TCB May 23, 2019 — Wake while black

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point May 23-29, 2019 triad-city-beat.com

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The racial divide at North Carolina’s elite universities

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May 23-29 ,2019

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Rachel and Ani

Rachel couldn’t even.

She fidgeted in her seat. She swiveled her head. She fanned herself with her hands. She

by Brian Clarey selfied.

Rachel had missed the window to get a ticket for Ani DiFranco’s reading and conversation with Rhiannon Giddens at this year’s Greensboro Bound festival. And now here she sat, in the center of the front row, preparing to bask in a glow that had lit her way since she was a girl — before the first marriage and the kids and the second engagement and even the third.

Rachel pointed to the tattoo on her right calf: a blurred visage of the Righteous Babe Records logo. It was her first.

“She’s more than a role model,” Rachel said. “She’s like my spirit guide.”

Ani was brave: She left Buffalo at 16 and made for New York City in 1987, back when the city was a more hostile place. She was uncompromising, creating Righteous Babe Records when she was 19 years old instead of allowing a record label to corrupt her work. She was a visionary, weaving her ethos into the DIY movement before the tools of recording and distribution became democratized. She

was beautiful and strong, and everything else Rachel tries to be.

Rachel had seen Ani DiFranco in the flesh before, of course, plenty of times.

But it was never anything like this: a conversation about her life, her work, her family. This wasn’t a performance. This would be like hanging out with her.

It felt like a lot of pressure.

“You don’t understand,” Rachel said.

“I’ve been a fan for 20 years. Ani got me through everything.”

Rachel gasped when Ani came out, sat rapturously as Ani read from her book, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, absorbed every word that came from Ani’s mouth in the same way a plant absorbs sunshine.

And when Rhiannon ended the conversation and kicked it over to questions from the audience, Rachel got over herself and scrambled for one of the microphones at the feet of the aisles in front of the stage.

The question wasn’t important — she barely remembered it afterwards. What mattered was that she asked it, that Ani answered it thoughtfully, that Ani looked right at her as she did.

Rachel returned eye contact as long as she could. But it was like looking at the sun.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

What they did with the highway was they displaced all those black-owned businesses and did not offer any funds for relocation.

—elder gentleman Pg. 16

BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

EDITORIAL INTERN Cason Ragland ART ART DIRECTOR Robert Paquette

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ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sayaka Matsuoka SPECIAL SECTION EDITOR Nikki Miller-Ka niksnacksblog@gmail.com

STAFF WRITER Lauren Barber lauren@triad-city-beat.com

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1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 Wake Forest University 2019 STAFF WRITER Savi Ettinger commencement exercises. [Photo savi@triad-city-beat.com

by Jerry Cooper]

KEY ACCOUNTS Gayla Price CONTRIBUTORS

Carolyn de Berry, Matt Jones

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May 23-29 ,2019

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May 23-29 ,2019

CITY LIFE May 23-26, 2019

by Cason Ragland

Mental Health Seminar: User Friendly Service @ Footnotes Café and Cocktails (W-S), 9 a.m.

The Winston-Salem Urban League, in partnership with the Mental Health Association in Forsyth County, will host a seminar today on mental health in the Twin City. Humanservices workers will train attendees on the subject of servicing low-income communities. If you’d like to know more, check out the details of the event’s Facebook page.

Lunafest Film Festival @ Community Theatre of Greensboro (GSO), 7 p.m.

For the past 10 years, Hirsch Wellness Net-

FRIDAY May 24

Opening night for Carrie: The Musical @ ARTC Theatre (W-S), 7:30 p.m.

This unlikely performance brings together

the chilling thrills of Stephen King’s Carrie with the spectacle of musical theatre. What more could one ask for? Discover the story of Carrie and how she used her latent, supernatural powers to punish those who’ve wronged her. You can find out more details and showtimes on the event’s Facebook page.

Gears and Guitars 2019 @ Bailey Park (W-S), 4 p.m.

In conjunction with the Winston-Salem

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THURSDAY May 23

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work has hosted the Lunafest Film Festival in Greensboro. The films that will screen are by women, for women and about women.

There will also be live, musical entertainment before the screening begin. Take a look at CTG’s website for more information.

Cycling Classic, Gears and Guitars returns to Winston-Salem for three nights. Tonight’s headliner is the Infamous Stringdusters, followed by Drivy-By Truckers on Saturday, and Stone Temple Pilots on Sunday, as well as supporting acts. Tickets for Gears and Guitars 2019 can be purchased through Etix.

A call to artists deadline @ Distractions:

May 23-29 ,2019

An Art Entertainment Studio (HP), 12 p.m.

Artists from around the Triad are invited to submit up to five pieces of their work to Distractions for an upcom-

ter (HP), 11 a.m.

North Carolina is home to many unique species of flora and you can find out more about them this Sunday at Up Front

tion Quarter (W-S), 9 a.m.

The only thing more fun than riding a bike is watching someone else ride a bike very, very quickly. The competition is heating up this weekend in Winston-Salem for their

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seventh annual Cycling Classic. While you’re not watching the race, you can enjoy live music and kids can take part in events just for them. Discover more info on Facebook.

Got to be NC @ Greensboro Farmers Curb Market (GSO), 10 a.m.

Join Chris Scalici, a chef located in Greensboro, for some pork barbecue sliders this weekend at the Greensboro

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ing summer exhibit. There’s no submission fee and all the pieces you present must be ready to hang and for sale.

Email some high resolution jpegs of your work to info@distractionsartstudio.com and put “Art Exhibit” in the subject line by 5 p.m. tomorrow. ’90s Dance Party with DJ Süp @ Common Grounds (GSO), 9 p.m.

The fall of the Soviet Union, the death of Tupac and Biggie, the “Seinfeld” finale — all of these events shaped

Culture

SATURDAY May 25

SUNDAY May 26

Winston-Salem Cycling Classic @ Wake Forest Innova-

Native Plant Talk @ Soviero’s Tri-County Garden Cen-

Live Jazz Jam Sessions @ the Historic Magnolia House (GSO), 6 p.m.

Wind down the weekend with a dinner and an evening of jazz at the Historic Magnolia House. Lacy Haith, a jazz trumpet player, will host the event. This event is kid-friendly. For more on the subject, take a look at the Historic Magnolia’s website.

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the course of history and they all happened in the 1990s.

If you’re feeling somewhat nostalgic for the days when N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys dominated the airwaves, you might want to check out this dance party at Common Grounds. Find out more via Facebook.

Consent to Self-Love: A Radical, Interactive Workshop @ Off the Beaten Path (W-S) 12 p.m.

This free workshop is open to the public and invites anyone who feels as though they need some help with selfesteem. The Coalition of Consent developed interactive workshops that uses interpersonal consent dynamics to educate others on the idea of radical self-love. If you’d like to know more, check out the workshop’s Facebook page.

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Farmers Curb Market. While you’re there, you can learn more about how to support local farmers and agricultural workers. You can find out way more by checking out the details on the event’s Facebook page.

Soviero’s Tri-County Garden Center. The hosts will discuss why it’s important to add these native plants to your own landscapes and examples of these plants will be for sale. If you’re intrigued, take a look at the Facebook page for the event.

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May 23-29 ,2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

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Sheriff Rogers and the immigrant community

by Sayaka Matsuoka On Monday, several immigrant-rights groups met with Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers but some say they’re still unsatisfied with his stance on policies that cooperate with immigration and customs enforcement officials.

Laura Garduño Garcia with Siembra NC said that leaders from different community organizations were invited by Rogers last week to engage in conversation. Garcia says they were never told why.

