CHARLOTTE – North Carolina has never had a problem bragging about its progressive history. In 1960, when George Wallace was formulating the hard-line segregationist stand that would propel him to multiple terms in the Alabama statehouse, North Carolina was electing as its governor Terry Sanford, who was an advocate of education, an opponent of capital punishment and took moderate but definite steps toward integration – at the time a risk in the South.
In the early 1970′s, Mecklenburg County liked to contrast pictures of the relative calm that greeted its busing of students to achieve school integration with the violence and vandalism up North in Boston’s busing battles. And 50 years ago, in May 1963, a year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public accommodations, Charlotte leaders — black and white — paired up for two-by-two integration of restaurants, called “eat-ins,” a name that played off the “sit-ins” of three years before at a Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth’s counter.
This week, marchers retraced the steps of Charlotte’s marchers. But 2013 events in the capital city of Raleigh aren’t mirroring such togetherness. For the last month, marchers have been using the old tactics, and not for nostalgia’s sake. In what they have labeled “Moral Monday” demonstrations, crowds have gathered inside the North Carolina Legislative Building to protest, resulting in an increasing number of arrests by the General Assembly police.
