Elon, N.C. ? The ruling body of the N.C. Democratic Party took a stand on searing issues of the past and present Saturday, adopting a resolution apologizing for the party’s role in the 1898 Wilmington race riot and another calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

The first nonbinding measure repudiated the role of party leaders in the Nov. 17, 1898, riot that resulted in a virtual coup d’etat of a legally-elected city government. Dozens of black citizens were killed in the fray, which terrorized and banished black businessmen, community leaders, journalists and their white allies.

The second measure, on the Iraq war, proved more controversial, drawing impassioned responses from several committee members. Their words reflected a split in Democratic ranks across the country between young, grassroots, anti-war liberals of the party’s so-called Howard Dean wing and older Democrats who don’t want to dishonor the sacrifices of American troops.

“I do not see anything in this resolution that says we do not support the troops,” said committee member Don Davis, mayor of Snow Hill in Greene County, who noted he was a former Air Force captain who handled mortuary duties for 300 dead troops while stationed at Andrews Air Force base near Washington, D.C.

But Rev. Floyd Johnson Jr. of Fayetteville, a Vietnam War-era Army veteran who did not see combat, recalled losing comrades in that war and remembered the hostile reception received by homecoming veterans.

“When we came back from Vietnam, we were spit upon and called baby-killers,” said Johnson, who is second vice chairman of the Cumberland County Democratic Party. “Do we want our servicemen and women to feel like they’ve been forgotten about – betrayed – because the North Carolina Democratic Party passed this resolution?”