Yesterday afternoon, the local NAACP president, Alfred Barfield, and State Representative William Wainwright notified us that several of his constituents had gone to early voting at a poll in a fire station in Craven County, only to be greeted by a threatening casket with Sen. Obama’s picture on it within clear vision of the voting place. The casket had apparently been placed there for at least several hours, if not days. There is no telling how many voters it had frightened away. It appeared to be an obvious threat to Sen. Obama—a warning to him to stay away from North Carolina.
The NAACP is non-partisan and we have carefully avoided any appearance of working for any partisan candidate. But we have always—since our birth almost 100 years ago—been zealous advocates for the elimination of racial discrimination from our social and political life. The right to vote was guaranteed to African Americans in 1866 by the 15th Amendment, yet the great majority of African Americans’ right to vote was not enforced until after the Voting Rights Act of l965. Even today, some people continue to believe that Black candidates and their supporters are fair game. We believe this act is a clear violation of the law and obvious voter intimidation and voter suppression. We are contacting the state board of elections, the Attorney General’s office, the justice department, and the FBI for a full investigation. We demand that the law be enforced, perpetrators be prosecuted and voters be protected.
We are further, calling on both political parties, candidates, and their surrogates to openly and clearly denounce this act specifically and any other acts generally.
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