|
Did a Racist Coup in a Northern
Louisiana Town
Overthrow its Black Mayor and Police
Chief?
By Jordan
Flaherty
In
Waterproof, a small northern Louisiana town near
Natchez, Mississippi, the African-American mayor and
police chief assert that they have been forced from
office and arrested as part of an illegal coup carried
out by an alliance of white politicians and their
followers. In a lawsuit filed last week, Police Chief
Miles Jenkins asserts a wide-ranging conspiracy
involving the area’s district attorney and parish
sheriff, along with several other members of the
region’s entrenched political power structure. These
events come at a time when the validity of federal power
is being questioned because of the race of the US
president, and in a state where white political
corruption and violence have been and continue to be
used as tools to fight Black political power.
About 800 people
live in
Waterproof, a rural community in the south of Tensas
Parish. Tensas has just over 6,000 residents, making it
both the smallest parish in the state, and the parish
with the state’s fastest declining population. The
parish’s schools remain mostly segregated, with nearly
all the Black students attending public schools, and
nearly all the white students attending private schools.
With a median household income of $10,250,
Waterproof is also one of the poorest communities in
the US. The only jobs for Black people in town are in
work for white farmers, according to Chief Jenkins.
“Unless you go out of town to work,” he says, “You’re
going to ride the white man’s tractor. That's it.”
Bobby Higginbotham
was elected mayor of
Waterproof in September of 2006. The next year, he
appointed Miles Jenkins as chief of police. Jenkins, who
served in the US military for 30 years and earned a
master’s degree in public administration from Troy
University in Alabama, immediately began the work of
professionalizing a small town police department that
had previously been mostly inactive. “You called the
Waterproof police for help before,” says Chief
Jenkins, “He would say, wait ‘til tomorrow, it’s too hot
to come out today.” He also sought to reform the town’s
financial practices, which Chief Jenkins says were in
disorder and consumed by debt.
Chief Jenkins
asserts that a white political infrastructure, led by
the Parish Sheriff Ricky Jones and District
Attorney James Paxton, were threatened by their
actions. This group immediately sought to orchestrate a
coup against the two Black men, including clandestine
meetings, false arrests, harassment, and even physical
violence. Court documents describe how Paxton, Jones,
and their allies formed an alliance “designed to harass
intimidate, arrest, imprison, prosecute, illegally
remove plaintiff from his position of police chief,
prevent plaintiff from performing his law duties as
police chief and/or force plaintiff to leave the town of
Waterproof.”
Ms. Annie Watson, a
Black school board member in her 60s who was born and
raised in
Waterproof, worked as a volunteer for the mayor. She
says that the mayor and chief, who had both lived in New
Orleans, brought a new attitude that Parish officials
didn’t like. “The Mayor and the Chief said you can’t
treat people this way, and the Sheriff and DA said you
got to know your place. If you're educated and
intelligent and know your rights and in this parish, you
are in trouble,” she says. “They are determined to let
you know you have a place and if you don't jump when
they say jump you are in trouble.”
Ms. Watson explains
that Paxton and Jones were threatened by Chief Jenkins’
efforts to professionalize the town’s police force.
Aside from representing a challenge to Sheriff Jones’
political power, this also took away a source of his
funding. “Before Mayor Higginbotham, all traffic tickets
went to St. Joseph,” she says, referring to the Parish
seat, where Sheriff Jones is based. “So he cut their
income by having a police department.”
Jack McMillan, an
African American deputy sheriff in Tensas Parish, says
he tried to warn Chief Jenkins to back down. “You’ve got
to adapt to your environment,” he says. “You can't come
to a small town and do things the same way you might in
a big city. Like the song says, you got to know when to
hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.”
Tensas Parish
Tensas and the
nearby parishes of Madison and East Carroll all share
the sixth judicial district—currently
represented by District Attorney James Paxton. Buddy
Caldwell, DA for the sixth judicial district from 1979
to 2008, is now Attorney General for the state of
Louisiana. The sixth district parishes all have majority
Black populations and mostly white elected officials,
which Chief Jenkins and Watson attribute to political
corruption and disenfranchisement of Black voters. Prior
to the registration of 15 voters in 1964, there was not
a single Black voter registered in Tensas, despite
having more than 7,000 African American residents (and
about 4,000 white residents), making it the last Parish
in Louisiana to allow African Americans to register.
