Memory of a Helms…

It was reported today that former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms died. He was 84.

I won’t spend time filling this space with substantiation that Helms was a crazy, racist homophobe.  You can find many other blogs which will do this.  I won’t even make any allusions to the subliminal messages alluded to have been included in his 1990 re-election campaign. You can do your own Google searches about that.

I will, however, recommend the 1998 documentary film Dear Jesse created by Tim Kirkland, an openly gay male from North Carolina who was trying to find some common ground with the longtime senator. It’s really quite a powerful film — especially a moment in it where the filmmaker interviews an openly gay visitor to a North Carolina college: a man named Matthew Shepard. (The filn was post-produced and released after Shepard’s murder.)

And I will recount one memory of living in North Carolina:  it was a day which held great importance for me in November of 1996.  Instead of heading right to work, I awoke earlier than usual and went to a local elementary school. I waited on line and was given a piece of paper and a thick, black magic marker.  I made some marks on the thick paper, folded it, and put it into a box on a table.

Yes, I voted in magic marker that year. Such was the voting process — where I voted for the re-election of President Clinton and, more importantly, for Harvey Gantt as my US Senator.

I was happy that Clinton won. I was disappointed that Gantt didn’t.  But I had realized that both elections were inevitable early on.  Nonetheless, it was still a milestone for me. A proud moment in my life.

It was the day I voted against Jesse Helms.