By JIM AYCOCK

Dr. Tim Tyson, who was in residence during February at Warren Wilson College, played a role in ending the Vance-Aycock Dinner in Asheville, for 50 years a Democratic Party fundraiser.

The Duke professor’s zeal or his worthy cause, civil rights, raises questions about his objectivity. 

Dr. Tyson’s newspaper tabloid titled, “The Ghosts of 1898,” tied Charles Brantley Aycock to the Wilmington race riot beyond any proportionality.

In May 2006, the Wilmington Race Riot Commission Report (WRRCR) was released. It was a thorough, objective, well-documented and fair report paid for the the state of North Carolina, and is the ultimate authority on the events of Nov. 10, 1898.  

Charles Aycock was not mentioned until Chapter 3. A press release about the commission report did not mention him at all.  Nowhere did the report say that Aycock advocated, helped plan or carry out violence.  It did not place him in Wilmington at any time before, during or after the riot.

In its entry on the riot, Wikipedia does not mention Aycock until the end, where it says almost off-handedly that he was elected governor in 1900. It does not tie him to the riot in any way.

On Nov. 17, 2006, Dr. Tyson’s tabloid section was carried in the Raleigh, Charlotte and Wilmington newspapers.  Only weeks later, in January 2007, the N.C. Democratic Party apologized for the campaigns of 1898 and 1900, and Vance-Aycock was effectively finished. Charles

Aycock was named three times on the front page, directly under a photo of a burned-out black-owned newspaper office.  A special box next to the photo was devoted solely to Aycock.  This is vastly disproportionate to anything he had to do with the riot, which was basically nothing except for giving the party line speech across the state.

Almost every reference by Dr. Tyson to Aycock included the words “white supremacy.”  Dr. Tyson said Aycock died while giving a speech on education.  He omitted that the speech was in 1912 calling on the Alabama Education Assn. to educate all its children, repeat, in Alabama in 1912.

According to the WRRCR, the chair of the N.C. Democratic Party tried to “rein in” Democrats in Wilmington for fear they would do something the Executive Committee would not approve.

He was told by George Rountree, one of the coup planners, to “Go to hell,” that they would run the campaign their way in Wilmington.

Dr. Tyson did not include that in his story. The commission report quotes Henry Connor, whose son co-authored the 1912 biography of Aycock, as hoping that no violence would occur.  The report quotes Aycock in a letter to Connor a day after the riot as expressing regrets for the events in Wilmington.

Aycock was the only Democrat quoted in the commission report as expressing regrets.  Dr. Tyson did not include any of these things in his newspaper section, “The Ghosts of 1898.”

Dr. Tyson reported that Gov. Hoke Smith of Georgia asked help from Aycock and others in writing that state’s suffrage amendment, and described Smith as “braying” his way across Georgia, a clear bias.  

He failed to report that Aycock refused a similar request from Maryland because that state planned to include property ownership as a qualification to vote, which offended Aycock’s sense of democracy.

Aycock’s position was clearly a progressive move away from “we the people” —meaning white male property owners.  Dr. Tyson did not include this relevant material when writing of Aycock’s views on suffrage.

Some time later, the Duke Chronicle, a student newspaper, and a blog called Duke.Fact.Check, both published falsely that Aycock led the riot in Wilmington.  Dr. Tyson and Duke President Richard Brodhead both refused to correct these malicious publications to their campus community.’

The blogger described Aycock as a “terrorist” guilty of “horrendous crimes,” and has since told me he knows the charges are false, and has refused to publish a correction.

The Wilmington Race Riot Commission Report and “The Ghosts of 1898” can both be read on line.  One certain cause of the Wilmington riot was the takeover of local government by the GOP-controlled legislature, which gave the Republican governor power to appoint one half of the Wilmington city council.

Today, public schools are under attack in North Carolina. “You cannot do the best for your child unless you also do the best for my child,” Aycock said in his universal education speech in Alabama, beginning one of the best arguments ever made for public schools.  

But he has been destroyed as a force for public education in our time of greatest need.

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Jim Aycock is the former publisher of the Black Mountain News. Former North Carolina Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock was his great-grandfather’s brother.