(Background information on this post can be found here.)

The federal  justice system is predicated on a simple assumption: reasonable people facing a long stretch in prison without parole will do whatever it takes to stay in the free world.  When the government has a gun to your head guilt and innocence counts for little; you say what the government wants you to say.

Of course you ca always roll the dice with a federal jury.  Unfortunately, only 3% of those who take this route are satisfied with the outcome.

This explains why 97% of federal cases are settled outside of court. 

Ray Nealy was thrilled to accept a plea agreement that will likely keep him out of federal prison.  He had to tell a little white lie to get the deal; but hustler’s like Nealy don’t sweat the small stuff.

All of this has placed Judge Leon Holmes in a dicey position.  A devout Roman Catholic, Holmes doesn’t enjoy being party to sleazy legal machinations.  Holmes can’t be written off as a jaded rubber-stamp functionary; the record suggests that he is a dedicated jurist committed to the highest ideals of his profession.

Nonetheless, the transcript of Ray Nealy’s plea hearing on March 13 shows a judge shifting uncomfortably in his leather easy chair.  The documents presented during Alvin Clay’s trial in 2008 leave little doubt as to Nealy’s guilt: his signature is all over loan applications were riddled with fraudulent claims.  Nealy had literally no chance at trial.

So why is the government letting him walk?

Only one theory makes sense.  Ray Nealy’s attorneys told the government that they were prepared to put Donny McCuien on the stand if their client went to trial.

Questioning McCuien couldn’t possibly help Nealy, but it would broadcast to the great wide world that an FBI agent and a federal prosecutor knowingly sponsored perjured testimony.  Not surprisingly, Steven Snyder and agent Rodney Hays would rather keep that fact under wraps.

Alvin Clay doesn’t take sweetheart deals.  Not when he is innocent.  Clay scares the federal government because he defies their assumptions.

The black Little Rock attorney could have avoided prison time by taking a pre-trial plea deal.  He knew the government had no interest in putting him behind bars, they just wanted to bump an aggressive defense attorney out of the legal game.  Clay had repeatedly embarrassed and frustrated federal prosecutors and no it was pay-back time.  If Clay had simply plead guilty to a second-rate felony and surrendered his legal credentials the government would have been satisfied.

The government wasn’t too worried by Donnie McCuien’s bizarre perjury parade during the Clay trial.  The jury was too mesmerized by the mind-numbing detail of a complicated case to catch most of the inconsistencies, evasions and downright lies.  Jurors believed McCuien just enough to convict Clay. 

That was sufficient.

Alvin Clay didn’t have the money to bankroll an investigation of the government’s star witness, and the government knew it.

They forgot that Alvin Clay is a trained attorney with time on his hands. 

After weeks of tedious toil, Clay had lined up a score of witnesses willing to testify that Donnie McCuien had been bilking home buyers, real estate agents, bankers and contractors before he met Ray Nealy.  Moreover, like the psychopath he is, McCuien had continued to work his favorite hustle even after the federal government was on to his game. 

The man can’t help himself–his brain ain’t wired right.

None of this made the Little Rock paper, of course.  Apart from an annoying blogger in Texas, no one has been paying the slightest attention.

Nonetheless, the government couldn’t afford another trial featuring Donnie McCuien. 

AUSA Steven Snyder was sitting across the table from Ray Nealy holding a royal flush.  Nealy bluffed and Snyder folded.

Panic is written all over the transcript of Ray Nealy’s plea hearing.  The former NFL player was admitting to “misprision of a felony”: that is, he knew felonious behavior was going down and failed to report it. 

That’s it.

Highlights from the hearing appear below with my analysis in bold italics. 

“The Court”, of course, is federal Judge Leon Holmes.

THE COURT: The Court has an obligation to consider and can either reject or accept the plea agreement because of the terms. What I want from you — I mean, I’ve heard your case in chief in the trial against Mr. Clay. I have not heard Mr. Nealy’s defense, of course. But I’d like for you to explain to me why I should accept the plea agreement in this instance, from the government’s standpoint, moving from the charges, the conspiracy charges down to misprision of a felony. And I have every confidence that you and Mr. Webb and Ms. Stanley have a good reason for it, but I have no idea what it is. So I would like for you to tell me what it is that you can tell me. There may be things that you can’t tell me. But I need to hear something that makes me see that this is a plea agreement that’s in the public interest and something that I should accept.

Judge Holmes needs to hear “something that makes sense” because the plea agreement, on its face, makes no sense at all.

MR. SNYDER: It’s kind of hard for me to put it into words. I probably am not doing a very good job of articulating it. And we’ve, again, weighed the strengths and the weaknesses,and based upon those and in talking to Mr. Nealy and his attorneys, we just feel that it would be in the best interest of the government to proceed with this information.

Thus far, Mr. Snyder hasn’t given the judge the slightest justification for the sweetheart deal.

 THE COURT: I think you know what my question is. You put on a case in the Clay trial, and without hearing Mr. Nealy’s defense, I mean, the case in chief was very compelling, and the jury convicted Mr. Clay of conspiring with Mr. Nealy. And really and truly, the evidence was stronger against Mr. Nealy than against Mr. Clay. I think everybody knew that. That was part of the defense, that the case that you put on was primarily aimed at Mr. Nealy, not Mr. Clay. So now that we have Mr. Clay convicted, we’re in here pleading Mr. Nealy to a substantially lesser offense. And it’s not that I’m going to reject it, and I never have rejected. I’ve been here four and a half years. I have not rejected a plea agreement. I let the lawyers try their cases and do their things, and you all are good lawyers, and Ms. Koehler and Mr. Perroni are good lawyers, and I’m confident there’s a good reason for it. But I am bothered some by it. Part of it is the fairness of the whole thing, because we have different parties being treated substantially different, at least on what’s been presented to me, not based on anything related to culpability.

Judge Holmes explains the reason for his discomfort (as if anybody needed an explanation).   Clay’s trial primarily consisted of documentary evidence that Alvin Clay had never seen.  Clay knew nothing about the fraudulent loan applications and  Donnie McCuien couldn’t tie Clay to the loans because McCuien had never seen the applications.  The only link between Alvin Clay and illegal behavior was McCuien’s insistence that “Me, Ray and Clay” talked about the details of the fraudulent scheme behind closed doors. 

Again, the government needed McCuien to convict Clay; but they could convict Nealy on the strength of the loan applications alone.

MR. SNYDER: Well, I would say some things have come to our attention since the Clay trial that possibly could be detrimental to our case.

THE COURT: Do they have to do with a key witness?

MR. SNYDER: Yes, sir.

Holmes and Snyder are talking about Donnie McCuien.  McCuien is the sole justification for the government’s change in plans.  Holmes, reluctantly, goes along.