“He didn’t say what it was,” Garcia said. “But we assumed it was because of immigration.”

The group has been trying to schedule a meeting with Rogers for weeks, since he took office after being elected in 2018. Garcia said this long-awaited meeting, however, was a disappointment.

“Sheriff Danny Rogers took about 30 minutes of the time to say all the things that were on his mind about how he wasn’t able to meet with folks, or had made efforts to meet with folks,” Garcia said. “Or how this has been politically motivated.”

Garcia also said that Rogers didn’t give the groups, which included members of the League of Women Voters and the Latino Community Coalition, time to introduce themselves and when it came time for them to talk, he only allowed them to ask two questions each.

Addy Jeffrey, who attended the meeting on behalf of both organizations, said she couldn’t comment for the piece because the meeting had been a closed session.

“We want to honor that,” she said. “We do feel like it’s important to continue conversations with the sheriff’s department.”

Garcia said that the main questions Siembra had for Rogers pertained to his recent support of the NC Sheriff’s Association’s amendments to HB 370, which would require local sheriffs’ offices around the state to cooperate more extensively with immigrations and customs enforcement officials.

In April, the office said that they did not support “HB 370 or any measures being used to circumvent the local authority of the sheriffs in requiring cooperation with ICE.” However, a recently proposed amendment to the original bill by the NC Sheriff’s Association changed Rogers’ mind.

According to Max Benbassat, the sheriff’s office’s public information officer, Rogers supports the decision of the sheriffs association.

While the bill no longer includes penalties for sheriffs who don’t cooperate with ICE, it still requires employees at county jails to take ICE detainers to state judicial officials who can then issue magistrate’s orders to hold people in custody until they are picked up by ICE if they are in the country illegally.

In a press release posted on Tuesday, the sheriff’s office recapped the meeting with immigrant-rights activists saying that he has “met with several groups regarding immigration both formally and informally.”

Members of Siembra NC recap the meeting on Facebook Live on Monday.

SCREEN SHOT

The press release goes on to say that the “Guilford County Sheriff’s Office opposes HB 370 as presently drafted by the General Assembly.” Benbassat also said that Rogers is working with the office’s attorney to “improve the bill.”

On Tuesday, he emphasized Rogers’ openness with working with the immigrant community.

He noted the recent collaboration with Faith Action International and the upcoming implementation of the group’s identification cards which can be used in lieu of driver’s licenses and other forms of identification to visit the local jail as well as for reentry into society.

“It’s in the best interest of police and the immigrant community,” Benbassat said.

He also said that Rogers wants to continue cultivating relationships with immigrant groups to build trust.

“People shouldn’t be afraid to call 911 for help,” Benbassat said. “But he’s not going to be intimidated by different groups on how he enforces the law.”

But Garcia says that she’s still not satisfied with Rogers’ response to their organization.

“It’s clear that the sheriff isn’t interested in having a dialogue with members in our community to listen, to understand, to ask questions,” she said. “To take meaningful steps to be welcoming to every person in our community. It just doesn’t seem to be true with his actions.”

May 23-29 ,2019

Free the Julian Price House!

by Brian Clarey

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backyard. Even a straight-up bed and breakfast would be a fine use of the property. It’s either that or bust it up into apartments, which would also likely drive the neighbors crazy.

This week, the Greensboro Zoning Commission decided to deny the Fuko-Rizzo’s application for a special-use permit, which would have allowed them to operate the place as a bed and breakfast or event site. According to reporting in the Rhino, about 50 neighbors opposed to the permit flooded the hearing and were able to sway the board’s 4-3 vote.

Now, we all know just how very special the Fisher Park neighborhood and its residents are. But it seems that while they very quickly assembled a commission to respond to the problems associated with the home, not a one of them stepped up with a feasible plan to save this architectural gem from demolition. It looks from here like the Fuko-Rizzos took on considerable risk in saving this house and are being denied the potential rewards by a few residents who feel that their neighborhood should be immune from change.

But without turning the home into a stream of revenue, the Julian Price House can’t even exist. There’s more than 7,000 square feet inside those walls. Preventing its use is just another form of hoarding.

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If one needs evidence of the outsized influence the Fisher Park neighborhood has on Greensboro, look no further than the saga of the Julian Price House.

Until just a few years ago, before it was featured on an episode of “Hoarders,” the Price House was an oft-whisperedabout-but-never-directly-addressed eyesore, hidden behind unkempt landscapery and infested with a Dickensian gloom associated with mental illness and prosperity in decline. Anyone who saw the hoard unearthed on national TV would not have been surprised to see a rotting wedding cake hauled out of there.

You know the story: After the home was foreclosed, Michael and Eric Fuko-Rizzo stepped up, buying the most architecturally and historically significant home in the city, right up there with Blandwood. They cleared it out, fixed it up, laid on a fresh coat of paint. More than that, they restored Fisher Park’s dirty little secret into a point of pride once again.

But after the redesign, after the showcase, what then is a small family to so with a four-story, 31-room home designed for a turnof-the-century industrialist?

Why, rent it out of course: for weddings, for Furniture Market, for AirBnB tourists, for shows in the backyard and banquets in the dining room, readings in the parlor and cocktails in the

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May 23-29 ,2019

Black at...

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by Jordan Green

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In 1836, two years after the founding of what would become Wake Forest University, the estate of John Blount, a planter in Edenton, was donated to the budding institution. The estate included land and enslaved black people, and the proceeds were intended to support “poor and indigent young men destined for the ministry.”

After the death of Blount’s widow, 14 enslaved human beings were auctioned on May 7, 1860, yielding a sum of $10,718 for Wake Forest’s benefit. The details of the transaction are plainly displayed on a website maintained by the Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections.

For the first 128 years of its history, a university whose endowment was literally financed by profits from black bodies and black labor excluded black people from studying in its classrooms.

When Wake Forest finally admitted its first black student in 1962, it was notably a Ghanaian named Ed Reynolds, not an African American descended from enslaved persons. Next fall, the university will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the entry of the first two black female residential students, Muriel Elizabeth Norbrey (now Beth Hopkins) and Janet Graves.

Wake Forest’s troubled history with white supremacy came crashing into the open this past February with the revelation that the university’s dean of admissions and an assistant dean of admissions posed with the Confederate flag as students in the 1980s.

During one of two public apologies, Dean of Admissions Martha Allman explained that she simply didn’t think that much about the Confederate flag and what it signified in 1982 — her senior year at Wake, when she posed for a group photo as the “sweetheart” of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity, and was also engaged to marry one of its members.

“I was not politically active,” Allman

said during a gathering of administrators and faculty in a small auditorium at Z. Smith Reynolds Library in April. “I was not engaged in discussions about diversity, nor involved in issues of social justice. In retrospect, I’m ashamed of that lack of awareness, but it’s true. I read applications and I meet new students, and I’m aware that there are a lot of students who become aware in their youth, and for others it just takes longer.”

Many black students at Wake Forest — who make up 9.4 percent of the student body — say there’s never a time on campus when they can avoid thinking about race.

“It seems like my blackness is something that other people need to figure out how to navigate in academic and social settings,” said Kate Pearson, a rising sophomore who came from New Jersey to study political science at Wake. “My blackness is something I have to wear on my sleeve, which is exhausting.”

‘A continuity of spirit’ Wake Forest is part of a troika of elite universities in North Carolina, alongside UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke, that play an outsized role in influencing the state’s politics, business, medicine and law.

