The Charlotte NAACP has announced plans to push the NCAA, the PGA, "and any other 'A,'" as well as perhaps the national Democratic Party, to stay away from the city following a decision by the county's school board to use Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a snow make-up day.
Charlotte is one of four cities that could be chosen to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Cleveland, Minneapolis and St. Louis are the three others.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP President Kojo Nantambu says that he is planning to mobilize the boycott in order to "expose Charlotte for the racist bastion it is," according to the The Charlotte Observer.
The Observer reports:
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.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg county board announced the controversial decision last week:
"Schools will be in session on Jan. 17, the observance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, to make up one of three days when schools were closed because of snow and ice," the county wrote in a release, explaining that the make-up day had been set by a scheduling decision made two years ago.
The local NAACP also claims that this latest move is exacerbating racial tensions first strained by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board late last year, when it decided to close eight schools attended primarily by minority students. While the county acknowledged the cuts would disproportionately affect minority families, they maintained that the closures were made based on enrollment and academic performance number, not race, The Charlotte Observer reports. The U.S. Department of Education has since announced an investigation into the resulting civil-rights complaints.
Wake County in North Carolina has also recently faced charges of allegedly upholding segregation following their decision to eliminate an integrated-busing program.