Part 2: The Revenge of the Old Guard- Playbook 2.0

By MoCo's Voice

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There is a moment, familiar to anyone who has ever dared to challenge entrenched power in a small American town, when the rules change. Not gradually, not transparently, but overnight, and always in the direction of whoever holds the gavel. What was tolerated for decades becomes a scandal. What was overlooked in predecessors becomes grounds for investigation. What was once dismissed as routine administrative discretion becomes, suddenly, a potential crime. This is not coincidence. This is strategy. And in communities like Montgomery County, North Carolina, it is playing out with a precision that should alarm every citizen who believes in democratic governance.

This article is the second installment of an examination of what we call the Old Guard Playbook, the systematic methods by which those who have long controlled local institutions respond when new, independent, or simply inconvenient voices emerge. The first playbook was blunt: exclusion, rumor, social pressure, and quiet defunding. Playbook 2.0 is more sophisticated. It reaches into the justice system. It uses the newspaper as a weapon. It manufactures scandal where none exists. And it does so with the full understanding that in a small town, the accusation is often indistinguishable from the verdict.

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Part One: The Architecture of Retaliation

Before the courts are involved, before the newspaper runs its first insinuating headline, there is a quieter phase. The Old Guard begins by changing the conditions under which the new voice must operate. Expectations are raised without notice. Standards that were never applied to previous officeholders are suddenly invoked with urgency. Requests for documentation multiply. Meetings are called without adequate preparation time. The new leader, whether a superintendent, a commissioner, a board member, or a community organizer, finds herself navigating a landscape that has been subtly but deliberately rearranged.

This is not paranoia. It is a documented pattern. Research on Black female superintendents in particular has found that they face what scholars describe as a "double bind", expected to demonstrate both toughness and warmth, both innovation and deference, both community engagement and institutional compliance, in ways that their white male predecessors were never required to balance.¹ A 2025 study published in the Journal of Educational Administration found that Black women who lead school districts frequently report that school boards hold them to shifting and contradictory standards, and that conflicts between superintendent and board are disproportionately likely to result in the superintendent's removal when the superintendent is a Black woman.²

The mechanism is elegant in its cruelty: because the standards were never written down, they can never be violated in any formal sense. The new leader simply "isn't a good fit." The community "isn't ready." The board has "lost confidence." These phrases are the vocabulary of institutional racism dressed in the language of administrative procedure. They leave no fingerprints.

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Part Two: When the Playbook Escalates — Criminalizing the Voice

When social pressure and administrative sabotage fail to dislodge the unwanted voice, the Old Guard reaches for a more powerful instrument: the justice system itself. This is Playbook 2.0's most dangerous innovation, and it is not hypothetical. It is happening in documented cases across the country, including in communities that bear a striking resemblance to Montgomery County.

The clearest recent example comes from Atmore, Alabama, a town of approximately 13,000 people on the Alabama-Florida border. In 2023, the co-owner of the Atmore News, Sherry Digmon, and her reporter Don Fletcher were arrested after their newspaper published reporting that exposed opposition to the incumbent school superintendent. Two other community members, school board member Cindy Jackson and payroll supervisor Ashley Fore, were also arrested. All four faced felony charges carrying potential three-year prison sentences. They were strip-searched. Their mugshots were aired on local television.³

Behind the charges, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice, was a scheme orchestrated by Escambia County District Attorney Stephen Billy to strongarm the school board into renewing the superintendent's contract. The DA and the sheriff, the lawsuit alleges, used the machinery of criminal prosecution not to enforce the law but to punish political opponents and silence a community newspaper.⁴ In March 2026, a federal court allowed key claims in the lawsuit to proceed, ruling that the plaintiffs could sue the DA for conspiring with the sheriff to deprive them of their constitutional rights.⁵

"Americans must be able to participate in their government without fear that they'll be labeled as political enemies, investigated, and punished for exposing corruption," said IJ Senior Attorney Jared McClain. "Sherry, Don, Cindy, and Ashley were just doing their jobs and what they knew was right. But because that got in the way of the district attorney and sheriff, they ended up in jail."⁵

