Parking brake/Rear drum sticking on Rabbit

Hi everybody,
I've got an '84 Rabbit L that I believe has a problem with the
parking brake/rear drum on the right rear wheel. I purchased the car
about two months ago and have noticed what sounds like a scratching
sound (that I thought was coming from the front wheel). This led me
to think I had a wheel bearing issue because the noise would vanish on
a right turn. However, I replaced the front right wheel bearings this
past weekend and this scratching sound has continued.
After doing some more research last night with the rear wheels
jacked up off the ground, the right rear wheel doesn't spin freely.
With the parking brake off, the wheel will rotate, but only with me
gripping it forcefully and rotating it by hand. The left rear wheel,
to the contrary, spins freely. I only need to pull up the parking
brake one click to prevent the right rear from moving at all.
So, I loosened the right side parking brake cable (almost to
the point where the 10mm nuts were about to come off the end) but this
hasn't fixed my problem. Furthermore, I noticed on my drive into work
today that if I gently tug on that right parking brake cable with my
fingers while driving down the road, the scratching noise I hear
changes in pitch.
I'm feeling pretty confident that the problem is my parking
brake. Is the parking brake mechanism completely independent of the
regular rear drum braking system? Or is pushing in my brake pedal
doing the same thing mechanically as pulling up on the parking brake.?
Given that I have loosened the parking brake cable as much as I can, I
don't think the problem is the cable being to tight, right? I'm
guessing that something isn't adjusted correctly on the wheel.

Thanks in advance for your reply.
Bryan

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