MR. SNYDER: Your Honor, on August 28, 2002, Alvin Clay received a check in the amount of $33,939.51 from Stewart Title in connection with a loan closing involving the sale of a home to Linda Jones. After receiving the check, Alvin Clay, with the defendant’s knowledge, deposited the check into the Clay Construction checking account at Simmons Bank. Alvin Clay then wrote a $33,939.51 check, cashed the check, and received $33,939.51 in cash. Alvin Clay owed Raymond Nealy $22,339.51. In order to avoid the currency transaction reporting requirements of Title 31, U.S. Code, Section 5313(a), and with the defendant’s knowledge, Alvin Clay structured his repayment to the defendant by purchasing three cashier’s checks in the amount of 9,000, 9,000, and $4,339.51, which totalled $22,339.51. Those three cashier’s checks were given to the defendant, Raymond Nealy, who, in turn, gave them to his mother. The defendant’s mother deposited the three checks into a joint account at the Capitol branch of the Arkansas Federal Credit Union in Little Rock.

Every word of the preceding paragraph is accurate except the alleged motivation.  Alvin Clay repaid an outstanding debt to Ray Nealy in three separate checks because that’s the way Nealy wanted the money.  Nothing in the law Snyder cites suggests that Alvin Clay had any obligation to report the repayment of a loan (although Judge Holmes can be forgiven for not knowing the minutiae of the relevant law).  The title company had already told the IRS that it had tendered a check to Alvin Clay.  Clay dutifully reported that income on his income tax return.  The onus for reporting the money he received from Clay was entirely on the shoulders of Ray Nealy.

THE COURT: And I neglected to ask you earlier about the restitution in the plea agreement. Is that where the sum comes from, the restitution, the $22,000?

MR. SNYDER: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: I mean, is it going to go to the victims of the four or five transactions?

MR. SNYDER: Right.

THE COURT: It will go to them?

MR. SNYDER: Correct.

THE COURT: The amount that comes from that $22,000, the amount is the three checks?

MR. SNYDER: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: And that’s going to be paid to the victims, the people that we heard from in the Alvin Clay trial who came up and said, “I borrowed money”?

MR. SNYDER: Actually, it will only be paid to four individuals. Rodney White’s house burned down, and he had insurance on it, so that took care of that debt. So it would be —

THE COURT: The other four.

MR. SNYDER: Robin Seals, Linda Jones, Marcus Patillo. The three.

THE COURT: All right. Thank you.

Robin Seals, Linda Jones and Marcus Patillo weren’t innocent dupes.  All three were paid kickbacks in exchange for their willingness to participate in a fraudulent scam.  When Nealy put money into their bank accounts then immediately withdrew the funds, the buyers knew the mortgage company was being defrauded, yet they allowed Nealy to proceed.  Now they are regarded as victims.  Alvin Clay had no way of knowing what Nealy and McCuien were up to–the same cannot be said for the buyers.

Finally, Ray Nealy takes the stand.

THE DEFENDANT: Actually, me and Alvin had did a prior investment earlier that year, which had something to do with a boxing match. And I had loaned him a substantial amount of funds, and it was actually a little more than what he owed — I mean, actually, what I loaned him and what he paid me back was more than what I loaned him. But when we had this deal go through, which was a construction deal where he was supposed torehab the homes, he took the money from that and he paid me back. And when he paid me back, he said that he didn’t want to report it to the government, so he wanted to make sure that he drew the checks up under the legal amount to where people could trace it. So when he paid me back, he paid me in the sum of 9,000, 9,000, and $4,000 to keep from the government finding out, rather than just paying me the whole $23,000, or $22,000, in one lump sum.

THE COURT: And you knew that he was writing the checks in that amount for the purpose of avoiding to have any kind of reporting go to the government?

THE DEFENDANT: Yes. That’s what he said.

Is there any way of knowing whether it was Clay or Nealy who suggested that the loan be repayed in three smaller sums?  As an attorney, Alvin Clay knew he could lose his license for failing to report income.  He had watched other attorneys disbarred for precisely this reason.  If Nealy had asked for repayment in nickels, Clay would have made a good faith effort to comply.  The lender dictates the terms of repayment, not the borrower. 

So where do we go from here?  The government has already convicted Alvin Clay on the testimony of a thoroughly discredited witness.  Moreover, they knew or should have known that McCuien was radically unreliable. 

I know it, you know it, and now Judge Leon Holmes knows it. 

What are they going to do about it? 

If Judge Holmes won’t hold the guilty parties to account, who will?

C. Victor Lander, the lead judge of Dallas’ municipal courts, has come under fire for a comment he recently made in The Dallas Weekly, an independent black publication.  I have pasted an article from the Dallas Weekly below and you can also check out a related piece in the Dallas Morning News.

Here’s the offending remark: “But as recent articles in the Dallas Morning News have shown, it is clear that the more mess that has been made by
others, the more it is up to us to clean it up. But black folks have been cleaning up white folks’ messes for hundreds of years, so why should we expect any different now?”

Remember now, this was written for a black audience who could be expected to take Judge Lander’s words in their proper context.  The “black folks have been cleaning up white folks’ messes for hundreds of years” remark is familiar to anyone raised in the black community and it doesn’t take a PhD in English for a white guy to get the gist.  Black people have traditionally worked as maids, waiters and garbagemen so they are used to cleaning up after white people. 

As black politicians are gradually absorbed into the mainstream (think Barack Obama) they are frequently asked to resolve problems they didn’t create.

Judge Landers is being called a racist, a familiar flip-the-script ploy used by  racially insensitive white conservatives who think history started this morning.

Can Landers’ remark be considered racist if it is given the most  literal interpretation possible?

Is saying that white people are screw-ups a racist claim?

We are dealing with the old what’s-good-for-the-goose argument favored by outraged whites, as in: “If it had been six white boys kicking a black kid in Jena the media wouldn’t have given it a second thought.”  (Readers of this blog will remember Judge Landers for the guest columns he wrote on the Jena 6 story before it became a national phenomenon.)

The alleged offense is multiplied when Landers’ comment is interpreted personally, as in, “the Judge is calling me a screw-up just because I’m white!”

That is precisely the way Dallas City Councilman Mitchell Rasansky is reading Landers’ statement.  Refusing to accept an apology, Rasansky is calling for Judge Landers to resign.

The strategy is obvious.  If one black Dallas official can be shamed into silence white folks will be free to live as if the account owed to black Americans has been paid with interest.

Here’s the real issue: Rasansky is calling for a strictly ahistorical reading of history.  With issues touching on race, most white people can’t think systemically and we can’t think historically.  The idea that white Americans generated an enormous mess by forcing African men, women and children into slavery is unacceptable to most white folks.  The notion that this enormous mess has the slightest bearing on contemporary conditions is considered outlandish.

But it isn’t.  As a matter of simple historical fact, white Americans enslaved African blacks, then forced them to live as second-class citizens under Jim Crow Apartheid.  Should black people be considered racist whenever they make reference to this tragic history?

When black people call for reparations they aren’t asking for a handout; they are asking the dominant white community to engage with history.

White people who think they have nothing to apologize for are in the same class as Holocaust deniers. 

Even if you take his comment in the most literal and offensive sense, Landers is right.  Black people are being forced to clean up a mess they did not create.  If the history textbooks used in American schools told the truth, men like Mitchell Rasansky would know better. 