The three universities have produced US presidents, senators, governors and judges. Wake Forest’s alumni include Sen. Richard Burr and the late Sen. Jesse Helms, along with former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. UNC-Chapel Hill produced Gov. Roy Cooper and former Gov. Jim Hunt, along with US Reps. David Price and Virginia Foxx. Duke claims President Nixon and Trump policy advisor Stephen Miller, along with journalist Judy Woodruff.

Beyond being part of the storied “Tobacco Road” basketball rivalry as members of the NCAA Atlantic Coast Conference, the three universities are renowned research institutions that feed hospital systems and influence cultural discourse through highly regarded fac-

ulty.

In particular, UNC Chapel Hill — mythologized as a “light on the hill” — holds a reputation as an engine of progress for the state.

Terry Sanford, a former governor, observed in a 1990 interview archived by the Southern Oral History Program that by 1900, most of the state’s leaders came out of UNC-Chapel Hill.

“And I think Chapel Hill had that concept of how to make the world better as a function of the university,” Sanford said. “Now, I could also tie in some efforts of other universities. There are two or three great people at Wake Forest. Certainly academic freedom in the country got its greatest boost from Trinity College, which is now Duke. But of all these forces, Chapel Hill had to be the principal force, because the most people who were taking up positions of leadership went to Chapel Hill. And I think to have social change, you almost need a continuity of spirit that comes from a university, not necessarily from one person at a university, but from the university. And I think Chapel Hill has played that role, sometimes played it badly but sometimes played it extremely well.”

For many black students, who went from only a handful at UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1950s to less than 10 percent of the student body today — still far below African Americans’ 21.5-percent share of the state population — enrollment at these still predominantly white institutions represents access to resources at a steep psychological cost.

Growing up in North Carolina, Jerry J. Wilson watched his two eldest sisters attend predominantly white institutions in the UNC System and drop out. Another set of sisters, the third and fourth, attended historically black universities and graduated.

“When it was my turn, I got a strong nudge from my parents to consider a HBCU,” Wilson said. He chose Fayette-

ville State University, which offered him the best financial-aid package. Wilson is now a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Education.

“When I got here to Carolina, things were very different from Fayetteville State: programs, scholarships, study abroad and facilities,” Wilson said. “So much, so many more resources than I had access to at Fayetteville State. I remember being in awe, like, Wow. “That’s why I go back to this notion of democratic equality, what it means for the flagship institutions to have all these resources, yet have this disparity when it comes to enrollment by race,” he continued. “Because the reality is it’s not just what you know, it’s also who you know, and what type of resources you have access to. It is the case that students at other universities may be receiving a wonderful education, but how well they’re able to take advantage of their opportunities is outside of their control.

In terms of opportunities for research, we have Nobel laureates on the faculty at Chapel Hill. That means something for young people who are applying for other opportunities and are interested in a certain topic or need an introduction or a research apprenticeship.”

Aries Powell attended predominantly white K-12 schools in Delaware, but they weren’t prepared for the flavor and intensity of whiteness they found at Wake Forest.

“It’s pervasive, in-your face, violent whiteness,” said Powell, who graduated from Wake Forest on Monday and goes by they and them. “Wealthy, elite whiteness. I’m solidly middle class. I’d always gone to school with people making similar amounts of money…. I had a lab partner, and he was like, ‘I’m going to drop out.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ He said, ‘It’s no problem. My dad owns a potato chip company. I’ll just go work for him.’”

While Powell described Wake Forest as an “adversarial place to be” both academically and socially, they readily

May 23-29 ,2019 Up Front News Opinion

The story UNC-Chapel Hill tells about its relationship with diversity is a flattering one. A page on the university website headlined “Black Enrollment” notes that there were only 113 black students in 1968, adding that “after a major recruitment initiative, 138 professional and 946 undergraduate students were enrolled in 1978. The university has become a national leader in this area.”

Yet the data on record with the National Center for Educational Statistics indicates black enrollment at UNCChapel Hill plateaued in the late 1990s, and then actually began to drop after 2010. Kate Luck, a spokesperson for the university told Triad City Beat that changes in federal reporting guidelines account for a drop from 10.8 percent to 9.3 percent between 2009 and 2010. But even accounting for the new reporting guidelines, the percentage of black freshmen entering UNC-Chapel Hill in 2018 had dropped to 8.6 percent.

Similarly, NC State University — the

largest school in the UNC System, with a total enrollment of more than 33,000 — saw black enrollment top out at 10.4 percent in 2000 and fall to 7.2 percent by 2017.

Increasing diversity has been a longstanding commitment at UNC-Chapel Hill, along with other elite, predominantly white institutions. At UNCChapel Hill, the Chancellor’s Minority Affairs Review Committee declared in 2000 that diversity is “a fundamental prerequisite to both educational excellence and the university’s ability to serve all the people of the state.” A diversity plan released by the university reaffirmed its commitment in 2014.

Likewise, at Wake Forest, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion José Villalba told TCB that “the drive is still on” to improve diversity.

In the late ’70s, as public institutions like UNC-Chapel Hill were making significant strides in increasing black enrollment, Wake Forest found itself under

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Commitment to diversity?

Regardless of its status as a public university, UNC-Chapel Hill’s history of race tracks closely with that of Wake Forest. Like its counterpart at Wake Forest, UNC Libraries has presented clear evidence of slavery’s role in establishing the university. In UNC-Chapel Hill’s case, slaves literally built the facilities, as evidenced by Census records showing that contractors and subcontractors for the antebellum buildings owned slaves.

The first public university in the United States, UNC-Chapel Hill

excluded blacks for the first 162 years of its existence. Pauli Murray, a mixedrace black woman whose slaveholding ancestors donated land to the university, chronicled in her classic memoir Proud Shoes about how she was denied admittance to UNC in 1938. She would go on to become the first African-American woman to become ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church.

When UNC-Chapel Hill finally did integrate, it would only be under pressure and haltingly. The university was forced by federal court order to admit five black students under the “separatebut-equal” doctrine in 1951 because the state did not fund equivalent medical and law programs at black institutions.

Then, in 1955, UNC-Chapel Hill admitted three black students, all graduates of Durham’s Hillside High School, to its undergraduate program to comply with Brown v. Board of Education. Five years later, in 1960, there were still only four black freshmen.

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acknowledged several advantages: They received a full-ride scholarship, ducking what would otherwise be at least $200,000 of debt. The university paid for two study-abroad experiences, sending them to Cuba in their first year and Ghana in their third. And undergraduates with the requisite GPA or LSAT scores are automatically admitted into Wake Law.

JERRY COOPER

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Less than one in 10 students at Wake Forest University is African-American, while African Americans make up 21.5 percent of the population of North Carolina.

Pictured: Graduates prepare for commencement on Monday.

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May 23-29 ,2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

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pressure to become more diverse. Herman Eure, who had been among the first two tenure-track black faculty members hired by Wake Forest, created the Office of Minority Affairs — the forerunner of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion — in 1978. The purpose of the office, according to a page on the university website was “to foster [the] success of [a] small number of black students.”

Martha Allman was a freshman that year. After graduating in 1982, Allman went to work as an admissions counselor at her alma mater. Through an AfricanAmerican colleague, she came to know Eure.

“I still treasure Dr. Eure’s friendship and have trusted his wisdom for almost 40 years,” Allman said in April. “Even in 1982, the admissions office was charged with increasing diversity on campus, and steadily I became more and more convinced of the critical importance of that work.”

As undergraduate admissions director — a position she assumed in 2001 — Allman led the charge to institute test-optional admissions at the university in 2008 to reduce barriers to black and brown students, making Wake Forest the first Top 30 university, based on rankings published by US News & World Report, to do so. Under Allman’s leadership, the share of students of color in undergraduate programs has risen from 14.8 percent in 2007 to 22.9 percent in 2017.

