We were there, sweat trickling onto our notepad, listening to David Harvey, president of the Halifax County Chapter of the NAACP, proposing to work hard to oust Commissioners Vernon Bryant and Rives Manning.
We remember Harvey calling Historic Halifax pathetic Halifax, while the groups used a Northwest Halifax High School student as a pawn to push their agenda.
Gary Grant, of Concerned Citizens of Tillery, was there applauding them on, himself talking about Jim Crow laws, preaching to a small choir that the situation today was something out of the Civil Rights era.
We remember Rebecca Copeland, author of a March 4 letter requesting an investigation of the Halifax Political Action Committee, spewing bile about the Roanoke Rapids Graded School District, likening the city's school system to hood-wearing members of the Ku Klux Klan.
She made it clear that despite the wishes of the Roanoke Rapids and Weldon school systems, merger was going to happen and the wishes of an overwhelming majority of people in Halifax County, the same people who voted down a supplemental school tax almost two years earlier, be damned.
The coalition may have forgotten that rhetoric-filled day, but we haven't, using their group as a tool to not only push the merger issue, but using it as an opportunity to cry racism where no racism exists.
That the coalition is now calling for an investigation of the PAC screams hypocrisy. As it pushes its agenda to save the county school system, it is attempting to throw out a roadblock that would disallow the PAC and the Roanoke Rapids Graded School District, incorrectly called the Greater school district in the letter, to do the same.
School board members, who are elected in non-partisan races, have every right to do everything within their power to protect the districts they serve. There is no loyalty to party bonds when you are a school board member, therefore, they have every right to encourage Republicans who live in a mostly Democratic county to change their affiliation to vote in the May 6 primary. As we generally support the unlocking of handcuffs to one party or another, we encourage others concerned about the merger issue to switch to independent so they may vote in the primary.
What the coalition seems to be saying in its letter to the county and state board of elections is a double standard, that it's not OK for city school board members to use the PAC to save its school system, but they are allowed to use students, use other organizations and the Halifax County school system to say merger is the best option for the county.
They can preach targeting people like Bryant and Manning for ouster, while the PAC can't go about raising money to put them back in office.
The coalition seems to have a short memory and was erroneous in its assumption that the organization it is targeting was only recently formed, when its efforts led to the defeat of a supplemental school tax for Halifax County nearly two years ago.
The coalition is calling for two Roanoke Rapids school board members to either resign from the PAC or the school board. What we are asking the coalition is should the people standing with them supporting merger on the lawn of that so-called pathetic historic courthouse resign from the various organizations they represent?
We think they wouldn't.
We think they should call off the dogs in their request for an investigation into a group that is trying to save its school system, just as they are trying to save the county school system. If the pressure was on the coalition, we think they would be screaming unkind words, calling racism and crying they were being treated unfairly.
But, for some unknown reason, the coalition seems to have forgotten that hot day last summer when they stood in lockstep with the county school system pushing merger at all costs — Editor
