The progressive South rises again.

North Carolina NAACP legal chair Al McSurely, Rev. William Barber and the Klonsky brothers.

It wasn’t their plan, but the Republicans and Tea Party folks in North Carolina have created a progressive, multi-racial movement that has rocked the state over the past few months.

The Moral Monday Movement.

“It’s a big tent,” Al McSurely told us. “The center pole is anti-racism. But includes the issues of poverty. Education. Women’s rights.”

McSurely is a long-time activist in the Southern Civil Rights Movement going back to the days before the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

Rev. William Barber is the head of the North Carolina NAACP and the charismatic leader of the Moral Monday Movement in that state.

We got together yesterday afternoon. Barber was in town to speak to the convention of the United Electrical Workers (UE).

Rev. Barber told us of how a few weeks into the campaign he was invited to speak up in Mitchell County. Mitchell County is in the western part of the state. It is white. It is Republican. But a thousand people turned out to hear Barber speak at a local church. And 10,000 rallied a few days later in nearby Asheville.

The Republicans took over the state legislature and the governor’s office in 2010 after years of Democratic Party control.

The North Carolina Democrats were no prize.

But the Republicans voted to roll back working people’s rights at all levels: Rolling back voting rights, abortions rights, teachers collective bargaining rights.

The response was the Moral Monday movement.

Over three months of rallies at the Capitol every Monday. Each rally bigger than the one before. Over 900 arrested in acts of civil disobedience. Including the President of the state’s teachers union.

“People are looking for moral leadership,” Barber said. “The Christian right doesn’t provide that. I tell people, ‘I’m the conservative.’ I’m about conserving our rights.”

I said, “That’s what people were looking for in 2008.”

“And they still are,” said Barber. “In North Carolina we are building a multi-racial movement for justice and morality. It’s people of faith and people who have lost faith. Atheists, Muslims and Christians. Nobody thought we could sustain this, but we have.”

“Look,” McSurely said. “If we can increase the African-American vote by 2% and switch 1% of the white vote in North Carolina, we can take the legislature back.”

And Barber added the same thing was happening in other southern states. Like Texas and Georgia.

A new Southern Strategy.

As I left I couldn’t help but think of how the movement has exploded in Chicago in some of the same ways. Of course, it’s the Democrats here in Chicago and Illinois that are going after working people’s rights. But Moral Monday isn’t a movement tied to a political party.

Just like Dr. King’s movement. It is tied to a vision of justice.