If Rasansky stated that white people have historically been forced to clean up after black people he wouldn’t  be a racist, he would just be wrong.  C. Victor Lander’s big sin is giving the white residents of Dallas a belated history lesson.

Dallas administrative judge comes under fire for column

By Patrice J. Holmes
editorial@dallasweekly.com

Dallas administrative judge C. Victor Lander is being called
a racist for a recent column written in the Dallas Weekly
where he made a statement that has resulted in him being asked
to resign from his position.

In the March 4 edition of the paper, Judge Lander writes:
“But as recent articles in the Dallas Morning News have
shown, it is clear that the more mess that has been made by
others, the more it is up to us to clean it up. But black folks have been cleaning up white folks’ messes
for hundreds of years, so why should we expect any different now?”

Judge Lander was subsequently asked, in a letter by Dallas City Councilman Mitchell
Rasansky, to step down from the post where he oversees all of
Dallas municipal court judges. Councilman Rasansky said
Judge Lander’s actions were unbecoming of a man in his position.

“I think he’s wrong and we should not have someone like
this on the bench, Mr. Rasanky said, “I didn’t appreciate it at
all.”

In the Dallas City Hall Blog on the Dallas Morning News
website, contributors are posting mixed reviews of Judge
Lander’s column.While some call him”fair, kind, and respectful to all regardless
of race,” some are calling him a flat out “racist” and comparing
him to radio shock jock Don Imus.

No matter the sentiments of the Dallas public, Judge Lander
said he regrets his statements if they offended anyone.
“I shouldn’t have used those words with respect to the city,
and that comparison shouldn’t have been made,” Judge Lander
said. “We have worked and done a lot to keep the justice and
court system working and I’d hate to see something like this
happen to undo our efforts.”

The badge of “racist” is one label Judge Lander said he will not wear.

“Anyone can call anyone else a racist but it doesn’t have to be true.”

Fellow Dallas Weekly columnist Vincent Hall said Mr. Lander’s comments were well founded.

“The way he is being lambasted for pointing out a legitimate flaw in a relatively kind way is ridiculous,” Mr. Hall said. “Look at Ron Kirk, look at Lupe Valdez and the jail system, it was ugly the whole time her white predecessors had it.”

Mr. Hall continued, “Look at Henry Wade, Bill Hill and John Vance, they made a mockery of the justice system. And President Obama-he inherited the greatest mess known to the U.S.!”

Blacks and whites alike are asking if the same consequences would have befallen a white person if put in the same situation.

Mr. Rasansky said no matter what race, statements such as these are completely out of line.

“If he were white I would ask of him the same thing,” the councilman said, “I would still go after him.”

James Washington, publisher of the Dallas Weekly weighed in on the
issue, saying the reaction from the public was overblown.

“It was a knee jerk reaction to a linguistic misunderstanding,” Mr.Washington said. “Take what he said
and then take what he meant as Blacks have been cleaning white houses,
keeping white kids and the like for centuries.”

 Mr. Washington continued, “This is a colloquialism in our community and when put
into context, most African American people understood what the judge meant. But if you
take it verbatim and out of context, it seems like a radical statement. Some see it as racist, I do not.”
Judge Lander said he will continue his weekly column in the paper but in the future it will be
purely for educational purposes. “I enjoy writing for Dallas Weekly. It will be a little
more boring, but it will not be as controversial as this.”

Exactly one month ago, Attorney General Eric Holder sparked a maelstrom of white outrage.  As usual in sound-bite America, the media focused on a single phrase: “In things racial we have always been . . . a nation of cowards.”

You can find the full text of Holder’s remarks here, or scan the abbreviated version pasted below. 

Holder was talking about Black History Month.  Instead of dishing out the usual bromides about the contributions of great black Americans, the Attorney General lamented the fact that black history is too often segregated from “real” American history.  Although Holder didn’t put it this bluntly, the basic idea was that white Americans are uncomfortable talking about black history because the subject hooks the distressing side of white history.

White Americans are ahistorical because they can’t face the hard truth.    “Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.”  Ergo, we are a nation of cowards.

Isn’t this obvious to everyone?

Apparently not.

The pattern is familiar.  A black leader makes an undeniable assertion (white folks don’t like to talk about America’s racial history; America’s chickens are coming home to roost, etc.) and white people go apoplectic.

I just returned from a speaking engagement in Ottawa, Canada sponsored by the African Canadian Legal Clinic (the Canadian version of the Legal Defense Fund).  History hung thick in the air.  The horrors of slavery, apartheid, Jim Crow, and European colonization dominated every conversation, every key note address and every panel discussion.  The views expressed ranged from common sense moderation to full-blown Afrocentrism, but everyone was talking history all the time.  When event organizers gathered for drinks at the end of the day they talked about the subject with passion, conviction and a lot of gallows humor.  If a white guy happened to be at the table, so much the better.  There was always a chance I’d learn something.

White people don’t talk about racial history.  When we do we emphasize the great strides we have made.  Our ancestors made some big mistakes, no doubt; but all wounds have now healed, all wrongs have been righted, every valley has been exalted, and all’s well in the world. 

Which means that when black people dwell in the past they are just hurting themselves.

When we consider the career trajectory of an Eric Holder or a Barack Obama it is easy to buy into this ahistorical narrative.  When a black man can become president or attorney general, how bad can it be, really?

But when we move to the lower rungs of the social ladder this rosy portrait fades to white.  Why are so many people of color mired in poverty?  Why are inner city schools so abysmal?  Why do so few poor black children have two parents?  Why is the unemployment rate among young black males so high, and why must black people speak of the “just-us system”?

Now we are face-to-face with history.  Can we drive a wedge between these ugly facts and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow?

Sure we can.  Black people, it is argued, fail due to laziness, broken families, drug addiction and ignorance. 

Solutions to these problems, from the dominant white perspective, have nothing to do with the past and everything to do with choices made in this present moment.  The power of positive thinking (the real religion of America) is tied to the liberal dogma of inevitable progress.  Every day in every way we are getting better.

Because this is so, the best way to ease racial tensions is to ignore them.  The less said the better.  Time, that munificent elixor, will heal all wounds.  Bad things happen when you remove the bandage and start picking at the scab.

Such pablum passes for serious discourse in our post-racial America.

In other words, Eric Holder was bang on target.  Americans in general, and white Americans in particular, are so afraid to talk about racial history that we silence every suggestion that present suffering is linked to past injustice. 

I hope Attorney General Holder sticks to his guns.  We need to get over our ahistorical miasma.

After three days in Canada, I returned to the United States via rental car.  At the border, after a two-hour wait, I finally got to talk to a customs official.  I have a gift for getting in the slowest line and this time was no exception (all the other lines were moving twice as fast as mine).  This meant that I would be talking to a guy who enjoyed his authority far too much.

After bombarding me with a series of questions designed to detect deception, the unsmiling officer asked what I did for a living.  “I direct a non-profit organization,” I replied.

“What’s your organization called?”

“Friends of Justice.”

