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From N.C. NAACP President William Barber:

This morning in Craven County, I saw it for myself, just outside a polling place: a casket with Barack Obama's name on it. The NC NAACP has formally requested that both the Democratic and Republican Parties condemn this attempt at voter intimidation using images of death.

[snip]

Here's what I said in the letter to party officials:

I write about a matter of great urgency and seriousness. A casket with a picture of Sen. Barack Obama on it was conspicuously within the sight of voters entering an early voting polling place in Craven County yesterday. State Representative William Wainwright along with local NAACP President Alfred Barfield were alerted to the dangerous situation by their respective constituents, and they were able to convince the Craven County Sheriff to remove the vicious display. The obvious attempt was to use the image of death as a way of demeaning a particular candidate as well as intimidating voters. The casket had been placed near a fire station polling place.

The North Carolina NAACP calls on the state and national leadership of both major parties to denounce such acts. We request your parties issue strong statements of condemnation to the media and to call on your national candidates and their surrogates to repudiate such vicious acts.

There is no room for the suggestion of death threats for any candidate of any party in the United States. We condemn all such acts. North Carolina is the state where the only violent overthrow of an elected government took place in l898, when the bi-racial government of Wilmington was the object of a terrorist attack as a prelude to 70 years of disenfranchisement of African Americans. We will never go back.

Thank you for your immediate attention to our requests.

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Click here for the WRAL report.