January 27, 2022/Media, Press

ICYMI: Pat McCrory compared his not getting a job at Duke University to 1960s segregation [CNN]

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CNN: Pat McCrory compared his not getting a job at Duke University to 1960s segregation

By Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck

January 27, 2022

  • Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said last year that not receiving an offer to teach at Duke University upon leaving the governorship was “blacklisting” and comparable to the refusal to serve Black Americans at lunch counters in the 1960s during segregation.
  • McCrory, who is now running for US Senate in a Republican primary, instead took a job as a local radio host where he made the comments, which were reviewed by CNN’s KFile as part of a look at the rhetoric he used after leaving office in 2017. McCrory was the governor of North Carolina from 2013 to 2017.
  • “The head of the policy school called me up and said, ‘Governor, we’ve got some problems. We’ve got some alumni and big donors that don’t want you to come back to Duke to be a part of this public policy school,'” said McCrory in January 2021, referring to a job at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
  • “You know what I said to him, I said, ‘If I come back to the, if I come back to the campus, will you serve me at the lunch counter?’ And I meant it.”
  • “Speaking about the ultimate blacklisting was the African American students from North Carolina A&T University who wanted to eat at the counter at Woolworths, the lunch counter. And they refused them. They were blacklisted because of the color of their skin,” added McCrory. “Other people are now being blacklisted because of our politics. And it’s both wrong. It’s both deplorable. And we’ve got to speak out against it.”
  • “I was blacklisted by Duke University, I was — every former governor of North Carolina was invited to work in the Public Policy School of Duke University, the Terry Sanford Public Policy School — former governor,” McCrory said. “And so I went and talked to them and they said, ‘We’d love to have you help us out.’ And it wasn’t for money or anything. And within an hour of believing there were protests and signatures by both students and faculty signed up saying, ‘We don’t want Pat McCrory back on the Duke University campus anymore.'”
  • A spokesperson for Duke University told CNN that it was inaccurate of McCrory to say that “every former governor of North Carolina was invited to work in the Public Policy School of Duke University” and declined to comment further.

 

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