NC Gov. Pat McCrory was interviewed on NPR the other day and managed to express the idea that passage of Hate Bill 2 was the fault of transgender people.

If we had not pushed for equal rights and access to public accommodations, then conservative forces would not have been forced to take them away from us.

He and other conservatives were also vehemently upset over AG Loretta Lynch's comparison of the current state of affairs to Jim Crow.

What Lynch said was, in fact, rather solicitous in her description of the discomfort some Americans feel with vast social changes that have taken shape in the years since the Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged that Americans' constitutional equality extends to matters related to gender and sexuality. What Lynch said was that said discomfort does not and cannot outweigh U.S. law. And state policies that attempt to contravene it cannot be abided.

Here is the indisputable truth: Jim Crow was not, in fact, simply a natural state of affairs or set of traditions that a set of unruly, anti-social, particularly liberal or impatient people suddenly decided must be overturned and brought to an end. Jim Crow was a system of laws, policies and social practices shaped in direct response to -- or more accurately, created and sustained as a means to roll back -- the social and legal changes that occurred in the United States after the emancipation of the country's slaves.

--Janell Ross, Washington Post

I think there is another voice which needs to be heard here.

Carlotta Walls LaNier knows about Jim Crow firsthand. She was the youngest of the Little Rock 9, the first black students to attend Little Rock's Central High School after the Brown v Board of Education ruling. Now 73, Ms. LaNier was the first black female to graduate from Central High and in 1999 was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bill Clinton. She is now a real estate broker in Colorado.

Carlotta Walls LaNier knows that history firsthand, and to her that comparison seems fair. As a teenager, she was one of those nine. Now 73, LaNier said the North Carolina state law known as HB2 is a threat to civil rights—and it bothers her that people are still debating the same issues.

We made progress, and then there are people who want to take two and three steps backward. History wants to continue to repeat itself.

--Ms. LaNier

LaNier said she agrees with President Barack Obama, whose administration told public schools on Friday that they have to allow transgender students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity.

When are we going to move into the 21st century? Here we are still digging a deeper hole when it comes down to equal rights for people.

I grew up in a Jim Crow environment where you had one sign that said, ‘Colored’ and one said ‘White. Here we are looking at some of the same situations…To me, it’s just going backwards.

--Ms LaNier

LaNier said she thinks the U.S. needs to be more forward-thinking, and she praised LGBT groups and activists for fighting discrimination.

I think that they should demand their rights. Fortunately a great number of them are speaking up—and as they do that, they will find that there is support out there. They have a place in this country, too.

--Carlotta Walls LaNier