I worked on the Perot campaign in 1992 and spent a great deal of time in NC. Not to entirely disagree with the article, but changing NC from a red state to even light pink is going to be nearly impossible. Even though the Raleigh/Durham area is rife with PhDs and other highly educated voters, the vast majority of the state is overrun with racist, anti-education, angry white nationalists. In fact, while I was there, many people in Charlotte said if a person goes east of I-95 he goes back 50 years and lynchings still go on. Also, much of the military base community is reflexively anti-democratic; the military, by definition is an authoritarian organization and almost always votes Republican. Much of the South prides itself on being uneducated, racist, homophobic, reactionary and xenophobic; to these people, those traits are features, not bugs. They are still angry that the Union Army won. Eventually, the Himalayan Mountains will erode into a prairie, and someday NC might evolve and vote blue; if itâs a race, my moneyâs on the mountains.
Excellent read â thank you, Charlotte Fryar!! This helps me better understand my neighbor to the south. Growing up, Iâd always heard how great NCâs public education was â now I know why. Fantastic job, Mr. Graham. I must say, that flyer by Grahamâs opponent in 1950 was sickening. Even though I was born in 1965 (in rural northern Virginia), it brought back memories of some of the stuff I saw and read back in my childhood. Part of me cringes; part of me cries; whatâs left is steeled into pledging to fight against that sort of ⌠ignorance and hate.
Great article about an amazing man. Just a note - itâs a failure to expand Medicaid not Medicare.
Former NC Medicaid policy wonk here and NC has not expanded MediCAID, not Medicare. Medicare is universal. Medicaid is means-tested.
This strain of progressivism reminds me of my time as a grad student at the University of Mississippiâs Center for the Study of Southern Culture starting in 1996. Chancellor Khayat, a UM grad who had played football in the NFL and who was (and is) of Arabic descent had just started a couple years before. He couched his progressivism as necessary to make the college a top tier educational institution. I was told that, the year before, the schoolâs application for Phi Beta Kappa had been rejected with a single sentence, âDeal with your past.â True or not, Chancellor Khayat used that as an unofficial rallying cry. He got âConfederate flagsâ removed from football games by banning the wooden sticks they were attached to as a poking hazard, he prohibited the band from playing Dixie, he banned the mascot, Colonel Reb, from football games, and he even got a monument to James Meredith and the fight for equal access to education erected on campus. (I was on the student led monument committee. The winner of the juried competition, which was an abstract glass and metal piece, was ultimately discarded by Chancellor Khayat for the much more traditional monument that went in behind the Lyceum, the main administrative building on campus)
Reaction was harsh, though largely impotent. Rumours flew that the Rebels would be changed to the Thoroughbreds. Several student groups organised overnight, including Students for University Heritage, or SUH, as in, âYes suh, no suh.â There were demonstrations by Neo confederate groups, though they were small and remained civil. Being that the film Malcom X had been released a few years before, students wore shirts emblazoned with the âConfedrate flagâ and the caption, âyouâve got your x, Iâve got mine.â The Daily Mississippian published a lengthy article laying bare the collegeâs history of racial strife, including that the runner up to Rebels in the original srudent vote for a new school mascot had been Ole Massas, as in Ole Miss Ole Massas. It also documented that there had been conflagrations as recently as the 80s, when a small group of African American students who were protesting on the Lyceum steps the inclusion in the yearbook of the KKK were greeted by thousands of white students in counter protest
There are more stories, but thatâs plenty for now. In the end, I think the college is a better place for Chancellor Khayat having been there. There is good happening in even the deepest South. Itâs easy to forget. Apologies for the lengthy comment.
