'Limits of Dissent' brings back trial of Junius Scales

Chapel Hill Herald, May 18, 2001

By SUSAN BROILI

CHAPEL HILL - Lou Lipsitz had never written a play before he wrote "The Limits of Dissent." But the play practically wrote itself, the former UNC political science professor said earlier this week.

That's because the play is based on the 1950s trial of Junius Scales.

In 1956 and 1957, Scales was tried and convicted in Federal Court in Greensboro for violating the Smith Act, which was passed in 1940 and prohibited even being a member of an organization that advocated the violent overthrow of the government.

"There's nothing invented in the play. All the characters, all the testimony are real. I did some editing, a little smoothing out here and there for the sake of clarity," Lipsitz said.

Lipsitz had been commissioned to do the play in 1976 by Warren Nord, then with the N.C. Humanities Council. Nord now directs UNC's Program in the Humanities.

Nord knew Lipsitz was a writer (he writes poetry) and that the UNC political science professor had a strong interest in civil liberties issues.

Lipsitz retired from UNC in 1995, continues to write poetry and also works as a psychotherapist.

The playwright said he chose the trial of Scales because of local interest and issues involved.

Scales lived in Carrboro and Chapel Hill and went to UNC.

Joe Herzenberg, who performs in the play, said he recently went by Scales' home in Carrboro at 201 Carr St. and took a photograph to display during the staged readings. The exact location of where Scales lived in Chapel Hill is not known. Scales and his mother moved to Chapel Hill, where Scales graduated from Chapel Hill High School in 1936, Herzenberg said.

Scales' father had been a real estate developer in Greensboro but was ruined in the Depression, Herzenberg said.

Scales came from a prominent family in the state; his great-uncle had served as governor. This revival of the play also features "local color" in its actors, Lipsitz said.

Herzenberg, a former Chapel Hill Town Council member, plays the judge.

"It's an easy role. He doesn't have much to say," Herzenberg said.

"The judge was a very conservative man," Herzenberg said. "At one point, he rules that writing your congressman could be illegal - the first step toward overthrowing the government."

Joe Straley, a retired UNC professor of physics and well-known activist, will actually play himself. He was a character witness for Scales during the trial.

"And, he has to read his own testimony," Lipsitz said.

The idea to revive the play came from Mark Dorosin, attorney, Carrboro alderman and current president of the local ACLU chapter, Herzenberg said, adding that other actors also are on the ACLU board.

The cast also features Dorosin, Pat Devine, Malcolm Logan, Margaret Brown, Marina Barber, David Neal and Jonathan Broun. Former UNC student body President Aaron Nelson, currently director of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, plays "The Bailiff."

Issues also made the case of Scales good fodder for a play, Lipsitz said.

"There are always people for various reasons who want to suppress controversial speech," Lipsitz said. "There are free speech issues of different kinds. It's good to have a historical perspective. In America, we have these episodes of suppression."

Then there are the moral questions raised by Scales' case.

There was the issue of his honor: not wanting to dishonor himself and his friends by testifying, Lipsitz said.

There are the questions about the tolerance of unpopular views as well as how honesty and truth, or the lack thereof, figured into the verdict, Lipsitz said.

The main issue, as Lipsitz sees it, and the reason why he titled his play as he did: "What kinds of limits are there to dissent against a government you think is corrupt and evil? When does free speech turn into the advocacy of action? Where's the limit?"

The prosecution could not prove that Scales had committed any violent acts or had plans to overthrow the government, Lipsitz said.

The trial had consisted of 13 days of prosecution testimony mostly about the organization of the Communist Party, portrayed as a secret and violent conspiracy, but there was no actual proof the organization had done anything, Lipsitz said.

"They were trying to convict people for their thoughts," he said.

The case against Scales was very weak, but he was convicted both times, the playwright said.

"He was convicted because of the atmosphere of the times," Lipsitz said.

This was the era dominated by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and others who feared the Soviet Union.

The playwright said what struck him about the trial in particular was the disillusionment of the ex-communists who testified for the government and the loss of a sense of proportion.

"Scales is obviously not a dangerous man," Lipsitz said.

Scales was not even a member of the Communist Party during the trials in 1956-57, Lipsitz said.

He had joined the party in the 1930s when he thought it the best way to address the racial situation as well as poverty brought about by the Great Depression, the playwright said.

He, as others, later became disillusioned about the Communist Party, Lipsitz said.

