A Voice That Carries - Franky Echols

Series Introduction

This is the first of a 12-part series on community builders who participate in Activate Selma NC.

The author is Cindy Brookshire, one of the co-founders of Activate Selma.

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Caption: Franky Echols with Chandler Pernell of Pernell Heating and Air Conditioning at an Activate Selma meeting held at Plant a Row for the Hungry, Johnston County's Selma Community Garden at Selma Baptist Church. Local volunteers help provide fresh, locally grown produce to local soup kitchens and food banks.

A Voice That Carries

Franky Echols wants you to know how important your voice as a voter is.

She has been encouraging Activate Selma meeting attendees with her cheery “Good morning, everybody!” since 2022.

Regulars can practically recite her admonitions like a call-and-response:

“There is always an election going on in North Carolina,

So, make sure your voter registration is updated!

Know what is going on,

Go to your town council meetings,

And vote in your local elections!

If your 17-year-old is 18 by Election Day, they can vote,

So, make sure they are registered early!

We are a second-chance state,

So, if a person who committed a felony

Has served their time, they regain their voting rights,

Even if they have debts associated with their sentence remaining.

They must still register to vote.”

The repetition echoes, until you find yourself sharing it at the grocery store check-out line or with your church coffee hour friends.

Franky doesn’t even live in Selma. She’s a divorcee who moved to Archer Lodge from Cary in 2005 and raised her daughter, son, and nephew there. She was drawn here by her work as a community educator in Wake and Johnston counties for the non-partisan voting organization, such as You Can Vote.

“Mike Sneed told me about Activate Selma at Selma Railroad Days and invited me to a meeting,” she says. “I told him, I've been coming to Selma since the 1990s when my college friend lived here. Selma was a ghost town during those days. I was so happy to see the growth and development since then, and to see the town prospering.”

Back then, she was a young enthusiast from South Raleigh, working on her Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communications from Campbell University. She graduated in 1995, and began working in radio and television, with positions at WRAL and WNCN 17, and about 20 years at MCI WorldCom. While she gravitated more toward political discussions over the years, she has become disheartened by the deterioration in civic discourse.

“I wanted to work more directly with the public to educate them and bring back civility and humanity to politics,” she says. So, Franky began working, in both paid and volunteer capacities, for a series of non-partisan voting organizations, primarily You Can Vote. YCV was founded in 2014 following Shelby County v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612, the Supreme Court decision rolling back key protections of the Voting Rights Act. While she no longer works with them, You Can Vote continues to educate and mobilize North Carolinians to take civic action, know their rights, and successfully cast a ballot in each election.

Franky explains: “I worked with the Divine Nine – the nine black Greek-letter organizations like the Deltas, the Kappas, several times throughout the year doing voter registration, training volunteers, and educating the public. I also worked with corporations and churches. Whenever it didn’t fit the You Can Vote mode, I would just do events on my own time.”

More recently, she worked as a chief judge with the Johnston County Board of Elections and Public School Strong, a nonprofit under Down Home North Carolina, which fights for fully funded public schools and increased involvement of parents, students, teachers, and community members at school and at board meetings. One of Down Home’s campaigns addressed food insecurity with SNAP benefits. “Our county commissioners can actually put aside money and add it to a double bucks program so that people can go to farmers’ markets and get $40 worth of healthy food if they have $20 on their EBT cards,” she says.

Coming to Activate Selma meetings and events like Rockin’ on Raiford concerts increased Franky’s chances to talk with everyday citizens on the street.

“I have had many conversations with people who didn’t think it was important to vote,” she says. “One young man wasn’t impressed until I told him in North Carolina, ex-felons may vote. I saw his face light up, and in less than a minute, he was filling out the registration form. Before, he was hesitant because of what happened in Florida.”

According to The Sentencing Project, despite a 2018 constitutional amendment, thousands of Floridians are denied access to voting because they have completed their sentences but not yet fully paid court fines, fees, costs, or restitution – a poverty penalty.

“I showed him how to pull up the North Carolina law on the State Board of Elections website on his phone so he could read it and share it with others.”

“If we are talking about acclimating them back to normal activities of society,” she continued, “Voting is the premier activity for a citizen. It is a right and a privilege. Your voice needs to be heard. I could tell by his body language that he was empowered.”

Not all of Franky’s experiences have been positive ones.

“I was at an event, and a man said, ‘You work for George Soros,’ and I was like, ‘No,’ and I explained I was nonpartisan, but he just kept yelling, and he made it uncomfortable for other people around me. So, for the sake of civility, I walked off and talked to people in another area. Right now, there's so much discord, incivility, and corruption. We need to restore humanity in politics. People are economically and mentally struggling; we need to get something done! Any type of voter suppression is wrong. There should be no barriers, no gerrymandering.”