Interesting, but it seems to beg the question why NC has not fulfilled Grahamâs vision, even with migration from the North. One answer may be that most of the people who migrate there are happy with the status quo. And that status quo is the usual feudalism and racism of the South, with weak public institutions. I friend of mine left UNC (where he held an appointment in the child development institute named for Graham) because of the poor salary structure of this âflagshipâ university. Even with plenty of outside grant funding, he could not negotiate a better salary, so he went elsewhere. From my work in public health, Iâm aware that the state has a weak non-profit sector and a bare bones public health system. Yet, for some reason, NC is somehow seen as moderateâperhaps in comparison with Alabama, but otherwise I have to wonder if itâs the wishful thinking from attending Duke or UNC, or perhaps wistful memories of The Andy Griffith Show. Clearly, the social forces of the 1950s are still very much with us in NC and elsewhere.
With all due respect, you know nothing of North Carolina. Iâve lived here since 1986. And I can tell you that Itâs not 1992 anymore.
NC went from Bush +14 in 2004 to Obama +.5 in 2008 because half a million people moved into the state, mostly from up north. He lost by less than 100K in 2012 because he lost a few Raleigh suburbs. And that change is because of the massive immigration from other states thatâs occurred over the last three decades.
Actually relocations from the Northeast are what have allowed the Republican party in NC to flourish and keep it competitive. The Wake County school board resegregation fiasco from five years ago is a prime example. Likewise one only has to look at the current and recent leadership of the NCGOP: McCrory, Berger, Stam, Rucho, et. al. Carpetbaggers the whole lot of them.
A well-considered and well-written article.
Being a fan of Field of Dreams, I kept seeing Burt Lancaster as I read about Frank Porter. The Grahamâs appear to have been a remarkable family.
The âWAKE UPâ slogan on that poster from Smith in 1950 is now an alt-right meme. Around Memphis I see it plastered up on light poles alongside InfoWars stickers. Itâs so sad how this stuff is still very much alive.
Well, you can look at anecdotes or you can look at data. And when you look at data, what you see is the ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans increasing at roughly the same rate as immigration into the state. Yes, of course, people at the CEO level of all the banks in Charlotte and the tech companies in RTP are going to be Republican. But the young (at the time they moved here, at least) highly educated people who moved here to work in those companiesâor came here to go to school and never leftâbreak heavily Democratic and left of center.
Something took the state from Bush +14 in 2004 to Obama +1 in 2008. The half million people who moved to the state in those four years were a major part of it. And the way you know that is you see the impact primarily in the Wake-Durham-Orange area. The Wake suburbanites can be fickle, particularly when it comes to stuff like schools. But the ones who werenât working for state government used to skew a lot more heavily toward country-club Republicanism back in the 80âs and 90âs.
Watch the Emmy Award-winning documentary about Frank Porter Graham, narrated by Charles Kuralt, at https://vimeo.com/11191367 Below is a description of the film.
Students worshipfully called him âDr. Frank.â Critics called him a radical, a socialist and worse. Historians call him âthe most renowned southern liberal of his time.â
As president of the University of North Carolina and a United States senator, Frank Porter Graham was a southerner who challenged the traditions of the segregated South. A senator who would not be a politician, he never comprehended why the very people he had tried to serve turned against him in one of the most memorable political contests in American history.
Charles Kuralt narrates âDr. Frank: The Life and Times of Frank Porter Graham,â the Emmy Award-winning biographical documentary that uses Grahamâs life as a prism through which to view the twentieth-century American South in transition.
Among those appearing in the film are UNC President Emeritus William Friday, Vanderbilt Chancellor Emeritus Alexander Heard, former U.S. Senator Terry Sanford, journalists Tom Wicker and Ed Yoder, and historians Helen Edmonds, John Hope Franklin and William Leuchtenburg.
Also, watch the documentary âSenator No: Jesse Helmsâ at https://vimeo.com/11203847
âDonât miss âSenator Noâ⌠a fascinating account filled with detail [and] interesting revelations.â - Jack Betts, The Charlotte Observer
âa fascinating and sometimes complex portraitâ - Danny Hooley, The News & Observer
âNo American politician is more controversial, beloved in some quarters and hated in others, than Jesse Helms," wrote The Almanac of American Politics as the conservative North Carolina Republican neared the end of his 30-year U.S. Senate career.
