Protesting the Death Penalty for Human Rights Week
by John Johnson, Campaign to End the Death Penalty

Last night (Dec. 9th, 1999) was the kickoff of Human Rights Week at the Old Capitol in Raleigh. NC Governor Jim Hunt was scheduled to give a speech. In his four terms in office, Hunt has refused to grant clemency to anyone facing execution, so Campaign to End the Death Penalty thought that we'd stop by and say hello to our beloved "executive."

We rode in four or five separate cars to the Old Capitol in Raleigh. Despite bad traffic, we arrived just in time at 5:30. We walked into the Capitol in small groups and tried not to act like we knew each other. I was surprised at how few people there were. In all, we numbered half the crowd of approx. forty people.

As the MC gave his welcome, he said the Governor would not be able to make his Bill of Rights Proclamation because he was in an emergency meeting, but that he would probably drop by later. I thought that they might be on to our plan, but about halfway into the reading of the second of the governor's three readings, Hunt walked in and stood beside the podium. He began reading his third speech, and I counted down: 5-4-3-2-1. We all reached into our pockets and pulled out the previously concealed cloth banners reading "Human Rights? Clemency for Wendell Flowers," "The Death Penalty Violates Human Rights", "One execution per month in 2000? NC Violates Human Rights," and other slogans. In all, there were 13 people holding up cloth banners. Hunt had his head down to read from his speech, but then looked up and saw us. I didn't hear him skip a beat in his speech, but his face turned red. One lady behind said to Peter and me during the speech, "Thank you for doing this. He needs to see this."

Hunt finished his speech quickly- he may have cut some stuff out just to get out of there- and for some reason, he walked toward us to go out the front entrance rather than the back (from where he came in). That was good for us, and a huge mistake for him.

As he walked between the two flanks of sign holders, Kara and Lucie walked up to him. They were dressed very nicely and were not holding signs, so the Governor wouldn't know they were with us. Kara stood in front of the Governor's path and introduced herself, saying, "Governor Hunt, it's a pleasure to meet you." She shook his hand and held on to it so he couldn't walk away. As she spoke to the Governor, Brock, Mark, and Greg (the three ghosts) approached the Governor and took off their outer shirts to reveal signs on their chests with pictures of death row inmates reading "Executions Past" "Executions Present" and "Executions Future". We were going for a _Christmas Carol_ theme here, with Hunt as Ebenezer Scrooge, but I don't know if Kara got to that point or if the Governor was soaking everything in. Apparently, Brock approaced the Governor pretty quickly, and a security guard told him to "Back up! Back way up!"

Anyway, Kara presented Hunt with the UNC Student Congress resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and he was out the door. He ignored the rest of us, and didn't even look up. We were all relieved that we hadn't had our signs confiscated or been kicked out of the Old Capitol, so we stood there as the next speaker, NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Frye read the Bill of Rights. It was hard for me to read his reaction to our protest, but when he got to the Eighth Amendment (...no cruel and unusual punishment), we raised our signs up in the air. I remember Greg's very loud pseudo-coughing fit at this point and hearing him say, "excuse me" so that it was very audible.

After Frye spoke, the MC introduced Rev. Bill Finlator, a long-time civil rights and abolitionist pastor from the Raleigh area. We gave him a very long round of applause (about three times more than the Governor got). From what I recall, his speech was about holding government responsible to its promises of equity and justice. He talked about race and poverty, then he said this government accountability included holding them responsible for their cruel and unusual punishment. We all clapped for that one, and the people who organized the event were smiling, too. Rev. Finlator finished by saying something to the effect of, "If our fight for justice is a secular one, then heaven help us make the most of it." We all clapped again and he went to sit down.

The MC had us end the event by singing "Happy Birthday" to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was pretty cheesy, but we went along with it because we didn't want to rock the boat any more than we already had during the Governor's speech.

Afterward, we talked to other people who had shown up to the event.
I was afraid they would be mad that we had crashed their event, but, as Peter commented afterward, Hunt and Frye must have been the only ones at this human rights celebration who supported the death penalty. We then stood outside the Capitol and talked to two guys walking down the street about Wendell Flowers and Dawud Abdullah Muhammad.