DURHAM - Representatives from the state chapter of the NAACP plan to tape a public policy action agenda on the door of the state Legislative Building on Saturday.

One of the 14 points planned for that docket will urge legislators to take stock of a violent incident in Wilmington in 1898 that historians say destroyed a thriving black community and led to the spread of white supremacy across the state and throughout the South.

"We want to see the state of North Carolina address, in a very meaningful way, unfinished business with regards to Wilmington," said Jarvis Hall, director of the Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change at N.C. Central University.

Hall, who helps set the legislative agenda for the state NAACP chapter, was one of six people who led a seminar at the NCCU law school Wednesday titled "1898 Wilmington Race Rebellion: Pressing on in Pursuit of Justice."

They talked of possible reparations from the state and federal governments.

The discussion comes nearly nine months after the release of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission report. For six years, a 13-member panel studied events that led to a government overthrow more than a century ago.

The commission reported that the riot, which ousted Wilmington's Reconstruction Republican leadership, stemmed from a conspiracy by white supremacist Democrats to drive blacks from power. The insurrection, the commission reported, led to the deaths of at least 14 black people and perhaps five times that many.

That chapter in the state's history had been left out of many books and official records until recently.

The NCCU law school and Black Law Students Association sponsored the panel discussion Wednesday.

In addition to Hall, others on the panel were state Rep. Larry Hall, a Durham Democrat and lawyer; Tom Keith, the Forsyth County district attorney and a North Carolinian whose grandfather was a politician who spoke out against the supremacists; Orage Quarles III, president and publisher of The News & Observer; and LeRae Umfleet, an employee of the state Department of Cultural Resources and author of the commission report.

Irving Joyner, an NCCU law professor and vice chairman of the commission, moderated the discussion.

Umfleet, during a 15-minute overview, touched on how the editorial positions on race taken by Josephus Daniels, publisher and editor of The News and Observer during that time, helped the supremacists gain power.

"The story is out there now, so how do we move forward?" said Quarles, publisher of The N&O since January 2000. "How do we make sure this never, ever happens again?"