The man winced noticeably.  “And what do the ‘Friends of Justice’ do?”

“We work to protect due process in the criminal justice system.”

For the first time the man swung his head in my direction and established eye contact.

“Oh, so that means you on the side of the criminals.”

It was a statement not a question.

I desperately wanted to engage the man in conversation, but the power differential between us and the folks waiting in line behind me argued for the better part of valor.   That, and the fact that the authority junky I was talking to now works for Barack Obama. I took real pleasure in that observation just as I rejoice that an Attorney General of the United States can say something like this:

The link between the black experience and this country is still evident. While the problems that continue to afflict the black community may be more severe, they are an indication of where the rest of the nation may be if corrective measures are not taken. Our inner cities are still too conversant with crime but the level of fear generated by that crime, now found in once quiet, and now electronically padlocked suburbs is alarming and further demonstrates that our past, present and future are linked. It is not safe for this nation to assume that the unaddressed social problems in the poorest parts of our country can be isolated and will not ultimately affect the larger society.

 Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Department of Justice African American History Month Program

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul.

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us. But we must do more- and we in this room bear a special responsibility. Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must – and will – lead the nation to the “new birth of freedom” so long ago promised by our greatest President. This is our duty and our solemn obligation.

 We commemorated five years ago, the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. And though the world in which we now live is fundamentally different than that which existed then, this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past nor has it been willing to contemplate, in a truly meaningful way, the diverse future it is fated to have. To our detriment, this is typical of the way in which this nation deals with issues of race. And so I would suggest that we use February of every year to not only commemorate black history but also to foster a period of dialogue among the races. This is admittedly an artificial device to generate discussion that should come more naturally, but our history is such that we must find ways to force ourselves to confront that which we have become expert at avoiding.

 This will be, at first, a process that is both awkward and painful but the rewards are potentially great. The alternative is to allow to continue the polite, restrained mixing that now passes as meaningful interaction but that accomplishes little. Imagine if you will situations where people- regardless of their skin color- could confront racial issues freely and without fear.

Our history has demonstrated that the vast majority of Americans are uncomfortable with, and would like to not have to deal with, racial matters and that is why those, black or white, elected or self-appointed, who promise relief in easy, quick solutions, no matter how divisive, are embraced. We are then free to retreat to our race protected cocoons where much is comfortable and where progress is not really made. If we allow this attitude to persist in the face of the most significant demographic changes that this nation has ever confronted- and remember, there will be no majority race in America in about fifty years- the coming diversity that could be such a powerful, positive force will, instead, become a reason for stagnation and polarization. We cannot allow this to happen and one way to prevent such an unwelcome outcome is to engage one another more routinely- and to do so now.

 The civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s changed America in truly fundamental ways. Americans of all colors were forced to examine basic beliefs and long held views. Even so, most people, who are not conversant with history, still do not really comprehend the way in which that movement transformed America. In racial terms the country that existed before the civil rights struggle is almost unrecognizable to us today. Separate public facilities, separate entrances, poll taxes, legal discrimination, forced labor, in essence an American apartheid, all were part of an America that the movement destroyed. To attend her state’s taxpayer supported college in 1963 my late sister in law had to be escorted to class by United States Marshals and past the state’s governor, George Wallace. That frightening reality seems almost unthinkable to us now. The civil rights movement made America, if not perfect, better.

In addition, the other major social movements of the latter half of the twentieth century- feminism, the nation’s treatment of other minority groups, even the anti-war effort- were all tied in some way to the spirit that was set free by the quest for African American equality. Those other movements may have occurred in the absence of the civil rights struggle but the fight for black equality came first and helped to shape the way in which other groups of people came to think of themselves and to raise their desire for equal treatment. Further, many of the tactics that were used by these other groups were developed in the civil rights movement.

 And today the link between the black experience and this country is still evident. While the problems that continue to afflict the black community may be more severe, they are an indication of where the rest of the nation may be if corrective measures are not taken. Our inner cities are still too conversant with crime but the level of fear generated by that crime, now found in once quiet, and now electronically padlocked suburbs is alarming and further demonstrates that our past, present and future are linked. It is not safe for this nation to assume that the unaddressed social problems in the poorest parts of our country can be isolated and will not ultimately affect the larger society.

There is clearly a need at present for a device that focuses the attention of the country on the study of the history of its black citizens. But we must endeavor to integrate black history into our culture and into our curriculums in ways in which it has never occurred before so that the study of black history, and a recognition of the contributions of black Americans, become commonplace. Until that time, Black History Month must remain an important, vital concept. But we have to recognize that until black history is included in the standard curriculum in our schools and becomes a regular part of all our lives, it will be viewed as a novelty, relatively unimportant and not as weighty as so called “real” American history.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the United States is the diversity of its people and to truly understand this country one must have knowledge of its constituent parts. But an unstudied, not discussed and ultimately misunderstood diversity can become a divisive force. An appreciation of the unique black past, acquired through the study of black history, will help lead to understanding and true compassion in the present, where it is still so sorely needed, and to a future where all of our people are truly valued.

Thank you.

A new batch of articles appeared recently recycling data from last year’s Pew study on incarceration.  Depending on how you work the numbers (and which numbers you work) it is possible to conclude that either Louisiana, Georgia or Texas has the nation’s highest incarceration rate.   If you sift through the data carefully you will notice that the Deep South states are in a category by themselves.  Those who believe that the Jim Crow past casts no shadow should take a second look.

Readers of this blog know that I rarely belabor the empirical date of incarceration.  The statistical work is important, but it has little lasting impact in the public arena.  Scholars and legal experts love charts and numbers; ordinary Americans respond to stories. 

When a statistician goes up against a storyteller, the storyteller will win every time. 

This might not be the way it ought to be; but it’s the way it is. 

Unfortunately, the progressive establishment fails to grasp the importance of narrative.  Barack Obama is president because, thanks to people like Marshall Ganz, he gets the power of story and appreciates the value of community organizing.  Unfortunately, the academic, political, legal and philanthropic communities continue to rely on empirical studies and use stories, if they use them at all, as tacked on illustrations.

Friends of Justice has been successful because we tell good stories and we tell them right. 

Judges and prosecutors like to Google themselves.   When they realize their actions are being  scrutinized (even if it’s just a single blog) they get nervous.  Behavior changes.  The system works differently.   It doesn’t always happen quickly; but it happens.

Narratives are effective because the legal system is driven by narrative.  The common sense story of self-reliance, individual responsibility and the virtue of hard work hangs in the courtroom like a dense fog (for those with eyes to see such things).  Prosecutors win cases simply by painting defendants as sketchy, shiftless, scumbags who have opted out of the American dream through sheer malice or laziness.   This simple narrative, largely assumed, will control the trial from beginning to end unless an alternative narrative is placed on the table.

Again, nothing against scholarly studies (I sometimes allude to them in public presentations myself) but they won’t get us where we need to go.  Notice the dramatic spike  in the chart below and ask yourself why America suddenly embraced mass incarceration with such fervent enthusiasm.  The damage reflected in the numbers was been driven by a shift in narrative from a belief in the goodness of all people and a preference for rehabilitation over incarceration to a culture war narrative about personal responsibility, family values and a just war on drugs, gangs, illegal immigrants and terrorists.