The playwright read through a foot-tall stack of transcripts from the second trial of Scales to get material for his 90-minute play.

"There is moving and funny testimony buried in the three weeks of testimony. I chose the compelling human moments and humor that I found," Lipsitz said.

The play has a lot of humor, including the evasive testimony of Esther Gillis, a textile worker from High Point who was asked to name people who attended a meeting and who managed, in various ways, to not answer the question, Lipsitz said.

The Supreme Court upheld the verdict barely at 5-4 and prominent people campaigned to get Scales out of jail, Lipsitz said.

But Scales wound up serving about a year and a half in a federal prison in Pennsylvania and while there hosted an opera show on the prison radio, Lipsitz said.

President John F. Kennedy commuted Scales' sentence on Christmas Eve 1962.

Scales then worked as a proofreader for The New York Times and vowed never to return to North Carolina because he thought it would cause more pain to his family and friends here, Lipsitz said.

In 1976, Lipsitz said he had written to Scales about the play, and Scales had told him not to do it because the incident had brought pain to so many people. But Lipsitz said he thought Scales was wrong, that the play should be written.

"It would help to heal what had happened," Lipsitz said.

Scales wound up coming to see a performance of the play in 1977 in Raleigh.

"It changed his life," Lipsitz said. "He came out of seclusion, wrote an autobiography, published by The University of Georgia Press. He taught at the Journalism School at Columbia University."

Herzenberg said he saw Scales once at a reception held in the Morehead building after publication of Scales' autobiography. Women - high school classmates - flocked to see him again for the first time since high school.

"He really was a charming man," Herzenberg said. Scales now lives in Pine Bush, N.Y.

Herzenberg said he also attended the performance of Lipsitz's play in the '70s at an Orange County courthouse, where a "jury" of community members wound up being hung because of a debate about whether to make the decision based on the standards of the '50s or of the present day.

"Juries" at the other 29 performances, all held in courtrooms throughout the state, found Scales innocent, Lipsitz said.

What had seemed threatening 20 years before did not seem that way when the play was performed. "People were really afraid in the '50s," Lipsitz said.

The play premiered in the Federal Courthouse in Greensboro where Scales was tried. "What really gets to me is how difficult it is to transport ourselves back in time. Audiences of today laugh at things that people found very serious back in the 1950s," Herzenberg said. "I just hope people remember these things weren't intended as jokes."

The Smith Act was passed before World War II to attack radicals, Herzenberg said. "Throughout our history, there have been repeated periods of political paranoia, usually from the far left. The main point is that you should know that these things can happen in our society."

But the limits of dissent have broadened since Scales' trial, Herzenberg said. "We're a much freer society than we were then."

Staged reading

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro ACLU presents "The Limits of Dissent" by Lou Lipsitz. A public staged reading of the play takes place at 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday inside the Chapel Hill Courthouse on the corner of Henderson and East Franklin streets. The play is based on the 1950s trial of Junius Scales, the only American ever sent to prison just because he belonged to a political party - the Communist Party.

No admission will be charged, but donations will be accepted.

Junius Scales died of a stroke in August, 2002. He was 82.

Roses to Joe Herzenberg

Chapel Hill News, Feb. 21, 2001 - Roses and Raspberries

Roses to Joe Herzenberg of Chapel Hill and Bonnie Davis of Hillsborough, co-winners of this year's Pauli Murray Human Relations Award.

The honor is given by the Orange County Human Relations Commission to residents who have served the pursuit of equality, justice and human rights for all citizens.

The award is made in the name of the Rev. Pauli Murray, the first ordained black woman priest in the Episcopal Church, who lived in Durham and performed services at Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill.

Herzenberg deserves recognition for his persistent advocacy on behalf of the disenfranchised and victims of discrimination. A former Chapel Hill Town Council member, he is chair of the Chapel Hill Greenway Commission and the Merritt Pasture Access Committee.

...

The awards will be presented Sunday at 1 p.m. in a ceremony at A.L. Stanback Middle School.

Award honors 4 for human relations work

Chapel Hill Herald, Feb. 18, 2001

HILLSBOROUGH - The Orange County Human Relations Commission has named three residents and a local business as winners of this year's Pauli Murray Human Relations awards.

For the first time, the individual Murray Human Relations Award went to two people - Bonnie Davis of Hillsborough and Joe Herzenberg of Chapel Hill.

...

