None Dare Call It Racism

A recent Tweet by David Hogg has gotten some notice. He accuses white suburban women and their voting habits as the reason more gun control has not been enacted.

Given that the Demanding Moms would not even exist if it were not for white suburban women, his claim is ludicrous. One really should not expect anything honest or profound coming from “Camera” Hogg.

If this was the only thing regarding “persons of pallor” and support/non-support for gun control, it could be passed off as just more crap coming out of Hogg’s mouth. Unfortunately, it is not. A post by journalist Emily Miller of “Emily Gets Her Gun” fame (#commission earned) listing posts she began and abandoned led to a CNN story out of Denver.

It was a “whites only” demonstration for more gun control in Colorado.

Hundreds of White women gathered at the Colorado Capitol Monday morning, with more expected to show up throughout the day, to use their “privilege” in a silent sit-in to demand Gov. Jared Polis ban guns and create a gun buyback program….

Here4TheKids, a movement created after a mass shooting in Nashville in March left six people dead, including three children, calls for primarily White women to peacefully sit-in until Polis, a Democrat, signs an executive order banning guns. It was founded by two women of color, Saira Rao, who is South Asian American, and Tina Strawn, who is Black. Both are mothers.

Strawn told CNN the movement calls for White women to be at the forefront of the sit-in because, “we know what happens when we show up with demands.”…

“So, it appealed to me very much that this was actually a time where we are asking Black folks and other marginalized and vulnerable communities to sit this one out and allow the White women and their privileged bodies, their privilege, and their power to show up. It’s time for them to show up,” Strawn added.

The thesis pushed by Strawn is that white women are less likely to be arrested, less likely to run afoul of police overreaction, etc. She goes on to add that blacks and other “marginalized” minorities have been “traumatized over and over and over again” both by police and by violence within their communities. Thus, white women should use their “white privilege” to bring attention to the issue of gun control.

The aim of the sit-in was to have Gov. Polis (D-CO) sign an executive order that any court in the land would find unconstitutional.

The executive order Here4TheKids has proposed for Polis to sign calls for the governor to “ban the use, loading, possession or carrying of all firearms in Colorado, including but not limited to firearms for personal protection, hunting, law enforcement or any otherwise lawful purpose” and create a statewide gun buyback program.

The organizers of Here4TheKids want more action because gun control laws have not stopped “the violence”. They say “because guns can cross state lines, you can print guns on 3D printers” that gun control is not working. Cody Wilson would agree with that last part as that has always been his argument about making gun control futile.

I look at my friends in the gun culture. They are white, black, Asian, Native American, and everything in between. They are male, female, and transexual. They are rich and poor. They are urban, suburban, and rural. In other words, they all are part of this melting pot that we call America. We make no demands that only whites can be for gun rights. Indeed, we argue against laws that were implemented to keep blacks and other minorities disarmed. Unfortunately, the enemies of freedom and our God-given right to self-protection have argued for these very laws.

Frankly, I find this interjection of race into the arguments for gun control to be repulsive. I thought we left that behind years ago along with anti-semitism. Obviously, not.

Historical Ignorance Is No Excuse

As philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Taken a step further, historical ignorance is no excuse for opposing a law meant to write a wrong.

In this case, it is the 1919 law originally entitled “an act to regulate the sale of concealed weapons in North Carolina.” Both houses of the North Carolina General Assembly have voted to repeal this law and have sent HB 398 to the governor’s desk where it is likely to be vetoed.

One of the leading opponents of the repeal is Sen. Natasha Marcus (D-Mecklenburg). A lawyer and community organizer, Marcus proudly proclaims her membership in Moms Demand Action. She is a graduate of Hamilton College in New York and the Duke University School of Law.

From Marcus campaign website

In her opposition to the repeal, the AP reports this:

The local pistol permit requirement began in 1919 during the Jim Crow era, and some bill supporters argue it’s still preventing law-abiding black residents from obtaining weapons. But a local NAACP leader spoke against the bill earlier Wednesday, and Marcus said such opposition is evidence to her that the current permitting system isn’t racist.

Just because a local NAACP leader spoke against the repeal does not confer racial neutrality upon the law. I’m sure if Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-NC) who is black had condemned the existing law as discriminatory and based upon a desire for white supremacy – which it was – that Sen. Marcus would ignore it and call Lt. Gov. Robinson just a tool of the NRA.

