Downtown Lexington features a prominent Confederate war memorial, and Dixie battle flags still flutter along the county's winding back roads.Ī Duke University study a few years ago concluded that Davidson County schools are the second most racially segregated in the state. Though it is home to thousands of minority residents, the county has never elected a nonwhite commissioner. "Leaving my church at night, I don't want to veer off of the main roads for any reason." Robert Hill, a black pastor at Lexington Christian Fellowship. "Davidson County has the reputation of being one of the most racist counties in North Carolina," said the Rev. In the 1990s, a local man tried to revive the state's chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, America's most notorious white-supremacist group. In 1963, one man was killed after 600 white residents stormed Lexington to oppose efforts to desegregate local businesses. Depending on whom you ask, its history is either rife with evidence of ingrained prejudice or checkered with isolated racial incidents. Tucked just south of Winston-Salem, Davidson County sits in what was once, before the factories closed, a major hub of furniture and textile manufacturing. "All I know is that these are great kids. "I don't know anything about the politics," volunteer coach Herb White said after a recent practice. But because they don't associate with them, stereotypes and tensions can flourish."Īs the adults tried to hash things out at a flurry of public meetings and town halls, the Lexington Middle School Yellow Jackets continued to tug on their shoulder pads and jerseys to practice for games it was unclear they would ever play. I bet most of the people in my church don't have any black friends," Howell said. "Every Sunday, I look out and, with one or two exceptions, I see all white faces. Ray Howell, the white pastor of First Baptist Church in Lexington, who said he was cautioned by white friends against moving into the city in 1990. "We're still segregated in so many ways," said the Rev. At times, the warring factions seemed to occupy different worlds despite living in the same small community. The spiraling indignation echoes a recurrent national debate about whether pervasive prejudice or knee-jerk charges of racism is the more urgent threat to society.
Outraged, county school officials declared that if Lexington wouldn't play South Davidson, it would not be allowed to play any of the other schools in the county - which fully surrounds the city - a move that threatened Lexington's entire fall schedule. School district officials in the racially diverse city of Lexington, 16 miles to the north, responded by canceling their middle school football game against South Davidson, saying they feared for the safety of the predominantly black Lexington team. School officials said they punished the teen but provided few details, citing student privacy laws. The local sheriff announced there would be no hate crime investigation, dismissing the incident as a matter for school discipline rather than a criminal probe.
Was it harmless graffiti - a stupid decision by a single teen - or a dangerous call to racial violence? While local residents have been united in condemning the slur, they are deeply divided over its meaning and importance.
But a grainy video was soon ricocheting across the Internet, igniting a weeks-long controversy that has exposed raw racial tensions, imperiled the fall football season for dozens of middle school students and sparked a tempestuous debate over whether the incident constitutes a hate crime. Within minutes, the slur was gone, painted over by other students.
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