Blog | Center for Civil Rights

Peter with NC NAACP President Rev. William Barber on the NC Poverty Tour

I became a lawyer to help individuals as a public defender and had little hope that lawyering could produce significant systemic change. During law school, I interned at both a public defender office and at the UNC Center for Civil Rights. Although I found my criminal work rewarding, I was captivated by the effectiveness of the Center’s approach to challenging entrenched systemic racism, the legacy of de jure segregation that is the greatest obstacle to progress in the U.S. South.

ROCCA clients and attorneys in Brunswick County after the March 2012 hearing

At the end of March, and after four days of hearings since October, 2011, Brunswick County’s Planning Board denied Operation Services’ application for a Special Exception Permit to construct a landfill near Supply, NC, in the historic African American community of Royal Oak. The County spent $266,000 on legal services in defense of the permit, which, according to County Manager Marty Lawing, was necessary due to opposition to the permit.

The UNC Center for Civil Rights represented the opposition, a community group called the Royal Oak Concerned Citizens Association (ROCCA).

“We are looking forward to an end to the trucks, the dust, the noise and the negative stigma of living next to the landfill,” said ROCCA president Lewis Dozier.

Plaintiffs and concerned citizens, Center Attorneys, and UNC Law Students outside the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals after January 2012 oral arguments in Everett v. Pitt County Schools

On May 7, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a published opinion in Everett et al. v. Pitt County Board of Education affirming the efforts of African American parents and community members to stop Pitt County Schools from implementing its 2011-12 student reassignment. The UNC Center for Civil Rights represents the Pitt Coalition for Educating Black Children and several individual parents of children attending Pitt County Schools.

“This is a great victory for the people,” said Mark Dorosin, Managing Attorney at the Center. “The court affirmed what decades of desegregation law, from Brown vs. Board of Ed. to the present, require: that a school district which remains under a desegregation order has an affirmative duty to eliminate the vestiges of racial discrimination, and until the court rules that the district has fulfilled that duty, current racial disparities are presumed to be the result of the past unconstitutional conduct.”

North Carolina confronts an historic milestone on May 8 with the proposed change to our state constitution: historic, because we have typically amended our constitution to expand and protect, not take away rights. Except when it comes to marriage, and thus the milestone: from 1865 until 1967, Article XIV, Section 8 of our state constitution “forever” prohibited “[a]ll marriages between a white person and a Negro.” It took the courageous love between Richard and Mildred Loving and a United States Supreme Court decision in 1967 to invalidate that law. In Loving v. Virginia, the Court noted that “[t]here is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification,” and ruled such statutes in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Court’s core holding bears repeating as North Carolina voters head to the polls on May 8:

Marriage is “one of the basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival....To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.

Law students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with community volunteers, will staff the North Carolina Election Protection hotline, a toll-free, nonpartisan resource to answer voter questions during the primary election on Tuesday, May 8. Election Protection is a nationwide voter advocacy and education coalition of more than 100 local, state and national partners, and is coordinated by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Voters anywhere in the state can call 1.866.OUR.VOTE (866.687.8683) or 1.888.VE.Y.VOTA (888.839.8682) between 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., the hours polls are open in North Carolina, with questions about their rights and the voting process. Assistance will be available in English and Spanish.

On April 25, the UNC Center for Civil Rights filed a brief in the latest appeal in the ongoing Leandro litigation, the landmark court case regarding the State's constitutional obligation to provide a sound basic education to North Carolina children that began 18 years ago. Since 2005, the Center has represented parents and children in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Branch of the NAACP, with the support of the North Carolina State Conference and the national NAACP. The current appeal focuses on the State's continuing duty to remedy the constitutional violations that were established in the previous Leandro rulings from the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Ms. Florine Bell outside an abandoned home on Branch Avenue in Lincoln Heights, NC

UNC Law students spent their Spring Break on the Wills Project, providing free wills, powers of attorney, and living wills for low-wealth clients in Halifax, Lenoir, Pitt, Avery and Watauga counties. The biannual Wills Project is sponsored by the UNC Pro Bono Program, Legal Aid, and the UNC Center for Civil Rights. Before meeting their first clients, students on the Eastern NC team were led on a walking tour of Lincoln Heights, and excluded community in Halifax County, by community advocate Ms. Florine Bell. Ms. Bell has been a minister and organizer in Lincoln Heights for several years and has spent her life fighting for economic, legal, and social justice in Halifax County.

Standing outside the Lighthouse of Deliverance Church on Branch Avenue, Ms. Bell gave a brief history of Lincoln Heights. Community Inclusion Attorney Fellow Peter Gilbert then gave an overview of community exclusion, the layered effects of disempowerment faced by Lincoln Heights, and the Center’s work there and in other excluded communities.

Continue reading for more pictures, student remarks, and a video of Ms. Florine Bell's introduction and Center Attorney-Fellow Peter Gilbert speaking about community exclusion.

On February 13, the North Carolina Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a landmark case regarding the authority of public school officials to search students. The Center for Civil Rights, the UNC Juvenile Justice Clinic and other students’ rights advocates filed an amicus brief in support of plaintiff T.A.S, a fifteen year old girl. The NC Court of Appeals found the T.A.S. had been subjected to an unconstitutional search, and the state appealed.

In her opening statement on behalf of T.A.S, attorney Geeta Kapur told the Court:

“A fifteen-year-old girl was patted down and her bra was searched by a male school official while a male law enforcement officer stood guard and observed in a closed classroom. The two men did not have any individualized suspicion that she had violated any school rules or the law. She must have been humiliated, frightened and embarrassed.

It is unconstitutional for our daughters to be searched and violated this way by the public schools of North Carolina.”

The UNC Center for Civil Rights and UNC Juvenile Justice Clinic joined the National ACLU, the NC ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Juvenile Defenders Office, the Southern Juvenile Defender, the NC Juvenile Defender and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in an amicus brief to the court.

Education Attorney-Fellow Taiyyaba Qureshi attended the recent Southern Region School to Prison Pipeline ActionCamp, hosted by the Advancement Project at North Carolina Central University. Workshops featured facts and stories about the various factors that put a quality education out of reach for many students, with disproportionate effects on students of color – zero tolerance policies, high-stakes testing, and unregulated school resource officers.

The truly inspirational parts of the ActionCamp were the dozens of youth activists who shared their stories of struggle against the personal impacts and long-term effects of disproportionate discipline. We are also thankful to the community leaders from Halifax County and the Rural Education Working Group attended the Action Camp, enhancing the dialogue with personal experiences of the specific needs of rural counties in North Carolina.

We are hoping that 2012 will be an “annus mirabilis” for the Center for Civil Rights and the struggle for social justice, and it’s fair to say that the pace and scope of our work these first weeks have far exceeded expectations. In January, Center lawyers argued what may prove to be a landmark school desegregation case at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals; litigated the second full day of permitting hearings in opposition to a landfill being targeted for an African American community we represent; and challenged a county’s illegal property tax collection in a community unfairly targeted for “redevelopment.”

As you can see from the summary below of upcoming events, the breakneck pace of the work continues. Additional information on all of our current cases, public education and research, and student engagement, and as well as regular updates on everything in which the Center is currently involved, can be found our blog. You can also follow the Center on Twitter.

Click the "Read more" link to learn about upcoming events this month and how you can participate.