For Sen. Marcus’ edification and education, here are some links that illustrate the history as well as the disparate impact of the law:

By historian Clayton Cramer – North Carolina’s Permit to Purchase Law: The Rumble Seat of Gun Control Laws?

By Nicholas Gallo in the North Carolina Law Review – Misfire: How the North Carolina Pistol Purchase Permit System Misses the Mark of Constitutional Muster and Effectiveness

Finally, a couple from myself – “An Act to Regulate the Sale of Concealed Weapons in North Carolina” – Part I and “An Act to Regulate the Sale of Concealed Weapons in North Carolina” – Part II

I do not hold the fact that Sen. Marcus was born and bred in New York against her. My mother was born and raised in New York and Paul Valone who has been tireless in the fight to overturn this Jim Crow law is also a New York native.

I do hold her ignorance of North Carolina history against her. I also find it contemptuous that she uses the testimony of a NAACP leader as her justification for saying the law is not racist. To be perfectly frank, she couldn’t care less whether it was or was not racist. All that matters to her is that it is gun control of which she is a card carrying supporter.

Chipman Derails Black ATF Agent’s Career With False Accusation

Stephen Gutowski of The Reload has a story today of how David Chipman derailed a promising black ATF Special Agent’s career with a false accusation of cheating in a promotion assessment. Chipman’s accusation required a two-year investigation into the matter which effectively took this Special Agent out of contention for further promotions even though the agent in question was eventually cleared.

“I couldn’t believe it when it happened,” the agent told The Reload. “But when I read about his other comments, in my mind, I was like ‘that motherf*****.’ That’s what happened. He said, ‘Hey, a lot of African Americans qualified to be promoted on this certification list; they must have been cheating.’ And then he had to go and find one. I happened to be that one.”

He said he believes Chipman’s allegation after the in-person test was motivated by race.

“I believe it had to have been a bias,” the agent, who spent more than 25 years at the agency, said. “My answers were just ‘too good.’ And my thought is he just said, ‘this black guy could not have answered this well if he wasn’t cheating.’”

The agent said he was cleared by a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation, but not before his career took a hit. He said the protracted investigation effectively paused the promising career he’d built.

“I was cleared as I should have been,” the agent said. “But it was very painful because it was two years out of my life where my career was sidelined for something like that. And it caused me a lot of stress and my family a lot of stress. And it kind of disenchanted me with the idea of management.”

In the in-person assessment, the Special Agent was given a scenario and asked how he would handle it. In this particular case, unbeknownst to Chipman the scenario was something this agent had been doing as part of team for a number of years. The agent did well on it which led Chipman to make his false accusation of cheating.

Read the whole story which has been corroborated by another ATF agent.

Did David Chipman Say Blacks Cheated To Pass Promotion Exam?

We know that David Chipman served as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Field Division of BATFE. He served in that position from November 2006 until March 2009. While serving in that position, he is alleged by a fellow BATFE Special Agent to have made disparaging remarks about the number of African-Americans who had passed the BATFE promotion exam to be ASAC’s. That agent filed a complaint with the EEOC about the comment.

“Wow, there were an unusually large number of African American agents that passed the exam this time. They must have been cheating.”

The Daily Caller spoke with another former ATF Special Agent who said Chipman’s comments spread throughout the Field Division.

The former Detroit-based ATF agent, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, did not personally witness Chipman making the comment, but recalled colleagues talking about how Chipman “made this remark that all the African Americans must be cheating because there’s no way they could get these scores.”

“He made this remark in front of a bunch of witnesses,” the former Detroit-based ATF agent said. “It spread like wildfire at the agency. It got tremendous blowback, as it should. Here you have a middle manager saying something like that with absolutely no proof.”

Chipman was asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about any EEOC reports and responded that there had been two. He went on to add that they had been resolved without any finding of discrimination. Chipman then added that his ATF personnel file remains under the control of the Federal government.

Chipman has been very reticent about providing his personnel record for public review. According to Tom Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, this is a big red flag based upon his own 13 years serving as a Senate staffer. As a result, AAF filed a Freedom of Information Act request on April 20th requesting documents relating to “all complaints, grievances, requests for investigation, or investigatory documents related to employee misconduct, harassment, malfeasance, or other violations of the standards of professional conduct” concerning Chipman. They filed another request in May after being told his records had been sent to the National Personnel Records Center of the National Archives.

