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http://www.newsobserver.com/print/sunday/sunday_journal/story/2474719p-8879121c.html UNC center pushes annexation
In some ways, Moore County is still a portrait in black and white, a place where race may be the major factor determining quality of life, down to questions of whether a person has access to public water and sewer and how they get rid of their trash. As the region prepares to welcome scores of the world's greatest golfers and tens of thousands of spectators for the 2005 U.S. Open, the Center for Civil Rights, an arm of the University of North Carolina School of Law, claims that Moore County municipalities have systematically discriminated against the residents of black communities by drawing corporate boundaries around them. By excluding the neighborhoods from town limits, the center says, the predominantly white municipalities have denied basic services to generations of black residents, in some cases suppressing their land values and compromising their safety and health. As a further insult, the center claims, by extending their zoning jurisdiction beyond their own town limits, the municipalities have imposed restrictions on the black communities whose residents can't serve on the towns' governing boards. A look at Moore County's history and interviews with residents show that municipal gerrymandering has played a role in shutting some of its poorest residents out of the local political process and left them behind as the county as a whole has become one of the wealthiest in the state. But so have deed restrictions dating to the late 1800s, as the resort was being developed; lingering discrimination in property sales; black settlement patterns; absentee property ownership; and a dearth of high-paying jobs.
"I don't think race has anything to do with it," says Irirain Hill, when asked why Midway, where she has lived all of her 58 years, has never been taken in by Aberdeen. "I think money has something to do with it." A few minutes later, she reconsiders. "I'm quite sure if there were some other families over here besides black people, they'd do something." Although segregated housing patterns exist elsewhere in North Carolina -- and in the nation -- the disparity between the wealthiest, whitest neighborhoods in Moore County and the poorest, most uniformly black ones is stark, if only because the two are often in such close proximity, sometimes butting up against one another's property lines. The Center for Civil Rights is organizing residents of five black neighborhoods, hoping to score some local and national publicity as the press and spectators gather. In the short term, the Center hopes to pressure local governments to provide basic services where they are lacking. In the long run, it hopes the municipalities will annex their black neighbors, though it's not clear that would be in the best interest of all the neighborhoods or that it's even what residents want. "The immediate goal is getting equitable services," says Chris Brook, who began working on the Moore County project last year for class credit. He graduated from UNC in May and plans to volunteer with the project through the summer before going to work at a Raleigh law firm in the fall. "The ultimate goal is to make them a part of these communities, equal to their neighbors," Brook says. "We believe that if they're going to have any political clout, they will have to become part of those communities."
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