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Debates about how to treat historical figures such as Aycock are common, said Harry Watson, director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"This is a repeat of a very complicated set of questions that just keeps coming up and coming up," Watson said.

About 20 years ago, students at Charles Aycock Junior High School in Greensboro -- which Watson attended -- tried unsuccessfully to persuade the local school board to drop Aycock's name.

What about Jefferson?

Watson says that removing Aycock's name could lead to questions about other leaders, including Gov. Zebulon Vance, whose name also appears on the dinner. Vance is a former Confederate colonel and was North Carolina governor during the Confederacy. He also served as governor and U.S senator in later years.

What about the Democrats' other major dinner, the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner held annually in Raleigh, named after two presidents who were slaveholders, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson?

"I think [Aycock] is very much a figure like Thomas Jefferson," Watson said. "Jefferson was a more important figure. Both of them did very good things in this state or in this country. In both cases they advocated reforms inside a very wrong set of institutions. The truth is that these guys are figures of a very, very much mixed legacy."

One way to look at the issue, said Watson, is to separate Aycock the political figure from Aycock the historical figure.

Watson said it might be appropriate for political parties and communities to take into account modern sensibilities when choosing whom to honor. But Watson cautions against eradicating Aycock from history.

"My feeling is if you take down these discredited statues you are almost trying to re-create a past or a landscape of memory that doesn't include anything bad in it," Watson said. "It's almost like a coverup. It suggests that these things that happened in the past didn't happen."

NAACP convention

The issue will likely come up next week at the state NAACP convention in Wilmington.

The NAACP has scheduled a symposium, which includes noted historian John Hope Franklin of Durham, to discuss the white supremacy campaigns -- and the violence in Wilmington that accompanied the campaigns.

The Rev. William Barber, the NAACP president, said changing the name of the Vance-Aycock dinner is a fine first step. But Barber would like the state to enact some of the recommendations made by the state's Wilmington riot commission last year, including compensation for the families that lost property, and assistance for minority-owned businesses and home buyers.

"We should not only change the name and have apologies for slavery," Barber said, "we need to enact the 15 recommendations of the Wilmington riot commission, so that in changing names, we are also changing history."

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