As you might expect out of the Biden Administration, this request has been stone-walled with no definitive answer. Thus, the American Accountability Foundation filed a Federal lawsuit in US District Court for DC seeking these documents. They are seeking a formal response from BATFE to either comply with or deny the request. They then ask for these documents to be released as they believe records are still being held within BATFE.

Do I think Chipman could have made these remarks? I do because I think he is arrogant enough to have made them and because too many other agents have some recollection of it. Do I think it probably was swept under the table at the time? Sure. The BATFE management has a history of protecting their fair haired children and it appears that Chipman was one of those.

The FOIA lawsuit is below:

D.D.C.-21-cv-01669-dckt-000001_000-filed-2021-06-22 by jpr9954 on Scribd

First US Law To Treat Repeating Arms Differently

Attorney and Second Amendment scholar David Kopel had an interesting article published yesterday. It dealt with the racist history of gun control and how it is still being written by gun control advocates.

The article recounted the advice of journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells to fellow blacks to “buy a Winchester”. As Kopel notes, Wells was the leading anti-lynching advocate of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She felt that a repeating rifle in the hands of armed black men and women was essential to lynch mobs.

On June 25, 1892, Wells penned an iconic article for the New York Age, which was reprinted as a nationally circulated pamphlet, “Southern Horrors.” After noting cases in which lynch mobs had been defeated by armed blacks, Wells continued: “The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for the protection which the law refuses to give.

“When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged, lynched.”

Wells was referring to an incident in Jacksonville, Florida in which armed black men with their repeating rifles prevented a black prisoner from being lynched.

The result of this incident is that that Florida legislature enacted a gun control law in the next session that required a license to carry or possess “a pistol, Winchester rifle or other repeating rifle.”

This appears to be the first American statute that treated repeating arms differently from other arms. The 1893 Florida tradition is continued today by states such as California and Massachusetts, which ban many common repeating rifles and shotguns, and limit magazine capacity to only 10 rounds. (emphasis mine)

In the 1941 case Watson v. Stone, the Florida Supreme Court construed the statute narrowly. The court held that the statute didn’t apply to carrying in an automobile. Concurring, Justice Buford explained the racial background:

“I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers. … The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied. (emphasis mine) … [T]here has never been, within my knowledge, any effort to enforce the provisions of this statute as to white people, because it has been generally conceded to be in contravention of the Constitution and nonenforceable if contested.”

This law was only repealed in 1987 when Florida adopted shall-issue carry permits.

The gun control lobby is still trying to keep “repeating arms” out of the hands of blacks – and whites and Asians and Latinos and Native Americans. Indeed, Joe Biden, he of the double-barrel shotgun, vows to do away with “repeating arms” on his campaign website. He may call them by a different name but they are still repeating arms.

White Bernie Bro – “That T-Shirt Is Racist”

You know it takes either some sort of audacity or ignorance to tell an African-American man that his t-shirt’s message is racist especially when it is a t-shirt similar to the one below.

However, that is exactly what happened Sunday evening in Colorado at a Bernie Sanders speech.

A pale white Bernie bro told a black man wearing one of the t-shirts made famous by Maj Toure that it was racist.

“He had a problem with the shirt I was wearing,” this man said. “I was recording the event, he walks up and calls me a racist. But I thought, ‘What’s he know about black lives, about discrimination, or, for that matter, the representation of the shirt.’”

Throughout American history, the man continued, “Black people and their ability to own firearms has historically been very restricted. The shirt I got from a conceal-carry class.”

He said he agrees with Sanders on a number of policies but definitely not on gun ownership.

“I think it’s really a sad thing at a Bernie rally, when someone has a difference of opinion, that someone would be treated like that. I thought it really would be a lot more inclusive than that. It’s not a safe place to express differences. I would expect that sort of thing at a Trump rally.”

The Bernie bro named Tyler and the unnamed black man ended up in a scuffle. Tyler says he wasn’t the aggressor but that is not what the video from CBS 4 Denver shows. Tyler claims that T-shirt wearer was booing Bernie Sanders and knocked his cell phone out of his hand.

Regardless of just whom is the aggressor in this scuffle, Bernie bro Tyler shows an incredible ignorance of the historical roots of gun control.

I might suggest he read Prof. Nicholas Johnson’s Negroes and the Gun. At the very least, Tyler should read Dave Kopel’s article entitled “The Racist Roots of Gun Control.” He could also read the recently published Wilmington’s Lie which details the rise of white supremacy in North Carolina and the intertwining of it with keeping black Freedmen disarmed. Though on second thought, Tyler might object to that last book as the oppressors in question were Democrats.

