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Vol. 14 No. 14…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…April
4, 2011
Bit of History
William Woods Holden
(1818-1892)
Born November 24, 1818 near present-day
Carolina,
William Woods Holden was the son of Thomas Holden and Priscilla Woods, who were
never married. He was reared by his stepmother, Sally Nichols Holden.
At age ten, Holden was
apprenticed to the editor of the Hillsborough Recorder. He went to work as a
printer for the Milton Chronicle at age sixteen, then for a Danville, Virginia
paper and later the Raleigh Star.
Holden studied law and was
admitted to the bar on January 1, 1841, but he chose newspaper work over law
and politics. In 1842, he became owner and editor of the North Carolina
Standard. Holden changed his political party affiliation from the Whig to the
Democratic Party and served as a delegate to the state party convention, where
he was elected to the North Carolina Democratic Party state executive
committee.
In 1846, Wake County voters
elected Holden to the North Carolina House of Commons; he served one term.
Twelve years later, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic gubernatorial
nomination.
Holden advocated Southern rights
to expand slavery and championed the right of secession until 1860. When he
shifted his position to support the Union, he was removed as the state's
printer.
Wake County voters sent him to a
State Convention in 1861 to vote against secession, but after President Abraham
Lincoln called on North Carolina to provide troops to suppress seceding states,
Holden joined in the unanimous vote to secede from the Union. As the Civil War
progressed, he became an outspoken critic of the Confederacy, and a leader of
the peace movement. Recognizing the futility of the war, he declared that it
was far better to make an honorable peace while still possible rather than
being forced to accept unconditional surrender. Moreover, he thought the time
had come to overthrow the agrarian aristocratic rule and create a progressive
state for the welfare of the masses rather than continue the existing order for
the privileged few. For such views, Holden was denounced as a traitor.
In September 1863, the Standard
office was attacked by Georgia troops and his personal papers and type were
destroyed. Nevertheless, he continued to publish the Standard until suspension
of the writ of habeas corpus took away the freedom of the press.
After the war, Holden was appointed governor by President Andrew Johnson. He
was defeated by Jonathan Worth in a special 1865 election and returned to
editing the Standard. Holden was elected governor on the Republican ticket in
1868.
Holden's administration faced many challenges, including reorganizing state and
local governments, reestablishing public schools for all children, reviving a
depressed economy, and establishing equal justice for all persons. The last
issue caused the greatest concern; many North Carolinians were unwilling to
extend full civil rights and suffrage to former slaves.
To combat the Ku Klux Klan, which organized to restore whites to local and
state offices, Holden hired two dozen detectives in 1869-70. While not overly
successful in limiting Klan activities, Holden's efforts to suppress the Klan
exceeded those of other Southern governors. In 1870, he imposed martial law in
two counties and suspended the writ of habeas corpus for accused Klan leaders
in what became known as the Kirk-Holden war. The result was a political
backlash that lost the Republicans the upcoming legislative election.
On December 9, 1870, Frederick W. Strudwick of Orange
County, a former Klan leader, introduced in the state house of representatives
a resolution calling for Holden's impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors.
The resolution was adopted on December 14. Five days later, the house approved
eight articles of impeachment against Holden. He was convicted on six of the
eight charges against him by the North Carolina Senate in straight party-line
votes on March 22, 1871.
The main charges against Holden had to do with the rough treatment and arrests
of North Carolina citizens by state militia officer Col. George W. Kirk during
the enforcement of Radical Reconstruction civil rights legislation. Initially,
Holden had formed the state militia out of a response to the assassination of
senator John W. Stephens on May 21, 1870 and the lynching of Wyatt Outlaw, an
African American night police officer in the town of Graham in Alamance County,
as well as numerous attacks by the Ku Klux Klan.
Holden was the first governor in American history to be impeached, convicted,
and removed from office. After his removal from office, Holden moved to Washington,
D.C., where he again worked for a newspaper. He returned to Raleigh when
President Ulysses Grant appointed him postmaster there from 1873 to 1881.
Raleigh Republicans persuaded President James Garfield not to re-appoint him to
his post, and Holden subsequently left the party.
Holden was married twice and had eight children. He died on March 1, 1892.