The Atmore case is not an outlier. The Institute for Justice has documented similar retaliatory patterns in Texas, Kansas, Arizona, and Ohio, cases in which elected officials, citizen journalists, and community members were arrested, investigated, or otherwise targeted by local government officials after they spoke out, ran for office, or simply asked inconvenient questions.⁵ The common thread is not geography or party affiliation. It is power, specifically, the willingness of those who hold institutional power to use the legal system as a cudgel against those who threaten it.

This is what the criminalization of voice looks like in practice. It does not require a conviction. It does not even require a credible charge. The arrest itself, the mugshot, the booking record, the court date, accomplishes the goal. It signals to the community that speaking out carries consequences. It drains the target's financial resources, time, and emotional energy. And it provides the local newspaper with a story that, however carefully worded, carries the unmistakable implication of wrongdoing.

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Part Three: The Newspaper as Weapon

In a small town, the local newspaper occupies a position of extraordinary trust. Residents who have grown up reading it, whose parents and grandparents read it, extend to it a credibility that national media outlets have long since forfeited. This trust is not unearned, at its best, local journalism is democracy's immune system, the mechanism by which communities hold their institutions accountable. But that same trust, in the wrong hands or under the wrong pressures, can be weaponized with devastating efficiency.

The weaponization does not require outright fabrication, though that does occur. More commonly, it operates through framing, selection, and implication. A story about a public official's administrative decisions can be written in a way that raises questions without answering them, that juxtaposes facts in ways that suggest misconduct without asserting it, that quotes critics prominently while burying responses, or that applies a standard of scrutiny to the new leader that was never applied to her predecessors. The reader, conditioned to trust the newspaper, fills in the gaps in the direction the framing suggests.

Research by the Equal Justice Initiative documents how this pattern operates with particular force when the subject is a Black public official. A 2021 EJI report found that media coverage of Black individuals accused of crimes used mugshots in 45 percent of cases, compared to only 8 percent of cases involving white defendants.⁶ Coverage was 50 percent more likely to refer to white defendants by name, a subtle but powerful humanizing distinction. These patterns do not disappear when the subject is a Black official rather than a criminal defendant. The same framing instincts, the same editorial choices, the same cultural assumptions about who is trustworthy and who is suspect, shape coverage of Black leaders in ways that their white counterparts rarely experience.

The Montgomery Herald, Montgomery County's weekly newspaper of record, has been at the center of a controversy that illustrates this dynamic with uncomfortable clarity. In March 2026, the paper published coverage of Dr. Karen Roseboro, a Black woman who became superintendent of Montgomery County Schools in July 2025 after the board signed her to a four-year contract, which generated significant community reaction. Employees of the school system appeared at a subsequent board meeting to voice their concerns about the paper's coverage, defending the superintendent and questioning the framing of the stories.⁷ A community opinion piece published in the same paper called a new policy attributed to Roseboro "absurd" and invoked First Amendment concerns, while noting that the superintendent had "created a firestorm among staff, board members, and members of the community."⁸

What is notable is not simply the controversy itself, new leaders often generate controversy, but the speed and intensity with which the coverage escalated, and the degree to which it tracked the interests of those who had opposed Roseboro's appointment. Within eight months of her arrival, the superintendent was being questioned by county commissioners in a public forum.⁹ The paper covered those questions prominently. The community that had supported her appointment rallied publicly in her defense.

This is the playbook in motion. The newspaper does not need to lie. It needs only to ask the right questions of the right people, in the right order, with the right tone. The cumulative effect, story after story raising concerns, quoting critics, noting controversies, creates a portrait of a leader under siege, regardless of whether the underlying concerns are legitimate. And because the newspaper is trusted, that portrait sticks.

