Burden

Born and reared in poverty on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina, I have had a burden in my heart that has convicted my soul for the poor people of the eastern part of this state. If North Carolina, from I-95 to the ocean, were one state, it would be the poorest state in the Union. As a child, with relatives scattered all around Eastern North Carolina, I was amazed at the poverty of this state. Later, as an educated man of some wealth, it has been my blessed opportunity to travel the world. Yet, I can assure you, without fear of contradiction, that there is no place on earth, (and most of the poverty of the world is below the 30th parallel) that is as poor as Eastern North Carolina when I was a child. I don't want anyone to accuse me of telling lies, because there is no reason for me to tell a lie about anything. The truth is tough enough. And, I know that there are many in Eastern North Carolina, throughout the country, who do not believe what I will say and who have told me, in no uncertain terms, that they do not believe what I have said and written previously.

As a small child, and I still have a very good memory of happenings as a child, my father had a friend who worked at the NC Hospital for the Negro Insane at Goldsboro (now called Cherry Hospital, named for former governor, Greg Cherry) I remember very well the containment type buildings, (there are still some of these buildings at military installations, such as Ft. Bragg, with large porches) I remember very well the black people being tied, their hands with ropes tied to the ceilings of these porches, where they had to remain all day; and I remember my father's friend talking about how they defecated all over their feet in that position. I also remember those with sense enough to pick beans were out in large fields picking string beans. An overseer on horseback, was riding around with a whip and every so often he would stop and hit one because the person was not picking fast enough. I do not know what other activities went on at that place, I can only imagine, but these things I saw, as a child.

In November 2007, a book entitled, Unspeakable, by Hannah Joyner and Susan Burch, was written about another unbelievable, despicable event which happened at this one state, tax supported hospital. Junius Wilson, a man from the city in which I live, deaf and retarded, was taken to Cherry Hospital where he lived from 1925-2001, 6 years of which he lived in the Criminal Ward because he'd be accused of rape. Of course, as was the usual case at that time in regard to rape, he was castrated. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. It is reliably reported that he suffered a stroke while at the hospital, but because of his deafness, did not receive adequate treatment. He lived a long, isolated, pitiful life, a victim of the state, which has as its motto, “To be, rather than to seem”.

To show again, the decadence of state treatment of its most deprived citizens, on April 29, 2008, a patient, Steve Sabock, sat in a chair for almost 24 hours, needing attention, while employees, paid by the state, were dancing, playing cards, laughing and watching TV. The most incredible part of this story is that the entire matter is on FILM! The video begins with an injury. Sabock is seen falling, hitting his head on the evening of April 28. He needs help to regain his feet and is helped from the room. Two hours later, he appears in the Goldsboro psychiatric facility’s day room. Until 9 pm. the next night, no one feeds him, checks his vital signs or helps him from his chair. An autopsy found Sabock died of a pre-existing heart condition. According to a federal report, he ate nothing the day he died and had little food in the three days preceding his death. Workers were supposed to be monitoring his condition. Such is the care of your most deprived citizens, such is the casual, callous attitude of state workers who receive good pay for insolent activity. Such is the concern of your legislature and state officials who should answer to federal officials for the manner in which federal dollars are spent in these facilities, and such will be their condemnation before a God of justice. I personally have known doctors, nurses, and others with authority at this facility; they all have just one word of evaluation, “pitiful”.

As a young college student, working my way through the university, selling books door to door down about every 'pig path' in Eastern North Carolina for 8 years, as I matriculated through two universities, I never cease to be amazed at the political contamination in this solid Democrat party state. As a state officer in the Jaycees, a state officer in the Young Democrats, a state officer in health care groups, I was forever preaching about the needs of Eastern North Carolina. After I had returned from my military service, totally disabled, it became more and more difficult for me to fill as many speaking engagements as I was invited. But, in spite of everything, from pulpits and lecterns (churches, civic clubs, banquets, graduation addresses) I implored anyone who would listen for action. One small, very intelligent, hard working, state representative, Nancy Chase (farmer, Eureka, Wayne County) went to the legislature with the message that I had burdened her to take. But, she was just one voice in a 'bee-hive' of 'whoredom' where most of the elected representatives were just there to fatten their own pockets, and cared nothing at all for the distress of Eastern North Carolina.

In a state, where there are more 'outhouses' than any other state in the Union, where the schools were totally inadequate, where the black citizens, when they went to town, had to park near the courthouse, the only place they could use bathroom facilities, the only people of success and money were the tobacco warehouse men and the cotton mill owners who monopolized and hand picked anyone seeking political office; from the coroner to any Raleigh representation. High in their country club perch, they look down on we 'underlings' as the castaways which 'their god' considered 'untouchables' .

My parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, were members of a small Eastern North Carolina Baptist denomination. There were only 2 or 3 ministers in the entire denomination who had college degrees. It was a stench in the nostrils of All Mighty God how the cliques among these ministers so hindered the development of this denomination and to this day, has kept it from growing, fulfilling the great commission which they are supposed to believe. The young, intelligent children of this denominational group fled its incompetence, to seek discipleship in better structured denominations. Having studied the faith and practices of many denominations, I am convinced there is no denomination which is more solid in its doctrine (Free Will Baptist). Churches, denominations, individuals, are sometimes their own worst enemies. I do not believe God blesses a denomination or a church who shows allegiance to anything as corrupt as the NC Democrat political party.

With the influx of northerners and others into one of the country's most pleasant climates, a countryside ripe for development, the entire commercial, academic and even political climate has changed to some extent in Eastern North Carolina. With the death of Josephus Daniels, some changes in the Raleigh News and Observer, (the Democrat Bible of Eastern North Carolina and the totalitarian influence this one newspaper controlled) news people with backbones have dared to challenge the solid Democrat political bosses who since 1900 have made this part of the state their own private fiefdom. YOU CAN NOT LIFT A BOX BY STANDING IN IT. Thank God, there have been enough intelligent voyeurs, visitors and stable investors to work outside the box. So many of us, were told in our youth, that if we were going to get anywhere in eastern North Carolina, or in this state, we had to get into the Democrat box. As fresh in my mind this minute as the day it happened, this totally blind, 100% disabled Veteran, in uniform with his decorations, with a white cane, was standing next to a former President of the NC Jaycees in the Legislative Building in Raleigh, and my friend was talking with a Senator from eastern North Carolina (Columbia, Tyrell County) about some much needed legislation. The Senator said, “I have a daughter in college and I do not know how I am going to pay her tuition.” My friend put money in his pocket. I asked him later, “How much money did you give him?” He said, “I gave him $500, that is the way you get things done up here.”

Those of you who can still read, who still have a radio or television, who have heard of the money being passed in the bathrooms in Raleigh, who have heard of the Governor's wife being paid off, who know of the financial and real estate transactions going on between political contributors who know that the only way you get appointed to any type board or position in this state is because of who you know, and how much you give, not what you know and how much God has given you. Will we, as the education system improves, learn to read and study and vote for those who have the salvation of this state in mind...particularly eastern North Carolina, where many of us still have a burden for the good people who live here.

Some of the finest people I ever met, working with black people on my father's farm, selling books to black people on the dusty roads of eastern North Carolina, were those who had to sit in a 'Jim Crow' reception room when they went to the doctor or a state, tax-supported hospital. Some of the finest people I ever knew, intelligent, worthy, were not allowed to attend the state, tax-supported universities. I have here in my house, one of those cards found in the front of any public bus which gave the North Carolina Statute, a law requiring that the blacks sit in the rear of the bus. (a law passed by white, male, Democrats)

I do not see, and I do not believe my blessed savior can understand, how any white person who claims to be Christian, can go to our Lord's communion table and receive the bread and wine with an attitude of bigotry in the heart. I do not understand how any black person, can go to our Lord's communion table, and receive the bread and wine, remembering what our blessed Lord did on Calvary's tree, and then go in locked step to the voting poles and support a political party that promotes the murder of innocent children. I have a burden for the unsaved world. The people of Eastern North Carolina should have a burden for political history of hypocrisy and shame.

"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over it's government." Franklin Roosevelt (1938)

Golden Leaf

I am a product of eastern North Carolina. According to statistics, if North Carolina, from Hwy 95 to the Atlantic Ocean, were a state, it would be the poorest state in the union. I have traveled the world (passport stamped in 157 countries), I have seen the poverty of third world nations, peasants working in the rice fields and in the agriculture areas of Asia and Africa. In all these places, poverty of the cruelest kind, but I have never witnessed as much poverty as I witnessed while growing up in eastern North Carolina.

Most of this poverty was due to the growing of green tobacco. The marketing of that tobacco, the witnessing of seeing those who grew the tobacco, did the back-breaking, unending work, taken advantage of by the landowners, the tobacco auction warehouseman, the cigarette manufacturers who purchased the product. In the winter, the farmer began preparing his plant beds, the areas where he put the seed for the tobacco plants. Because of insect delight in tobacco products (even insects, worms of every type are addicted to tobacco), the tobacco beds were covered with plastic and poison gas used to kill infestation. From the time the tobacco seed germinated and the plant began to grow, ready for transplant in the fields, poison was used in an effort to raise plants for market. Over and over, the stomata, gummed plants were poisoned in the continued fight with nature against insects. After the plant matured, a leaf structure of about six feet in height, the leaves ripened from the bottom towards the top. Each week, young men and women (tobacco croppers), would go down the rows of the tobacco fields taking the ripened leaves to an area where, when I was young, the leaves were attached to sticks which were in-turn hung into curing barns. My tobacco growing cousins tell me that the procedure has changed completely in recent years. Anyways, then or now, the leaves, with their residue of poison, were subject to tremendous heat in curing facilities.

