
          Robeson County's 'Third World Ills'
          By Segrest, MabMab Segrest
          Vol. 10, No. 4, 1988, pp. 14-16
          
          Julian Pierce, a Lumbee Indian candidate for superior court judge
in Robeson County, North Carolina, went to his door in the early
morning hours of March 26, apparently responding to noise. A waiting
assailant shot Pierce as he approached the door--first in the chest,
then in the side as he fell, and finally in the back of the
head. Pierce lay dead on his kitchen floor, the latest in the body
count of this county which has, in the words of one local organizer,
"Third World ills." These include a potent combination of drugs,
government corruption and racism.
          Pierce's death brought his home county into the national spotlight
for the second time this winter. In early February Eddie Hatcher and
Timothy Jacobs, two Tuscarora men, walked into the offices of the
Robesonian, the newspaper in the county seat of
Lumberton, and took nineteen people hostage, demanding an
investigation of drugs, corruption and the county's unsolved
murders. They surrendered ten hours later--amid much sympathy not only
from local residents, but even from some of their hostages--after
Governor James Martin agreed to form a special task force to
investigate their complaints. "Their requests were very
reasonable," said Martin.
          Hatcher and Jacobs are to be tried in August or September on
federal hostage-taking and illegal weapons charges. Their lawyers from
the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Christic Institute South
plan to put the county on trial as well, with a "necessity defense"
that the two acted in imminent danger of their lives after having
exhausted legal remedies.
          Robeson County is distinctly tri-racial, with 40 percent white, 35
percent Native American and 25 percent black citizens. One-fourth live
below the poverty level, the unemployment rate is consistently one of
the highest in the state, and the per-capita income is one of the
lowest. Fifty-five percent of adults over twenty-five have not
completed high school. Whites remain in most positions of power
because the county's minority residents have historically remained
divided.
          
            Poverty, Drugs and Violence
          
          Not only poverty, but drugs and violence plague the county, which
is on Interstate 95 about midway between New York and Miami. According
to Assistant U.S. Attorney William Webb, four or five major drug
organizations operate in the county. U.S. Attorney Sam Currin said
that last year he got weekly calls from Robeson citizens that
"drugs are being bought and sold openly on the streets." Currin
said that "cocaine people are just flooding the market" and
that drug dealers believe they can operate at will, with local law
enforcement incapable of stopping them. "Incapable--or bought off,"
say many local residents.
          The violence plaguing Robeson County is the South's familiar
violence bred by racism and poverty, and also a fearful new violence
spawned by the drug trade. Since 1975 there have been eighteen
unsolved murders, including execution-style killings said to be drug
related. For example, on Oct. 9, 1985, three Lumbee men died when
their vehicle was sprayed with bullets and crashed into an
embankment. Other victims have been shot in the head and their bodies
dumped on the interstate, in their backyards or in the Lumber
River. Since the hostage-taking, according to a report on WRAL-TV in
Raleigh, there have been fourteen more killings in the county.
          Other deaths have raised the specter of racial violence. On
Oct. 31, 1985, Joyce Sinclair, a black woman who had just been
promoted to a supervisory position at a textile mill, was kidnaped
from her home by a "white man wearing v site," (said her daughter) and
found raped and brutally murdered. Her murder is unsolved. Other black
families have lost loved ones--for example, Halbert Patterson, a black
resident of Maxton, who was shot down in the street by a white
merchant because, according to the merchant, 

Patterson had closed a
car hood on his head. In January of 1988, Billy McKellar, a young
black man, died of bronchial asthma in the Robeson County jail where,
his family feels, he was denied his asthma medication. The McKellar
case was one of the issues raised by Hatcher and Jacobs during their
ten-hour siege. Commented John McKellar, Billy's father: "When I
heard about the hostage taking, it seemed like a weight lifted off
me. Maybe this will help some of what's going on in Robeson
County. The people in Robeson County are the ones being held hostage
by Robeson County law officials. Eddie and Tim are the only two people
who stood up to be free."
          
            Killing Ignited Citizens
          
          The killing that most ignited local citizens, however, was the
November 1986 shooting of Jimmy Earl Cummings, an unarmed Lumbee man,
by Kevin Stone, county narcotics agent and son of Robeson County
Sheriff Hubert Stone, on what should have been a routine drug
search. Two weeks after the shooting, a hastily called inquest cleared
Kevin Stone of any wrongdoing in Cummings death. The Cummings family
was notified of the inquest only hours before and was not able to
obtain legal counsel. District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt, in a highly
unusual move, was present to question witnesses. He did not call Stone
to testify, although other law enforcement officials presented
conflicting accounts of the death. The coroner's jury came back with a
highly unusual verdict: "either an accident or self-defense."
          Kevin Stone was one of two deputies with keys to a locker from
which $50,000 in stolen drugs and evidence in fifty drug cases had
been illegally removed in August 1986. Members of Cumming's family
told state media that Jimmy Earl said he was buying drugs from the
locker cache. In December 1986, Mitchell Stevens, a former sheriff's
deputy, and two other men were indicted for the locker theft. At their
trial a State Bureau of Investigation agent testified that he had
information suggesting another deputy might have helped in obtaining
the cocaine stolen from the locker, and named Kevin Stone as one of
two officers he suspected.
          Cummings's death, the possible whitewash from the legal
establishment, and growing suggestions of law enforcement complicity
ignited county residents. Soon up to 800 people--Native American,
black and white--were attending mass meetings, They came together in a
coalition, Concerned Citizens for Better Government, and began to
rally the three races around a variety of concerns. These ranged from
protests against violence and corruption to support for the merger of
the county's five school systems into one system that would more
equitably educate the county's minority children. On Easter Monday
1987, a march sponsored by the coalition brought 1,500 of the county's
residents into the streets in an unprecedented show of unity and
opposition to what they perceived as a morally bankrupt power
structure.
          On Super Tuesday this year, the coalition brought people together
in the ballot box as well, and blacks and Native Americans together
voted for school merger, signaling a historic shift of power. Julian
Pierce's campaign for the position of Superior Court judge against
District Attorney Joe Freeman Britt--by then regarded as a hated
symbol of the white establishment--took on added energy, and
supporters predicted Pierce's victory.
          Then Pierce was murdered. The law enforcement officer leading the
investigation was Sheriff Hubert Stone (accompanied by state and
federal agents), and the DA in charge 

of the prosecution was Pierce's
rival, Joe Freeman Britt. Within four days, Stone announced that the
case was solved--and that the main suspect was dead of "apparent
suicide." Pierce had been killed by two Indians over a "domestic
dispute," he said.
          According to Stone, John Anderson Goins, 24, was the boyfriend of
Pierce's fiancee's daughter, and the young Lumbee had killed Pierce
because he and her mother had sworn out a warrant on Goins to keep him
away from the girl. Stone charged Sandy Chavis, whom he described as
Goin's companion, with Pierce's murder, although Chavis denied
participating in the killing, saying that he had driven Goins to
Pierce's house without knowing his friend intended to kill Pierce. A
deputy and an SBI agent found Goins dead in a closet in his father's
unoccupied home after law enforcement had pursued him, the sheriff
said.
          
            Accusations of a Coverup
          
          "My first reaction is that it's a cover-up--or that they picked
a scapegoat," said Dail Chavis, one of Pierce's
sisters." Julian Pierce wanted to clean things up," a young
black man who refused to give his name told a reporter. "So now
Pierce is shot dead, and the sheriff right away says these two guys
did it, and one of the guys just happens to kill himself. What would
you think about that, if you was me?"
          Governor Martin, responding to citizen demands, apparently
pressured Britt into requesting a special prosecutor from the attorney
general's office. Maneuvering also occurred between Martin and the
legislature. Part of Martin's compromise in the wake of the
hostage-taking was that Martin would ask the legislature to add a
second judgeship for the county and that he would appoint a Native
American to that position (rather than postponing the election to find
someone to run against Britt as Pierce's supporters originally
requested). According to press coverage of the dealing between Martin
and the legislature, the governor did push the legislature to create
the second judgeship, but the legislature then declared that Britt
would be senior judge, thus getting power to appoint magistrates and
set the court calendar. The legislature also demanded a guarantee that
the district attorney appointed to fill Britt's unexpired term would
be white. The legislature agreed, however, to the appointment of a
black public defender, for which the coalition of Concerned Citizens
and the Rural Advancement Fund had been steadily working in the county
for some time. When all was said and done, however, the positions of
real authority remained in the hands of Britt and the local white
establishment.
          The Hatcher-Jacobs trial will show evidence of drug trafficking and
"how things happen when a system is controlled by drug
cartels," said Bob Warren, attorney for Christic Institute
South. "The murder of Julian Pierce is a major example of what
happens in such a system." Warren says that the lawyers hope by
the trial date to have the Pierce murder solved. "Our evidence now
points to an assassination, not to a domestic dispute," Warren
commented.
          On April 20, five blocks from the courthouse in downtown Lumberton,
a bullet shattered the windshield of the car Bob Warren was driving. A
later call explained it had been a warning shot. Warren says that he
has heard from four different sources that there is a contract on his
life.
          The media are filled with stories of constant violence, corruption
and drug-related problems in such countries as El Salvador, Colombia,
and Panama. Yet we in the South do not have to look that far for
examples of failed democracy. Robeson County lies halfway between New
York and Miami; but what its people are suffering may be going on now
or soon in other communities across the South.
          
            Mab Segrest is director of North Carolinians Against
Racial and Religious Violence. Her article is adapted from a
copyrighted article in Christian Century, and appears
here with permission.
          
        