CHIEF JUSTICE BEASLEY
CONCEDES ELECTION
TO JUSTICE NEWBY
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
After 39 days, and one of the tightest elections in the history of North Carolina, NC Chief Justice Cheryl Beasley, Democrat, conceded defeat to Republican challenger Justice Paul Newby December 12th.
Newby will become Chief Justice on Jan. 1, 2021. He will serve an eight-year term.
Beasley, the first Black woman ever to serve as chief justice of the NC Supreme Court, trailed Newby in a statewide machine recount and hand-to-eye recount by 401 votes out of 5.4 million cast.
“Today, I called Justice Newby to congratulate him on winning the election for Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court,” Beasley wrote in an open letter to her supporters Saturday. “I offer my very best to him and his family as he moves into that new role.”
“I have tried my best as your Chief Justice to honor the opportunity set before me,” she continued. “I have tried not just to speak the truth, but to live it. To not simply be an expert in the law, but an advocate for equity, to apply the tools of justice to the cause of equality. My hope is that those values will continue to define North Carolina’s highest court as it meets the challenges of the future.”
“To serve this state and the people of North Carolina has been the greatest honor of my life.,” Beasley concluded.
To say that Chief Justice Beasley’s razor thin election defeat was stinging to her many supporters is an understatement.
“NC Dems failed Back women!! Period!,” opined Phyllis Coley, Durham Black magazine publisher, referring to the failure of six Black Democrat female candidates falling short in November.
“The NC Democratic Party should be ashamed considering of their failure to reciprocate the support black women have given to the Party to the black women who were on the ballot,” complained DeWarren L. online.
It was 2012 when then Democratic Governor Beverly Perdue appointed Associate NC Appellate Judge Cheri Beasley to finish the unexpired term of Associate Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson on the state’s highest court. A former Cumberland County public defender and District Court judge, Justice Beasley later won election to the seat.
In February 2019, after seven years on the High Court, Gov. Roy Cooper elevated Justice Beasley to chief justice to fill that vacancy, drawing the ire of the court’s longest serving justice, Paul Newby. Beasley instantly made history as the first African-American woman to hold the post, and the 29th justice to ever do so. An outraged Newby immediately challenged Beasley for her seat, eventually defeating her during the November 2020 election.
“Chief Justice Beasley was an outstanding leader for our judiciary during a period of tremendous challenges and stress,” said atty. Irving Joyner. “During this time, where huge racial issues arose and this deadly coronavirus pandemic ravished families and communities, the chief justice stood firm as an administrator and manager of the court’s operations and as a strong advocate for racial justice and equality within our justice system. She spoke with a calm and deliberate voice in order that our judicial agencies were open and available to the people and that citizens and court personnel were not placed in harm’s way. During this period, her voice as a progressive and concerned judicial arbiter was loud and clear as she fought to insure that Supreme Court opinions represented holistic view of how the North Carolina Constitution and laws spoke to the rights and protections of all of the people.
“For African Americans in particular,” Joyner continued , “we are proud that she represented us well as the first African American female and the second African American to lead the North Carolina Supreme Court. We were honored and blessed to have experienced her judicial wisdom and persuasion on the Court.”
“With the advent of Associate Justice Paul Newby as the incoming chief justice,” atty Joyner continued, “ we will experience a more conservative leadership and government-centered administration. Within African American and racial minority communities, there will be significant concerns about reported racially insensitive comments which he made following the appointment of Justice Beasley as the chief justice and during his campaign to unseat her. “
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NC BLACK FEMALE SCIENTIST
RESPONSIBLE FOR COVID-19
VACCINE
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
“Let us salute Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett for her role in developing this vaccine,” posted Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the NCNAACP , to his Facebook page Monday.
In case anyone seeing Dr. Spearman’s post wasn’t clear on what he was referring to, it was the notable revelation that a Black female immunologist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), who graduated from Orange High School in Hillsborough, and then UNC at Chapel Hill years later, was one of the leading researchers to unlock the mystery of the vaccine that now protects the world against the novel coronavirus.
