The State Board of Elections is investigating whether this anonymous flier that attacks five Democratic-backed Wake County school board candidates and links them to the NAACP violates campaign laws.

The flier criticizes National NAACP President Ben Jealous and state NAACP President the Rev. William Barber for opposing the elimination of the diversity policy. The flier accuses the five Democratic school board members of being the NAACP’s “liberal allies” and urges people to “vote no” on them.

“We MUST vote to keep these five radicals away from our children,” the flier says.

NAACP leaders Benjamin Todd Jealous and the Rev. William Barber are using a national stage to accuse the Wake County school board of trying to resegregate the schools and roll the clock back to the Jim Crow era.

In an op-ed piece Saturday for CNN, Jealous and Barber rail that "extreme right wing members" want to bring neighborhood schools to Wake County to recreate a system of separate but unequal schools. Both NAACP leaders say that they're fighting what's happening in Wake to prevent other school districts nationally from moving in the same direction.

"North Carolina could become a social justice battleground, just as Arizona has been in the immigration debate," Jealous and Barber write. "Wake County is becoming a symbol of attempts to return to the days pre-Brown v. Board of Education, just as 60 years ago, Birmingham, Alabama, woke the nation to the immoral costs of segregating our nation."

National NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous will be back in Raleigh later this month to continue to add national attention to Wake County's school diversity fight.

In a press release Thursday, Jealous said he'd be in Raleigh Feb. 12 to join with state NAACP President the Rev. William Barber in leading the Historic Thousands on Jones Street march. The Wake County school board is the special focus of this year's march with protesters complaining that ending the diversity policy will create "separate but unequal" schools.

“Separate but equal was wrong then, and it’s wrong now,” stated Jealous in the press release. “We cannot in good moral conscience separate the struggle for diverse and superior education from the struggle for jobs and economic solutions. We’ve got to fight for our children, for good schools, for good jobs, and for a great future for all people in our nation.”

A conservative website has given a pretty harsh review of Wednesday's Washington Post article on the Wake County school diversity fight.

In a a blog post Wednesday, Newsbusters managing editor Ken Shepherd argues that the Post article unfairly paints Tea Party conservatives in North Carolina as being opposed to racial integration and diversity in Wake. Newsbusters is a project of the Media Research Center, which describes its mission as exposing liberal bias in the news media.

"In truth the Wake County, North Carolina, school board is simply moving to reverse decades of busing that shuttled some students to schools farther away from their homes in an effort to artificially engineer the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the county's individual schools," Shepherd writes.

NAACP leaders and Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker took shots over the weekend at the Wake County school system's elimination of the diversity policy with the NAACP also announcing plans for a mass rally Feb. 12.

As noted in today's article by John Murawski, NAACP leaders said that the group's financial resources will be redirected to North Carolina to fight Wake. One thing they intend to do is to have people from across the country come to Raleigh on Feb. 12 for a downtown protest march.

"We've spent decades bragging about Wake County," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, the NAACP's national president and CEO, during a Saturday news conference. "We're going to defend our victories, and this is one of our victories."

The national and state NAACP are ramping up the public relations pressure on the Wake County school board for eliminating the diversity policy and moving to community schools.

As noted in today's Associated Press article that's appearing across the nation, the NAACP is using Wake's diversity fight as the backdrop for its national education summit in Raleigh. Wake will probably be mentioned tonight as part of National NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous' keynote speech.

But the biggest shot at Wake will likely come at a press conference being held tomorrow on school segregation in North Carolina.

The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, which has been fighting the end of the diversity policy in the Wake County school system, is being cited as a role model for next week's National NAACP Daisy Bates Education Summit being held in Raleigh.

In an article Monday in the American Independent, Adora Obi Nweze, the president of NAACP’s Florida chapter and chairwoman of the national organization’s education committee, said holding the summit in Raleigh will let those attending see how a state chapter is fighting a change in school policy. Nweze said the approach is needed in every state.

“I think it’s a national issue,” Nweze said at a Monday morning press conference in Raleigh. “In every state you could find a Wake County. There is an effort to re-segregate under the guise of new plans.”

National NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous will be in Raleigh on Saturday for what’s being billed as a major announcement on legal action against the Wake County school system.

The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, one of the organizers of Saturday’s event, said they’ll “unveil the first legal strategies challenging resegregation” in Wake and other school districts in North Carolina. Barber, who has threatened legal action against Wake for several months, was tight-lipped about saying in advance of Saturday what those legal strategies would be.

But the presence of Jealous, a leading figure in the civil rights movement, will serve to give opponents of Wake’s move to neighborhood schools even more national attention.

The head of the national NAACP could come to Raleigh for next week's mass demonstration against the Wake County school board's elimination of the socioeconomic diversity policy.

The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, said he has talked with NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous about participating in the July 20 rally. Barber, who is also on the national board of directors of the NAACP, is in Kansas City for the group's annual convention.

Todd Jealous has previously spoken out publicly about the Wake school situation.

The national NAACP is now joining the call for Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta to resign following his "here come the animals out of the cages" comment at last week's board meeting.

In a press release today, national NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said he's joining the state NAACP in calling for Margiotta's resignation as board chairman. He said Margiotta's comment was 'racially insensitive."

“The racial insensitivity exhibited by Mr. Margiotta underscores the lack of consideration for the interests, needs, and concerns of Blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities in North Carolina,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous in the press releae. “We support the North Carolina NAACP in their call for justice and sensitivity in Wake County, and believe the resignation of Mr. Margiotta is a necessary step in that direction.”

UPDATED TO REFLECT THAT TODD JEALOUS IS CALLING FOR MARGIOTTA TO RESIGN AS BOARD CHAIR