During her second public apology, Allman boasted that “Wake Forest’s non-white student population has now grown to over 30 percent.” Katie Neal, a spokesperson for the university, said Allman’s figure takes into account international students, including a sizable cohort of students from China.

The share of African-American undergraduate students has barely budged, from 6.8 percent in 1990 to 7.5 percent in 2017, according to data on file with the National Center for Education Statistics. Higher numbers of students of color in graduate programs pushes African-American representation across all levels up to 9.4 percent — a figure that’s still well below African Americans’ 21.5-percent share of the state population, and 34.7-percent share of the population of Winston-Salem.

Nate French, who heads the Magnolia Scholars program to support first-generation students and formerly worked in the admissions office to recruit students from across North Carolina, said the reason African Americans remain underrepresented at Wake Forest is fairly straightforward.

“It’s a poor K-12 preparation program,” he said.

“We can’t recruit students if they’re not prepared to come out of high school.

I think the report last year in Winston-Salem is that only 27 percent of AfricanAmericans hit third-grade proficiency. That number’s not going to go up exponentially by the time they get to 12th grade.”

High-achieving students of color — or, for that matter, low-income or rural students — are highly soughtafter by recruiters seeking to improve their diversity marks.

“I think all the schools — and I’ve been out on the road recruiting for Wake — you’re trying to beat the bushes to find students,” French said. “But if you find one or two or three — and this is red or yellow, black or white — if you find the kid that can get into Wake, they can get into Carolina, they can get into State. Everybody’s going for that student, so there’s a lot of competition there. It’s tough.”

Kate Luck, the UNCChapel Hill spokesperson said in an email that the university’s 8.6 percent share of African-American first-year students places it ahead of every other top 25 national public university in the US News & World Report’s ranking. Yet looking at all students, UNC-Chapel Hill (8.5 percent) ranks behind University of Maryland (13.5 percent), Rutgers University (9.1 percent) and University of Georgia (9.0 Wake Forest University admitted its first black student, a native of Ghana, in 1962. This fall, Wake will commem percent) for African-Amerithe university. can representation. make the enrollment of the university at Austin.

“Like many universities, look more like the state.” the work toward a more diverse student Even UNC-Chapel Hill’s modest ‘The thing that’s so hard is the body is ongoing,” she said. diversity is under assault. A group called consistency’ Jerry J. Wilson, the doctoral student in Students for Fair Admissions sued the The emotional labor of being black at education at UNC-Chapel Hill, worked university in 2014, claiming that the a predominantly white institution plays in the office of undergraduate admisUNC’s consideration of the race of out in multiple ways. sions for his first couple years as a graduunder-represented groups “equates to a Aries Powell cited as an example a ate student. penalty imposed upon white and Asianhistoric simulation set in the Greenwich “I don’t remember anyone while I was American applicants.” The group has Village section of New York City in there in admissions talking about trying filed similar lawsuits against Harvard the 1910s and ’20s that took place in to get rid of the under-representation,” University and the University of Texas her first year. The scenario centered on Wilson recalled. “Nobody was trying to

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to a vote.”

Beyond persistent everyday racism of the sort that Powell has experienced, overt and outrageous acts of racism are legion at Wake Forest. Those that have been reported in the news media in the past five years include a bucket of urine being placed outside the black Muslim chaplain’s office, an invitation to a white fraternity party where guests were encouraged to dress like performers in a rap video, white students running

‘This campus does not… care about black students’ In February, members of the Wake Forest University Anti-Racism Coalition took over a forum hosted by Villalba entitled “Creating Inclusive Climates at Wake Forest University, Past, Present and Future,” while calling attention to Martha Allman’s past association with the Confederate flag. But their concerns and demands went much further than the status of the dean of admissions or the Confederacy. They demanded a dedicated space for the Black Student Alliance, a “zero-tolerance policy” against acts of white supremacy, transparency in the campus bias reporting process, additional black counselors to support black students and the removal of monuments and building names that commemorate Confederates and eugenicists.

In addition to the two apologies by Allman, which received a lukewarm reception from students and faculty, administration responded by immediately dedicating the lounge at Kitchin Hall to the Black Student Alliance.

“We had to literally shut shit down to get that,” Powell said. “We had to make administration afraid of us…. This campus does not cater to or care about black students.”

Meanwhile, the university has pledged to review its bias incident reporting system — the university’s process for adjudicating racist acts — and President Nathan O. Hatch announced the launch of a President’s Commission on Race, Equity and Community, which will con-

Up Front

labor and class oppression, but the white students repurposed it into a discourse on race. Powell, the only black student in the class, was the first to use the word “Negro,” wanting to be historically accurate, but they came to regret it. Their classmates seemed to relish tossing the word around at every opportunity.

“The white students ran wild with it,” Powell recalled. “I said, ‘Can we stop?

This is a little much.’ The professor made me plead my case, and then put it

JERRY COOPER

universities have programs to support first-generation students: Wake Forest has the Magnolia Scholars, UNC-Chapel Hill has Carolina Firsts, and Duke has Duke LIFE. Both Wake Forest’s Villalba and Gary Bennett, the vice provost for education at Duke, mentioned faculty-student relationships in response to inquiries about what their respective institutions are doing to support students of color.

Asked how they are responding to racism by white students, Villalba cited a “Living in Community” workshop, including discussions about “multicultural competence” and “micro-aggressions,” that every first-year student is required to attend at the culmination of orientation week.

In a statement to TCB, Bennett said, “We and our peers are constantly working to cultivate a climate in which free expression is encouraged, and one that is characterized by mutual respect, appreciation for difference, and inclusivity.”

May 23-29 ,2019

morate the 50th anniversary of the first black women resident students entering

around campus yelling “n***er” on the night of Trump’s election, a white student calling her black resident advisor a “n***er,” and an Instagram post from a student calling for a wall to separate Wake Forest from Winston-Salem State University, an HBCU in the city.

“Everyone in your classes could be incredibly racist,” Powell said. “Your roommate could be incredibly racist.

The thing that’s so hard is the consistency.”

For Jerry J. Wilson, being one of the few black graduate students at UNCChapel Hill means often feeling that his academic interests are devalued.

“For us in the school of education — for me and the other students of color — it’s trying to find scholarship with which we identify,” he said. “A lot of us prefer more critical work, work that challenges dominant narratives, work that aims to transform oppressive systems. There are few faculty in the school of education that take that approach.”

As an example of the skew created by under-representation of black students and faculty, Wilson cited a conference on school safety in which a police officer expressed the opinion that the school-toprison pipeline was “fake news.”

“This is an education research conference put on by a school of education at a university,” Wilson said. “For that comment to go largely unchallenged when there is an abundance of research that shows the opposite — that the school-toprison pipeline is a real thing, and black and brown kids are overly disciplined in ways that expose them to the criminal justice system; the evidence is clear — if we had more faculty of color, if we had more scholars who were working on research with a critical focus, not to say that these sorts of things wouldn’t happen, but there would be more people to push back and say, ‘That’s not what the research shows.’”

The support systems for students of color at predominantly white institutions are remarkably similar.

All three universities have various cultural centers that provide respite and social opportunities for under-represented students — the Women’s Center, the LGBTQ Center, the Latinx Center and the Sonja Haynes Stone Cultural Center for Black Culture & History at UNCChapel Hill; the Women’s Center, the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity and the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture at Duke; the Women’s Center, the LGBTQ Center and the Intercultural Center at Wake Forest.

And as Nate French noted, all three

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May 23-29 ,2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

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vene in September.

