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Rev. William Barber, N.C. NAACP, is calling for mass voting rights protests in N.C.  

RALEIGH, N.C. — The leader of the “Moral Monday” protests intends to use a speech Saturday to outline plans for the movement’s future, including a mass march in July to coincide with a federal hearing about North Carolina’s voter rights laws and intensive local organizing at the county level.

The Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP, told The Associated Press that he will discuss the future of the movement, more broadly called Forward Together, when he speaks to the local NAACP chapter in Greensboro.

The mass march tied to voting rights will be held July 13 in Winston-Salem, where the federal hearing is scheduled that same day. People from across the nation are being asked to march, he said.

“The call is that North Carolina is our Selma,” Barber said. “People came to Selma in 1965. We’re calling people to come to North Carolina in 2015.”

North Carolina’s new voting law, considered one of the toughest in the nation, eliminates same-day registrationduring early voting and voids ballots cast outside a person’s assigned precinct on Election Day. The law also reduces early voting to 10 days and adds a voter identification requirement in 2016.

North Carolina legislators passed the law after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case called Shelby v. Holder, ruled that parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 no longer applied to states.

“We believe that our case, being the first and worst since Shelby, really is the gauge,” Barber said. “If we win, we push back on voter suppression. A loss will set us back years.”

The NAACP will be back in court at the end of August to argue against North Carolina’s redistricting plan. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a North Carolina ruling that upheld Republican-drawn electoral districts for state and congressional lawmakers.

State judges were told to consider whether lawmakers relied too much on race when they drew boundaries that increased minority representation in Raleigh while boosting GOP fortunes.

Republicans have said they’re confident the courts will uphold the voting laws and redistricting.

The group also is continuing its weekly Moral Monday protests at the General Assembly, although they’re now held on Wednesdays. Other plans include more intensive organizing at the county level after a few Republicans, especially two-term Rep. Tim Moffitt of Buncombe County, lost to Democrats, Barber said.

Possible plans in 2016 include another poverty tour, like the one the NAACP undertook in 2012, where Barber and other activists visit poverty-stricken areas. The NAACP also plans to organize a youth movement and citizenship schools in 2016, Barber said.

Meanwhile, Barber plans to return in June from a three-month sabbatical during which he’s spent much time studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York, meeting with scholars and speaking to various groups.

 “Let the dead bury the dead,”  but in this case the dead continues to haunt the present in the form of old battles over symbols of the Civil War.

It’s occurring across the country, but especially in the South as opponents and supporters battle over whether to display confederate monuments, remove the names of former confederate leaders from public building, or if confederate flags should be flown in public spaces.  In North Carolina, there are several fights over erasing the name of segregationists leaders from university buildings.  Is this “whitewashing” the past?  Or as many young African-American students argue it is refusing to praise the racist practices  and public figures from the Jim Crow era.  Students at several campuses in North Carolina are fighting  to have the name of former segregationists Gov. Charles B. Aycock removed a university building.

Texas students are also fighting to have the statue of Jefferson Davis removed from their campus.  However the number of sites in Texas, on public and private land that seek to recognize confederate history, is growing.  Supporters claim the right to memorialize confederate heroes, whereas, others see statues and flags of the Civil War era as reminders of an era of racism and oppression.  The Texas Historical Commission is considering the applications for over 1,000 locations that want to honor the confederate dead.

The controversy continues.  The issue is a hot topic across the country from Colorado — where high school students posed with confederate flags and automatic weapons — to California.

The heroic struggle of working women who attempted to organize a union at R.J.R in the 1940s will be honored Friday when the city unveils a plague near the site of the beginning of the labor battle. This strike has been mostly forgotten as part of local civil rights history,  and it has not been recognized as part of the broader fight for equal justice.  Scholars now argue that it was part of the “the long civil rights struggle” of blacks seeking justice, and fairness in the segregated South.

Duke University Professor Robert R. Korstad wrote in “Civil Rights Unionism” that the struggle by R.J.R workers, who were mostly black and female, against the corporate giant R.J.R aided the early civil rights movement in Winston-Salem, and had national implications on politics and economic rights.   Many famous public figures such as Paul Robeson, and the Rev. Norman V. Peale and others recognized the significance of the struggle..

It started on June 17, 1943 in Plant Number 65 of R.J.R, the largest tobacco manufacturing complex in World War II America.  The women became angry over oppressive working conditions — long hours, low pay, and abuse from foreman.  After one foreman threatened to dismiss an elderly widower, the female workers staged a work stoppage, and the men later supported them in the protest.  John C. Whitaker, vice president of manufacturing , was startled to find out that the women were very knowledgeable about labor rights, and were prepared to fight to improve working conditions in the plant.

The workers eventually lost the battle to organize a union at the company, but it was part of the civil rights continuum that laid the ground work for the modern day movement, as the workers not only fought for equity in the workplace, but fought Jim Crow laws, organized people to vote, and sought better education and housing opportunities for the local black community.

On Friday, the city of Winston Salem will be dedicating a plague to the memory of the black women who started R.J.R labor strikes.  The ceremony will be held at what is now called Power Plant Circle Plant 64 –although it seems based on scholarly sources– the strike actually started in Plant 65.  This event is part of the redevelopment by the city and Wake Forest University to attract younger, and more upscale people to the downtown area.