The overall aim of the Murray awards is to honor those with a "significant history of promoting and fostering better human relations among the diverse residents of Orange County."

The award program gets its name from the Rev. Pauli Murray, who focused on human relations in many roles, including her work as the first black woman in the country ordained in the Episcopal Church, in 1977.

...

The individual Murray award goes to residents who have worked to foster conciliation, human rights, diversity and/or equality in Orange County.

...

Joe Herzenberg moved to Chapel Hill in 1969 to study American history as a graduate student. His first history professor told Herzenberg about Pauli Murray, and he was so intrigued, he tracked down a copy of her book, "Proud Shoes."

"She's just a great role model for anybody," Herzenberg said about Murray. "She viewed herself as an American, of both African and European descent. She never saw anything narrowly. She saw the civil rights movement as a way to liberate not just black people, but white people as well. She was pretty much interested in everything."

Herzenberg, 59, is a native of Franklin, N.J., and he had been teaching at a black college in Mississippi before he came to Chapel Hill. He has been active in local politics and issues for many years, serving on a number of advisory boards and committees.

He is chairman of Chapel Hill's Greenways Commission and the Merritt Pasture Access Committee. He served eight years on the Chapel Hill Town Council before resigning in 1993, in the midst of controversy over his pleading guilty to a tax evasion charge.

Herzenberg laughed Friday in recalling the recent phone call in which he learned about the award. He said he initially joked with the caller that he didn't want the award, because he felt such awards were supposed to go to older residents.

"I'm actually quite happy," he said. "This award is one that I'm especially honored to get."

Herzenberg said his focus in the past three decades primarily has been on civil rights for black residents and on gay and lesbian rights.

UNC removal of magnolia for utilities irks residents

Chapel Hill Herald, Feb. 14, 2001

CHAPEL HILL - For three decades, Ken Jackson has enjoyed the view of the UNC campus he has from his jewelry store window.

Thus, the recent removal of a towering magnolia tree near Franklin Street has saddened Jackson and others who treasure the beauty of the campus.

"I was very heartsick," said Jackson, who owns Franklin Street's Wentworth & Sloan. "I've looked at that tree every day for the last 30 years. It's a loss."

The tree came down about two weeks ago, the result of a new campus building project. It was in the way and its destruction couldn't be avoided, said UNC officials, themselves sorry to see the tree go.

Jackson, for one, accepts the university's explanation that the tree had to be removed to install a utility line. But others in town aren't so easily convinced.

"It seems to me they could have planned better," said Joe Herzenberg, a town resident who, as a member of the Town Council in the late 1980s, led a town task force on tree protection. "They took the shortest distance between two points for this utility line. If they had gone 20 yards to the east, closer to Battle Hall, they could have avoided the roots of the tree."

The tree stood back from the street just west of Battle-Vance-Pettigrew. It was slated to be preserved, but construction on a new Institute for the Arts and Humanities nearby took an unplanned twist. To hook the new institute into an existing water line on the north side of Franklin Street, construction workers had to build a larger, deeper hole than was originally thought. The hole was needed to bore under Franklin Street to reach the water line. The other option, to tear up Franklin Street and build a new line under it, was less feasible. So, the tree had to be removed.

"I really had nowhere to go on this," said Kirk Pelland, UNC's grounds director. "The tree couldn't be saved."

And university officials say there's nothing to Herzenberg's claim that they simply could have moved the path of the utility line slightly, to work around the tree.

"It's not that easy, and you have to weigh your disruptions," said Anna Wu, UNC's associate director for facilities planning and design. "It proved to be the best alternative."

But the decision has left Herzenberg unsatisfied, a sentiment he expressed in a recent letter penned to UNC Chancellor James Moeser. The decision, he said, points to a larger issue involving the university's philosophy concerning campus development.

"The big point is that the university has its eye on master plans, on campus and for the Horace Williams property," he said. "They tend to be not as careful about the smaller points, which are also important - in this case, the tree."

But facilities planners say the university does make those so-called "smaller points" a priority and pledge to beautify the area around the institute once construction finishes. Bruce Runberg, associate vice chancellor for facilities services, has pledged to plant a new magnolia tree nearby to replace the old one.

"Our intention is to go back and re-landscape that area," Wu said. "We will restore that area."

Jackson, the jewelry store owner, accepts the price of progress. Still, he's sorry to see the old magnolia go. "It was an older tree," he said. "The older I got, the greater appreciation I had for older things. It was a beautiful tree."

