NAACP to call for removal of Aycock’s name from Wayne County high school

The Goldsboro-Wayne branch of the NAACP is gearing up for a showdown, if necessary, with the Wayne County Board of Education, as the organization prepares a campaign to have controversial North Carolina Gov. Charles B. Aycock’s name removed from a local high school.

Local NAACP president Sylvia Barnes said pulling Aycock’s name is non-negotiable — and long overdue.

“Whether they are ready or not, I’m not backing down until the action is taken,” she said.

The decision to demand action comes in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. The incident sparked nationwide protests and has led to the removal and defacing of numerous statues of everyone from Confederate leaders and historical figures with ties to white supremacist groups to U.S. presidents.

Aycock was governor from 1901 to 1905 and, while he is known for helping to establish more than 1,000 schools across the state, he also worked closely with the state legislature to pass laws that suppressed black voters.

Removing Aycock’s name from the Pikeville high school would not be the first time the former governor was shunned by an academic institution.

In 2014, Duke University removed his name from an undergraduate dormitory. At the time, then-Duke President Richard Brodhead said that while Aycock made “notable contributions to public education” in the state, “his legacy is inextricably associated with the disenfranchisement of black voters, or what W.E.B. DuBois termed ‘a civic death.’”

The following year, East Carolina University trustees also voted to remove Aycock’s name from a campus dorm.

UNC-Greensboro trustees followed suit in 2016, voting to pull Aycock’s name off its auditorium because, as Chancellor Dr. Frank Gilliam said, “the beliefs, words and actions of Gov. Aycock regarding racial matters are so clearly antithetical to our core values and mission that we should no longer honor him.”

Aycock, a Wayne County native known as the “Education Governor,” was a leading voice for the Democratic Party before his election — and was considered one of the “architects” of the 1898 massacre in Wilmington by claiming the city was “the center of the white supremacy movement.”

During his gubernatorial campaign, he championed a constitutional amendment requiring literacy tests for voters, a measure intended to disenfranchise blacks and women.

On the stump, Aycock criticized Gov. Daniel Russell for embracing black North Carolinians.

Barnes said the NAACP will not make its case to the Board of Education during its monthly meeting Monday afternoon because members of the organization want to ensure they have an appropriate replacement to recommend — an effort, she said, that will be spearheaded by former Edgewood Community Developmental School principal Tasha Christian-Adams.

“We want to do it right,” she said. “We’ve got to have the right name.”