BICENTENNIAL ON DEATH ROW
P., Sister Lois Spear, O.
BICENTENNIAL ON DEATH ROW LOIS SPEAR The discrepancy between the myth and the reality North Carolina joined her sister states with a yearlong Bicentennial celebration, including the usual July...
...Chavis' friends associate him with the port city of Wilmington, whose strategic location caused it to play a significant role in the American Revolution...
...Both of them, along with six other inmates, were killed and over twenty seriously burned in a fire they enkindled with their highly flammable prison mattresses...
...Another prisoner, Ronald Denny, had no such expectations, for he had served only thirty days of a two-year sentence...
...For Robert Dent on, the 19-year-old inmate of the McDowell Prison Unit in Marion, July 4 should have been a special day also, for it meant homecoming after finishing a twelve-month term for obstruction of justice...
...Supporters of Chavis contend that he is a "political prisoner," an activist who is so articulate that he threatens the state's white power structure...
...A ninth died July 16 of burns...
...Very Special Day In Raleigh a variety of entertainments made July 4 a very special day...
...In the hospital sister lois spear, o.p., teaches in the History Department at St...
...Known as the Old North State of the original thirteen, the state claims two additional honors: the first colony to vote for independence from England and the birthplace of three Presidents...
...This year's celebration tended to be elaborate and the rhetoric florid, setting off in clearer relief than in many other states the gap between the myths we cherish about our national past and the reality we see around us daily...
...Unlike the majority of the state's historic sites which are no longer being used, this decrepit, maximum security facility has approximately 1,250 prisoners crammed into a space designed to accommodate 860 people...
...The charges, arising from the Joanne Little case, could lead to disbarment...
...On July 10 when the verdict of not guilty was announced, stunned members of the black community met to plan some form of public protest...
...On July 6. in Henderson the trial got underway for the wife of a Free Will Baptist Minister, Sandra Dupree, who was charged with shooting Harry Dickens in Scotland Neck...
...And the ink had barely dried on that decision before Lieutenant Governor Jim Hunt, who is also the front-running candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor (primary, August 17), declared on WRAL-TV on July 6 that, if elected, he would recommend that stiff penalties for crime be made mandatory...
...In Durham on July 7, civil rights lawyer, Jerry Paul, prepared to stand trial on charges made by the N.C...
...At the state fairgrounds the Pershing Rifles Brigade of N.C...
...While the trial was in progress, many of the state's civil rights leaders, instead of joining Frinks, preferred to maintain a low profile, apparently believing that the evidence in the case was so overwhelming that the minimum sentence Mrs...
...wing of the prison, the Reverend Benjamin Chavis, civil rights activist, continues his fast...
...State University drilled for the entertainment of spectators...
...They were protesting a disciplinary measure: the confiscation of radios that had been used without earplugs...
...only one other state, South Carolina, kept this certification requirement until it was overturned by the courts...
...Headlines and news coverage appearing in the special, Bicentennial issue of the morning newspaper, The News and Observer, sharply etched in the contrasts...
...It is a short distance from Halifax to Henderson in Vance County whose citizens purchased a full-page ad in the Bicentennial issue to describe how their town and county participated in the Revolution...
...The discrepancy between the myth and reality that these incidents point out appears in every state's oratory as the Fourth of July rolls around...
...While older, seasoned prisoners looked on and were safely evacuated from cellblock B, the doors of cellblock A remained locked while the thick smoke and flames burned and suffocated eight of the prisoners, most of whom were young men serving time for misdemeanors...
...That First Approved Independence...
...Authorities of the Scotland County prison unit near Wagram, where McLaughlin was imprisoned, face charges of willfully neglecting the ailing prisoner...
...Bar Association...
...Reformers in the state shared the sentiments of Chief Justice Susie Sharp who warned recently that prison conditions were "inconsistent with the professed standards of a Christian people and demand our immediate attention and correction...
...not to mention the state's economic problems indicated by its lack of unionization and low median income level...
...And yet, it's chilling, like watching a Kafka drama, to see so many Tarheels serious, well-meaning citizens simply ignore the pictures of the burned out McDowell Prison unit, moving quickly to snaps of Holshouser cutting the birthday cake in Wilmington...
...Under the headline, "Wake County Abounds with Historic Sites," a list of historic places had been compiled...
...Yet, on July 8, the state asked the federal courts to reverse an earlier ruling overturning the requirement that, before an applicant could obtain a teaching license in North Carolina, he must make a minimum score of 950 on the Princeton National Teachers Examination...
...In the later antebellum period, runaway slaves tended to gather here in hopes of boarding foreign ships and working their way to freedom...
...the defendant admitted firing the fatal shot hitting Dickens in the back of the head...
...Included in the list was "Central Prison built 1869-1884 by prison labor...
...In Moore Square you could listen to jazz and blue-grass music...
...In the long run, that may be more open and honest than in many northern cities...
...BICENTENNIAL ON DEATH ROW LOIS SPEAR The discrepancy between the myth and the reality North Carolina joined her sister states with a yearlong Bicentennial celebration, including the usual July Fourth parades, picnicking, and oratory...
...Nash Square hosted an arts and crafts display...
...Augustine College in Raleigh...
...This is a reference to the Halifax Resolves of April 12, 1776, presumably making the state the first one to opt for independence, though many professional historians vigorously deny this claim...
...The Richfield Cloggers from Stanley County shook the stage at nearby Norton Arena...
...Yet, it took a Supreme Court decision to overturn the state's capital punishment laws...
...But the contradictions are more open here from the proud claim on the license plates, "First in Freedom," to the ghostly specter of Central Prison and the tragic death of eight young men in the McDowell Prison Unit fire...
...Dupree had been given bail when, under similar circumstances, it had been denied to blacks...
...Dupree could receive would be voluntary manslaughter...
...The Bicentennial issue of the local paper headlined a myth the state fondly cherishes: "It was N.C...
...Paul's time for his own defense is limited, because he has undertaken the case of William McLaughlin, who died on July 12 during a routine physical checkup in Central Prison...
...The headline, "Thomas Jefferson, with Freedom in His mind, Made Nation Free, Gave World Freedom Formula," seems strangely incompatible with the state's legal system that placed 122 men on death row...
...Joanne Little is the young black woman who was acquitted on charges stemming from the slaying of her jailer in Washington, N.C...
...It was in this city that Ben Chavis currently in Central Prison and nine other young people, the "Wilmington 10," allegedly committed the "conspiracy" that netted them a total of 282 years in prison...
...North Carolina is not the only state to demonstrate the ambiguity between freedom preached and basic freedoms safeguarded...
...The black community considers the NTE highly discriminatory...
...The Bicentennial ball was held in this city and the state's first Republican governor in over seventy years, Jim Holshouser, sliced pieces from a giant, 300 lb., 5-foot-high birthday cake...
...A degree of concern with the historic basis to blacks' demands for equal treatment under the law can be surmised from the headline, "58 Blacks Served in Army of Washington...
...Visitors could admire the recently renovated state capitol building, visit Mordecai House, or the birthplace of Andrew Johnson...
...Many of the celebrations in the state capital, Raleigh, and surrounding Wake County centered on historic sites...
...In the South, you can see the contradictions laid open on the pages of a newspaper...
...As the prosecution rested its case, Golden Frinks, field director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a handful of his supporters protested outside the courtroom because Mrs...
Vol. 103 • August 1976 • No. 17