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Part Four: The Shifting Rules

One of the most insidious features of Playbook 2.0 is the retroactive application of standards. Conduct that was acceptable, indeed, unremarkable, when performed by the previous occupant of a position, becomes, under the new occupant, a potential violation. The rules do not change in writing. They change in enforcement.

This pattern is familiar to anyone who has studied the history of Black political leadership in the American South. When Reconstruction-era Black officeholders took power in the 1860s and 1870s, they were subjected to scrutiny that their white predecessors had never faced. Their financial decisions were audited. Their personal conduct was examined. Their qualifications were questioned. When the Old Guard regained power after Reconstruction, it did so in part by constructing a narrative of Black incompetence and corruption that justified the removal of Black officials, a narrative built not on evidence but on the strategic application of standards that had never been applied to white officeholders.¹⁰

The pattern has not disappeared. It has modernized. Today, the tools are public records requests, ethics complaints, and open meetings law challenges. These are legitimate instruments of democratic accountability when used in good faith. They become weapons when deployed selectively — when the same board that never scrutinized the previous superintendent's travel expenses suddenly demands a full accounting of every administrative decision made by her successor; when the same commissioners who never questioned the previous leader's budget presentations suddenly call a public forum to challenge hers.

The Texas Tribune documented in 2023 how open records requests have been "increasingly weaponized" by political opponents, with some officials facing hundreds of requests designed not to obtain information but to consume staff time, generate legal costs, and create the impression of an administration with something to hide.¹¹ The same dynamic operates at the local level in small counties. A flood of records requests, however meritless, signals to the community that something is wrong. The newspaper covers the requests. The coverage reinforces the signal. The signal becomes the story.

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Part Five: Montgomery County, North Carolina — A Case Study in Progress

Montgomery County, North Carolina is a rural county of approximately 27,000 people in the Piedmont region of the state. Its county seat is Troy. The county is approximately 64 percent white and 16 percent Black, with a growing Hispanic population.¹² Like many rural Southern counties, it has a long history of concentrated political and economic power, a network of families, institutions, and relationships that has shaped local governance for generations.

The appointment of Dr. Karen Roseboro as superintendent of Montgomery County Schools in May 2025 represented a departure from that history. A Black woman with more than 25 years of experience in North Carolina public education, Roseboro was hired on a four-year contract and took office in July 2025.¹³ By March 2026, less than nine months into her tenure, she was facing public questioning from county commissioners, critical coverage in the local newspaper, and a community divided between those who supported her and those who appeared determined to see her removed.

The specifics of the controversy involve a policy that critics characterized as an attempt to restrict employees' First Amendment rights, a charge serious enough to generate both a community opinion column in the Herald and a public mobilization in Roseboro's defense.⁸ Employees appeared at a school board meeting to push back against the newspaper's coverage, explicitly defending the superintendent and questioning the framing of the stories.⁷ A Facebook post from a community member noted that staff, students, and parents were calling for the superintendent's resignation, while another commenter observed pointedly that the criticism was being "made into a race thing," and that people do not leave jobs of many years simply because their supervisor is of a different race, but they do leave when they feel "belittled, lied to, intimidated and humiliated."¹⁴

What is happening in Montgomery County is not unique. It is a local expression of a national pattern. The county has a new leader who does not fit the traditional profile. The traditional power structure is responding with the tools available to it: newspaper coverage that raises questions without answering them, public forums that put the new leader on the defensive, and a community discourse that frames her tenure as controversial from the outset. Whether legal tools will be deployed remains to be seen. But the conditions for their deployment , a leader under scrutiny, a community divided, a newspaper willing to amplify criticism, are already in place.

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Part Six: The Legal Vacuum — North Carolina's Missing Anti-SLAPP Law

There is a legal protection that could help shield community voices in Montgomery County and across North Carolina from the weaponization of litigation. It is called an anti-SLAPP law, a statute designed to protect people from "strategic lawsuits against public participation," the meritless defamation suits that powerful actors file not to win in court but to silence critics by burying them in legal costs.