The narrative shift was carefully and thoughtfully orchestrated by people trying to counter the impact of the Civil Rights Movement.  It was successful because it tapped into public narratives that have circulated in America since the earliest days of the Republic.  Only by telling different stories appealing to a different set of virtues can we hope to prevail in the courts (or anywhere else).

The fight in Tulia shifted powerfully when Freddie Brookins Sr. looked into a camera held by Sarah Kunstler and said, “I told my son, ‘Don’t plead to something you didn’t do.  You stand to be right, even if they give you 100 years.  You stand to be right.”

Average Americans, conservative, moderate or liberal, understand that kind of language.  Lets hope the reform community catches on.

Crain Watkins                                 Henry Wade

I was a bit nervous when I learned that the Dallas-based D-Magazine had just published a feature length article on Craig Watkins the Dallas County District Attorney.  

D-Magazine made a valiant attempt to flip the Tulia script while the City of Amarillo was paying out $4 million to the victims of the infamous 1999 drug bust and approximately $2 million to the attorneys involved in the case.  

The Tulia article raised some legitimate issues.  Tom Coleman’s credibility issues made it impossible to convict anyone on the basis of his testimony.  That didn’t mean Coleman was incapable of telling the truth or that all his marks were innocent. 

Fair enough.  But no journalist who had attended the Tulia evidentiary hearings in the Spring of 2003 would have gone to the wall for a lout like Coleman.   It didn’t help that my views were mischaracterized in the article.

I was concerned that the D-Magazine piece on Craig Watkins would follow a similar trajectory.  I was pleasantly surprised.

True, this is primarily a personality piece.  I would have liked more discussion of Watkins’ prosecutorial philosophy.  The Dallas County DA has departed from the convict-at-all-costs philosophy of Henry Wade, his famous predecessor.   The results have been nothing short of spectacular.

Unfortunately, Watkins is just now learning to keep his hurt feelings to himself–a fact frequently emphasized in local coverage.   Predictably, the D-Magazine piece begins with this problem.

But plow through all the People Magazine fluff and you get to the heart of the matter.  This is really a story about what happens when a progressive prosecutor like Watkins inherits a political establishment still dominated by the cruel spirit of Henry Wade.   Wade wanted to win every time, and until the case that still bears his name (Roe vs. Wade) he had never lost. 

Wade wanted to beat the bad guys so badly that he routinely withheld expulpatory evidence (Brady material) from defense counsel.  Most of the men exonerated on DNA evidence during the past decade were convicted under Wade’s watch.

Here’s Watkins’ big question: Why is the media picking at my every misstep and personality flaw when a lost soul like Henry Wade got a free pass for decades?

The answer is simple.  Wade worked within the dominant criminal justice narrative; Watkins is working on a re-write.

It is commonly believed that law enforcement, judges and prosecutors stand between the average citizen and a creepy criminal subculture.  This perception makes it very difficult for most potential jurors to believe that cops can lie, that prosecutors can play fast and loose with the rules of evidence, or that judges sometimes care more about bureaucratic efficiency than justice.

The prevailing narrative means that criminal defendants who can’t prove their actual innocence will be convicted no matter how weak the state’s case. 

This explains why defense attorneys are frequently asked how they can defend the people who undermine civil society.  In television dramas, you can pick out the defense attorney the moment he steps inside the room–he’s the guy with the amoral smirk.

When the new DA in town stands up for the due process rights of criminals he is bound to be controversial.  Watkins is challenging the dominant paradigm.  Henry Wade was lionized because he accepted the common sense assumption that the criminal justice system exists to put bad guys in prison–period! 

Prosecutors like Wade reinforced this view because it made their lives so much easier.  Wade was paddling downstream; Watkins has turned the canoe into the teeth of the current.

The Last Temptation of Craig Watkins

by Zac Crain

In Craig Watkins’ office high atop the frank crowley courts Building, there is a small table nestled against the front of his desk, flanked on either side by a black leather chair. On the table there are three books: A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; The Pursuit of Happyness, Chris Gardner’s Will Smith-approved memoir of his journey from homelessness to Wall Street; and Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Guide to Ethics and Civil Liability (second edition). Atop the books sits a short stack of recent issues of Jet magazine.

Nothing would seem to sum up the last two years of Watkins’ life so neatly as that little table. A district attorney (Doing Justice) who, though he has faced long odds and is often underestimated (The Pursuit of Happyness), strives for a significant change in The Way Things Are Done (A Call to Conscience). Oh, and he’s black (Jet). But it’s not that simple.

Watkins, 41, is full of contradictions. He has the resolve to take on decades of history, the legacy of one of the most well-known DAs in America (Henry Wade), and an entire criminal justice system. But he’s also so sensitive that he can’t help but recall slights suffered on the campaign trail more than two years ago, the kind of rearview-mirror business that shouldn’t bother a man bent on progress. He’s helplessly showy at times and can be immodest. He is, after all, the first black DA in Texas history. Yet his biggest fear is being trapped by his own celebrity, tripping over his own press clippings and highlight reels. With DNA testing, Dallas County has freed more wrongly convicted men than anywhere else in the country, and last year 60 Minutes gave Watkins much of the credit.

In short, he is just a man. A man with a powerful position and, on the right day, history at his back-but still a man, with flaws and foibles like all the rest. He’s a work in progress. He’s still figuring it all out. In just six months, the time it took to report this story, I saw the evolution of Craig Watkins.

Watkins is a big guy, 6-foot-5 and broad, and he carries himself so that not an inch or pound is unaccounted for. When he enters his office and deposits himself into one of those leather chairs next to the table, he sinks into his seat like a bored king, weighing his chin in one giant paw, his legs jutting out like flying buttresses. While we’re here: his skin isn’t caramel-colored. It’s black. The color of coffee with no cream. Even today, that color puts some people on edge, scares them just a little bit.

It’s May 21, 2008. It’s been 506 days since Watkins took office. The narrative that took shape when he ran for district attorney in 2002 (against Bill Hill), and again in 2006, has been added onto substantially, of course, in the intervening years, given all that has happened since. But the core of it-the origin story, if you will-remains unchanged. It says that Watkins was a political neophyte who came out of nowhere, riding the tide of a motivated Democratic base. He did not win so much as the Republicans were defeated. It could have been anyone. Watkins was a cipher, a warm body, a name on the ballot at the right place and time.

Part of this is true. The Democratic base was motivated in 2006. But though Watkins was unknown north of I-30, he was no stranger to politics or local government. His uncle Ted Watkins, who passed away in November, was a four-term president of the Dallas chapter of the NAACP. His aunt Deborah Watkins is the city secretary. His cousin Kurt Watkins is the head of the communications committee for the Dallas County Young Democrats.

“I think the southern sector always knew him,” Kurt says. “Black Dallas knew who Craig Watkins was 10 years ago. In South Dallas, the Watkins name is a big deal.”