“I believe we need to be authentic and honest about our past, including our relationship to slavery and segregation,” Hatch said in a public email on May 13.

“Facing these realities, however sobering, is essential if we are to build a genuinely pluralistic community moving forward.”

The Rev. Willard Bass, who graduated with the second class in the School of Divinity in 2003, credited the antiracist students with holding administration accountable.

“I’ve been really impressed with their courage and forthrightness around the issue of race and racism,” said Bass, who is the executive director of the Institute for Dismantling Racism in WinstonSalem. “I’m impressed with their ability to articulate issues, and their ability to identify the history of the university and call out the administration’s lack of response. If you don’t address things that happened in the past, how can you expect anything to change?”

While black students, faculty and alumni are broadly in agreement about the need to confront overt and institutional racism, increasing diversity at Wake Forest is not the first priority of the current crop of student activists.

“The stat is depressing and disgusting, but the fewer students of color, the better, as a matter of harm reduction,” Powell said.

While Powell said they are ultimately optimistic about Wake Forest’s future, they don’t believe that it’s fair to ask black students to come to a university where they will carry the burden of changing it for the better.

“This campus has the potential to be a great place for black students,” they

said. “It will be. We are at the beginning of a long path. We are a long way from black students being safe and okay here.

I don’t want to tell black students to be here to enlist them in my war. I understood that I was taking on this work when I came here.”

Meanwhile, at UNC-Chapel Hill, black students and faculty are pushing forward in the midst of uncertainty over the future of Silent Sam, with the UNC Board of Governors’ recent announcement that a decision over the fate of the Confederate monument will be delayed indefinitely.

“We spent half a million dollars protecting a Confederate monument,” said William Sturkey, an assistant professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill. “We do not have a historian of slavery at Carolina.

One of the messages that conveys is that several hundred people who volunteered to fight for North Carolina when it left the United States are more important than the thousands of people who were slaves who were connected to the university, hereby privileging one race over another. That’s a choice we make in 2019.”

UNC-Chapel Hill is completely different from Wake Forest and Duke in one respect when it comes to addressing its history of white supremacy: “The university of the people” is hostage to the reactionary politics of state government.

“We claim to be a global leader; there’s no reason for any institute in the world to look at UNC as a model for how to deal with the troubling history of race,” Sturkey said.

“When the Silent Sam controversy happened, there were so many of us that were asked to speak all over the

state and nation,” he continued. “The one place where our expertise has not been marshalled at all, it’s on our very own campus. They just formed this new commission to figure out what should be done with Silent Sam. We have one of the leading experts on Confederate history [Fitzhugh Brundage], and we choose not to use him. That would be the equivalent of forming a basketball team, and not choosing Roy Williams as the coach.”

Black students at both UNC-Chapel Hill and Wake said that their respective universities are supposed to be home, but often don’t feel like it.

Jerry Wilson, the doctoral student in education, recalled a 2015 town hall at UNC-Chapel Hill on race and inclusion at which Chancellor Carol Folt, who left to become the president of the University of Southern California earlier this year, said when she invited a guest to her house she wanted “to make them feel perfectly welcome.” Wilson wondered whether she was implying that students of color were guests on campus.

“One of the questions that has come to mind is this notion of Southern hospitality, and how that’s something that is a point of pride for Southerners to be so welcoming of guests,” Wilson said. “What does it mean to be seen as a guest, especially in your own home?”

Disclosure: The author of this article was employed by Wake Forest University in the fall of 2017 to lead an independent study.

Top universities ranked by AfricanAmerican representation Name, location, (rank by US News & World Report), % Af-Am, % students of color, (rank by % students of color) 1. Emory University, Atlanta (21) — 12.3%, 43.3% (15) 2. Vanderbilt University, Nashville (14) — 10.1%, 35.9% (25) 3. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (10) — 10.0%, 43.8% (16) 4. Duke University, Durham (8) — 9.5%, 40.3% (22) 5. Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem (27) — 9.4%, 24.5% (32) 6. Georgetown University, Washington DC (22) — 9.4%, 33.7% (26) 7. Washington University, St. Louis (19) — 9.2%, 38.0% (24) 8. Columbia University, New York (3) — 8.7%, 46.9% (12) 9. UNC-Chapel Hill (30) —

8.5%, 33.2% (28) 10. New York University (30) — 8.4%, 52.4% (8) 11. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (1) — 8.2%, 45.3% (13) 12. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (8) — 8.1%, 43.1% (18) 13. University of Southern California, Los Angeles (22) — 7.9%, 56.0% (4) 14. Brown University, Providence, RI (14) — 7.8%, 45.2% (14) 15. University of Virginia, Charlottesville (25) — 7.3%, 32.1% (29) 16. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (16) — 7.2%, 48.6% (11) 17. Yale University, New Haven, Ct. (3) — 7.2%, 43.6% (17) 18. Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (2) — 7.2%, 42.2% (20) 19. Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. (10) — 7.0%, 39.7% (23) 20. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (12) — 6.8%, 40.8% (21) 21. Rice University, Houston (16) — 6.7%, 51.4% (9) 22. University of Chicago (3) — 6.2%, 42.6% (19) 23. Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. (7) — 5.6%, 52.8% (7) 24. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (25) — 5.6%, 54.1% (5) 25. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (27) — 5.2%, 31.9% (30) 26. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

(3) — 5.1%, 51.3% (10) 27. Tufts University, Medford, Mass. (27) — 5.0%, 33.5% (27) 28. UC-Los Angeles (19) — 4.1%, 64.8% (1) 29. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Ind. (18) — 4.1%, 25.2% (31) 30. UC-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Calif. (30) — 2.6%, 60.7% (3) 31. UC-Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.

(22) — 2.5%, 63.7% (2) 32. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena (12) — 1.3%, 53.8% (6) Source: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, National Center for Education Statistics

May 23-29 ,2019 Up Front

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May 23-29 ,2019

OPINION

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EDITORIAL

Aborted Last week, an orchestrated effort by the vast, right-

wing conspiracy culminated in draconian abortion bills in Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and Ohio. Abortion bills passed in Utah, Kentucky, Arkansas and Mississippi earlier this year. And there are anti-abortion bills in the works for Florida, West Virginia, Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota, New Jersey, Nebraska and, naturally, North Carolina, which will always find itself on lists like these.

The substances of these individual bills differ — Alabama’s is perhaps the most primitive in concept, making the procedure illegal even in cases of rape or incest, and felonizing even doctors who perform them.

North Carolina’s bill, known in shorthand as the Born Alive Bill, is a trifle less harsh when it comes to women’s rights, a tad more scientific when it comes to defining “alive” and slightly less restricting when it comes to doctors’ decisions about their patients. But it is not a good bill.

It was vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper in The point is to get in April after passing the House and Sen- front of the Supreme ate, and it would Court to challenge take three-fifths Roe v Wade, which is of each chamber to overturn the seen as vulnerable veto. A vote had since Brett been scheduled for Wednesday in Kavanaugh oozed the state House, his way onto the where there are not enough Republibench last year. cans to overturn the veto, but it was withdrawn before a vote was taken.

The point here, obviously, is to get in front of the Supreme Court to challenge Roe v. Wade, which is seen as vulnerable since Brett Kavanaugh oozed his way onto the bench last year.

And like most efforts of the vast, right-wing conspiracy, it seeks to marginalize the majority. Women outnumber men in this country by about 6.5 million.

And it’s estimated by Focus on Family — a pro-life group — that 25 percent of American women will have the procedure by the time they reach 45 years of age.