“I tell people, ‘Do your research! Look where a person’s heart and mind are! Look at what type of policies they’re putting in place! How does it affect your pockets, your family, your community?”

Franky adds: “anyone can find the summary of a bill online.”

She considers herself a document “nerd,” having read long PDFs and meeting notebooks as a homeowners’ association president and as a member of the Archer Lodge planning board and board of adjustment.

When Archer Lodge wanted to raise their property tax, Franky shared text messages, phone calls, and social media posts to inform others of the proposed increase. The next town meeting was standing room only.  Her own involvement finally led her to seek local office for herself.

“The last few years, people kept asking, ‘when are you running? You’re such a good communicator! You make everything simple and understandable!’ I knew if I ran for town council, I could learn, just like I’d done on the planning board – by shadowing the director, by doing my own research, and by asking questions. My hesitancy was that I was waiting for a confirmation from God, like Gideon in the Bible,” says Franky.

Evidently, she got it, because Franky ran, won the seat in November, and in December 2025, was sworn in as a member of the Archer Lodge Town Council for a four-year term.

What keeps her coming back to Activate Selma?

“We’re like a little family now,” she says, poking her head into the January 14, 2026, meeting room – On Beat Drum Ministry on North Raiford Street – and handing out hugs as well as smiles and encouragement. “Our whole attitude is, we can do this together, no matter where we live. It’s the unity thing. We are the microcosm of diverse men, women, blacks, whites, Latinos, young, old, of any town. We have people with experience, and new people coming in with new ideas. We have rough spots and confrontations, but we also have discussions and problem-solving. We can be honest and be respectful 99 percent of the time, step on toes (not maliciously), and apologize. I take that home with me to Archer Lodge, and I keep coming back.”

Caption: Franky Echols with Mike Jentes, vice president of Activate Selma at a meeting at The Farm at 95, a premier Johnston County site for events from weddings to outdoor summer concerts. By rotating meeting locations each week, newcomers get to learn about places, resources, and people in their community.   

What can Activate Selma improve on?

“I'm the first to say, I’m a proud black woman,” says Franky. “I don't have to hide or be ashamed of who I am. Sometimes in these discussions (or these interviews), I don’t mind giving someone a history lesson, on why some people are engaged in their communities and why some people are not, and we get tired of spoon-feeding history. People need to do the research, and I dare you to go and do unbiased research on multiple sources. Not on Wikipedia or AI, those are manipulated. Even Google can echo misinformation and you have to dig for the truth!”

“What Activate Selma does well is organization and communication in the weekly meetings. But what we can improve on is how to reach people. How do you welcome everyone to participate? Do we knock on doors? How do we bring out people who never come downtown, who are on the outskirts, who need to be invited into the conversation? How do you welcome them?”

“Some, historically, don't feel welcome downtown because of the trauma that happened to their families, to their friends, in the past -- deadly things, heart issues, distrust.”

She says, "I remember a meeting where some didn't understand the history behind why some blacks still had fear in Selma. The discussion allowed us to remind some how past racism still affects our society."

“The weekly meetings are amazing opportunities for open ideas, for suggestions, for pros and cons, for continuing to grow in our knowledge.”

“Even recently,” she adds, “Someone asked, ‘Why didn’t more people turn out for the Three Kings Fiesta? One theory was that someone on Tik Tok was spreading fear, saying that ICE was in Johnston County. No one should be made to fear like that. Creating that fear is terror.”

Franky suggests that Activate Selma consider using the Rockin’ on Raiford concerts as way to deploy a community-wide survey and reach out to Selma residents – not only to discover what they want, but also to find out why they are not engaged in their own hometown.

“Surveys are powerful. You could use an ongoing survey this whole season to find out -- Why don’t more people in Selma know what is going on? Why aren’t they concerned? Is it just that life is busy? What keeps them from participating in Activate Selma events, town functions, or being involved in their community? If you have the same people volunteering for the group and doing the same volunteer work, that speaks volumes. Why isn't everyone participating in our growth and our development? What is in the hearts and minds of people that makes them not come downtown?”

“Every town should have an Activate ___________, you know, put the name of your town in the blank space after it, and get your community involved.”

            Meanwhile, remember the call-and-response:

“There is always an election going on in North Carolina,

So, make sure your voter registration is updated!

Know what is going on,

Go to your town council meetings,

And vote in your local elections!

If your 17-year-old is 18 by Election Day, they can vote,

So, make sure they are registered early!

We are a second-chance state,

So, if a person who committed a felony

Has served their time, they regain their voting rights,

Even if they have debts associated with their sentence remaining.

They must still register to vote.”