Schools do the right thing on Boy Scouts

Chapel Hill Herald, Feb. 2, 2001 - Letter to the Editor

What our Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education voted was not only fair and wise - but the right thing to do. The school board cannot support programs, however splendid, that are not open to all children.

The Boy Scouts may be a wonderful organization. If so, the organization should be open to all boys. And I'm pleased to note that local Scout leaders seem to be opposed to the exclusionary policy of the national organization. That policy, sooner or later, will be changed.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill

Listening for a Change: Interview with Joe Herzenberg, conducted by Chris McGinnis

Oral History Interview with Joe Herzenberg, conducted by Chris McGinnis, Nov. 1, 2000.

Interview Number: K-0196. Archived for listening as part of the Southern Oral History Program at the Southern Historical Collection Manuscripts Department in Wilson Libary, UNC-Chapel Hill. The complete transcript is reproduced below.

Listening for a Change: History of Gay Men and Transgender People in the South

These interviews by Chris McGinnis, an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, were conducted for an independent study in the fall semester of 2000 and for the Southern Oral History Program in 2001-2002.

They give a perspective of gay life in the South, with particular emphasis on North Carolina in the 1960s through the 1980s. The interviews chronicle the development of the gay community in the South and explore early gay bars, social events and festivals of the gay community, gay organizations and activism, and places where gay men met and engaged in public sex, among other topics.

Included are interviews with Chapel Hill, N.C., town council member Joseph A. Herzenberg and writer Perry Deane Young. Interviews with Angela Brightfeather and Lily Rose DeVee offer perspectives of transgender individuals.

Joe in 2000, as featured in Out and Elected in the U.S.A. photo exhibit

Town milestone in gay rights

Chapel Hill News, Sept. 13, 2000 - Letter to the Editor

Twenty-five years ago, on Sept. 13, 1975, the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen, as the Town Council was then called, passed the first gay rights law in the southern states. (In 1975 fewer than a dozen towns and cities in the United States had such laws.)

The aldermen at the time were considering a new personnel ordinance for the town employees. In response to a request from the recently formed Carolina Gay Association, a UNC student organization, the aldermen included gay people among the list of groups against whom the town should not discriminate in matters of hiring and compensation, training and promotion. The vote was unanimous.

After all these years, it may be appropriate to thank once again those who took a stand in 1975: Mayor Howard Lee and Alderman Gerry Cohen, Tommy Gardner, Shirley Marshall, Sid Rancer, R.D. Smith and Alice Welsh.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill

Gay Rights: Where Are We Now?

NC Society for Ethical Culture Sunday Platform Talk, June 11, 2000

Featured Speaker:

Joe Herzenberg, retired historian, Founding Board Member of Equality NC PAC

Presentation:

Gay Rights: Where Are We Now?

Our platform speakers are selected based on their knowledge and expertise on a given subject, not necessarily on the degree to which they agree with the basic values and principles of Ethical Culture. We may invite speakers with dramatically opposing views in order to challenge the existing "politically correct" views.

Presentations are on Sundays at 11AM at the Arts Center, 300 E. Main St. in Carrboro, NC.

Wilson would help protect environment

Chapel Hill Herald, April 20, 2000 - Letter to the Editor

It seems we've had one environmental disaster after another this year. We need strong leadership in North Carolina to protect our environment for the people of our state. Ed Wilson, candidate for lieutenant governor, will provide such leadership.

For instance, Ed Wilson wants to eliminate hog lagoons. Meanwhile his opponent, Beverly Perdue, not only voted to prohibit local communities from regulating hog lagoons, she also sponsored a bill that would have barred the state's main environmental police from inspecting livestock operations.

Vote for Ed Wilson to represent the environmental concerns of the people of North Carolina over special interests of corporate hog farms.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill

Readers know about their pizza

Chapel Hill Herald, Jan. 30, 2000

Last week's Challenge readers know their pizza joints, including Courtney Morris who knew the answer to the following:

Where on Franklin Street can you get a slice of Luau pizza?

The hint was that compared to a slice of Luau, the regular Hawaiian pizza, ham and pineapple, is like looking at slides of someone else's vacation.

The answer is Pepper's Pizza on East Franklin Street. Pepper's opened its doors in the mid-1980s and has become a favorite hangout since for those looking to rub shoulders with an eclectic mix of customers and staff.

...