(Sources: www.absoluteastronomy.com, http://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/bios/pn0000761_bio.html,
and http://en.wikipedia.org)
To the Colored People
of North Carolina
Know ye that since the time that Haman conspired to destroy all the Jews who dwelt in the
Persian Dominions, because he hated Mordecai, no wickedness hath been devised
that will bear any comparison with some of the measures proposed by the
dominant 
party
in the present General Assembly. Indeed there is some analogy between our case
and that of the Jews at that time. In Gov. Holden we have the despised
Mordecai. His enemies stand forth as the exact counterpart of Haman. The poor people, especially the colored people are
the great body of victims appointed for the slaughter, and we as
Representatives, occupying the place of power, as did Esther, feel it to be our
duty to warn you of the impending danger, and arouse you to such action as may
tend to avert, if possible, the threatened evil.
The only offence of Gov. Holden,
and that which has brought down the wrath of the dominant party upon him is
that he thwarted the designs of a band of Assassins, who had prepared to
saturate this State in the blood of the poor people on the night before the
last election on account of their political sentiments, and to prevent them
from voting. Because he dispersed this murderous host, organized by the so
called Conservative party they propose to destroy him. First they propose to
suspend him, then to go through with a mock trial before the Senate as they
have already done before the House, where a true bill has been found without
taking testimony.
After impeachment, his enemies
will not be satisfied until he is hanged, unless happily their own gallows
should overtake them. When Gov. Holden is disposed of those whom he protected
will be the next victims. For the blood of one man will not satiate their
thirst. They are mad because their slave property is lost. They are mad because
the Reconstruction measures have triumphed, and we are permitted to represent
you in this body. They are mad because we refuse to bow the knee to them.
Like Haman,
who, after speaking of his riches, the multitude of his children, and his
preferment both by the King and Queen, yet declared it availed nothing so long
as Mordecai sat at the King's gate--so with our enemies. It avails nothing,
that they have got control of the General Assembly, by deception, fraud, and
intimidation; so long as the friend of the poor, and protector of the innocent
and defenseless, occupies the Chair of State, and you have the right to go to
the polls unmolested. They have therefore commenced a system of
disfranchisement, by amending the charters of towns, by allowing but one day
for voting, by allowing voters to be challenged at the polls, and by requiring
each to vote in the township in which he resides. They have thereby already
disfranchised thousands. But progress in this way is too slow for their
purpose. They therefore propose to call a Convention. Having repealed the
Militia law, they propose to let loose their murderous band, upon us and thus
secure a majority of the delegates to this Convention. When this is done our
liberties are at an end.
To avert the impending evil we
see no power in the arm of flesh. We feel that we have too long neglected to
seek aid at that source that never fails. The laws of righteous retribution
have not been repealed, but are in force upon the statutes of the Almighty.
Justice will riot sleep forever. If we call upon God he will hear and answer
us.
We therefore propose a day of fasting and prayer throughout the State. Let us
ask God to bring our good friend the governor triumphantly through this ordeal,
and to avert the evils that are hanging over us.
LET FRIDAY THE 13TH DAY OF
JANUARY be set apart as a day of fasting and prayer,
throughout our habitations. Let no strong drink or other luxuries, be used for
the three days preceding. Let the people assemble in their places of worship
and cry unto the Lord. Let the maid-servants, whose employment will not permit
them to worship during the forenoon ask their employers to allow them the
afternoon, that they may spend it in fasting and prayer on behalf of the
Governor and our suffering people.
Let the Ministers of the Gospel
proclaim this fast and see that it is observed. If this call is heartily
responded to God will deliver us.
About Me: Published in Raleigh, North Carolina on December 19, 1870, this
broadside was addressed to former slaves and other persons of color residing in
that state. It was signed by 17 state legislators and warned of the
consequences of removing Gov. Holden from office.
NC Senate Weighs a
Holden Pardon
In a move that could compel
legislators to confront North Carolina's racist past, the state senate is
debating a resolution to pardon 
the
late Republican Gov. William Holden, who became the first governor removed from
office in the US on March 22, 1871. Holden's chief offense stemmed from
stopping Ku Klux Klan violence during Reconstruction following the Civil War.
Holden's impeachment took place
months after Democrats - the party that had favored secession and formation of
the Confederacy - took back control of the statehouse from Republicans, the
party of Lincoln. Republicans did not take charge of the North Carolina Senate again
until this year (2011).
Democrats were angry with Holden
for bringing in a state militia to quell a Klan insurrection that killed
newly-freed slaves and other Republicans, both black and white.
The House approved eight
impeachment articles against him, including several for jailing Klan supporters
without due process rights. The Senate convicted him on six of the articles
following a seven-week trial and removed him from office.