The latest from Pew Research posits that the scales of public opinion are tilted towards pro-choice by almost 20 points, 58-37. And if you believe Freakonomics, a combination of legalized, safe abortions and easy access to birth-control led to a major reduction in crime rates in the years since Roe v. Wade.

For now, North Carolina seems safe from the reactionaries and religious tyrants. For now. But the dominoes are just beginning to fall.

CITIZEN GREEN

Who’s afraid of black history?

They asked to get on the agenproponents also cite a benefit to the majority population, da of the Curriculum Committee writing, “White students who do not receive a multicultural of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth education that truly reflects the history and experiences of County School Board on Tuesday, their non-white peers will be less prepared to live and work and Chair Barbara Hanes Burke, a in a 21st Century American society, and will be less successnewly elected representative from ful as a result.” the east side of Winston-Salem, Burke read a statement on behalf of the school board. obliged.

“As an update on the status, I’m announcing that we will

by Jordan Green While Al Jabbar spoke on behalf include the consideration of a required African-American of the community coalition seeking a mandatory, districtcourse as part of our new high-school course offerings wide African American Studies class during the Tuesday process,” Burke said. “New courses come to the curriculum committee meeting, members of Hate Out of Winston committee for consideration during the October meetstood silently in the back of the room with signs reading ing. At our September curriculum meeting we will review “Black History Now” and “We Will Be Heard.” background information about African-American history, Destiny Blackwell circled a cluster of tables where school models of current implementation and related issues.” board members were seated, handing out collated packets.

Kimya Dennis, an associate professor of sociology and “We have the research here to present it to you,” she criminal studies at Salem College, smelled a stall tactic. said. “If you won’t allow us to present it to you during the “That whole letter is typical,” she said. “It’s said all the meeting, we’ll allow you to take it with you to review…. And time at public schools. I promise that you’re gonna talk we could do the presentation now…. Because the board has about it. I just want y’all to remember that you’re speakused research as an excuse to drag your feet, we’re gonna ing with a community who knows the jargon. What I’m encouraging you to do is stop the jargon. Everything in that give you a little nudge. Here’s the research for you.” letter — we’ll consider; we’ll talk about it — there’s really no Instructional Superintendent Karen Roseboro rose to mystery here. You really don’t have to go to speak, taking a couple pokes at the report Philly. All this promise of road trips and stuff, by calling attention to a list of states, cities it’s really a complete waste. That’s a political and public school systems that teach African ‘That whole stunt to keep people waiting, searching. Don’t American studies and suggesting that the letter is typical.’ complain. It’s gonna be okay. Black folks have community activists differentiate between been told that for centuries. What you’re dothose that are mandatory and elective, and – Kimya Dennis ing is the white system’s plan for you to do…. those that provide a full credit and partial credit. She said staff is planning a trip to You’re not talking to idiots. You’re talking to communities who are educators. And if you Philadelphia in the fall to study the African American studies program in that city’s public-school don’t care about that, then you’re part to blame for the system. inequality in the system.”

Let’s acknowledge something: The debate that’s been Roseboro also said, and interim Superintendent Kenneth aired thus far on the proposal for mandatory AfricanSimington confirmed, that Winston-Salem/Forsyth County American studies has featured black school-board memSchools already has an elective African-American Studbers and administrators on one side, and black community ies course. A parent with a child in Paisley Middle School asked why she had never heard of it. members on the other. Like every one of us, they are all implicated to one degree or another in a system rooted in James Norris, a math professor at Wake Forest Uniwhite supremacy, and each person has to figure out how to versity, pleaded with the board. He cited the Piedmont navigate the system.

Freedom Schools, a summer program, as an example of “I can guarantee you that I support a mandatory course, how culturally relevant education can create a spark for black children. but this is a public-school bureaucracy,” said Malishai “African-American individuals come in and they’re imWoodbury, the board chair. “We’re going to have to work mersed in their history, and they develop great pride in through the logistics…. I don’t play games. There’s chiltheir history, great self-confidence,” Norris said. “I’ve seen dren’s lives on the line.” lives turned around by hearing about what others of their After the meeting, Woodbury insisted that her emphasis on deliberate speed is not a matter of political expedience. same race have done. They’re reading books with African She said district leaders will need to figure out how the Americans as main characters that are doing wondercourse will fit into the master schedule for high schools, ful things. And I’ve seen such transformation in so many will have to survey teachers and principals so everyone is people…. Many of you might not even know that many of the inventions that were credited to Thomas Edison were on board, and ensure that the necessary teaching staff is in actually done by an African American, who was doing all place. the hard work in his lab. Did he get any credit for it? No. But Miranda Jones, a member of Hate Out of Winston, So, things like this are just invaluable.” said she doesn’t see any real progress to date.

While the need to close the yawning achievement gap “We cannot be controlled by white supremacy,” she said.

“The fear of white backlash is real. The fear of not being rethat disadvantages black students is the moral imperative elected is real. But who suffers while we wait? The children.” for implementing mandatory African American Studies, the

by Sayaka Matsuoka

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News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

the science behind it here.

But regardless of how it’s made, the Impossible Burger has been a game changer for those who crave the taste of meat without the actual animal product.

“The first Impossible Burger that I had was at Bites and Pints on Spring Garden,” says Todd Turner, a local photographer and frequent TCB contributor. “It wasn’t exactly like a beef burger, but it was crazy close. I loved eating burgers in the past and I didn’t stop eating them because I had lost the taste; it was for the animals.”

For non-meat eaters like Turner, the Impossible Burger and the also popular Beyond Meat Burger — which can be purchased in grocery stores, unlike the Impossible product which is only wholesaled to restaurants — are just a step closer to normalizing a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.

Earlier this month, Burger King announced that they would be rolling out the Impossible Whopper to all of their stores nationwide after they tested the product in Missouri. This marked the Impossible product’s first appearance at a coast-to-coast, fast-food restaurant.

The patty is also on the menu at other chains like the Cheesecake Factory, Hard Rock Café, Red Robin, White Castle and most recently, Little Caesars. Chains like TGI Fridays, Del Taco and Carl’s Jr. have introduced Beyond SAYAKA MATSUOKA It’s not meat, but it’s pretty close.

Meat to their menus.

“A lot of people that enjoying eating vegetarian burgers are very excited about the potential of these keeping the products around. being distributed through some major fast-food chains,” says “We’ve had it about a month and a half and used them Turner. “One of the hardest things about being vegetarian is for tacos too. It’s been very positive so far,” Wise continues. that when you need to grab something on the go, there aren’t “I have a guy who comes in and orders a double stack every exactly a lot of options to scratch the itch.” week. People like them.”

And while the spread of a non-meat option is a win for vegetarians and vegans, many local restaurants say they’ve had a Locations in the Triad that serve the Impossible Burger: hard time getting the product since Impossible’s partnership with Burger King.

GREENSBORO An employee at Bites and Pints says that because they’ve · Big Burger Spot — both locations had issues with distribution, they have been substituting the · Bites and Pints — currently substituting the Beyond Impossible Burger with Beyond Meat.

Burger Fishbones and Sticks and Stones in Greensboro and the Can· Fishbones — currently substituting the Beyond teen Market and Bistro and Bobo’s Deli and Grill in WinstonBurger Salem have followed suit. · Sticks and Stone — currently substituting the Beyond “Burger King has pretty much bought up all of the supply,” Burger says Helen Rohr, the manager on duty at Canteen. “We’ll try · Mad Hatter to get back to the Impossible Burger when we can.” · Red Robin Foothills also has the Beyond Burger as a regular item on · Char Bar 7 their menu.

