[D.P.Roberts]

I lived in Durham for 11 years. The Black People's Committee hired folks to pass out instructions to black voters going to the polls. Eventually, they got what they wanted: a bunch of office holders who felt they were totally unaccountable to any white citizen, indeed, to anyone but the Committee.

I remember one meeting where then-Commissioner Deborah Giles snapped at an elderly white man who was speaking, "It's not your county anymore!" and she was quite correct.

It was a corrupt third-world hellhole when I left four years ago; I would imagine the Committee likes it that way.

D.P.Roberts