NC NAACP and how he was instrumental in launching HK on J.
The next day, I was on the road with Carolyn McDougall, a strong leader in the NC NAACP and the point person for the Wilmington leg of the pilgrimage. We met with the NAACP branch presidents for the counties that the pilgrimage would travel through. For each stop on the Pilgrimage, a procession through the city was being planned in the morning and a spiritual renewal service at a local church for the evening. The branch presidents were responsible for planning both events in their county.
McDougall and I met with them to make sure they had everything they needed: flyers, news releases, permits, venues, speakers, and so on. A few days later, I met another strong NAACP leader, Keith Cook, who was the point person for the Winston-Salem leg of the pilgrimage.
Over the week leading up to the pilgrimage, I was honored to work alongside truly remarkable people like Rev. Barber; Amina Turner, NC NAACP’s executive director; Carolyn McDougal; Keith Cook; the branch presidents; Al McSurely; Stephen Dear of People of All Faith Against the Death Penalty; and others - many of whom had been involved in social justice struggles for decades.
Ms. Turner set me up in the state office in Durham. My typical day involved several hours in the office - making phone calls, sending emails and faxes, checking in with the state and local leadership to see what tasks remained - usually followed by a late-afternoon trip to one or two of the Pilgrimage stops to deliver flyers, news releases, information packets or signs, and to talk with the branch presidents.
On Thursday, October 2, two simultaneous evening services - one in Wilmington, one in Winston-Salem - kicked off the Pilgrimage for Truth and Justice. For the next seven days, pilgrims gathered every morning in a different city to walk together, remembering - and bringing to others’ attention - those pilgrims who had walked long journeys before in this continuing struggle for justice.
Each evening, people gathered at a different local church for a spiritual renewal service featuring fiery speakers like Rev. Dr. Mazie Ferguson and Rev. Barber. Attendees and passersby were given packets that included the 14-point People’s Agenda, a primer on the histories of Wilmington and Winston-Salem, and an explanation of the pilgrimage, as well as voter registration forms.
The Pilgrimage for Truth and Justice energized me, and I am honored to have been part of this effort to draw connections between our various issues, as well as to draw that unbroken line that connects our current struggles for justice to those who struggled before us, on whose shoulders we stand. WRL looks forward to soon becoming a member organization of the HK on J Coalition and to continuing to develop collaborative work in North Carolina.
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In 1898, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city. With a majority Black population and a concentration of Black professionals, Wilmington’s government had also proudly become biracial. In November 1898, white supremacists openly plotted to violently overthrow Wilmington’s biracial government to reestablish their control under North Carolina’s unabashedly white supremacist Democratic Party.
Neither North Carolina Governor Daniel Lindsay Russell nor President William McKinley lifted a finger to intervene when Wilmington’s democratically elected government was brutally and illegally sacked - the only time in U.S. history when an elected municipal government has been violently overthrown. White supremacists killed dozens of Black people (estimates range from 26 to 150), destroyed businesses, seized property, exiled hundreds of families from Wilmington forever - including most of the courageous Black and white fusion leaders - and forced the fusion government to resign.
White supremacists in North Carolina and across the South quickly controlled the description of the events, labeling them “race riots” and using them as justification for rigidly drawn Jim Crow Laws and disenfranchisement of Black voters from 1900 through 1965 in most parts of the South. The Wilmington terrorist attack became the model for dozens of other terrorist acts across the South and up-South for the next 25 years.
The “Wilmington Race Riot of 1898” traumatized generations to come, poisoning race relations and causing the political and economic underdevelopment of a large region that extended far inland from Wilmington. As North Carolina’s major port city, Wilmington was a catalyst for industrialization. The attack not only set Wilmington back but also seriously retarded economic development throughout eastern North Carolina. The effects can still be felt today.
