"The head of the policy school called me up and said, 'Governor, we've got some problems. We've got some alumni and big donors that don't want you to come back to Duke to be a part of this public policy school,'" said McCrory in January 2021, referring to a job at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.
"You know what I said to him, I said, 'If I come back to the, if I come back to the campus, will you serve me at the lunch counter?' And I meant it."
"Speaking about the ultimate blacklisting was the African American students from North Carolina A&T University who wanted to eat at the counter at Woolworths, the lunch counter. And they refused them. They were blacklisted because of the color of their skin," added McCrory. "Other people are now being blacklisted because of our politics. And it's both wrong. It's both deplorable. And we've got to speak out against it."