White youths dressed in shorts take advantage of music by provided by hymn singing Negro pickets in front of hotel to get in a little dancing. Some 400 Negro students from Shaw University marched up and down Raleigh’s main street picketing theaters and other places that will not serve them. This is the 4th day of such activities. May 12, 1963 UPI TELEPHOTO

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALLLLLLL?????????

Last Saturday, NC State played a football game in Carter-Finley Stadium.  Huh?  I know there is an usual chill in the air for April, but still it is officially Spring and Spring is not for football.

Yet on this day in 1991, the RDU Skyhawks entered the same stadium to play their first game.  They ended the season – their only season – with a 0-10 record.

They were led by head coach Roman Gabriel:

• quarterback for NC State, breaking virtually every Wolfpack passing record (22 school and 9 conference records).
• threw for 2,961 yards and 19 touchdowns.
• two-time All-American.
• two-time ACC Player of the Year.
• also played Wolfpack baseball.
• voted the best amateur athlete in the Carolinas.
• inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1989.

Last month, NC State tore down the fieldhouse from which Gabriel and his teammates used to run out onto the field.

Another little bit of Raleigh history bites the dust.

A charred mass of debris is all that remains of the bath at Central Prison following an all-night spree of violence in which five inmates were killed by guards shooting from the prison walls. Another 78 inmates were wounded in the uprising. April 17, 1968 UPI TELEPHOTO

Prison guard Billy Smith with what prison officials described as a collection of weapons used by rioting inmates at Central Prison early today. Five inmates were killed and 75 were injured when guards opened fire. Prison officials say the guards fired after inmates threw lighted torches at prison personnel. April 17, 1968 UPI TELEPHOTO

A pile of debris litters the yard of Central Prison following a spree of early morning rioting by an estimated 400 inmates. Center is the prison chapel. April 17, 1968 UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL TELEPHOTO

Richard Ensminger of Grensboro, N.C., who lost his left leg in Vietnam, walks with a group of veterans in an anti-war march in Raleigh, N. C. April 16, 1972.

Over 1000 students march down Hillsborough Street from campus to the State Capitol to protest the Vietnam War, staging a rally on the capitol steps. April 16, 1972

National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets and wearing gas masks fired tear gas into a crowd of Shaw University students.  The students were sitting in the street near Memorial Auditorium and refused to move.  They were distraught and angry about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the prior evening. April 5, 1968 AP WIREPHOTO

Alexander Hairson (L) and George Samuel (R) are the focus point of all eyes outside City Hall here after they were found guilty and fined $10 and cost for trespassing. The trespassing charges grew from the sitdown protest staged by Negro students over segregated eating places. They were out on $25 bond as the finding has been appealed. March 14, 1960. UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL TELEPHOTO

In a nod to a glorious past, the new train station in downtown Raleigh will be called Union Station.

In homage to the former Union Depot, which opened in 1892.

The new plans were previewed last night.

But was our rail past really that glorious?

Could we not choose a name that that honors the glorious present?

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Just to remind us that March Madness is almost here.

The McAttack – Mayor McFarlane vs. Governor McCrory?  My money would be on McFarlane.

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Raleigh Mayor Smedes York pwnts Governor James Hunt in a friendly tip-off. February 20, 1982

From today’s N&O:

Russell and a subordinate, Marvin Butler, failed to report they held outside jobs, and they used their DOT computers in connection with the jobs. Butler was suspended without pay for two days…

Recognize that name, Marvin Butler?  Former Chair, still member of the Raleigh Planning Commission? Now caught up in an ethics scandal at NC Department of Transportation???

Will Tony Tata fire him?  Not a chance – he’s a fellow Wake County Republican who’s also in a job he’s not fit for, and Tata knows that there is no place else where Butler can pull in $66,568 a year, especially where he could use company time and equipment to work an outside job.

Will he resign from the Planning Commission?  Not a chance – he has firmly established that he has the acumen of a DOT road grader.  Not the operator, the actual machine.  So there’s no image to tarnish with a resignation.

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Evening update:  Former City Councilor now State Secretary of Public Safety Kieran Shanahan doesn’t fool around – he fired the head of the State Capitol Police and a sergeant under his command for hanky-panky with outside jobs.  Butler needs to pray that Secretary Tata doesn’t ask Secretary Shanahan for ideas on how to handle him.