On the wall opposite the front counter are several profiles of Pepper's customers, including Joe Herzenberg whose profile describes his occupation as "small town politician" and his latest accomplishment as "an out-of-town trip to Carrboro."

There's also an ever-changing display of artwork for sale above the booths.

Gays see the glass half full

Ruth Sheehan, The News & Observer, Raleigh, June 11, 1999

Starting this evening, thousands of gay men and women will gather in Greensboro for seminars and speeches, a big campy parade - and lots of parties. They call it PRIDE weekend. And this year, gay activists say they have much to celebrate. Much to be proud of.

"This was a good year," says my friend Joe Herzenberg, a former Chapel Hill Town Council member and the state's first openly gay elected official. "A very good year."

A key reason, according to Herzenberg, is that in April, for the first time ever, not one but two bills aimed at protecting gay citizens received a hearing on the floor of the state House.

One of the bills would have allowed Orange County commissioners to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations. The second - named for Matthew Shepard, the former Triangle resident who was pistol-whipped, tied to a fence and left to die in Wyoming because he was gay - would have expanded the definition of hate crimes to include victims targeted because of their sexual orientation, sex, disability or age.

Both bills were killed on the House floor. But to Herzenberg, in some ways, that's a small detail.

"Gay rights were discussed by the full House," Herzenberg tells me. "That is a big step. There are people who want to make radical change in a hurry. That's not always the best approach."

Herzenberg knows all too well that gay rights in a Bible Belt state such as North Carolina, where anti-gay sentiment remains so entrenched, is a two-steps-forward, one-step-back proposition at best: Superior Court Judge Ray Warren comes out of the closet, only to be run out of the Republican Party. The Rev. Jimmy Creech officiates at a gay union, only to face the possibility of expulsion from the pulpit. Chapel Hill and Carrboro offer benefits to the domestic partners of town employees, including two gay workers, only to find the policies challenged in court by disapproving conservatives.

The progress is incremental. Painstakingly so, it seems to me.

Because in the end, you can still be fired, or evicted, or denied a job because you're gay.

You can be beaten simply because of whom you love - and it won't be considered a hate crime.

You can actually be arrested for the way you and your partner engage in fully consensual sex, even though many straight people routinely engage in similarly illegal activity.

It all amounts to legal discrimination against one final unprotected group of people. So to me, the fact that the state House heard, and promptly quashed, two mostly symbolic bills to protect gay civil rights is more an outrage than a cause for optimism.

But Herzenberg is far more patient. He points out that the landscape has changed dramatically since 1987, when he was first elected. Gay couples are out-virtually everywhere, without so much as an eyebrow raised, Herzenberg notes.

Getting the laws to acknowledge this social reality is the next step. And getting gay-rights legislation heard on the House floor is obviously a crucial part of that process.

Perhaps, as Herzenberg says, it has been a "good" year. But I believe we could have done better.

Tradition could wilt with retirement of `flower ladies'

Chapel Hill Herald, May 16, 1999

By Ray Gronberg

CHAPEL HILL -- Franklin Street regulars are starting to wonder where all the flower ladies have gone. And the answer, unfortunately, seems to be that age is catching up with them.

Some worry another Chapel Hill tradition is about to fade away, a gnawing fear that has grown in inverse proportion to the number of active flower ladies. For now, only one still plies her wares on a regular basis.

"It looks like it's a dying breed," sighed Manning Outen, manager of NationsBank Plaza. "We need somebody to pick up the tradition."

Outen's building -- soon to be renamed the Bank of America Center -- served as the daytime base of operations for two of the last flower ladies, Mary Farrington and Betty Jones.

Neither is active.

Outen and hotdog vendor Ed "Squeaky" Morgan believe Jones is out of the flower business entirely after an early evening auto accident about a month ago.

Until then, Jones "was here any day it wasn't raining," said Morgan, also a Franklin Street fixture. "She didn't get hurt, but she was shaken up. Her son came and took her back to Texas. I don't think she'll be coming back."

Farrington seemingly hasn't set up shop in the lobby of NationsBank Plaza even once this year. Health is believed an issue, though she has told patrons she'll "be coming back now and then," Morgan said.

One other woman, Moselle Pratt, is holding up the flower lady tradition by night. She prefers working outdoors, and Police Department Sgt. Steve Riddle said people can find her near the Sephora perfume store most any time the weather is nice.

Morgan and Outen are not alone in suspecting that the curtain is about to close on Chapel Hill's flower ladies.