In 1876, years after his
impeachment, Holden said he acted "purely as a defensive measure to save
human life and to protect and secure free suffrage to all. I had solely in view
the vindication of the law, the protection of the citizen and the good of
society," Holden said, according to a historical review article.
Supporters of the resolution to
pardon Holden say the Senate's debate will help set straight an injustice from
a painful chapter in the state's history. According to Wake County GOP Senator
Neal Hunt, one of the resolution's three primary sponsors, "He definitely
warrants a pardon. He was standing up for what is right. He was impeached by
people who had very bad views about the appropriate treatment of citizens,
whether they were black or white people supporting black people."
Senate debate on the resolution
scheduled for Tuesday was delayed until at least Wednesday after senators were
given a document citing a nearly 100-year-old book by a University of North
Carolina history professor criticizing Holden for supporting carpetbaggers and
scalawags.
It was not immediately clear who
put the document on their desks. It cited a 1914 book that it said berated
Holden's administration and called his appointees corrupt.
Contemporary historians, however, have been more sympathetic to Holden, and
three living former governors have signed a letter endorsing his pardon.
While the debate was delayed to
ensure Senate Republicans had the correct information before undoing the
pardon, the House will still have to approve the resolution to give it formal
weight to remove the impeachment and conviction.
Democratic Sen. Dan Blue of Wake County,
another primary sponsor, said he believes correcting Holden's impeachment and
conviction can become a source of unity for state residents who lived through
the civil rights era in the 20th century.
"There's also a redeeming
message in it, too," said Blue, who was elected the state's first black
House speaker in 1991. "There are a lot of other injustices we can correct
and I'm hoping we can look at those as well, as well as make sure we don't
inflict any injustices in this current climate."
Cross Burning in California
Anger and shock have penetrated a prosperous, mostly white
Central California community where an 11-foot cross was stolen from a church
and set on fire next to the home of a black family.
Police
assigned extra patrols to the neighborhood in Arroyo Grande - a city that
hasn't seen a hate crime in nearly a decade - and rewards were offered for
information leading to an arrest.
The cross was stolen from a garden at Saint John's Lutheran Church
weeks ago and set ablaze Friday in a lot behind the house where the family
lived, police Cmdr. John Hough said.
A 19-year-old woman saw the flaming cross from her bedroom
window. Officers doused burning pieces of wood with a garden hose.
Police declined to release the names of the family because the incident was
considered a hate crime - the first since 2002 in the city of 17,000 in mostly
rural San Luis Obispo County, a region of vast farms, picturesque towns and a
state university campus.
More than 30 clergy members signed a letter to the editor of
the San Luis Obispo Tribune urging that the crime be taken seriously.
FBI agents and investigators from the county and the state
Department of Justice were involved in the arson and hate-crime probe. Police
said a $3,500 rewards was offered.
There was no evidence that an organized racist group was involved, Hough said.
The 100-pound cross was hollow and made of fir. It was built
eight years ago for a local production of "Jesus Christ Superstar,"
then donated to Saint John, Pastor Randy Ouimette
said. It was usually bolted to a base in the garden, but each year it was taken
inside the sanctuary during the Lenten season before being moved to a beach two
miles away to be decorated with flowers for an Easter sunrise service. The
theft at the church was discovered March 5 but may have occurred weeks earlier,
the pastor said.
Authorities suspected the stolen cross had been used in the
hate crime and showed Ouimette the half-charred
pieces of wood. He quickly recognized it because its maker had carved
"PHIL 4:13" into it, a reference to a passage in the New Testament
book of Philippians that says: "I can do all things through Him who
strengthens me."
More than 100 members of the congregation signed a giant
card of compassion they planned to deliver to the family with two handmade
prayer quilts - even though they didn't know the family.
The church has accepted an offer of a 10-foot replacement
cross that a nearby church had placed in storage. (Source: Associated Press,
March 23, 2011)
Race Issues Rise for Miami Police (Excerpts)
By
Don Van Natta, Jr.
The video, shot with a hand-held
camera, shows brawny Miami police officers breaking down doors and hauling
handcuffed African-
American
suspects off some of the city's toughest streets. "We hunt," one
officer says in the five-and-a-half-minute clip. "I like to hunt."
But it was not a source of embarrassment for Miami's police chief, Miguel A. Exposito. The video was part of a reality television pilot,
"Miami's Finest SOS," a project with the enthusiastic backing of
Chief Exposito. "Our guys were proactively going
out there, like predators," he says during his cameo in the video, which
surfaced online in January.