Waterproof is “Reminiscent of the bygone days of
southern politics,” with a white power structure
maintaining political power over a Black majority,
according to veteran civil rights attorney Ron Wilson,
who is representing Jenkins in his civil rights lawsuit.
“At any and all costs, even jeopardizing the life and
freedom of my client, they will ruin him to maintain
power. This case is ultimately about whether an
African-American can be guaranteed the rights that are
assured to him in the constitution.” According to court
papers, this Jim Crow alliance dominates elected power
in the area, and "even on the local level, where the
office holders tend to be African American, they are
powerless to control their own destiny.” According to
Chief Jenkins, the District Attorney once boasted that
he controlled the votes of
Waterproof’s Black Aldermen.
 |
Chief Jenkins says he
faced an immediate campaign of harassment
from Sheriff Jones. “They just wanted this
town to be white-controlled,” explained
Chief Jenkins. The police chief described
being arrested multiple times under the
order of District Attorney Paxton and
Sheriff Jones. The charges, says Jenkins,
range from charges of theft for a pay raise
he received from the town’s board of
Aldermen to criminal trespass for going to
the home of a citizen who had been stopped
for speeding without a valid driver’s
license, to disturbing the peace for an
incident where individuals threatened the
police chief with violence for issuing
traffic citations. Ms. Watson says the
charges were invented out of thin air. “It
was a sad case of lies,” she says, adding
that, “The majority of the town of
Waterproof supports the chief and
supports the mayor.”
Parish Sheriff Ricky
Jones |
Chief Jenkins says
he was arrested and declared a flight risk by District
Attorney Paxton, despite living and owning property in
the Parish. “In all my years,” says attorney Ron Wilson,
“I've never seen a police officer, and certainly not a
police chief, charged for something like this.” Chief
Jenkins alleges he was attacked and choked by a deputy
sheriff, who he says shouted, "Shut up . . . We are in
charge . . .We are the sheriff and the sheriff controls
Tensas Parish. The sooner you all learn this the better
off you will be," an action that Ms. Watson says she
also witnessed.
Chief Jenkins says
his police car was shoved in a ditch, and when he
arrested the people who had committed the act, the DA
refused to press charges. In fact, he says the DA
refused almost all charges he presented and released
anyone he arrested. The chief was even charged with
kidnapping for one incident in which he arrested the
former town clerk for illegal entry. “That’s the most
ludicrous notion I've ever come across,” says Wilson.
“That a police chief can be arrested for kidnapping,
because he placed someone under arrest who was breaking
the law.”
A grand jury has
returned indictments of Chief Jenkins and Mayor
Higginbotham, and Higginbotham’s trial is scheduled to
begin this Monday. The mayor faces 44 charges, including
multiple counts of malfeasance in office and felony
theft. The charges appear to be based on the results of
a state audit of
Waterproof that found irregularities in the town’s
record keeping going back to before the election of
Higginbotham – irregularities that the mayor and police
chief say they had repaired.
Patterns of
Violence
Mayor Higginbotham
was elected at the same time as two other Black mayors
of small Louisiana towns, both of whom also received
threats based on race. In December of 2006, shortly
after Higginbotham was elected mayor of
Waterproof, Gerald Washington was shot and killed
three days before he was to become the first Black mayor
of the small southwest Louisiana town of Westlake. An
official investigation called his death a suicide, but
family members call it an assassination. Less than two
weeks after that, shots were fired into the house of
Earnest Lampkins, the first Black mayor of the northwest
Louisiana town of
Greenwood. Lampkins reported that he continued to
receive threats throughout his term, including a “for
sale” sign that someone planted outside his house.
Waterproof was Klan country from the reconstruction
era until well into the 20th century, and violence
frequently broke out in the area. Seven Black men in
Madison Parish were lynched over a period of three days
in 1894 for the charge of “insurrection,” apparently
because one man refused to follow an order from a
sheriff. “The Klan was very active here,” says Ms.
Watson, recalling her childhood in the 50s and 60s. “We
had crosses burned on people’s lawns. The school
principal had a cross burned on his lawn. A man named
Sun Turner was shot and killed on the streets by the
Klan.”
