Charles Brantley Aycock


Charles Brantley Aycock was the 50th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1901 to 1905. After starting his career as a lawyer and teacher, he became active in the Democratic Party during the party's Solid South period, and was a strong proponent of the white supremacy campaigns of that period. Aycock was one of the leading perpetrators of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, in which whites took over the city government by force, the only coup d'état in U. S. history.
He became known as "the Education Governor" for his advocacy for the improvement of North Carolina's public school systems, and following his term in office, he traveled the country promoting educational causes.

Early life

Charles B. Aycock was born in Wayne County, North Carolina, as the youngest of the 10 children of Benjamin and Serena Aycock. His family lived near the present-day town of Fremont, North Carolina, then known as Nahunta. Though his father died when he was 15, his mother and older brothers recognized his abilities and determined that he should go to college. Aycock attended the University of North Carolina and joined the Philanthropic Society, a debate and literary society at the university. After graduating in 1880 with first honors in both oratory and essay writing, he entered law practice in Goldsboro and supplemented his income by teaching school. His success in both fields led to his appointment as superintendent of schools for Wayne County and to service on the school board in Goldsboro.
His political career began in 1888 as a presidential elector for Grover Cleveland, when he gained distinction as an orator and political debater. From 1893 to 1897, he served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

White supremacy campaigns

In 1898 and 1900, Aycock was prominent in the Democratic Party's "white supremacy" campaigns. Aycock's involvement with the Wilmington insurrection of 1898 is chronicled in an official state commission report. "Planned violence to suppress the African American and Republican communities grew into unplanned bloodshed. The frenzy over white supremacy victory, incessantly repeated by orators such as Alfred Moore Waddell and Charles Aycock, simply could not be quieted after an overwhelming and somewhat anticlimactic election victory." Aycock was reportedly not present in Wilmington the day of the insurrection.
In 1900, Aycock was elected Governor over Republican Spencer B. Adams, as part of a sweeping Democratic victory which included a suffrage amendment to the state Constitution. Aycock was a supporter of the amendment and campaigned on the issue.

Governor

As governor, Aycock became known as the "Education Governor" for his support of the public school system. It was said that one school was constructed in the state for every day he was in office. He was supposedly dedicated to education after watching his mother make her mark when signing a deed. He felt that no lasting social reform could be accomplished without education. He supported increased salaries for teachers, longer school terms, and new school buildings; "690 new schoolhouses erected, including 599 for whites and 91 for blacks."
While credited for an expansion of schools for black students, Aycock is also noted as having advocated that black students be properly educated through curriculum and care
tightly controlled by North Carolina whites, to "benefit the black race to fit them into a subordinate role."
Historian Morgan Kousser has demonstrated that Aycock's progressive attitude toward black education was based on white Democrats' desire to ensure that the disfranchisement of black voters would not be reversed by federal government intervention. Kousser observed, "Some scholars have made a great deal of the opposition of 'progressive' Governor Charles B. Aycock and state school superintendent James Y. Joyner to the movement for a constitutional amendment in North Carolina to limit black school expenditures to the amount paid by Negroes in taxes. It is true that Aycock threatened resignation if such a law passed and that, speaking to the legislature in 1903, he condemned the proposed measure as 'unjust, unwise and unconstitutional.' Yet in the same address he put greater stress on his view that the act was impolitic than he did on its injustice. The law would invite a challenge in federal court, he believed, and 'if it should be made to appear to the Court that in connection with our disfranchisement of the negro we had taken pains for providing to keep him in ignorance, then both amendments would fall together.' In other words, the disfranchisement of the almost unanimously Republican blacks, which was virtually
priceless to the Democrats, would be bartered for the temporary gain of a few extra dollars of the school fund."

"The Negro Problem"

On December 18, 1903, while Governor, Aycock went to Baltimore to give a speech to 300 people at the North Carolina Society. His speech, "The Negro Problem," outlined his thoughts on keeping blacks separate, subservient, and locked out of representative government by circumventing the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote. Aycock's may have been a response to the book, "The Negro Problem," written by prominent black scholars, including W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, in which they consider the web of economic, political, and social problems faced by blacks in their collective history as slaves and second class citizens after Emancipation. The book had been released about two months before Aycock's speech.
The speech is one of Aycock's most well known, and controversial:

Later life

After leaving the governor's office in 1905, Aycock resumed his law practice. He was persuaded to run for the Senate seat held by fellow Democrat Furnifold M. Simmons in 1912. But before the nomination was decided, Aycock died of a heart attack while making a speech to the Alabama Education Association in Birmingham on April 4, 1912.
The subject of Aycock's speech was 'Universal Education'. After he had talked for a few minutes, Aycock spoke the words: 'I have always talked about education—.' Here he stopped, threw up his hands, reeled backward, and fell dead.

Legacy

In Greensboro, North Carolina, the auditorium at UNC Greensboro, as well as a street, a neighborhood, and a middle school were all named for him. Dormitories at UNC-Chapel Hill and East Carolina University campuses were named after him, although ECU decided to rename the dorm in 2015. UNC-Chapel Hill followed suit in 2020. In Pikeville, North Carolina, there is a high school named after him as well. There is an Aycock Elementary School in Henderson, and another in Asheville. Aycock High School in Cedar Grove graduated its last class in 1963.
In 1965, a junior high school in Raleigh, North Carolina was named after him, although it was absorbed into William G. Enloe High School in 1979.
For most of the 20th century, Aycock was characterized by state historians and politicians as an admirable figure, reflected in the choice to have a statue of him as one of the two submitted by the state to the National Statuary Hall Collection. In recent years, that viewpoint has been challenged:

Often overlooked was Aycock's role as a leading spokesman in the white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900, which were marked by widespread violence, voter intimidation, voter fraud and even a coup d'état of the government of Wilmington.... The campaigns had far-reaching consequences: Blacks were removed from the voter rolls based on literacy tests, Jim Crow customs were encoded into law, and the Democratic Party controlled Tar Heel politics for two-thirds of the 20th century.

In 2011, the N.C. Democratic Party dropped Aycock's name from its annual fundraiser after calls from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers brought attention to Aycock's white supremacy ties. Aycock had been included in the fundraiser's name since 1960.
On June 17, 2014, Duke University removed his name from a residence hall.
On February 20, 2015, East Carolina University trustees voted to remove Aycock's name from a residence hall after a months-long debate with faculty, students, staff and alumni. The trustees directed the university to represent Aycock's name in another campus location, where founders and other university supporters would be recognized.
As of early 2015, UNC Greensboro was also reviewing proposals to remove Aycock's name from campus buildings. On February 18, 2016, UNCG's Board of Trustees voted unanimously to remove his name from the auditorium.
On August 25, 2015, the Guilford County school board voted 9–2 to rename Aycock Middle School in Greensboro, dropping the Aycock name
On August 15, 2017, the Greensboro City Council voted to rename the Aycock Historic District, which included the formerly named Aycock Middle School to Dunleath Historic District.
On February 28, 2018, the governor of North Carolina requested from the Architect of the Capitol replacement of Aycock's statue with one of evangelist Billy Graham, pursuant to legislation signed in 2015. The statue will be replaced once sufficient private funds for Graham's statue are raised.
On April 24, 2018, Greensboro City Council unanimously voted to rename North and South Aycock Street, which runs from West Florida Street to Wendover Avenue, to North and South Josephine Boyd Street after Josephine Boyd, the first Black student to attend the all-white Greensboro High School in 1957.