A few weeks later, a Miami police
officer shot and killed a black man during a traffic stop at North Miami Avenue
and 75th Street in the Little Haiti neighborhood. The man, Travis McNeil, 28,
was unarmed and never left the driver's seat of his rental car when he was shot
once in the chest, members of his family said.
Mr. McNeil was the seventh
African-American man to be shot and killed by Miami police officers in eight
months. "I don't understand how the powers that be can allow these things
to keep happening," Sheila McNeil, the mother of Mr. McNeil, said of the
Feb. 10 shooting death of her son. "Something is drastically wrong."
Chief Exposito,
a burly 37-year veteran who became chief in November 2009, defended his leadership.
"We don't have a violent police department. You'll find our officers are
very compassionate with the people they deal with. They will try to de-escalate
situations 
rather
than resorting to deadly force."
The officer who shot Mr. McNeil
is Reinaldo Goyo, a member
of the city's elite gang unit who appeared in the "Miami's Finest SOS"
video. (The TV show has since been shelved.)
Saying on the video: "I've
got some style. I've got some flavor" while wearing a hoodie
emblazoned with the words "The Punisher," Detective Goyo says he and his partner inherited the nicknames
Crockett and Tubbs after the lead characters in the 1980s TV show "Miami
Vice." "It's got a nice little ring to it," he says.
Chief Exposito said he thought the video was
"excellent," although in an e-mail to the production company in
December, he acknowledged that he regretted using the word "predator"
and asked that his quotation be changed. In an interview, Chief Exposito said the video was not supposed to be for public
consumption. The chief also defended the officer who said, "I like to
hunt." "Hunting doesn't mean you go kill people," the chief
said. "Hunting means you go out there and capture people."
Miami has a long history of
racially charged police shootings, some of which combusted into deadly riots
and Justice Department inquiries that ended with police officers in prison. The
pattern this time is familiar: All seven men who were fatally shot by the
police were African-American; the police officers who shot them are all
Hispanics.
"There is a wide range of
growing concern in the community regarding the apparent lack of communication
and response to these incidents by the City of Miami Police Department,"
Representative Frederica S. Wilson, a Democrat from Miami, wrote in a recent
letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., asking the Justice Department to
investigate. (Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23miami.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)
From Memphis to Madison
By Isaiah J. Poole
"We are determined to be
people. We are saying that we are God's children. And that we don't have to
live like we are forced to 
live."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968
On April 4, we will be called on
not to merely remember that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on that
day in 1968, but to recall what he was about to do on the day he was shot--and
why the mission he was on that day very much matters to the struggle of working
people (and those who want to become working people) today.
King was in Memphis to support
sanitation workers who were caught in a struggle with the city's mayor that was
very similar to the battle that public employees in Wisconsin were fighting
with Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the state legislature.
At the "We Are One"
website created to be a hub of grassroots activities focusing on today's
worker's rights and economic justice issues, there are articles that tell the
story, along with the text of the famous speech that King gave on April 3.
That speech is best known for the
line in its closing paragraph--"I've been to the mountaintop..."--but
the heart of the speech is a theme of economic rights as well as human rights
that had been a consistent theme of King's for years, and one that particularly
conservatives who seek to wrap themselves in the mantle of King consistently
ignore.
Michael K. Honey, whose latest
book on King's economic message, explained in an interview with the AFL-CIO's
James Parks: "At various times he says he is not opposed to people having
wealth, he's opposed to people having wealth at the expense of other people not
having wealth…and ignoring the poor. His Poor People's Campaign" was
really about economic restructuring. His plan was to put pressure on Congress
to shift its priorities from war and military spending to housing, health care,
jobs and education, focusing especially on the people who were losing jobs
because of automation of industry and outsourcing.
It was a two-pronged approach - one was that there were these people who were
being thrown out of the economy to starve and something had to be done about
that. But secondly, the priorities of the country are all wrong."
As Honey also notes in this
interview, King saw the emergence of a right-wing campaign to neutralize the
power of workers, with the aim of keeping wages suppressed and minimizing
business accountability for the safety or well-being of either workers or the
communities in which they operated.
The push-back against this campaign took full force in Madison, Wis., this
year, when thousands of citizens descended upon the state capitol building to
object to Republican efforts to strip public workers of their bargaining
rights. Part of their message was that they would not stand passively by while
teachers and other public workers were being asked to "sacrifice" an
average $8,000 in salary and benefits to balance the state budget and give up
their ability to negotiate over working conditions while corporations were
being given millions in state tax breaks.
