The pepper spraying of marchers by Alamance officers calls out for investigations
An image appeared recently that echoes one of the most infamous moments of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Police officers in Graham,, in Alamance County, can be seen deploying pepper spray on peaceful participants in a “March to the Polls” within days of hotly contested state and national elections. The elderly, a wheelchair- bound individual, and children as young as six were among those chemically burned and sickened. A dozen people, including a member of the press, were arrested.
Video footage and photographs from Alamance could take their place alongside those of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, where Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor used police dogs and fire hoses to terrorize peaceful protesters during that city’s desegregation campaign. We now face the question of what our children and grandchildren will learn about events during the 2020 elections, in our time, in the state that we all call home. State and local authorities took no action against Connor and his deputies, and the Alabama of that time became forever associated in people’s minds with violent, official racial repression.
A moment now exists in which North Carolina can reinforce its identity as a southern state that has turned its back on the racial oppression of the past. If Josh Stein, the state attorney general, and Matthew Martin, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, initiate criminal and civil investigations under state and federal law of the actions of law enforcement agencies and officers involved, this terrible image may be remembered as part of a story about how zealously our state protected civil rights in general, and the right to vote in particular. State and federal prosecutors should also investigate whether any private actors were engaged in voter intimidation tactics in Alamance County.
Such investigations must, of course, follow the facts, wherever they lead. It is possible that the facts depicted images in photographs and videos of Saturday’s events in Graham do not accurately depict the force the officers appeared to use. But Reconstruction era federal laws (42 U.S.C. §§1983, 1985 and 1986), and state criminal and civil statutes, protect people’s rights to peacefully assemble and to vote. Initial reports raise serious issues about whether some of these laws have been broken by the very same officials and officers sworn to protect those rights. Individuals who engaged in voter intimidation and other disenfranchisement efforts may also have broken the law.
These issues must be carefully and immediately investigated. We urge state and federal prosecutors in North Carolina to make clear that they will not tolerate voter intimidation and civil rights violations that trample upon citizens’ most sacred right – the right to vote – that was bought and paid for with blood. The spirits of the late John Lewis, C.T. Vivian, Joseph Lowery, Viola Liuzzo, James Reeb, Amelia Boynton, Jimmie Lee Jackson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, and untold others, demand it.