"It is probably not a profession that anybody's looking to go into," said Robert Humphreys, executive director of the Chapel Hill Downtown Commission. "Once our existing flower ladies are gone, it may be something that falls by the wayside."

If that's the case, time will have done something the town bureaucracy couldn't.

The flower ladies -- and Morgan -- are the last vestiges of a sidewalk vending trade that Chapel Hill essentially outlawed during the 1970s.

The ban targeted a small group of peddlers "whom one might call hippies," said Joe Herzenberg, a local historian and former town councilman.

"It wasn't exactly an effort to get rid of the flower ladies, quite the contrary," he said. "It was an effort to get rid of other people, and the flower ladies were gotten rid of in the process."

The hippies sparked complaints, he said, from people offended by their views and their appearance. Town officials tried briefly to exempt the flower ladies from the ban, but they soon fretted that the attempt would draw a court challenge.

In any case, the exemption gave the town's real targets a way to evade the ban.

"Vendors would sell you a daisy for $30 and give you a pair of sandals for free," Planning Director Roger Waldon said.

Several of the flower ladies eventually found a home in the NationsBank Plaza lobby -- safe on private property -- as did Morgan, who briefly defied the vending ban in 1993.

The final flower lady may fall victim to simple economics. "I don't think business is great, to tell you the truth," Herzenberg said. "She doesn't sell that many, but she likes coming and talking to people."

ACLU seeks nominees for top award

Chapel Hill Herald, Aug. 16, 1998 - Letter to the Editor

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking nominations for our 1998 Charles and Dorcas Jones Award.

This award, initiated in 1993, recognizes a person or group who has made outstanding contributions to civil liberties and civil rights in Orange and Chatham counties, the area served by the local ACLU chapter.

Previous recipients of the Jones award include: Joe and Lucy Straley, 1993; Rebecca Clark, 1994; Robert Seymour, 1995; Dan Pollitt, 1996; and the UNC housekeepers, 1997.

The deadline for submitting nominations is Aug. 31.

To make a nomination, call 929-4052 and leave a brief message, or drop a note to ACLU, P.O. Box 1285, Chapel Hill, 27514.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill

Joe's 57th Birthday Dinner, 1998

Joe at his 57th birthday dinner, June 27, 1998. Photo and invite courtesy of Mark Donahue.

The Henderson Street shootings

Chapel Hill Herald, June 7, 1998

CHAPEL HILL -- During the past several weeks, readers have voted, by mail and via the Internet, on what they see as the 10 most important stories published in The Chapel Hill Herald during the past decade.

3. The Henderson Street shootings.

Joe Herzenberg's first thought was about gun control. Seeing a man walk down your street with a high-powered weapon will do that.

"He was carrying this rifle, and I was thinking, `Is it illegal to carry a rifle on the street?' " said Herzenberg, a Cobb Terrace resident and former town councilman. "And while I was thinking, he turned to the house next door and started firing on it. He was actually killing somebody."

Herzenberg could only watch as a deranged UNC law student, Wendell Williamson, gunned down the first of two men he would kill during his Jan. 26, 1995, shooting rampage.

Ralph Walker Jr., a restaurant worker, died on the steps of his Cobb Terrace rooming house. Williamson's other victim, UNC lacrosse player Kevin Reichardt, fell between two parked cars. He had been riding up Henderson Street on his bike.

Dozens of people witnessed the shootings, and many were lucky not to lose their own lives. Williamson, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, set out that day to kill as many people as possible. He thought himself to have telepathic powers, and was angry that no one believed him.

A jury later acquitted Williamson of his crimes, judging that his insanity freed him of responsibility for his actions. He remains hospitalized in a state mental institution in Morganton.

Jacobs has all the tools for commissioner

Chapel Hill Herald, May 2, 1998

Just writing to encourage support for Barry Jacobs for Orange County Commissioner in the Democratic primary on Tuesday (the polls are open from 6:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m.)

Barry has a distinguished record of public service, including terms on the Orange County Planning Board and the Orange Water and Sewer Authority board, both of which he chaired. He has progressive positions on various issues, including the environment, civil rights for all, social service, affordable housing and public schools. He is open to new ideas. He works well with elected officials in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough. And, perhaps most importantly, Barry will listen to the voices of all citizens and help provide civil leadership for our county. We can do better.

I urge your vote for Barry Jacobs for county commissioner on Tuesday.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill