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
Durham's unofficial town motto: "Reach for the sky!"
.......and it isn't a motivational phrase.
It's a smelly, dirty, crime-infested, corrupt hole in the midst of a thriving, gleaming, high-tech center; an emabarrassment to the region.
This Black Tamany Hall can be credited for nearly every bit of it.