A few days ago, a large crowd gathered in Red Hill, North Carolina, for the unveiling of a state historical marker commemorating the establishment of an Equal Rights League there in 1866. Sponsored by the Phoenix Historical Society, the ceremony was hosted by the Red Hill Missionary Baptist Church, the heart of that rural community 18 miles northeast of Rocky Mount.
voting rights
The Red Shirts in Lumberton, N.C., 1900
At the turn of the 20th century, the Red Shirts were what we today would call a white nationalist militia group. Bedecked in red trousers and shirts, they barricaded polling sites, shot into homes and generally terrorized those who supported black voting rights.
Edenton and the Battle for White Supremacy
Eighteen months after the Wilmington massacre of 1898, the leading white citizens of Edenton, N.C., gathered at the Chowan County Courthouse to organize a "white supremacy club." Their goal was take away black voting rights forever.
James R. Walker, Jr. & the Struggle for Voting Rights in North Carolina’s Black Belt
In today's post I'm looking at African American attorney James R. Walker, Jr. & a remarkable struggle for voting rights in North Carolina's Black Belt in the 1950s.
Summer of the Red Shirts
In today's post, I want to reflect a little bit on our history and how we got here-- how we came to be such a divided people, why our racial divisions seem to run so deep and why our country remains the land that the great writer James Baldwin once called "these yet-to-be-United States."
Freedom Days– Halifax County, 1964
Tonight’s Black History Month post is about another forgotten moment in eastern North Carolina's civil rights history: a historic voting rights movement in Halifax County, N.C., in 1964. It was called the Halifax County Voters Movement. I stumbled on it when I was going through some of my old notes from The Carolina Times, the African American newspaper that has been published in Durham, N.C., since 1921.
David Cecelski 