Pearl Xu, a spokesperson for Impossible Foods said via email HIGH POINT that the company currently has the Impossible Burger in 200 · Magnolia Blue Burger King locations and plans to have them in all 7,200 locations by the end of this year.

WINSTON-SALEM Xu also said that the company will be using a significant · Canteen Market and Bistro — currently substituting portion of a recent $300 million investment to increase prothe Beyond Burger duction and are “aggressively recruiting additional new hires” · Mary’s Gourmet Diner — have both the Impossible to meet demand.

Burger and Beyond Burger Still, other locations in the area say they’ve had no prob· Foothills — uses the Beyond Burger lems keeping the Impossible Burger in stock. · Bobo’s Deli and Grill — currently substituting the “We order them every week to keep up,” says Matt Wise, Beyond Burger the bar manager at Char Bar 7 in Greensboro. “We try to plan ahead.”

And thankfully for vegetarians, it seems restaurants plan on

Up Front

t even bleeds a little.

You can get it cooked medium, medium rare, or rare, if that’s your sort of thing. It sizzles the same way and oozes and comes with a little bit of pink in the middle. And it’s supposed to be healthier for you.

The Impossible Burger, a vegan, plantbased alternative to beef, has taken off wildly since its inception in 2016 and several Triad restaurants are selling the hype.

“We just have a very, very good response to it,” says Jo Croon, the front of house manager at Big Burger Spot on Nicholas Road in Greensboro. “We’ve had a lot of people coming in specifically for the Impossible Burger.”

The locally owned fast-casual joint — which has two locations — is just one of a handful of restaurants in the city that carry the product, and Croon says it’s improved their business.

“It does help our sales,” she says. “A lot of vegan and vegetarian customers appreciate it.”

Croon says they’ve had the patty as an option on their menu for about a year and customers can substitute it for a regular beef patty for an upcharge of a couple of bucks.

Big Burger Spot has other vegetarian options too, like a black-bean or chickpea patty, but the Impossible Burger takes plant-based meat to a whole ’nother level.

According to the Impossible Foods website, which makes the Impossible Burger, the reason why their patty looks, smells, tastes and even sounds so much like meat is because they use a particular ingredient called heme.

“Heme is what makes meat taste like meat,” the company explains. “It’s an essential molecule found in every living plant and animal — most abundantly in animals — and something we’ve been eating and craving since the dawn of humanity.”

At Impossible Foods, which is based out of Redwood City, CA, they extract heme from a protein called soy leghemoglobin, which comes from the roots of soy plants. The company takes the DNA from soy plants and inserts it into a genetically engineered yeast and ferments it in a way that’s similar to how Belgian beer is made. And instead of producing alcohol, the yeast multiplies and creates a lot of heme. The company has a cute, animated video explaining

May 23-29 ,2019

CULTURE Meatless mania: The Impossible Burger sprouts in the Triad

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May 23-29 ,2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

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CULTURE Wilmington Riot film raises small ruckus in High Point

by Lauren Barber

A

s the temperature climbs in the popcorn machine stationed in the far corner of a High Point YMCA’s massive gymnasium, the moisture in the kernels’ endosperm steams until bursting violently through the hulls — one of the oldest stories: tension, release, transformation.

Basketball nets frame a projection screen propped before the two dozen or so attendees who’ve scattered themselves within a patch of metal folding chairs to view Wilmington on Fire on the evening of May 17. The feature-length documentary examines the seldomacknowledged,bloody coup d’état white supremacist Democrats carried out in the booming port city of Wilmington on Nov. 10, 1898, a massacre that rendered roughly one-half of the city’s AfricanAmerican population dead or permanently exiled.

Kent Chatfield, an independent researcher, rifles through mountains of court documents, letters, ledgers and portraits uncovered in dusty government basements throughout the film.

He presents a copy of a pamphlet printed by the North Carolina Democratic Party in 1897, which defined the organization of the new White Government Union body and explicitly stated that the aim of the secret political society would be to install a white-supremacist government in North Carolina, beginning in Wilmington. More secretive and organized than the Ku Klux Klan, the group sought to first disrupt the Fusion Party coalition between white populists, mostly farmers, and Republicans, mostly newly freed African Americans.

They functioned as an officer class to the Red Shirts, the de facto paramilitary arm to the Democratic Party, which differed from the Klan in that they sported bright red shirts and did not cover their faces or wait for the cover of night before committing their crimes. Chatfield, who grew up white in Wilmington, recalls overhearing men boast of their forefathers’ execution of the only successful coup in US history, of the women and children who hid in the swamps for weeks, of the countless black bodies that floated downstream.

Alexander Manly, publisher of the Daily Record, the only black-owned daily newspaper in the country, grew too familiar with their intimidation tactics.

White supremacists cast him as a central character in their 1898 propaganda

campaign after he wrote an editorial denouncing the untruth of black men’s propensity to rape white women, a false narrative designed to stoke the ire of white men who might otherwise be sympathetic to African Americans.

The Star News, then the de facto paper of Wilmington’s Democratic party, and the News & Observer gladly assisted their cause in the lead-up to the coup, publishing grotesque racial cartoons and plain lies about the city’s thriving African-American community.

According to LaRae Umfleet, who researched and wrote the definitive study examining the riot and its impact as a watershed moment in post-Reconstruction North Carolina politics, WilmingLIBRARY OF ton had been considered a mecca for White supremacist militiamen gather outside the charred remains of CONGRESS The Daily Record building after the 1898 massacre.

African Americans at a time when the political process was more fairly reprevoices of others before arriving, though, going on about black sentative of them than at most other times in US history; they Israelites and rap culture as cancer. Bridges redirects, comparheld roles in the management of the city and county, seats on ing the fate of Wilmington’s all-black Brooklyn neighborhood the board of alderman, in the state legislature and in the US to High Point’s Washington Street community, and an elder House of Representatives. Wilmington was also the largest gentleman offers some local history: “We had a total of 27 and most prosperous city in North Carolina, largely due to its black-owned businesses on Fairview Street in one block, then status as a critical, deep-water port. Umfleet explains in the you had Kivett Drive which basically was a black economic film that African Americans at every economic rung of society corridor in the city. What they did with the highway was they experienced relative prosperity. Black shrimpers and fishdisplaced all those black-owned businesses and did not offer ers continued to pass down trade expertise in the Cape Fear any funds for relocation. Then you had Washington Street, a River region; black literacy rates soared; African Americans total of over 150 black-owned businesses that disappeared owned an astonishing number of businesses on main streets, because of ‘urban renewal.’” including restaurants; served as police and firemen; practiced Violence comes in many forms. medicine and law.

A man, white, describes coming into racial consciousness After the coup, only three of 18 black-owned businesses when he learned the history of white terror the next county remained. Once black magistrates “resigned,” racist Demoover from his childhood home in Georgia. He’s ready to speak crats also ruled the courts and when the state and federal up more often now, he says. “Now all those coals kept under government opted not to intervene, the newly empowered the surface have been raked up, but the thing is: that fire has foreclosed on the homes of the dead, refinanced bad loans, been smoldering under the surface this whole time.” inflated stock, lined their bloody pockets and waited with And so, a black woman poses the question: “One of the shotguns at the polls. things that haunts me about this film is the younger man Wilmington on Fire draws a clear connection between the [Umar Johnson] who was talking about the propaganda campolitical and social disenfranchisement and the scope of the paign that preceded the attack on Wilmington and how he generational wealth plundered from members of Wilmingthinks it’s worse today,” she says. “I wonder what you all think ton’s half-destroyed black community. Late in the film, Faye he’s talking about.”