Let’s Give Him A Warm North Carolina Welcome (Updated)

Guess who is coming to town on Thursday?

If you said anyone other than Mike Bloomberg you would be wrong.

Bloomberg is planning campaign stops in Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Raleigh in conjunction with the start of early voting in the North Carolina primary.

In Winston-Salem, he will be at Campus Gas, 1231 Polo Rd from 7:00am–8:30am. He continues on to his campaign HQ at 300 S. Elm Street in Greensboro and will be there at 9:30am. Doors open to the public at 9am. Finally, he will be in Raleigh at Union Station ( 510 W Martin St) from 11:45am until 1:15pm.

Volunteers from Grass Roots North Carolina plan to give him a warm North Carolina welcome when he arrives at his Greensboro downtown HQ. This is the main event! Try to be there by 9am.

A good turn out will get good press coverage. Please be there around 9am. Our friends in Virginia welcomed his bus in Arlington and greatly outnumbered Bloomberg’s supporters. It sure would be nice to see that happen here in the Tar Heel State.

If you can’t be in Greensboro or you need to get to work earlier, a few people plan to welcome his arrival in Winston-Salem at 7am. I’d suggest being there around 6:30am at Campus Gas.

Bloomberg’s money has bought him a lot of things. It bought him many houses, a well-armed security team, and most recently a compliant legislature in Virginia. It has also bought him silence when it comes to comments he made in a 2015 appearance at the Aspen Institute. He requested video not be made available and the Aspen Institute complied.

However, things have a way of leaking out.

“Ninety-five percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims, fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” Bloomberg said. “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city. And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed.”

“So one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is,” he continued.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/throw-them-up-against-the-wall-leaked-recording-of-bloomberg-defending-stop-and-frisk-resurfaces

This was a continuation of comments he made in defense of “stop and frisk” back in 2013. You can hear part of his comments to WOR-NY below where he says too many whites are being stopped and not enough minorities.

I am reading an excellent book right now on the rise of white supremacy in North Carolina in the post-Civil War days. The book, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, details how disarmament of blacks was one goal of the white supremacists. It started with the Black Codes, began again after Reconstruction ended, and continued on into the 20th Century. Armed freedmen and black Union veterans stood up to the Klan which allowed blacks to vote up through the end of the century. It made Wilmington a successful mixed-race community with many black office holders up until the coup of 1898.

Bloomberg’s comments would have found hearty agreement from former Confederate Colonel Roger Moore who headed the KKK in Wilmington and later from the Democrat architect of white supremacy Sen. Furnifold Simmons. The state’s pistol purchase permit is a remnant of laws put in place by the white supremacists. That we still have it is due in part to ad campaigns funded by Bloomberg and his Everytown organization against discarding the system.

So when Mike comes to town, let’s give him the warm North Carolina welcome he so richly deserves.

The Divorce Gets Uglier

The divorce between the NRA and Ackerman McQueen is ugly and is getting uglier. The NRA’s reply to Ackerman McQueen’s reply and counter-claim was filed with the US District Court on Friday. There were a number of news stories yesterday that excerpted parts of the reply with regard to NRATV and its characterization by the NRA as “distasteful” and “racist“.

The reply brought attention to an episode of NRATV featuring Dana Loesch in which she portrayed Thomas the Tank Engine in a KKK hooded robe.

From page 3 of the reply:

As AMc’s bills grew ever larger, NRATV’s messaging strayed from the Second Amendment to themes which some NRA leaders found distasteful and racist. One particularly damaging segment featured children’s cartoon characters adorned in Ku Klux Klan hoods. Unfortunately, attempts by the NRA to “rein in” AMc and its messaging were met with responses from AMc that ranged from evasive to hostile. At the same time, when NRA executives sought performance metrics for NRATV, AMc contrived a pretext to demand that each interlocutor be sidelined or fired. Simultaneously, in closed-door meetings with Mr. LaPierre (which AMc insisted remain “confidential”), the agency presented fabricated and inflated sponsorship and viewership claims. The simple request for the number of “unique visitors” to the site was not answered, despite multiple attempts by Mr. LaPierre and other NRA executives. In fact, AMc’s representations to the NRA leadership regarding the viewership for the digital platform it created, presented, and administered were, by 2017, intentionally (and wildly) misleading. Tellingly, when NRATV finally shut down in June 2019, no one missed it: not a single sponsor or viewer even called, confirming what at least some NRA executives suspected—the site had limited visibility and was failing the accomplish any of its goals.

