Echoes of the 1960s Movement: A&T Students Walk to Polls on First Day of Early Voting

On the first day of early voting in North Carolina, hundreds of students at North Carolina A&T State University assembled on campus Thursday and marched en masse to an off-campus polling site. The demonstration was part get-out-the-vote operation, part protest, and it capped months of student pressure to bring an early voting location onto campus. (North Carolina A&T State FP Photo)

HOME I I HI TECH NEWS I SPORTS I CONTACT

Echoes of the 1960s Movement: A&T Students Walk to Polls on First Day of Early Voting

Marc Kennedy - National-Politics
Tell Us USA News Network

GREENSBORO, N.C. — On the first day of early voting in North Carolina, students at North Carolina A&T State University marched from campus to an off-campus polling site on Thursday. The demonstration was part get-out-the-vote operation, part protest, and it capped months of student pressure to bring an early voting location onto campus.

Students set out at 3 p.m. Oct. 15 from A&T’s Student Center on John W. Mitchell Drive. A separate group from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro walked from the Curry Building on Spring Garden Street. Both groups made the walk of roughly 30 to 40 minutes to Union Square, 124 E. Gate City Blvd., to vote.

A&T is the nation’s largest historically Black university by enrollment, and North Carolina’s statewide races are often decided by narrow margins, so a turnout push there carries weight. Youth organizers and voting-rights groups are trying to turn political energy into ballots.

The march also highlights a dispute over who bears the cost of access. A&T students attended election board meetings and made the case for an on-campus early voting site, but the university entered the fall election without one, according to PBS North Carolina’s “Black Issues Forum.” For the general election, the Guilford County Board of Elections voted 4-1 this summer to leave A&T and UNCG off its early voting list and instead add Union Square, a shared downtown site used by both schools, Cone Health and Guilford Technical Community College. Student organizations and nonpartisan coalitions have filled the gap with group walks, shuttles and voter education drives.

Advocates say the burden of going off campus falls hardest on students without vehicles or with little time between classes. Francis De Luca, chairman of the State Board of Elections, has said he doesn’t like campus voting sites because parking is hard to find, NC Newsline reported. Whether that rationale outweighs the access concerns is the argument at the center of this fight.

The history is worth noting. Guilford County’s elections director has said A&T has never hosted an early voting site in a midterm election since early voting began in North Carolina in 2000, though it did host one in several presidential general elections. Students are seeking a change to that pattern.

This is not the first march. In February, during the primary, more than 60 students and community members walked about 1.3 miles from A&T to an early voting site after the State Board of Elections declined to approve a campus location, Spectrum News reported.

“Aggies do what is necessary for our rights, for our survival and for our people,” student Jae’lah Monet told Spectrum News at the February event.

A&T is the home of the Greensboro Four, whose 1960 lunch counter sit-in galvanized the civil rights movement, and the campus remains a bellwether for student-led political action. The real test is whether this energy converts into sustained youth turnout, which election officials will be watching in early voting returns. Early voting runs through 3 p.m. Oct. 31, and Election Day is Nov. 3.