jmccann@heraldsun.com; 419-6601
DURHAM -- Martin Luther King Jr.'s work is not over: Socio-economic divisions are taking the place that race once did, state NAACP President William Barber said Monday.
Barber served up proverbial fire to a standing-room-only crowd at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center for the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Triangle Interfaith Prayer Breakfast.
Barber directed his most scathing comments toward what he believes could unravel what King worked so hard to weave together. Taking desegregated schools as an example, Barber said popular talk these days is to move toward neighborhood schools. He told the crowd that it sounds good, as far as kids getting some extra shut-eye because they don't have to travel so far to get to to their classrooms.
"But understand it is an ugly history of divisiveness," Barber said. "Neighborhood schools is another name for re-segregation."
The problem with neighborhood schools is pockets of poverty that are created when students from lower socio-economic backgrounds get lumped together in one building. Those schools tend to be the failing schools, Barber said. The travesty is those in positions to fix those schools know exactly where they're located but choose to allow the students attending them to languish, he said. So these lower-performing schools continue to be the places where the least-experienced teachers cut their teeth before moving on, Barber said.
"It's a crying shame," Barber said. "Separate but equal doesn't work, and it's unlawful."
Meantime, moms and dads in better financial situations are busy trying to use public money to create what essentially amounts to private schools for their children, Barber claimed.
"Somebody ought to say, 'Not on my dime!'" the state NAACP president roared.
The crowd returned the roar, and the people leapt to their feet to second Barber's motion.
Gov. Beverly Perdue, who also spoke at the celebration on Monday, nodded to Barber's remarks and said she, too, fears re-segregation.
The breakfast was free and open to anyone who could find a seat. People parked their vehicles in tow-away zones, and an overflow room was needed to handle the spillover after hundreds of people packed the hotel's main ballroom.
While King probably would have thought now was too soon to expect a black family in the White House, Barber said the drum major for justice some 40 years ago had ideas about a grand government plan that not only would help black people but poor white folks, too. Pulling it off would require cooperation among those two groups of people, as well as progressive white people, even those on welfare, Barber said.
"This theme is a socio-political strategy" to get the have-nots to catch up with the haves, Barber said. But the approach has to be from the bottom up, not from the top down, he said.
"Wall Street can't drive a just society," Barber argued.
Durham County Board of Commissioners Chairman Michael Page said it's past time for government leaders to do something to end societal ills including poverty, homelessness and human trafficking.
Perdue brought up the late Durham lawyer and civil-rights champion Floyd McKissick Sr. and the legal fight that eventually got him admitted to UNC's law school after at first being denied entrance. What McKissick did changed the face of higher education, the governor said.
"The senator doesn't talk much about his dad," said Perdue, alluding to state Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr., who was at the breakfast. "But that was an ordinary man who made an extraordinary difference."
And what King did to root out discrimination has a lot to do with why Perdue is North Carolina's first female governor, she said.
But Perdue referenced some social shifting that stands to undermine such strides.
The Rev. David Mitchell, of Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, had touched on that shift during a prayer for world peace. He asked God to keep the far-right, conservative agenda -- and Mitchell mentioned conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh by name -- from thwarting rescue efforts toward earthquake survivors in Haiti.
Barber, too, acknowledged the situation in Haiti. He challenged Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson's belief that the earthquake was the result of a years-ago pact with the devil folks made in that very, very poor country.
"Pat Robertson needs to shut up," Barber said. "He doesn't need to go to hell, but his words need to go to the pit of hell."