Ackerman McQueen fired back today on the “distasteful” and “racist” claims in the NRA’s court filing. Like yesterday’s press release, the gloves are off and AckMac is taking no prisoners.

Ackerman McQueen recognized and handled the offensive imagery on the show, “Relentless”, in a proper fashion, like any media company would. We identified those responsible and put new processes and oversight in place. NRA executives acknowledged the corrective action taken by Ackerman McQueen, were satisfied with the response and a couple months later, renewed NRATV for 2019.

However, if the NRA wants to conduct a public conversation about distasteful and racist, they should consider their systematic behavior. This is the same executive leadership team and Board of Directors that refused to address the Philandro Castile tragedy. This the executive leadership team that put their heads in the sand every time a board member said something the could be perceived as distasteful or racist. This is the same executive team and Board of Directors that ignored, and didn’t even watch, the impactful programming that the NOIR team produced, telling important stories on minority issues. There are countless more examples, decisions and comments that plague the organization and will be a part of AMc’s defense.

As AMc said in its latest filing, Wayne LaPierre defrauded Ackerman McQueen. When AMc representatives discovered what he, his executive team as well as the Board of Directors were really doing, and AMc refused to have any part of it, the cabal that is left at the NRA retaliated. Now they want to blame anyone else for the people they actually are.

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Colion Noir Calls Out The Media

The media has been trying to use the shooting of Philandro Castile in Minnesota as a wedge between the African-American community and the National Rifle Association. They are saying that the NRA doesn’t care about black gun owners. Moreover, as this article in Inquisitr makes clear, they continue to try and make this a wedge issue because in the NRA’s call for an investigation in Minnesota they did not mention Mr. Castile by name. They are saying the NRA is facing an internal split. I don’t see it.

Colion Noir calls out the media and commentators who pushing the meme that the NRA doesn’t care about black gun owners. He notes that just like Philandro Castile he is a 32 year old black man with a carry permit that was stopped for a traffic infraction just two weeks ago.

Colion Noir is usually somewhat laid back and cool. Here he is not. He’s angry and he’s tired of putting up with the crap that the media and other critics have spewed towards him personally and to the NRA.

“An Act to Regulate the Sale of Concealed Weapons in North Carolina” – Part II

In any discussion of the 1919 act regulating the purchase of certain weapons in North Carolina, you have to go back to the state of politics as they existed in the 1890s. Post-Reconstruction, the Democrats had regained power in the state from the Republicans. However, this dominance was threatened in the 1890s by the rise of what was called Fusion politics. The Republicans and the Populist Party in North Carolina, while they differed on a national agenda, agreed on many items including education, voting rights, and the restoration of the charter of the Farmer’s Alliance which the Democrat-controlled General Assembly had revoked.

The guiding principle behind the fusion of the Republicans and the Populists was that they would agree to support the stronger candidate in each race against the Democrat’s candidate. Sometimes this would be the Populist and sometimes this would be the Republican. The elections of 1894 showed the success of the fusion approach. The Fusionists gained six US House seats from the Democrats; two for the Republicans and four for the Populists. They also elected both US Senators and took a super-majority in both house of the NC General Assembly. They repeated this success in the elections of 1896 where they widened their lead in the General Assembly, picked up another US House seat, and Republican Daniel Russell was elected governor. The General Assembly that convened in 1895 had five African-Americans as members and it loosened voting restrictions on blacks. As a result, voting participation of African-Americans increased significantly.

The Democrats had to come up with a strategy to overcome the successful fusion between the Populists and Republicans. They turned to New Bern attorney Furnifold M. Simmons who was appointed chairman of the NC Democratic Party. Simmons organized local party organizations in each county as well as a speaker’s bureau of orators such as South Carolina’s infamous Pitchfork Ben Tillman. The overriding strategy was based upon one thing: white supremacy.

The “white supremacy campaign” was exactly that. The Democrats repeatedly stated that only white men were fit to hold political office. They often accused the fusionists, especially the Republicans, of supporting “negro domination” in the state. Indeed, there were a large number of African American officeholders, some of whom had been elected and many more who were appointed to office. The Democrats referred to themselves as the “white man’s party” and appealed to white North Carolinians to restore them to power.