Forty states have enacted anti-SLAPP protections. North Carolina is not among them.¹⁵ The Institute for Free Speech assigns North Carolina an "F" grade for its failure to protect residents from SLAPP suits.¹⁶ The median cost of defeating a meritless defamation lawsuit in court is approximately $39,000, a sum that can easily exceed that figure, with legal fees sometimes running into the millions.¹⁶ For a community organizer, a school board member, or a local journalist in a small county, that cost is not merely burdensome. It is silencing.

The Wilson Times editorial board noted in March 2026 that North Carolina remains one of only ten states without an anti-SLAPP law, and called on the General Assembly to revive the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act in its 2026 short session.¹⁶ The bill had been introduced twice before, in 2022 and 2023, and failed to advance, reportedly after the Administrative Office of the Courts expressed concern, and House Speaker Tim Moore's office declined to schedule it for a hearing.¹⁷

The absence of this protection is not a neutral fact. It is a structural advantage for those with resources and institutional power over those without. When a local official, a newspaper, or a well-connected private citizen threatens a critic with a lawsuit, the threat alone, regardless of its legal merit, can achieve its purpose. The critic falls silent. The voice is extinguished. The Old Guard wins without ever having to prove its case.

Source: Institute for Free Speech, 2026; Wilson Times editorial, March 31, 2026

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Part Seven: Recognizing the Playbook

The purpose of naming these tactics is not to claim that every criticism of a new leader is illegitimate, or that every newspaper story is a weapon, or that every legal action is retaliatory. Accountability is essential to democratic governance. New leaders make mistakes. Newspapers have an obligation to cover them. Courts exist to resolve disputes.

The purpose is to provide a framework for distinguishing legitimate accountability from strategic suppression. The following table summarizes the key markers of each.

When a community sees multiple markers from the right column appearing together, in rapid succession, directed at a leader who represents a departure from the traditional power structure, it is reasonable to ask whether what is being called accountability is actually retaliation.

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Part Eight: What Communities Can Do

The Old Guard Playbook 2.0 depends on community passivity. It depends on the assumption that most residents will defer to the newspaper, trust the legal system, and interpret the accumulation of "concerns" as evidence of genuine wrongdoing. When communities refuse that passivity, when they show up at board meetings, when they push back on newspaper framing, when they demand that the same standards be applied to all leaders, the playbook loses its power.

The employees of Montgomery County Schools who appeared at the board meeting in March 2026 to defend Dr. Roseboro were not simply expressing personal loyalty. They were performing an act of democratic resistance. They were refusing to allow the narrative to be set by those who had opposed her appointment. They were insisting that their voices, the voices of the people who work in the schools, who see the superintendent's leadership every day, be part of the public record.⁷

That is the counter-playbook. It is not complicated. It requires showing up, speaking out, and refusing to allow the terms of the debate to be set by those with the most to gain from a particular outcome.

It also requires structural change. North Carolina's legislature should pass the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act and join the forty states that have chosen to protect their residents from the financial weaponization of the legal system.¹⁶ Local newspapers should examine their own coverage practices and ask whether they are applying consistent standards across leaders of different races, genders, and political alignments. County commissioners and school board members should be held to the same standard of transparency and accountability that they demand of the leaders they oversee.

And communities should remember what the Old Guard counts on them to forget: that the accusation is not the verdict. That the newspaper story is not the truth. That the legal filing is not the evidence. That the voice being targeted is, more often than not, the voice that most needs to be heard.

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Conclusion: The Stakes

In small towns across North Carolina and the American South, the contest between old power and new voice is not merely a local political dispute. It is a test of whether democratic institutions can function as advertised, whether the rules apply equally, whether the press serves the community or the powerful, whether the courts protect the rights of all citizens or only those with resources to defend them.

Montgomery County is watching that test play out in real time. So are communities across the state. The outcome will depend not on the Old Guard's willingness to play fair, that willingness has not been demonstrated, but on the community's willingness to recognize the playbook for what it is, to name it publicly, and to refuse to let it work.

