There's a "he said, she said" dispute going on between District 1 school board candidate Debbie Vair and a NAACP official.

Ronald White, president of the South Central Wake NAACP, denies that he's endorsing Vair. But Vair says White gave her permission to list him as a supporter on her campaign web site.

They both can't be right on this issue.

Patrick "9th Wonder" Douthit is a producer by trade, but he wears lots of hats. He oversees the hip-hop initiative at his alma mater, Durham's NC Central University, and also runs two independent labels -- on top of staying busy in the studio producing tracks for Ludacris, Eryka Badu and others. And now he has a fancy new title: the NAACP's new National Ambassador For Hip-Hop Relations and Popular Culture. It began with the NAACP approaching Wonder to put together a mixtape for the organization, which he agreed to do.

"But then I told them, 'Let's try to do something better than that,'" Douthit says. "We talked about them sending me around to schools to talk to kids about hip-hop history, and I asked if the NAACP has ever had a national spokesperson for hip-hop relations. The president of the NAACP, Benjamin Todd Jealous, is 36. So he's my generation and he knows how important hip-hop and the message it used to carry is -- about inspiring youth instead of bringing negativity. He's the one who changed the title from 'spokesperson' to 'ambassador.'"

Douthit is working on assembling a board of directors, in between recording sessions with David Banner and actor Idris Elba (best-known as Stringer Bell from the HBO series "The Wire"). Along with overseeing panel discussions at schools across the country, Douthit hopes to put together a big benefit concert for next spring.

"We'll try to be the voice the NAACP has never had," he says. "The goal is to usher in a new way of thinking. Barack Obama has got a lot of people thinking about things in new ways, getting more involved."

The NAACP is now entering the fight over the H6 high school due to the potential slave cemetery on site.

Ronald White, 4th vice president of the state NAACP and president of the group’s South Central Wake branch, said he intends to mobilize people to lobby Raleigh and school leaders against going ahead with the project.

White is upset that the latest plan for preserving the cemetery, which may or may not contain the graves of slaves, has it located right by the main entrance of the school.

Participants from across the state of North Carolina took part in the third annual HK on J (Historic Thousands on Jones Street) in downtown Raleigh ... more

A Duke health system administrator and the founders of the Durham Rescue Mission will be honored this weekend by the Durham chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The honorees at the chapter's 34th-annual Freedom Fund Award Dinner are MaryAnn Black, Duke University Health System's associate vice president for community relations, and Ernie and Gail Mills, founders and operators of the Durham Rescue Mission.

The award dinner will be held Saturday night at the downtown Durham Marriott.

Black is the former chair of the Durham Board of Commissioners and has a master's degree in social work from UNC Chapel Hill.

For now at least, the school system doesn't have to deal with the Rev. Al Sharpton in the fight over a possible slave cemetery on school property.

Sharpton had been invited to tour the cemetery on Saturday by neighbors who are fighting a planned high school on the site. He wasn't able to attend, but representatives of the NAAACP did visit the site.

It wasn't that much of a stretch considering that Sharpton was in the Triangle on Sunday to speak at N.C. Central University in Durham.

The spectre of a high school being built on the site of a potential slave cemetery in Northeastern Wake County is leading to some pretty tough words being used by critics.

As noted in today's article, critics on their Web site say that letting the school be built would be like treading on the suffering of the slaves buried there. (While one historian says it's "clearly a slave cemetery," no official determination has been made by the state yet.)

"What a disgrace to our heritage and our nation," according to the Web site. "I guess the slaves are in their way, and they are to be discarded just as they were, when they were of no longer use to their owners."

UPDATE

Cilick here for the online story from today's board meeting.