When he won the job of Dallas County district attorney, Watkins became the first black man to hold that position in this or any other county in Texas. At the time, he knew he was breaking new ground at home, but he didn’t find out that distinction applied statewide until the day he was sworn in, when state Sen. Royce West mentioned the fact in a speech after the ceremony. Watkins knew he was making history; he just didn’t know how much.

“I didn’t even think about it from that standpoint,” he says. “So that really gave me an idea of what all this meant. I had a responsibility-not just for Dallas, but for the state-to address some of the ills of our criminal justice system. Just to make it better.”

And so the man who campaigned on a platform of reform has slowly come to realize that one of the things in the district attorney’s office that needs to change is-him.

“If you look at Martin Luther King, when he gave that speech in Alabama during the bus boycott, when he was first put on the national scene to head the civil rights movement, you look at him as a person, and you read his writings and speeches, and you see he evolved into the position,” he says. His heavily lidded eyes flicker toward the table and A Call to Conscience. “I don’t think he knew what he was getting into. I don’t think Barack Obama knew what he was getting into. Hell, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I think at some point you evolve into it and you realize that this is a lot larger than you personally.”

He’s still clearly in the early stages of that evolutionary process. When he speaks-which he does in a surprisingly high voice that’s lightly coated in black vernacular; he always says “querstion” instead of “question,” and sometimes opts for “axe” instead of “ask”-it’s apparent that Watkins is still taking things very personally. He can’t let things go. Though some would attribute his status as one of the most prominent district attorneys in the country to a series of star-making profiles (in the New York Times and Texas Monthly and, most notably, the 60 Minutes segment devoted to him on May 4) that appeared in the wake of the unprecedented number of DNA exonerations emerging from Dallas County, Watkins isn’t as cozy with the fourth estate as that publicity would suggest, especially locally. In March, a series of stories ran in the Dallas Morning News about his alleged improper use of a county car, which followed close on the heels of the collective smirk that greeted his theatrical unveiling of newly discovered documents related to the JFK assassination (the documents turned out to be nothing more than a curiosity). But what sticks in his mind is what happened before he was elected.

“I think they have to make up for all the things they did to me when I was running,” he says. He was embarrassed to walk through the halls of his sons’ school, he says, worried that the other parents and teachers had read the stories that, he says, portrayed him as a criminal and incompetent. Every bit of negative press since then has picked at that scab, never letting it fully heal. His sensitivity used to be even more acute. At least he has stopped commenting on every blog post tagged “Craig Watkins.” “At this point, I’ve realized that I can’t sit around and respond to all the things they write about me,” he says. “That’s part of the evolution.”

But he can’t help himself. He would rather be talking about his work with the Innocence Project of Texas and his new conviction integrity unit and the men who were wrongly imprisoned that he helped free. But Watkins’ conversational GPS is broken. No matter what destination he chooses, his aggravation keeps him circling back to those old Morning News stories.

“I come into office under this big microscope, which I understand,” he says. “But all these other folks that had been in this position, you never challenged them. As a result of that, we’ve got all these exonerations. Had the fake drug scandal. Had a DA [Bill Hill] give $1 million away of money that I should be using for the benefit of the citizens of Dallas County. That was never questioned. Giving $400,000 to a special prosecutor on the fake drug scandal, in December, right after I was elected, two years after the fact. And then he’s over there partners with them.” True enough, Bill Hill works with former special prosecutor Dan Hagood at his criminal defense firm, Fitzpatrick Hagood Smith & Uhl. So does Toby Shook, the prosecutor Watkins beat out for the DA job. “No one asks any questions about that. But you’re gonna question me, ask if I’m doing something wrong, say that I’m morally challenged? That’s what upsets me about politics.”

Watkins should be talking about the new approach to criminal justice that he is trying to usher in, not just in Dallas, but across the state and the country, the programs meant to be smart on crime rather than tough. But, again, he can’t help himself. Now he’s moving on to County Commissioner Ken Mayfield. Almost every problem Watkins has faced since his election, publicly and privately, has somehow involved Mayfield. (When asked about Watkins, Mayfield says he has a problem with the DA “because of a lack of competence and a lack of ethics.”)

“I’m a human being,” Watkins says. “I get upset. I’m like, I’m gonna shoot back one day. You keep shooting at me, I’m gonna shoot back. And it’s gonna be a headshot. My thing is, am I gonna limit myself to playing politics, or am I gonna continue to do what’s in the best interests of the citizens that I represent? So I struggle with that because I’m a human being and I’m like, I’m tired of this. This is a government job. You know, I had a lucrative law firm. I gave it up to do this because I wanted to do something good. I’m thinking, ‘To hell with this.’ And, ‘Hell, I can fight you and really get you. The little things you’re throwing at me are bullshit. But I can really get you.’ And so am I gonna stoop to that level, or am I gonna stay aboveboard and do what’s necessary to make all this right? I struggle with that on a daily basis.”

Over the next several months, I will watch that struggle play out time and again, and I-and Watkins-will eventually learn the answer to that question. Today, though, one year and five months into his administration, that seems like a long way off.
It’s June 17, and Watkins, I’m sure, has called to say he will no longer cooperate with this story.
A week ago, I was scheduled to visit him at his home in DeSoto. Watkins doesn’t have many interests beyond his job and his family-wife Tanya; sons Chad, 10, and Cale, 6; and daughter Taryn, 2. He’s a fan of smooth jazz. He listens to an online feed of the Oasis out of Houston. The only movies he ever sees are whatever the boys want to watch (“Most of it is, you know, silly stuff,” he says). Weekends, he usually has speaking engagements at rotary clubs and bar associations around the county. When he has a rare moment of free time, he might fly down to Galveston (“the cheap little trip I go on”), but mostly he stays at the three-story house with towering white columns his years in private practice paid for, located in the middle of an enclave of black power. (Former NFL star Tim Brown, as well as John King, founder of one of the largest black-owned advertising firms in the nation, are among his neighbors, and Royce West owns property in the area.)

“I sit outside, watch basketball games, smoke some cigars, and barbecue,” Watkins says. “That’s the kind of stuff I do. Sit home and watch my kids run around.”

Catching Watkins off the clock meant a trip to DeSoto. But his public information officer, Jamille Bradfield, called the day before and canceled the visit to Watkins’ home without much explanation.

It was not surprising. A few weeks ago, Fox 4 reporter Paul Adrian broke a story about the DA office’s Christmas party in 2007, which featured door prizes like round-trip tickets for two on American Airlines and spots in a luxury suite at a Dallas Cowboys game. Using commentary from various watchdog groups, Adrian’s piece accused Watkins and his office of trading favors and “selling access.” It raised some legitimate questions, but the only answer Watkins was allowed in his own words was this: “Questions that have been raised about potential violations of any kind are groundless. It is unfortunate, that of all the real news being generated out of the DA’s office … that the media would waste time reporting on our office’s holiday event that occurred five and a half months ago.” They were ill-considered words, showing Watkins’ defensiveness. But they were cherry-picked from a three-page written response. Watkins felt burned.

