This is a story of North Carolina Fusion days, two years before the Constitutional amendment, disfranchising the negro, was adopted. In 1896 the Populists, managed by Senator Marion Butler, of Sampson, and the Republicans by Senator Jeter C. Pritchard, of Buncombe, were standing together in the State for mutual benefit--for pelf and pie--what most all active politicians stand together for. The Democrats were down and out. Ex-Judge Daniel L. Russell, of Wilmington, and Hon. Oliver H. Dockery, of Mangum, both of the sixth congressional district, were the candidates for the Republican nomination for Governor, which, at that time, meant an election. Charlotte, Union, Anson, Richmond, Robeson, New Hanover and other counties were in the Shoestring district. The Republicans were very busy. That being before the negro was disfranchised, the Republican party in this immediate section of the State was largely composed of Afro-Americans. A county convention was held in Charlotte, and it was as black as Africa. Of course there was a sprinkling of white men in it, but nine out of ten of the delegates were colored. The Dockeryites and the Russellites came close to blows. There were rumors of wars, but no blood was shed. Every county in the district had had a similar convention and named delegates to the Maxton meeting. The all-absorbing question was: “Are you for Dockery or Russell?” Mr. Dockery was known as the “Great Warhorse of the Pee Dee,” and Mr. Russell as “The Mighty Dan of New Hanover.” The Maxton convention promised a live newspaper story. Unless the hand writing on the wall had been misread there was blood on the moon. Some sort of a fight seemed certain if the delegates of the Shoestring district ever got together. It was at Maxton, as a common reporter, that I got my nickname, Red Buck, now a nom de plume. When the fight became warm I bolted without waiting ceremonies. We, the Mecklenburg delegates to the district convention, and I, my paper’s reliance for the story of the day, left Charlotte on the early train, a bright spring morning, and journeyed eastward. At Monroe the Union delegation got aboard, and at Wadesboro the Anson, and at Rockingham and Laurinburg, the Richmond. The train was literally filled with negroes. I had a dull time with that crowd until we got to Rockingham, where Claude Dockery, whom I had met at the State University at Chapel Hill several years prior to that, joined the party and introduced me to the most interesting character in the Dockery contingent, Rich Lilly, a tall, wiry, limber negro, with juicy mouth and knappy, dusty head. Rich was going to do what he could toward the nomination of his old friend, Col. Oliver Dockery. Somewhere between Rockingham and Maxton Rich and I were thrown together, when no one else was near. Rich beckoned to me and dodged behind a freight car and, in order to see what he wanted, I followed.