The "We Are One"
movement is seeking to turn that moment into a larger grassroots effort to
refocus our national leadership's attention on jobs. It is incredible that in
the final year of his life King was in the process of organizing a mass
demonstration in Washington to protest unemployment and poverty conditions that
were actually not as worse then as they are now.
Today, conservative economic
policies are threatening to take us into a sustained period of high
unemployment, continued stagnant wages and increased economic insecurity for
both the poor and the middle class. April 4 has to be a day in which we call
out the people who are pushing this toxic agenda and present a different vision
of an America that has a resurgent middle class standing on the foundation of a
new economy of broad prosperity.
April 4 is a day of teach-ins, vigils, faith events and demonstrations to call
for a new era of economic justice. It's a day to be creative, but clear: We are
one. Source: www.truth-out.org/from-memphis-madison-the-april-4-stand-for-economic-justice68718)
Disgruntled says: There
is nothing like killing foreigners to improve a US president's popularity
rating. This week President Barack Obama delivered an eloquent justification of
the West's Libyan intervention to "avert a humanitarian disaster." He
painted a vivid picture of what might have happened had US warships and jets
failed to stop Muammar Gadhafi from putting down an
armed insurrection. Oily partisans on both sides of the political aisle weighed
in on the merits of Obama's decision. In varying degrees with caveats galore,
most agreed his action was the right one; he just should have consulted
Congress first or articulated a doctrine or some such. Funny thing is, I cannot
imagine Democrats agreeing that starting another war was a good idea or even
the right thing to do, even as a humanitarian gesture,
had George W. Bush been commander-in-chief. I know I would not! Likewise, I
think this imperialistic move by Obama is wrong. The opposition forces are not
peaceful demonstrators being mowed down by Gadhafi's
forces; these are armed men, no matter how untrained they are portrayed by the
media. This is a civil war. Moreover, I do not recall any intense diplomatic
measures having been undertaken to resolve the situation. In the final
analysis, we can denigrate Gadhafi all we want, but
when we stack up the bodies, he has not killed nearly as many people as the US
and its allied forces' good intentions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, not
to mention the body count from all their prior good intentions. Want to avert a
humanitarian disaster? Stop the drone attacks and pull US troops out of these
and all foreign countries. Better yet, feed the hungry, provide jobs for
unemployed Americans, and stop funding the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.
Disgruntled wants to know: We have a
black/mulatto president and a black attorney general, but no positive change
for black people has resulted from their term in office. Blacks are still the
last hired and the first fired; they continue to experience double digit
unemployment rates even as the national average dips below 9%. Over the course
of the housing bubble, blacks were targeted by the big banks and their subprime
downstream lenders with predatory loans; hence, blacks are some of the biggest
losers in the resulting home foreclosure crisis. But, they are not being
targeted for loan modifications and other federal assistance to prevent them
from losing their homes. Likewise, they are not the ones getting new jobs
because they have been unemployed the longest. In fact, employers are
discriminating against long-term unemployed workers, both black and white, and
the government is doing nothing. Any way we analyze the situation, having a
black president has not changed the American black human condition. To be
honest, the state of black America has worsened under Obama. With so little
time left in his first term before he focuses full time on getting reelected,
when will our black president stop the slaughter of black men by police, speak
to the racism that divides us into segregated schools and neighborhoods, end
unequal sentencing that is a hallmark of the US criminal justice system and
work to end the income and employment disparities that have dogged black people
since this nation's inception?
Disgruntled feels: Baffled! I have a
conundrum. President Obama appointed Jeffrey Immelt, 
the
CEO of General Electric (GE), to head his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
Obama praised Immelt as a business leader who
"understands what it takes for America to compete in the global
economy." Under Immelt's leadership, GE paid no
taxes on its $14.5 billion in profit last year; the company is expected to
receive a $3.2 billion tax rebate. In addition to paying zero taxes on its
profits, GE under Immelt could be the poster child
for outsourcing jobs. I am baffled that an individual with such a history can
be praised and appointed to a council charged with creating US jobs. But, if
that is a conundrum, imagine bombing Libya with depleted uranium missiles,
which, according to some experts, amounts to dropping dirty bombs and claiming
the action safeguards civilians. I am baffled by this doublespeak that goes
unquestioned by mainstream media.