That’s what he’s saying now on the phone. It feels like a courtesy call, a way to let me down gently. He explains that Adrian’s report has made him reconsider his thoughts on dealing with the media, that he’s been “wounded by the press,” and maybe the problem is that he’s been too open with reporters, too willing to talk. So I’m stunned when he wraps up the conversation by inviting me to meet him at The Bridge at Fair Park. It’s an adult daycare center that his parents, Richard and Paula, opened a year ago. They pick up the elderly and disabled from around the neighborhood, keep them occupied and fed, and take them back home.

An hour later, I arrive at a stucco building with a fenced-in courtyard off MLK Boulevard. In front sits a blue Scion with a magnetic sign on the door promoting T-Shirts Etcetera, the t-shirt manufacturing shop that shares space with The Bridge. The car and the business belong to Watkins’ younger brother Greg. Next door is Fidelity National Title, the company his wife runs out of the building that used to house his law firm and still contains what he calls his “campaign headquarters,” a closet-sized space so overcrowded it’s a parody of a headquarters. Chad and Cale come here after school. If Watkins isn’t at home or his office, he’s probably on this corner of MLK.

(Less than a month from now, both buildings will be involved in another Paul Adrian investigative report, this one contending that Watkins was continuing the private practice of law, a no-no for prosecutors. The basis for this, in large part, was the amount of time Watkins spends here. “But if he’s not involved [in closings], why is the district attorney spending so much time at the title business?” Adrian asked. “Fox 4 monitored the company for the past few weeks and saw him there numerous times, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours, and a couple of times for most of the day.” This is why some people hate the media.)

Inside The Bridge, the power has been off for almost an hour, thanks to a storm that blew in this morning, but the business at hand continues. Paula, pretty and stylish even in plastic-wrap gloves, is readying lunch for her charges-lasagna, green beans, and a peach for dessert. Richard, an older version of his eldest son, with the same stature and hooded eyes, moves from room to room, making sure everyone is doing okay in the dark. The blackout has chased Greg from his office, so he has moved a pair of laptops to a table near the open door. The bulk of The Bridge consists of one large open space, with round tables for cards and dominos, a number of worn easy chairs, and a TV. It’s like the common room at a college dorm. This is where Watkins held a viewing party for his 60 Minutes episode.

After a few minutes, the rain stops and the power returns. Richard raises his arms and plays preacher: “Let there be light!” Playing along with the movie script, Watkins walks in with his wife and Bradfield.

“Where all the old folks at?” he asks, laughing.

“There’s one,” Tanya says, pointing at her father-in-law, laughing, too.

After a round of hugs, Watkins grabs a plate of lasagna from his mom and sits down, draping a leg over his chair. Why does Watkins spend so much time here? The past 45 seconds are a pretty good clue.

This is what Watkins wants me to see-not as a hedge because he knows Adrian (or someone else) will eventually try to use this place against him, but because this corner of MLK says more about him than a trip down to his house in DeSoto ever would. As much as any place, this is his home. This is his family. This is where he’s from, where he built his career as a lawyer. And what happened last weekend has given him renewed faith in himself and in what he’s been doing since his office moved to the Frank Crowley Building.

Last weekend, Watkins was in Washington, D.C., as a guest of the American Constitution Society at its national convention. It couldn’t have come at a better time. There he was surrounded by like-minded people, peers who had come of age as lawyers at the same time. More important, he was introduced to the next generation of prosecutors and defense attorneys, law students who were in awe of him and what he’s trying to accomplish. Watkins was taken aback by his reception. He says he had no idea people knew who he was, no understanding of just how far the message he was broadcasting out of Dallas County had spread.

“If you go to places outside of Dallas County, outside of Texas, what we’re doing is revolutionizing the criminal justice system,” he says. “I went there and saw there’s a bigger picture. It’s a lot bigger than me and what I’m dealing with here. It gave me the confidence back to keep going forward and not be afraid of the ugly side of this, because it’s going to happen and I don’t have any control over it. All I can do is just be honest, keep doing my deal, and hopefully we can get responsible people in positions like yours that will report the truth.”

It’s time to get outside of Dallas County, to see how The Craig Watkins Show travels. It’s time to go to Houston.

It’s June 20, and the occasion is a campaign fundraiser for C.O. “Brad” Bradford, the former Houston police chief who is attempting to become Texas’ second black district attorney. You’d be forgiven if you took in the scene and decided everyone was here for Watkins instead of Bradford. You wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. Most of the people are here because of Watkins, even Bradford. “Craig is just about the only one interested in conviction integrity,” he says, breaking away from the elevator speech about his candidacy he gave me as soon as I shook his hand.

For one thing, the location for tonight’s cocktail party-a well-appointed townhouse on a quiet, leafy street-belongs to Dwight Battle. He’s one of Watkins’ closest friends, and has been since he and his family moved from New York to just down the street from Watkins in fifth grade, near the corner of Caracas Drive and Meadow Valley Lane in the Red Bird area of Dallas. They stayed together from Adele Turner Elementary all the way through college at Prairie View A&M University, where they both pledged Kappa Alpha Psi. Back then, Watkins was known as the Gentle Giant.

“He wasn’t one of those individuals that talked a lot or was overly animated,” Battle says. “But he was definitely viewed as a leader, and when he spoke, people listened and took action based on a lot of what he recommended. Everyone in most situations viewed him as a leader and the go-to guy.”

The guest list is studded with other Kappas who were on the same line as Watkins and Battle, old buddies like Reuel Williams and Michael R. Williams. That was a special year, they all say; they are a fraternity within a fraternity. Of the 28 who pledged together, 21 still regularly keep in touch and get together when they can.
GOOD TIMES: Watkins with his father, Richard, at The Bridge at Fair Park, his parents’ adult daycare center that prompted an attack piece by Fox 4.
Partygoers trickle in, winding their way up the curving staircase into Battle’s living room, which looks like an African art gallery-on every wall, in every corner, there are paintings, drawings, wood sculpture. Tanya Watkins wants me to look at something else: “We stole that color for our house,” she says, pointing not to the art but the walls behind it. They’re in the middle of remodeling their home. Tanya is a Prairie View A&M alum as well. “We were at Prairie View at the same time, but I like to say I’m a lot younger,” she says, laughing. They met at an alumni picnic. She graduated in 1993; he walked three years earlier. She’s from Seattle but has family here, which is how she ended up in Prairie View, which is how she ended up here, the politician’s wife.

Watkins and the other Kappas huddle in the kitchen, letting the party start without them. They speak in shorthand: a name and a “remember the time when” is enough to prompt body-wrenching, eye-welling, counter-slapping laughter. Watkins doesn’t have to be Craig Watkins here. Not in the kitchen.

That time comes soon enough. First up, there is a conference with Bradford’s team as they look ahead to the future.

