The Greensboro Pulpit Forum fires off a letter (PDF) to the Justice Department asking that the recall election of City Council member Dianne Bellamy-Small be disallowed:

We believe that an objective examination will show that the whole recall initiative is racially motivated and will have the discriminatory effect of diluting the AfricanAmerican vote, as well as reducing the quality of representation to the African American community of Greensboro, a historically disenfranchised population that remains under-represented in the democratic process.

The letter doesn’t have many kind words for fellow council member Florence Gatten, “who has consistently expressed hostility and voted in opposition to issues deemed important to the welfare and dignity of the African American community.”

July 10, 2007
Mr. John K. Tanner, Chief
United States Department of Justice
Voting Section NWB, Civil Rights Division
250 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Mr. Tanner:

On May 15, 2007, the Greensboro City Council established August 21, 2007, as the date for citizens of
District 1 in Greensboro, North Carolina, to vote on whether to recall the duly elected City Councilwoman, T.
Dianne Bellamy-Small, from office. The Greensboro City Council acted in compliance with a state statute that
allows for a recall vote if one fourth of the number of registered voters who voted in the last election is certified
as having signed a valid recall petition. That requirement appears to have been met.

We, the undersigned pastors and religious leaders of predominantly African American
congregations, appeal to you to disallow the recall vote of African American Greensboro City
Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small. We are convinced that the recall effort is not only morally and
spiritually wrong but reflects the very behavior that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights
Act of 1965 were intended to prevent and that it may be legally challenged.

We believe that an objective examination will show that the whole recall initiative is racially motivated
and will have the discriminatory effect of diluting the African American vote, as well as reducing the quality of
representation to the African American community of Greensboro, a historically disenfranchised population that
remains under-represented in the democratic process.

We believe that it is critically important to place this recall initiative in its accurate social and legal
historical context. In 1983, one hundred and seventeen years after the civil war, a district system was finally
established in Greensboro with the intention of insuring more adequate representation of the African American
population. The 117-year period mentioned above was a period of massive disenfranchisement, enforced by
racially discriminatory laws and acts of violence and terror against African Americans.

This long period, commonly known as the period of “Jim Crow,” was resolutely resisted with great
sacrifice, including the loss of life by many who worked to make the vote available to African Americans in
such a way that their votes would have a meaningful impact. The initiative to recall T. Dianne Bellamy-Small
is a thinly disguised, racially motivated attempt to undermine, dilute and substantially reduce the impact
of the African American vote in Greensboro.

The Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 to 1973BB-1, was enacted in 1965 to end the whites-only
electoral system prevalent in the southern United States when previous measures were found inadequate to stem the repeated violations of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Congress extended the 1965 Voting Rights Act several times after hearing wide-ranging testimony concerning the variety of ways in which voting electorates continued to be manipulated and effectively disenfranchised.

In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301,327-28 (1966), the Supreme Court affirmed that the
broad range of voting practices required review because:“Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to combat wide-spread and persistent discrimination in voting, because of the inordinate amount of time and energy required to overcome the obstructionist tactics invariably encountered in these lawsuits. After enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well decide to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims.”

In the 1970s, Congress heard more about the broad range of abuses to voting rights, including
gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large elections and other structural changes. All of these “tricks”
yielded the result of reversing the franchise to minorities that was supposedly redressed by the 1964 and 1965
Acts.

A 1982 review by Congress, again after extensive hearings, on the special provisions of the Voting
Rights Act, amended Section 2 to provide that in claiming minority vote dilution, plaintiffs could establish a
violation of this Section without having to prove a racially discriminatory purpose. The clarification banned
practices that had a discriminatory result as well as those with a discriminatory purpose.

The leadership and dominant culture of Greensboro is in deep denial about the city’s history of
institutional racism. We are thoroughly convinced that the recall effort’s purpose is to reduce the quality of
African American representation and, if carried through to completion, that it will have an enduring
discriminatory effect. We cite the following to support our claims:

1. That the recall episode was initiated by a public call for the resignation of T. Dianne Bellamy-
Small by white City Councilwoman, Ms. Florence Gatten, who has consistently expressed
hostility towards and voted in opposition to issues deemed important to the welfare and dignity
of the African American community.

