THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 16, 1995 TAG: 9512160264
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
More than 100 middle-aged and mostly affluent African Americans have held a ``town meeting'' in Elizabeth City that was designed to send a message to their white neighbors in the state.
The message: Blacks aren't getting a fair shake.
Four whites were present to hear the message Thursday night. One of them was City Councilwoman Anita Hummer.
``When someone asked, `Where are the elected officials?' I looked around and felt uncomfortable,'' said Hummer. ``Sheriff (Randy) Cartwright and I were the only elected whites in the room.''
The meeting at Elizabeth City State University was sponsored by the North Carolina Black Legislative Caucus ``to solicit community input on vital issues.'' Most of the comments concerned charges of legislative inequity toward blacks.
Caucus Chairman Howard J. Hunter Jr., a Democratic representative from Murfreesboro, got the town meeting off to a passionate start:
``They're mean, mean, mean!'' shouted Hunter about the Republican majority in the state House of Representatives that dominated the last session of the General Assembly.
``They're the meanest bunch of people I've ever seen in the legislature,'' echoed Rep. Henry M. ``Mickey'' Michaux Jr., a nine-term black Democrat from Durham. Michaux and Hunter used to carry considerable weight in the North Carolina House.
``You ought to see the mess they made of welfare reform,'' said Michaux. ``If you think (Newt) Gingrich is bad, we've got folks in Raleigh that are 10 times worse.''
Michaux said Republican leaders ``told us we wanted more guns, more prisons.''
``We told them we wanted schools.
``So the Republicans voted $70 million for schools and $800 million for prisons,'' said Michaux.
``Tell me,'' Hunter asked, ``does your church want more guns and more prisons?''
But problems aren't all coming from Republicans, Hunter said. ``There are a lot of mean-spirited Democrats, too; not just those Republicans.''
Michaux fired another shot: ``Do you know how much we got for black schools? Not one red cent. Not a dime.''
The only spontaneous applause at the meeting greeted state Rep. Larry Shaw, a Cumberland County Democrat, when he said he was grateful for the day he saw the ``Million Man March'' by blacks in Washington. He did not mention Minister Farrakhan, who organized the march.
When Hunter asked for comment from the Elizabeth City audience that included black community leaders and educators, he got an earful:
``Those (white) legislators better remember they serve us, too,'' said Robert ``Bobby'' Vaughan, a retired Elizabeth City State University athletic director. ``I meet young people every day riding bikes - they can't find jobs. There is no correctional recreation. Sometimes they're forced into situations where they had no choice. Now everybody shoots at each other.''
Vaughan said he wasn't as worried about the likelihood of a ``racial civil war'' as he is about an ``internal'' conflict between haves and have-nots.
Hunter argued that there were no jobs for blacks.
``Show me two jobs - for me, for black people - in Gates County or Tyrrell County,'' said Hunter. The counties are two of the poorest in the state.
Isaac ``Ike'' Battle, a Gates County school principal and former chairman of the 1st District Democratic Party, begged the legislators to ``get rid of the outhouses in my county.'' Battle said Gates County still had more ourdoor privies than any other county in the state.
``There were more than 1,000 bills introduced by each chamber in the last legislative session - surely one of them could have helped get rid of our outhouses,'' Battle said.
Winfall Mayor Fred Yates, a member of Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.'s crime commission, asked Michaux why the General Assembly did not consolidate state and federal juvenile crime bureaus under one state-run agency.
``Do you know why it didn't happen?'' said Michaux. ``Because nobody asked for it.''
Myrtle Rivers, another Elizabeth City councilwoman, urged the caucus to ``protect'' Elizabeth City State University.
``I've been around for 78 years and I graduated from this fine school,'' said Rivers, ``but in recent years a group of Elizabeth City citizens has worked steadily to eliminate ECSU. Don't let that happen.
``And if it does, I'll come back and haunt them,'' said Rivers.
A few years ago, 26 influential white citizens wrote a letter to the president of the University of North Carolina asking him to remove the then ECSU chancellor. The writers urged that the historically black university be made a fully integrated campus within the UNC system.
Chancellor Mickey Burnim, the acting head of ECSU, was at the Thursday night meeting. ``Democracy is being tested in a number of ways,'' Burnim said. ``I hope there will be a continued narrowing of the gulf between people.''
Several speakers joined Michaux and Hunter in urging blacks to form a united front in upcoming elections.
``Let us know who the bad guys are and we can get rid of them,'' said Vaughan. One speaker said of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative black, ``just because he looks like us doesn't mean we support him.''
Vaughan singled out an influential white state representative for comment. ``Billy Owens had better remember that a lot of blacks elected him,'' said Vaughan of the Elizabeth City legislator.
Michaux told Burnim that if ``all 1,400 students at ECSU turned out to vote'' they could control the local elections.
Throughout the evening speaker after speaker repeated the message: if they organize, black voters in the coming elections can defeat Republican incumbents and redneck Democrats. by CNB