donbosco
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I’ve got a photograph of me, my 4th grade classmates, and US Congressman Nick Galifianakis, in the post office in ‘downtown’ #Bonlee. In the background you can see my mother leaning into the Teller Window — she and my Deddy both served as Postmaster. At this point the post office itself had been moved out of the interior of our hardware store and into a separate storefront adjacent. A door joined the two buildings and my parents ran back and forth between waiting on customers. Federal employees one minute, private business owners the next. It was a small town. We multitasked a lot of things.
Nevertheless, it WAS big enough for a Congressman to visit a whistle stop spot like Bonlee at the time (1968). Our import would even grow somewhat in 1972 when the son of Bonlee patriarchs Mr. Archie and Miz Ina Andrews - Ike - vied for and won the seat left open when Galifianakis ran for the US Senate. Galifianakis is a funny name - odd, some people in parts of NC might once have called it ‘quair.’ In those days the bank of surnames in #DeepChatham and a lot of similar historied parts of NC was relatively set in stone and had been for generations.
When Galifianakis ran for the Senate his opponent was the recently turned Republican but always virulently Conservative, one-time journalist and TV pundit, Jesse Helms. The Democrats as a Party, one that had in The South encompassed the Boll Weevils and Dixiecrats, had begun, slowly and torturously for some, to turn away from Segregation, States’ Rights, and Xenophobia and with that Helms and plenty others in the region found their new home in an increasingly Right-Wing Republican Party.
In that 1972 Senate race Helms’ campaign slogan, playing on local views of the ‘oddness’ of the name Galifianakis as well as that candidate’s ever-so-slightly dark complexion, was “Vote for Jesse Helms: He’s One of Us.” Galifianakis was born and raised in Durham and had served in the Marine Corps but his parents WERE immigrants from Greece. Helms’ strategy worked and he won by 8 points. His 30 year reign was kicked off right there and The South began a full-on turn to the GOP and Helmsian Ways.
Galiafinakis was a progressive in his day. Historical context is all-important in this definition of course but he stood for desegregation, education, the Equal Rights Amendment, and against the Vietnam War and the Draft. The Helms Machine, in its infancy at the time but already generating millions in out-of-state Rightist funding while appealing to White Supremacy and Fear of The “Not Like Me” Other in the local out lands as well as NC-born anti-labor entrepreneurs in the Country Clubs won the day there in 1972 and has been a presence ever since.
I grew up with dinner table political seminars. On Sundays ‘Meet The Press’ and ‘Face The Nation’ were mandatory viewing and to this day when a show like that comes on I get a little whiff of the aroma of Sunday Fried Chicken in my memory banks. Deddy preferred the politics of men like Galifianakis to that of the Helmses of the world. Just the same he tuned into Helms’ editorial segment on WRAL, ‘Viewpoint’ so that he knew what he was up against. I guess that’s why I often check in on Hannity or Ingraham or Carlson and force myself to read the tweets and bloviations of other regressive voices.
One of Deddy’s favorites was Terry Sanford. He was Governor from 1961 to 1965 and was, in a lot of ways, North Carolina’s answer to JFK. He stood for the same things as Galifianakis and was called to deal with statewide school integration unrest as well as Civil Rights activism. Unlike so many other southern governors he did not call out the National Guard (in which he had served up until his election as Governor) as protests on behalf of Civil Rights heated up. He was a progressive moderate — a gradualist on race and undoubtedly dedicated to the Free Market yet as he had learned from mentors like Kerr Scott and Dr. Frank Porter Graham, a man who held an equally strong belief in government to be a positive force in the lives of the state’s citizens. Politicians like Sanford and Galifianakis brought to NC true higher education, a community college system of renown, the Research Triangle Park, a university system of multiple branches serving everyone economically, and race relations that led the region. Sadly enough, most of those issues and institutions are under siege today. In some cases they are no longer the reality.
As I wrote above, historical context is all important - modern sensibilities of ‘wokeness’ would find these North Carolinians lacking no doubt. Regionalism is also important to remember - North Carolina was a Confederate state and carries a deep stain into modern times for that sedition and the legacies of slavery and the still active “Lost Cause” mythology. Those were powerful forces, and clearly remain so. Those battles fought half a century ago were but part of the larger struggle toward progress still ongoing. Sometimes my students point to movements of resistance that they have studied and say, “But they failed. Full victory was not won.” To that I say, “What if those activists had done nothing at all?” Without the work done by these radicals, progressives, and moderates - foibles and failings marring every one - which in superficial retrospect we might see or judge as falling short, we would no doubt be even deeper in the mire today.
#OTD in 1917 Terry Sanford was born in Laurinburg-a graduate of UNC, an agent in the FBI, a WW2 Paratrooper, UNCLaw, a State Senator, Governor (1961-1965), twice candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, a US Senator, and President of Duke U. Education & Civil Rts. were important issues in his career. Terry Sanford, Paratrooper, Governor, University President.
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