One of the most significant events of the campaign was the appearance of an editorial in the Wilmington Daily Record on August 18, 1898. The Daily Record was an African American newspaper published by Alex Manly. The editorial was a response to a speech by a Georgia woman who had called for the widespread lynching of African American men in order to protect white women. The Daily Record suggested that consensual relationships between African American men and white women were common and that often the man was accused of rape only after the relationship was discovered. Once the Democratic papers got hold of the editorial there was an uproar. Under headings such as “Vile and Villainous” and “A Horrid Slander,” the editorial was reprinted throughout the state. Some Democratic papers continued to run it in almost every single issue up to election day.

Not only was the election of 1898 built around white supremacy, it featured the intimidation of black voters by the neo-Fascist Red Shirts at the behest of Simmons as well as an actual coup d’etat after the election in Wilmington. Josephus Daniels, publisher of the News and Observer and an ardent white supremacist, said of Simmons that he was “a genius in putting everybody to
work—men who could write, men who could speak, and men who could ride—the last by no means the least important.” (As an aside, the News and Observer is editorializing in favor of keeping Jim Crow laws from that era.)

The role of newspapers such as the N&O, the Charlotte Observer, the Wilmington Morning Star, and the Wilmington Messenger cannot be understated. While their current staff and readership would be appalled by the overtly racist messages they published, they were the essential propaganda arm of the Democratic Party in North Carolina. In an era before the advent of TV and radio, the newspapers were the media. They conveyed the message to their readers through both editorials and through cartoons aimed at the less literate. Norman Jennett’s cartoons for the N&O ran above the fold and were praised by Democrats as “one of the powers that brought about the revolution.” Many of them can be found here.

On the eve of the 1898 election, Simmons wrote an editorial that laid out the reasons to vote for the Democrats and at its heart was the cause of white supremacy. It appeared on the front page of Daniels’ N&O on November 3rd.

Then came the evidence, disclosing the actual condition of affairs, in that section of the State, which astonished and shocked the consciences and moral sensibilities of the people.

NEGRO CONGRESSMEN, NEGRO SOLICITORS, NEGRO REVENUE OFFICERS, NEGRO COLLECTORS OF CUSTOMS, NEGROES in charge of white institutions, NEGROES in charge of white schools, NEGROES holding inquests over the white dead, NEGROES controlling the finances of great cities, NEGROES in control of the sanitation and police of cities, NEGRO CONSTABLES arresting white women and white men, NEGRO MAGISTRATES trying white women and white men, white convicts chained to NEGRO CONVICTS and forced to social equality with them, until the proofs rose up, and stood forth “like Pelion on Ossa piled.”….

The battle has been fought, the victory is within our reach. North Carolina is a WHITE MAN’S State, and WHITE MEN will rule it, and they will crush the party of negro domination beneath a majority so overwhelming that no other party will ever again dare to attempt to establish negro rule here.

They CANNOT intimidate us; they CANNOT buy us, and they SHALL NOT cheat us out of the fruits of our victory.

And victory was what the Democrats got in 1898. They gained back five seats in Congress from the Populists and Republicans and a super majority in the General Assembly (2 Populists and a smattering of mountain Republicans remained). While the fusionists won in Wilmington, then the state’s largest city, that lasted all of two days until white supremacists rioted and took over the city council from the elected representatives in what became known as the Wilmington Massacre.

They consolidated their gains in 1900 with the election of Democrat Charles B. Aycock as governor, the appointment of Simmons as US Senator, and a constitutional amendment that imposed both a poll tax and a literacy test. The amendment contained a grandfather clause enabling anyone whose ancestors were eligible to vote prior to 1867 to vote. Voter turnout dropped from around 85% in 1896 to less than 50% thereafter. A Republican would not be governor of North Carolina again until 1972 and a Republican majority in either house of the General Assembly until 2010.

Not only had the Democrats cemented their power but so had Furnifold Simmons. He would serve in the US Senate for 30 years and would use the power of patronage to maintain his control. Only once in the succeeding years was his candidate defeated for governor in the Democratic primary and then he worked to destroy the man. His organization wrote journalist W. J. Cash reached to “the headwaters of every Little Buffalo and Sandy Run in North Carolina; into every alley of every factory town.” The Democratic Party controlled a segregationist North Carolina and the Simmons Machine controlled the Democratic Party.

Part III will cover the passage of the act through the General Assembly in 1919 with the primary sponsor being none other than Simmons’ brother-in-law Sen. Earle A. Humphrey (D-Goldsboro).