Waterproof is an hour south of
Tallulah, the site of a notoriously abusive youth
prison, and a little more than hour east of
Jena, where accusations of systemic racism brought
40,000 people from around the country, including many
civil rights leaders, to a 2007 march. Like Jena,
Waterproof is also home to a prison that contracts
to hold federal immigration prisoners.
When asked for
comment on Chief Jenkins’ lawsuit, Tensas Parish Sheriff
Ricky Jones denied that race was a factor, claiming that
Jenkins had abused his office and that many of the local
citizens who filed complaints against him were Black.
“I'm not going to support any type of corruption,” said
Jones. “Certainly not from him.” District Attorney
Paxton, also named as a defendant in the lawsuit,
disputed all accusations from Jenkins, suggesting that
he had tried to help Jenkins when he was first elected.
“A lot of this will become clear when the case against
Mayor Higginbotham goes to trial on Monday,” he added.
Flood Caldwell, one
of the town’s aldermen, is currently serving as the
town’s mayor. Jenkins points to Caldwell’s appointment
as further evidence of a coup, saying that the town
aldermen, under the direction of DA Paxton, illegally
voted to remove Mayor Higginbotham. “No one recognizes
Caldwell as mayor except the DA and his friends,” says
Chief Jenkins. The office of the Louisiana Secretary of
State confirms that they still have Higginbotham listed
as mayor, adding that they cannot comment further
because of pending litigation.
Wilson says this
case is ultimately about the repression of Black
political and civil rights. “I think this has been going
on in Tensas for a while,” he says. “I think they’ve
gone too far in this case, and someone finally has come
along and says they won’t go along.” Wilson hopes this
lawsuit will bring federal attention. “We hope the
justice department will look into this and bring some
much-needed reform to this part of the world,” he says.
Chief Jenkins says
he took the Sheriff’s job to serve the community,
“You’ve given this country the best years of your life
and you get treated like an unwanted stepchild,” he
says. “I didn't realize there was so much politics to
just doing your job.”
Ms. Watson believes
that this is a struggle for self-determination and basic
civil rights. “I was born in 1948,” she says. “Ever
since I was born, Blacks never had a say in this parish,
until Chief Jenkins and Mayor Higginbotham. They spoke
up, and tried to change things. That’s why the parish is
going after them.”
Jacques Morial of the
Louisiana Justice Institute contributed to this
story.
Jordan Flaherty
is a journalist, an editor of
Left Turn Magazine,
and a staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He
was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six
to a national audience and audiences around the world
have seen the television reports he’s produced for
Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, Press-TV,
GritTV, and Democracy Now, as well as his
appearances on Anderson Cooper 360, CNN
Headline News, and several other programs. His
post-Katrina reporting for ColorLines shared an
award from New America Media for best Katrina-related
reporting in ethnic press. Haymarket Press will release
his new book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from
Katrina to the Jena Six, in 2010. He can be reached at
neworleans@leftturn.org.
posted 26 March 2010
*
* * * *
Links to
Resources Mentioned in Story
Lawsuit Filed by Chief Jenkins /
Louisiana Audit of Waterproof Finances, and Mayor's
Response
*
* * * *
Recent Reporting
by Jordan Flaherty
James Perry's Run for Mayor of New Orleans /
New Orleans' Heart is in Haiti /
Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans
Discriminatory Housing Lockouts Amid Post-Katrina
Rebuilding /
Homeless and Struggling in New Orleans
*
* * * *
Other Resources
Louisiana Justice Institute /
Justice Roars /
Project
Transparency /
Left Turn Magazine:
*
* * * *
Small town’s institutionally
racist practices contribute to government waste
What
do Jena, Winnfield, Homer, and Waterproof have in
common? They are all north Louisiana towns where
investigations into institutionally racist practices of
their justice and police departments are tying
up taxpayers’ money and government resources, rather
than having them applied toward balancing budgets due to
ever-winnowing resources.
Government spending
is frozen in Louisiana, according to an executive order
issued by Gov. Jindal. While many people decry
government waste, few recognize that when
individuals in justice and police departments act with
individual prejudice towards citizens and colleagues,
like those in these north Louisiana towns, the ensuing
investigations contribute inordinately to government
expenditures.Real
Views
* * *
* *
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * * *
 |
Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
|
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* * * *
*
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 10 March
2012
|