The voice they are trying to silence is yours. Act accordingly.

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References

Footnotes

1. Suggs Mason, B., & Roegman, R. (2025). Race, gender and the leadership of Black women superintendents. Journal of Educational Administration, 63(4), 272. https://www.emerald.com/jea/article-abstract/63/4/272/1251978 ↩

2. Dailey, E. (2025). Investigating the Challenges that Black Female Superintendents Face While Navigating Local School Boards. Arkansas State University. https://arch.astate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2151&context=all-etd ↩

3. Institute for Justice. (2024, November 20). Small-Town Newspaper Punished for Its Reporting Fights for the First Amendment. https://ij.org/press-release/small-town-newspaper-punished-for-its-reporting-fights-for-the-first-amendment/ ↩

4. Institute for Justice. (2024). Atmore, Alabama Retaliation — Case Background. https://ij.org/case/atmore-alabama-retaliation/ ↩

5. Wimer, A. (2026, March 26). Lawsuit Against Alabama District Attorney and Sheriff Who Punished Political Opponents and Reporter Moves Forward. Institute for Justice. https://ij.org/press-release/lawsuit-against-alabama-district-attorney-and-sheriff-who-punished-political-opponents-and-reporter-moves-forward/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Equal Justice Initiative. (2021, December 16). Report Documents Racial Bias in Coverage of Crime by Media. https://eji.org/news/report-documents-racial-bias-in-coverage-of-crime-by-media/ ↩

7. Brutonville Chapter. (2026, April 1). At the recent Montgomery County School Board meeting, employees voiced their concerns regarding a recent article published in the Montgomery Herald about Dr. Karen Roseboro [Facebook video]. https://www.facebook.com/PHAMEZion/videos/26629912496632633/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. Montgomery Herald. (2026, March 18). New policy is absurd [Community Cares column]. https://www.montgomeryherald.com/online_features/community_cares/article_94d9925a-acf3-40b1-91b0-bfa21d89be8b.html ↩ ↩²

9. Montgomery Herald. (2026, March 18). Superintendent questioned: Commissioners question superintendent's actions, requests. https://www.montgomeryherald.com/news/article_f5783630-3221-45ef-ab9b-6d4397016c33.html ↩

10. History.com Editors. (2018, December 20). Power Grabs in the South Erased Reforms After Reconstruction. https://www.history.com/articles/voter-suppression-after-reconstruction-southern-states ↩

11. Texas Tribune. (2023, November 29). Open record requests increasingly weaponized since 2020 election. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/29/weaponized-open-records-texas-government-transparency/ ↩

12. U.S. Census Bureau. (2024). Montgomery County, North Carolina — QuickFacts. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/montgomerycountynorthcarolina/PST045224 ↩

13. Montgomery County Schools. (2025, May 7). Superintendent named. Montgomery Herald. https://www.montgomeryherald.com/news/article_b2e54700-d47d-4e68-9cd6-3a3b43af03ea.html ↩

14. Allen, D. (2026, April). BREAKING: Staff, students, and parents are calling for the resignation of the superintendent of Montgomery County Schools [Facebook post]. https://www.facebook.com/dylan.allen.980404/posts/2777400735942872/ ↩

15. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. (2024). North Carolina Anti-SLAPP. https://www.rcfp.org/anti-slapp-guide/north-carolina/ ↩

16. Wilson Times Editorial Board. (2026, March 31). Our Opinion: NC can become 41st state to pass anti-SLAPP law. https://www.wilsontimes.com/editorials/our-opinion-nc-can-become-41st-state-to-pass-anti-slapp-law-e031551f ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

17. Castagno, P. (2024, March 31). NHC leaders have repeatedly called for anti-SLAPP law — but courts, House Speaker don't want one. Port City Daily. https://portcitydaily.com/local-news/2024/03/31/nhc-leaders-have-repeatedly-called-for-anti-slapp-law-but-courts-house-speaker-dont-want-one/ ↩