Chaplin, the great-granddaughter of A man who fits squarely in Fox News’ Thomas C. Miller, a real estate developer top demographic contributes proudly, Learn more about the film at in the city at the time of the coup, cries with a holler: “It’s called Fox News!” as she reads aloud a letter he penned wilmingtononfire.com. before other Boomers abruptly shift detailing the impossibility of starting to lamenting the fall of heterosexual anew with no wealth — Miller was one of households and other moral failings of the few “elite” African Americans who young people, none of whom chose to join tonight. the mob forcibly banished by way of a train headed north of Perhaps it is fair enough that most folks did not assemble the state line. She motions toward the window in her home in this auditorium on a balmy, full-mooned evening to discuss through which she witnesses the construction of apartment disturbing parallels to today’s alarms, let alone organize buildings gentrifying the property her kin owned only a few against the ongoing effort for one-party control of the Old generations ago.

North State, as premeditated and resolute as ever. Perhaps, it Phyllis Bridges, an award-winning historian and docuis critical, and an adequate end in itself, to create spaces for mentary filmmaker with expertise in High Point’s civil rights letting off steam, but questions linger: Who might you burn? history, leads an informal discussion after the screening. Some How will these stoked coals transform us? older men seemed to know what they wanted to say over the

CULTURE Her Song sweetens the air at Doodad Farm

May 23-29 ,2019

by Savi Ettinger

S

Up Front News Opinion Culture

Her Song highlighted female acts on the porch at Doodad Farm.

SAVI ETTINGER

Puzzles

guitar, piano, flute and violin to about 40 students. Koonce Between the stages stand cutouts of famous female North began the nonprofit after witnessing a similar institution in Carolinians that look out into the audience as the afternoon Knoxville, Tenn. called the Joy of Music School. continues. Girls walk up to the microphone, biographies in “I came back with the vision to start a school,” she says. hand, and read aloud each woman’s accomplishments. They Two students dressed in pastel blue each then run over to the figure of and pink sit beside one another, both Elizabeth Cotten, or Maya Angelou, or of them fitting on the same seat in whoever their sheet describes.

For more on Doodad Farm, visit front of a red keyboard. The two girls Koonce introduces herself to the ready their fingers and begin to play audience that leans against trees or them on Facebook or call at “Heart & Soul,” each set of hands reclines in folding lawn chairs. She (336) 260-7999. Learn more covering half of the keys. String lights tells the audience to sing with her, about the Harmony Music School hang above them, stretching from saying they can follow along as she rafter to rafter. leads the chorus to her own original at harmonymusicschoolgso.org.

A young girl carries her guitar onpiece, written specifically for the day. stage, climbing onto a barstool beside Some do more than that, clapping or Abigail Dowd, her teacher. Dowd tapping their feet to the beat of the holds up the sheet music in front of her student. The ponyuplifting melody. tailed girl works through John Lennon’s “Imagine,” as Dowd “We are the women. We are the girls,” she sings, “The future accompanies with lyrics. of this world.”

Shot in the Triad

tripes of soft blues, pinks and purples color a backdrop reading “Her Song” behind the wooden platform Gabriela la Foley steps onto. The English emcee sways in her floor-length floral dress, plucking her ukulele. Honeyed notes sweeten up the sweltering late May heat.

“And I’ll smile at everyone I meet,” Foley sings, “because today is a good day.”

Foley’s narration and ukulele lead one performance into the next on Doodad Farm in Greensboro. The Sunday boasts a long list of women on stage for Her Song — the latest iteration of the farm’s annual tribute fundraiser.

This year, Laurel and Dean Driver with all the volunteers of Doodad Farm hosted an annual show to raise funds for the Harmony Music School, a Greensboro nonprofit that helps give children from low-income families access to music education.

The #MeToo movement, and the current social and political issues surrounding women, partially inspired the day’s theme. Named “A celebration of women,” the day fills the outdoor space with female performers from across the state. Each brings their writing with them, whether it takes the form of music, comedy or poetry — or a mix of the three.

“We not only wanted songs written by women,” Dean said, “but songs uniquely by women.”

What looks like the extended porch of a log cabin acts as the main stage. On it, Bobbie Needham strums her guitar as the trees reach up overhead and provide a canopy of shade. A calm breeze rattles the leaves, playing back-up to her as she sings. A brief interaction with another woman in a thrift store’s formal section inspired Needham’s catchy tune.

“You can buy yourself a fluffy dress, a cake with buttercream,” she vocalizes, “and throw a big ol’ party, without putting on a ring.”

Aside from filling venues with lively guitar numbers, Needham also teaches a student for the Harmony Music School.

“The thing I’m learning from my student,” Needham says, “is how important it is to tell someone how wonderful they are.”

Lyn Koonce, the school’s founder, started the program in 2013 and it has since grown from six teachers to more than a dozen, providing free lessons in

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May 23-29 ,2019

South Greene Street, Greensboro

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9 Video game designer Sid who created the “Civilization” series 14 Three-time World Series of Poker winner Stu 15 “Deep Space Nine” security officer 16 Egyptian-born children’s singer 17 Ecuadoran province once famous for its gold 18 Wasabi-coated veggie 19 “Dark Side of the Moon” album image 20 Legendary producer of “Charlie’s Angels” and “7th Heaven” 23 Renaissance Faire org.

24 Fill in ___ blank 25 Unruly bunch 26 “Sit, ___, sit. Good dog” (‘80s TV vanity card) 29 Ouija board reply ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 30 Washington Post editor portrayed by Liev Schreiber in “Spotlight” 33 Info page on many sites 34 Gerund finish 35 Country with a red-and-white flag 36 “Par ___” (airmail stamp) 39 “The Raven” poet 40 Internet connection need 41 O’Rourke who’s running for president 42 Rule, briefly 43 “Epic ___ Battles of History” 44 Star of “An American in Paris” and “Gigi” 47 Tiny pellets Answers from last issue 50 Period to remember 51 Spring setting 13 Goblet’s edge 52 Outworn 21 1996 Dream Team nickname 53 Author Harper 22 “___ Shot” (2019 Seth Rogen movie) 54 Guitarist/songwriter for System of a Down 27 Make a tunnel and Scars on Broadway 28 E pluribus ___ 58 Basketball game site 31 New York county near Pennsylvania (or 60 Rho preceders Pennsylvania county near New York) 61 Talks gibberish 32 Each 62 Herpetologist’s study 33 Tarot character 63 1099-___ (annual tax form from the bank) 36 Competent 64 Arthouse film, probably 37 Change course suddenly 65 Designation at some meat markets 38 “Let’s shake on that” 66 Pub. staffers 39 Dessert that may include molasses 67 Aviary abodes 40 Dialect spoken by nearly a billion people 42 Taken-back merchandise Down 43 Sushi form 1 Somewhat seasick 45 Eurovision Song Contest 2019 host 2 Loosen your boots 46 Friars Club functions 3 Ancient Greek marketplaces 47 Window coverings 4 Card game that sounds like an ancient ruler 48 Hit from “Thriller” 5 Jagger, to the Stones, e.g.

49 They account for taste 6 The Big ___ (“Chantilly Lace” singer) 55 “Puppy Love” songwriter Paul 7 Notion, in France 56 Pay attention to 8 Site of a pit crew?

57 Orson Welles’s “Citizen ___” 9 Dr Pepper rival renamed in 2001 58 Campfire remains 10 Take home pay 59 “Messenger” material 11 “Saw that coming” 12 It makes up half the riffraff?

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May 23-29 ,2019

CROSSWORD ‘Your Choices Are’—out of four options. SUDOKU

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