a hero

North Carolina Civil Servant Quits Rather Than Lower Flag for Jesse Helms

L.F. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, “instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday” to honor the late senator Jesse Helms, “as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.” In a string of e-mail messages with his superiors, Eason was told he could either lower the flags or retire effective immediately. Here is Eason’s reasoning for his decision to retire:

This is in no way a political decision. I simply do not feel it is appropriate to honor a person whose epitaph of government service was to have voted against or blocked every civil rights issue that came before the US Congress. His doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice cost North Carolina and our Nation much that we may never regain.

 

Story in full at http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/90948/. There's a much fuller treatment at http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1135443.html.

My profound respect goes out to Eason for having the courage to stand up to what must have been a savage tyranny of peer-group pressure, not just on the part of his employers and colleagues but on that of many of the people of North Carolina, who clearly embrace racism and other bigotries in the way that only catastrophically ill educated and myopically insular barbarians can.

Meanwhile, Governor Mike Easley may never be able to raise his head in civilized company again. He should be ashamed of himself.