From: The Charlotte Observer
At a Martin Luther King Jr. Day protest over school policies, the head of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP Monday announced a campaign to urge the CIAA basketball tournament and other groups to boycott the city.
Pledging to “expose Charlotte for the racist bastion it is,” NAACP President Kojo Nantambu announced a drive to keep the CIAA, NCAA, PGA “and any other ‘A’” from coming to Charlotte.
He also said his group would ask the national NAACP to consider asking the Democratic Party not to hold its 2012 convention in Charlotte.
His comments came just before he led about 100 people on a march through uptown to protest the decision by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to hold classes on the King holiday to make up one of three days lost to snow last week.
Carrying signs and chanting “No justice, no peace,” the group marched to the Levine Museum of the New South and on to the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture.
The protest came on a day that many interracial and interfaith groups joined to mark the holiday and honor King’s memory. And it came on the heels of other controversies involving schools and the African-American community.
Many in the mainly African-American crowd who gathered in the morning chill outside the government center were fired up over the school’s holiday decision.
