Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston got to spend some time with the friend he made in the spring of 2021 – Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris was in Greensboro on Thursday, July 11, and she spent time with Alston, NC Governor Roy Cooper, Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan and other elected officials before giving a speech at Dudley High School.

Alston said after the visit that he and Vaughan were “on cloud nine” after greeting the vice president, riding in the motorcade and hearing her speak at Dudley, where she addressed an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd.

At the start of her speech, Harris thanked the governor and said she knew him well since they were both attorney generals years ago and worked together on several matters.

She thanked Mayor Nancy Vaughan for her warm greeting on the tarmac and she pointed Alston out and said, “Chairman Alston I thank you for your friendship and your leadership and all that you do.”

Alston and Harris have been friends ever since she visited Greensboro in 2021 and he convinced her to alter her plans that day to visit the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in downtown Greensboro, a museum Alston co-founded.

How did he persuade a vice president on an extremely tight schedule to drop everything and come to the Museum?

By invoking the name of a close mutual friend.

Alston was very good friends with the late Clarence Avant – a legendary music producer and power-broker who was born in Climax, North Carolina, attended Dudley High School and passed away last year.

Later in life, Avant moved to California and Alston said once Avant invited Alston out there and put him up in an ultra-elite hotel in Beverly Hills.

Alston became very good friends with Avant a decade ago when Alston called the producer to see about getting Motown music legend Berry Gordy to accept an award at the museum’s annual fundraising Gala.  Alston told Avant that the Museum leaders wanted to give him an award as well.

 In the end, it was Quincy Jones who came with Avant to the Gala and Avant and Alston became great friends from that point on.

Alston knew that Harris was also extremely close to Avant.

“When she ran for district attorney, he ran her campaign,” Alston said. “He made her.”

He said that Harris and Avant were extremely close and so, when Alston dropped the name in 2021, she lit up with amazement.

“When she heard his name and found out we were good friends, she melted,” Alston said.

In that first visit three years ago Alston told Harris, “I want you to see the seat that Rosa Parks sat in.”

Parks visited the building before it opened and sat in one of the seats at the now famous whites-only lunch counter.

 Harris changed her schedule, visited the museum and also took a seat at the counter where four NC A&T students started a sit-in protest movement that spread across the south.

This time around, on her trip to Greensboro on Thursday, Harris didn’t visit the Museum; instead, she headed to Dudley to speak.

Alston said he thought the speech she delivered was terrific and he pointed out that she spoke frequently of President Joe Biden and all that he has done for the country.

There were several protesters who shouted out one at a time periodically near the start of the speech; however, as soon as each protester began shouting, they were escorted out and they were simultaneously drowned out by the crowd’s enthusiastic chants of “Four more years!”

Harris spoke of the accomplishments of the Biden administration, and she said that, if there was one person in the world who was most responsible for strengthening NATO, it was Joe Biden. She added that the need to keep NATO strong was just one of the many reasons that electing Donald Trump president would be so disastrous for this country.

“He said, ‘Russia can do whatever the hell they want’” she said.

“Someone who bows down to dictators makes America weak,” she said, adding that doing so is also “disqualifying for someone who wants to be commander and chief of the United States of America.”

“So,” the vice president said, “all of this is to say there is so much at stake in this and, last week, we were again reminded of that fact when the Supreme Court basically told this individual who has been convicted of fraud, that, going forward, he will be immune for activity we know he is prepared to engage in if he gets back into the White House.”

  “This is not 2016,” Harris said. “This is not 2020. Understand the significance of what the Supreme Court does, and consider that in the context of the fact that Donald Trump has openly vowed that, if re-elected, he will be a dictator on day one and that he will weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies and round up peaceful protesters and throw them out of our country.”

Harris said someone like that should never have the chance to stand behind a microphone and the seal of the president of the United States of America.

About