“Kizzy is an African-American scientist who is right at the forefront of the development of the vaccine,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, after being questioned at a forum by the National Urban League.
“So the first thing you might want to say to my African-American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you’re going to be taking was developed by an African-American woman,” Dr. Fauci concluded.
Indeed, Dr. Corbett is one of the leading viral immunologists and research fellows at NIH that worked on the Moderna vaccine, which, according to the emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is 94% effective in preventing both illness and infection from COVID-19, which has presently claimed over 300,000 American lives, and infected more than 15 million people across the nation.
The Moderna vaccine is expected to be distributed in the U.S. by Friday.
It is a crowning achievement for what was once a young, gifted Black high school genius in the American Chemical Society’s Project SEED summer internship program at UNC-Chapel Hill. While other young people hung out or went to the beach for the summer, Corbett spent hers in laboratories, eventually earning an internship at the NIH.
She credits a scientist Al Russell, with being her mentor.
“Al was a Black man,” she once wrote. “At such an impressionable age, seeing, through him, that becoming a scientist was an attainable goal was what stood out to me the most. This left me with an understanding of the necessity of visible representation in underserved communities, and the realization that one’s approach to mentorship is equally as important as (or arguably more important than) their approach to scientific discovery. Al planted a seed that summer by taking time away from his experiments to mentor me. Now it is my purpose to resow those seeds in the youth who are the future of science.”
Dr. Corbett enrolled in a doctorate program at UNC-CH, and it was there that she chose to study viral infections, ultimately earning a PhD in microbiology and immunology. Corbett joined the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, and ultimately Dr. Fauci’s team, as a postdoctoral fellow in 2014.
When the first indications that a serious viral infection from China had the potential to be widespread earlier this year, Corbett knew that she had to be part of the effort to develop an effective vaccine as soon as possible.
And she also knew that as an African-Americas scientist, it was important that she be visible in that effort, to help inspire up-and-coming Black scientists.
“As I trek through my scientific career,” Dr. Corbett recently wrote for the online magazine Nature Medicine, “… making novel discoveries, climbing what seems to be a never-ending ladder, I am reminded of my other duties…to mentor…to be visible…to represent.
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STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 12-17-20
CIAA 2021 BASKETBALL SEASON HAS BEEN SCRAPPED
[CHARLOTTE] The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association has announced that because of concerns evolving around the novel coronavirus, the 2021 men’s and women’s basketball season has been cancelled. The CIAA Board of directors also voted to cancel the 2021 volleyball and football seasons as well. “Unfortunately, the COVID-19 continues to challenge the conference’s ability to see a clear path to move forward collectively,” CIAA commissioner Jacqie McWilliams said in a statement.
NC STATE SENATOR SAYS TRUMP SHOULD DECLARE NATIONAL EMERGENCY
[CHOWAN] A Republican NC state senator says he is suspicious of the November 2020 election results, and believes that president. Trump should declare a national emergency, suspend basic liberties to overturn the election, and invoke the Insurrection Act. State Sen Robert Steinburg [R- Chowan] is echoing other disbelieving members of his party that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Steinburg says he’s just putting “ideas on the table,” but believes “There’s something going on here bigger than what anybody is willing to talk about.”
NCGOP LEADERS FLAUNT COVID-19 SAFETY RULES WITH VICTORY PARTY
[ELKIN] Republican leaders from across the state gathered last Saturday at an indoor resort in Elkin to celebrate their election victories, but did so without masks and a definite lack of social distancing. Photographs from the event show leaders from Sen. Thom Tillis to House Speaker Tim Moore without masks carousing with other rand-in-file GOP’ers without any COVID-19 precautions. Ironically , North Carolina hit 6,000 cases on Saturday, and Elkin is in Surry County, one of the state’s hardest hit for corona virus.
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