When I was young, the leaves were graded at home before market and carefully prepared for the auction floor where, at the mercy of the buyers, the farmer obtained whatever price he could get for his carefully prepared, months long growing of this cash crop from which he earned his living, supported his family, supported his church and kept the economic welfare of eastern North Carolina going. If lucky, if blessed by good weather (as with any plant, the farmer had to depend on soil, rain, sun and hopefully few storms such as wind and hail) the tenant farmer, and most, especially black, were tenant farmers, gave from one half to one third of his earnings to the landlord. Usually large farms, handed down from generation to generation by families who had gained control of the land early in the country's founding. Most of the landlords lived in the towns and cities where they enjoyed the life of the “good ol' boy”, caring little, if at all, for the poverty existing on the very land that they owned. These “good ol' boys” were not rich Republicans (as the media would have you believe) but rather racist, calculating conservative democrats, part of the one time solid south.

The sons and daughters of these landowners, the warehousemen, the proprietors of the country stores where the peasants were indebted for their livelihood, were the only ones in the eastern part of the state allowed within sight of a tax-supported college or university. I will despise until my last breath the hedonistic commercial owners, the hypocritical preachers, the newspaper editors, the radio commentators, who just turned a blind eye to the disparity, the absolute tyranny, toward the good people who did the best they could with what was provided to them. Once in a while, as was the case with this writer, responsible, respected educators would recognize the aptitude and the work ethic of some students and some families and help them obtain an education and get ahead. But, believe me, those from the hinterlands, the pocosins/swamps of this state, were never accepted by the “blue blood”, “big I little you” toxic-minded, incest-infected hierarchy families who felt they had some entitlement from Heaven to rule their fellow man simply because large parcels of land had been inherited or their family was fortunate enough to have an Oldsmobile franchise.

To this day, and I hate to wish anyone his roasting in Hell, I remember as a young, working university student selling books door-to-door all summer among these beleaguered people who loved me as much as I loved them. Having enough money to pay my tuition, I went to the Chevrolet dealer, where my family had done business for many years and some of my relatives were actually related to them (Blalock Chevrolet, Fremont, NC). At that time a 1952 Chevrolet cost $2,000 (this was about the time of my involvement in the Korean War) and I paid cash for the car. The owner asked my father, who had come to inspect the car, “where did this “boy” get this money?”. My father said, “he worked for it”. You see, the children of poor people were not supposed to gain anything from hard work, they were supposed to be enslaved, as had been their parents and grandparents, to the whims and welts, as white and black slaves of eastern North Carolina.

In spite of these people, the incestuous, moronic placards of the Old South bigotry, many have survived and moved on to demonstrate, to the state and to the world, that the lowly can rise, that our God of justice is still the supreme judicial authority. You are not stuck where you start. Hell would have to be enlarged to accommodate the landlords, the tobacco warehousemen, the cigarette manufacturers, the political representatives who loved these enslaved people just enough to get their votes and to use them for their greed. The public relations protagonists have run overtime in building up the Dukes and the Reynolds...just two of the families who made fortunes beyond belief from the sweat of their fellow man and who can now clamor for attention with their ill-gained gifts to universities, hospitals and, God help us, puny grants supposedly for the good of mankind.

Because China (62% of Chinese smoke) and other countries were growing so much tobacco, producing cigarettes so cheaply, a great mental barrage of concern encircled the halls of government and, supposedly, tobacco farmers were paid off not to grow the weed. A “good ol' boy” group of corrupt politicians (Jim Hunt, Bill Friday, God help us Holding, Barber, Chambers, Davenport, Worley, Penny, etc.), old time corrupt democrats who have run and ruined this state their entire lives, have taken these funds and used them for their own pet projects. One of the most interesting Congressional hearings I ever observed, John McCain was chairman, he mocked governor Jim Hunt, almost crying, as he told the need for educating the people of NC against smoking (500,000 people die in this country each year from smoking). Hunt, Friday, these other hypocrites, could care less about our children smoking. I believe more women smoke today than ever before, they say it is a sign of their liberation.

The money of the Golden LEAF Foundation is used, and everyone in the Legislature knows this, for the benefit of the “good ol' boys”, their political allies and their personal aspirations and comfort. Those who have defended the country, the returning warriors (all of whom live on food stamps), the black and white descendants of the tenant farmers and the cotton mill workers of this state, who lived in poverty, whose only friend, as Senator Herman Talmadge (another corrupt democrat) has said “is and was Jesus Christ”, are still waiting for the largess of government and the justice of God to be visited on those who besmirch the very idea of liberty.