2. That the issues raised by Ms. Gatten and the recall petition revolve largely around unproven and,
we believe, false accusations that Ms. Bellamy-Small released a classified investigative report
concerning corrupt police conduct. This report focused primarily on the alleged mistreatment of
African American officers within the Police Department. In the wake of the report, the
Greensboro Police Chief, Deputy Chief, and a high ranking detective (all white) have resigned in
the last ten months. Further, the City of Greensboro and the Greensboro Police Department are
currently being sued for racial discrimination by an African American officer who is discussed in
the report. The recall effort of Ms. Bellamy-Small (a former police officer herself) was largely
retaliatory to and a deflection from the constructive work undertaken by Ms. Bellamy-Small to
rid our Police Department of internal corruption involving, but not limited to, the mistreatment of
African American officers and historical hostility towards the African American Community.

3. That the same City Council member, Ms. Florence Gatten, who initiated the recall effort, was a
leading force in denigrating the internationally respected Greensboro Truth and Community
Reconciliation Project and in urging the Greensboro City Council to vote to oppose it. The stated
purpose of the Project was to explore the “context, causes, sequence and consequence” of the
killing of five people and the wounding of ten others at a legally permitted anti-Klan march in
November 1979. Two all-white juries found no one criminally responsible for the killings. In a
1985 civil suit initiated by survivors of that incident, a federal court found Greensboro police
officers, along with Klan and Nazi members and a paid police informant, jointly liable for a
wrongful death. The City Council vote to oppose the truth and reconciliation effort was cast
strictly along racial lines with the three black council members all supporting the process and the
six white council members all voting to oppose this initiative. Ms. Bellamy-Small was an
outspoken supporter of the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Process.

4. That while the most visible public leader advocating the removal of Ms. Bellamy-Small from
office was white City Council Member Florence Gatten, the actual leader of the recall petition
was a white man, Mr. Jonathan Wagstaff, who does not even live in the district served by Ms.
Bellamy-Small, although he operates a business there. It is clear that the overall leadership of
the process to remove Ms. Bellamy-Small from office is white.

5. That while District 1 consists of approximately 65% people of color and approximately 35 %
white, the majority of those signing the recall petition were white.

6. That within weeks after the public call for the resignation of Ms. Bellamy-Small, an article and
an editorial (both by white males) appeared in the leading local newspaper, the News and
Record, essentially advocating the return to the pre-1983 at-large system of government, a clear
reversal in the progress toward full enfranchisement of minorities. Please see the enclosed
articles.

7. That it is, of course, possible and somewhat likely that the residents of District 1 will not vote to
recall Ms. Bellamy-Small. However, this recall election, laced with slanderous charges and
enormous confusion, places an extremely heavy and unjust burden on Ms. Bellamy-Small. She
faces the possibility of running three campaigns in less than three months—the recall vote, the
primary vote and the re-election vote.

8. That nor does the timing of a recall vote make any sense. This vote is scheduled to take place
several weeks before the general election at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $30,000. Not only
is this expense unnecessary and avoidable by waiting a few weeks when voters can register their
opinions at the polls, but it violates the spirit of Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq. of the Civil
Rights Act that requires that the money of taxpayers (of all races) not be spent in a way that
encourages, entrenches, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination. The isolated election date
of August 21, 2007, is designed to attract hostile white voters who are likely to mobilize for this
special election, whereas most others may not be so motivated to get out to vote; the pulse of the
voters is better taken at a primary or regular election.

9. Finally, that the fact is that Ms. Bellamy-Small has not been found guilty of any crime related to
the matter, nor is she charged with a crime and, to the best of our knowledge, there is no
discussion of a crime. She has been not found guilty of any malfeasance, nor is there any charge
by any authoritative body of malfeasance.

What we have here is a vicious and blatant campaign of sophistry, misinformation and slander carefully
choreographed with a coded appeal to racism.