CHARLOTTE — Visitors to Charlotte often travel from the airport to the city center via the Billy Graham Parkway. It can startle the first time, seeing a public roadway named for a major religious figure. But you get used to it once you’ve lived here awhile. You realize how much the region takes pride in its native son, though the life and history of the man called “America’s Pastor” illustrates — in even his own judgment – how tough it can be to maintain a separation of church and state. Should America have a pastor at all?
The end of domestic violence awareness month, but not the problem
CHARLOTTE – The confident, composed and extremely successful businesswoman sitting beside me at the “Women Helping Women” lunch was also the face and voice in the video, the one talking about how to move on and grow stronger after experiencing domestic violence at the hands of a partner who professes love.
The event called attention to activities planned for October, domestic violence awareness month. While the month may be drawing to an end, the problem is far from solved. Earlier this year, when President Obama signed an updated version of the Violence Against Women Act, which backs local and state efforts, he acknowledged that the rate of sexual assaults has dropped and progress has been made. But he said there is still work to do.
Oct302013
GOP launches minority outreach in N.C., defends voter law in court
CHARLOTTE — Republicans were busy in North Carolina and Washington on Monday. Did the activity in the courts and on a conservative stage have the effect of muddying the welcome mat the GOP rolled out for minority voters in the state?
Earlier in the day, Republican state officials filed to urge a federal court to dismiss two lawsuits challenging changes in North Carolina’s voting laws, changes opponents contend disproportionately harm African American voters. A third challenge by the U.S. Department of Justice is waiting in the wings.
Monday evening in Charlotte, at the opening of the Republican National Committee’s African American engagement office in North Carolina, Earl Philip, North Carolina African American state director, said he believed in the message he has been taking to churches, schools and community groups.
Oct222013
North Carolina attorney general dislikes laws he must defend
Roy Cooper wants everyone to know how he really feels. That must be why he wrote a column lamenting why and how he thinks his home state of North Carolina is moving in the wrong direction – that, and perhaps he’s trying out for a gubernatorial run in 2016.
Oct172013
‘I behaved badly,’ says Rielle Hunter. Is it ever too late to apologize?
At least it wasn’t one of those “I’m sorry if I offended anyone” apologies. For her big mistakes, John Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter, offered an all-encompassing apology in a column on the Huffington Post Web site. She knows she offended and hurt a lot of people.
“Back in 2006, I did not think about the scope of my actions, how my falling in love with John Edwards, and acting on that love, could hurt so many people,” she wrote. “I hurt Elizabeth and her kids. I hurt her family. I hurt John’s family. I hurt people that knew Elizabeth. I hurt people who didn’t know Elizabeth but loved her from afar.” The “Elizabeth” was, of course, Elizabeth Edwards, who was married to John Edwards at the time of the affair and who died of cancer in 2010.
Oct152013
In N.C. skirmish in national voting-rights wars, student once thrown off ballot wins race
Being thrown off the ballot was the best thing that ever happened to Montravias King. The national coverage that rained down on the Elizabeth City State University student when a local elections board in North Carolina rejected his initial City Council bid surely helped him break out from the field of candidates. He got the chance to plead his case, and his views, before millions, reaching many more people than a meager campaign budget could ever allow. This week, according to preliminary results, the university senior was the top vote-getter and will get to represent the ward where his school is located.
Was turnout affected by the actions of the board in an increasingly partisan state atmosphere where restrictive voting laws have drawn legal action from many groups, including the U.S. Justice Department? King, who never stopped thinking local, didn’t take any chances, knocking on 365 doors for votes, he said in the News & Record. He said that in addition to his fellow students, he had gotten a “great and amazing” reception from older voters. That he had also discussed the issue of voter suppression with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who went to North Carolina for the story, was an unexpected extra.
Oct102013
Ruth Benerito’s important legacy: Better laundry through chemistry
As Nobel Prizes are handed out this week in the sciences, it’s fitting to take note of a woman whose accomplishments in the field of chemistry – as complex as any – made life easier for so many and liberated homemakers from the ironing board.
Dr. Ruth Benerito died Saturday at 97 in her Louisiana home. Though few would recognize the name of the woman inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2008, most are familiar with her work. “A chemist long affiliated with the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Benerito helped perfect modern wrinkle-free cotton, colloquially known as permanent press, in work that she and her colleagues began in the late 1950s,” is how her obituary in the New York Times explained it. The achievement “is considered one of the most significant technological developments of the 20th century.”
Oct082013
Familiar lines drawn as Justice sues N.C. over voting law
You really could see this one coming. When Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday announced that the Justice Department would sue North Carolina over a controversial new voting law Holder says discriminates on the basis of race, no one was surprised. Those on both sides were ready – some cheering and others defensive — as North Carolina continues to be a puzzle for those who tagged it as that moderate Southern state that voted for Barack Obama in 2008. It’s now making headlines for conservative legislation and the resulting vehement pushback from groups inside – and now outside – its borders.
Oct012013
Is fear of a black man justified?
The story was about one particular case — a sad one, to be sure – but one that involved individuals, each with a name and story. When Jonathan Ferrell was killed in Charlotte, N.C., nearly two weeks ago, it shattered his family –which is now planning his Saturday funeral in Tallahassee, Fla.– and forever affected the life of the police officer accused of voluntary manslaughter in his death, no matter the verdict in his trial.
Many in a community that prides itself on getting along are asking questions and demanding changes – including a strengthened Citizens Review Board – to prevent a repeat of what happened.
Yet for many who commented on my story and NPR appearance that laid out the facts as they are now known, the case is already closed. For them, the woman who responded to Ferrell’s post-car accident knock on her door for help in the middle of the night with a frantic 911 call about a robber was making the only logical assumption. And Officer Randall Kerrick’s decision to fire 12 times at Ferrell, who police say was coming toward him, was more than justified. No more fact-finding is necessary, according to the critics of the charges filed against the officer.
The people that should be made to answer for the death of the unarmed Ferrell are black men – all of them, they told me.
Sep262013