From the moment he arrived in Washington in 1973, Helms began injecting hot-button issues into American politics. His notorious political action committee became the largest in the nation with its pioneering use of direct mail and negative television ads. The âNew Rightâ movement he spearheaded played a leading role in mobilizing Christian conservative voters and electing Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Two decades later, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms became the first legislator from any country to address the U.N. Security Councilâall this from the man a Canadian newspaper once called âredneck primitive.â
âSenator No: Jesse Helmsâ explores the origins of Jesse Helmsâs politics, from his Southern Baptist roots in the Jim Crow South to his political baptism in North Carolinaâs racially-charged 1950 U.S. Senate race. Trumpeting Old South values as an editorialist and politician, he crashed headlong into the civil rights movement, communism, abortion, gay rightsâvirtually every major issue of his time. Yet in the twilight of his career, Helms had a very publicâand intriguingâreversal on international AIDS relief.
Independent filmmaker John Wilson had unique access to Helms himself, vast archives spanning his 60 years in media and politics, and a diverse group of Helmsâs allies, opponents, and observers, from Jerry Falwell to Bono. Actor Will Patton narrates, with an original music score by Chris Frank of the Red Clay Ramblers. Wilsonâs previous collaborations with UNC-TV include the Emmy Award-winning âDr. Frank: The Life and Times of Frank Porter Graham,â narrated by Charles Kuralt.
Given that the state voted for Barack Obama in 2008, your view doesnât capture a lot of the complex picture of NC.
How do I read this piece? I signed up for Prime earlier this year, and my handle is under the word âPrimeâ in the upper right corner of every page I open on TPM. But the article fades out in the second paragraph, and thereâs a big box there saying, âLongform is a TPM Prime Featureâ and a button saying âSubscribe to Prime.â And apparently no way to say, âlook in the upper right corner - Iâve already subscribed!!â
Seriously, how do I read this piece?
Also, can they fix the damn site so that I quit getting pop-ups from Josh asking me to subscribe to Prime? I feel like Schrodingerâs Prime member here, with the site simultaneously recognizing and failing to recognize me as a Prime member.
The obvious data based rejoinder is that the state is run by a legislature that is far to the right and a governor who happily jettisoned his moderate past. Gerrymandering may explain part of the problem, but the lack of a strong democratic party allowed the gerrymandering to happen. Those of us who have been hearing about âthe New Southâ for decades and have even lived in places like Atlanta and Nashville have seen, over and over, how the feudal, racist roots have not gone away and if anything they they have strengthened their hold on institutions.
The 2011 session, that did the gerrymandering, was and is the first Republican legislature in this state since Reconstruction. They controlled one house or the other a few times, but this is the first time they controlled both. The Republican Party down here was a total basket case, at war with itself. The thing that turned the tide was the same thing that happened in Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2010: a river of Koch money, a MSM that was openly rooting for the Teeeeeee Parteeee!!! The most original, bestest, freshest, most grass rooty grass root movement evah!!!, and the perennial inability of Democrats to pull their heads out of their asses and vote in midterms.
Hi there, Gayatri here from TPM! We looked into your issue and found that you were a Prime member, but your account lapsed in March. To access this piece and all other Longforms, you need to update your payment information and subscribe again! Youâll know you are signed into Prime when you see a golden star next to your handle at the top right of the page. Thanks for reading!
This is not the stupidest comment on North Carolina politics I have ever read online, but itâs up there.
On the other hand, someone who though the Perot campaign was a good idea isnât someone Iâd trust with an opinion of politics.
Youâd think the geographic spread of Trumpâs support would knock some sense into peopleâs political typologies, but thatâs giving people with lazy opinions like this way too much credit.