“Get someone who’s not a part of that office,” he says. “I had to go get someone out of my jurisdiction.” That would be Terri Moore. She ran for DA in Tarrant County and worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office before coming on board Watkins’ staff as his first assistant. Watkins mentions another black district attorney in California, Kamala D. Harris of San Francisco. He spent a week in her office after being elected. “That gave me really good ideas in what to do in Dallas.” He offers the same courtesy to Bradford-should he win. Turning to his own administration, Watkins tells Bradford’s people it is “gonna take two more years,” that they’re “resistant to change.” He does not say these things angrily.

Battle pulls Watkins aside. He’s going to do a short speech at around 7:20. Until then, it’s time to turn on the charm. “Gonna shake some hands and kiss some babies,” Watkins says. “Got any babies in here?”

There are no babies here. But there are plenty of other full-grown people who want his attention. They want a word, a handshake, a moment. Watkins works the living room, scored to a soundtrack of soft piano versions of Aaron Copland, Vanessa Williams, and Bette Midler songs, asking questions, remembering names. What Watkins said about the American Constitution Society convention appears true, at least here. People outside Dallas County do see what’s going on there as a revolution. Of course, this is a fundraiser hosted by a longtime friend for a Democratic challenger who shares many of Watkins’ ideals, and it’s populated by a crowd that is the Cosby Show ideal: professional, attractive, educated, socially conscious, and black. That said, it is worth noting how Watkins handles the praise, deflecting attention from himself to his office, never pulling the pin on all those old grenades he used to throw at his predecessors. It’s the kind of audience that would indulge a bit of self-aggrandizement, that would easily help bear the burden of any chip on his shoulder. Tonight it just doesn’t happen.

He checks in on Tanya, holding court on a corner of the L-shaped sectional. She’s cut out for this-outgoing, confident, independent. She doesn’t need him worrying over her, so he takes a moment for himself before his speech. He slowly paces in a corner of the room, nursing a glass of water. After a few minutes, his path brings him to me. He starts talking about Battle, telling me about their first meeting (“I had to beat him up to show him who ran the block,” he says) and his friend’s route from Red Bird to Prairie View to Wharton Business School to life as a retired investment banker.

He puts his arm around my shoulders, and waves the other one around the room. “Who would have thought?” he says, smiling, taking it all in. “This little kid from New York.” Had he not added the last sentence, he might as well have been talking about himself.

It’s time to talk. After a few jokes at his host’s expense, he goes into a version of the speech he has delivered across the county since his election. He doesn’t use notes and appears completely at ease. “I’m not only concerned with putting people in prison,” he says. “I’m concerned with people being safe.” It’s a wide-ranging speech that touches on everything from education to drugs to the economy. If there is a central theme, it’s that everyone here is just as responsible for justice as he is, or Bradford might be.

“I always like to use O.J. Simpson as an example,” he says. “A lot of folks who look like us like to say he was innocent.” He pauses. “But let’s be honest-he was guilty.” It gets a huge laugh. After it dies down, Watkins turns serious. “Why was he found not guilty? Because the jury was made up of people who look like us. I don’t want an O.J. in Dallas County.”

He speaks for a few minutes more, periodically eliciting murmured mmm-hmms from around the room.

“I need C.O. Bradford because I’m standing by myself,” he concludes. “And it’s lonely. I need someone to help bring justice to Texas.”

Unfortunately, it won’t be Bradford. In November, he’ll be narrowly defeated by a Republican former felony court judge, Pat Lykos. Watkins is still the only black district attorney in Texas.
It’s september 4. we’re back in Watkins’ office. We’re talking about the Memo Agreement plan, a diversion program for first-time offenders that’s similar to the county’s drug court, which favors rehab over jail. Begun in June 2007, the program allows for the dismissal of certain misdemeanors if the perpetrator does 24 to 30 hours of community service, takes a few classes, pays court costs, and keeps his nose clean for 60 days.

“If you convict them of that crime, you may very well be affecting their ability to get a job-a good job-for the rest of their life,” Terri Moore, Watkins’ first assistant, told me a couple of months ago. “Right? In which case, have you really done anything for your community or have you just helped somebody to stay down? If you’re 18, or if you’re 25, for that matter, and you shoplifted, I know if I’m an employer and I see that you have a record for theft, I’m not going to hire you.”

This is one of the under-publicized good ideas Watkins brought to bear on the DA’s office, not as headline-worthy as the exonerations or double-blind lineups, maybe, but still a solid building block of a reconstructed system. He should enjoy discussing the topic, the interview equivalent of a fastball down the middle of the plate. Only he can’t see the pitch. Again, he can’t help himself.

He mentions that “a certain individual on the commissioners court” (he eventually names Ken Mayfield) tried to torpedo the program, inviting in a municipal court judge and a police officer to talk about all the dismissed cases. Watkins countered by pulling the numbers and explaining the Memo Agreement. “They went home with their tail between their legs,” he says. “They pretty much went out the door saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

Watkins has come to terms with the media, for the most part. He is coming to terms with the history of the DA’s office and the legacy of Henry Wade. He focuses on the future now rather than the past. But he has yet to come to terms with those who seek to knock him off stride in the name of politics. He has too much at stake.

Behind his desk, on a wall in the corner, there hangs a charcoal drawing depicting Watkins being sworn in as DA by retired judge L.A. Bedford, a legendary black attorney who led legal fights to desegregate Dallas schools. Bedford is a “first,” too-the first black judge in the city. The connection between the two runs even deeper: both went to Prairie View A&M, and Bedford was a deacon at the church Watkins grew up in. The drawing depicts a moment that is even more important than it appears. It is perhaps the key to all of this, the reason why he has the tendency, at times, to react poorly to people like Mayfield.

“I was looking at him when he was swearing me in, and he was trembling and he was almost teary-eyed,” Watkins says. “I was like, why is he so emotional for me? And then I realized: all the struggles that he had been through were really for me to have this opportunity. He said at the end of his little thing, ‘You’re the first. Let’s make sure that you’re not the last.’ I really didn’t understand at the time what he was talking about, but I understand it now. Any little thing you do will jeopardize someone else that may be different-a woman, Hispanic, whatever-to be put in this position. Whatever you do, if you make the smallest mistake, it will shine a disparaging light on everybody else that comes.”

You can hear it in his voice. Watkins physically feels that responsibility, senses the weight of it. The pressure he feels-not just as a district attorney, or even as the county and state’s first black district attorney-comes from knowing that everything he does will echo for years, affecting the lives of people who might not have even been born yet. When you’re in that position, carrying that burden, every pebble in the road has the potential to trip you up.

He is getting better at dealing with the scrutiny. He talks to Royce West. He talks to County Commissioner John Wiley Price. Their advice always comes too late, he jokes, but those post-mortem sessions have helped speed up his learning process, his evolution.

“You have to understand it’s not just about coming to work every day and doing your job,” he says. “That’s probably 10 percent of it.”

It’s November 4, and Craig Watkins is onstage in the middle of the Bishop Arts District, celebrating the victory of Barack Obama with just about every Democratic elected official in the county. It brings to mind something he said about Obama months ago in his office, just after the Texas primary.

“When I first met him, when I first saw all this, when he first started running, I’m thinking to myself, Obama is a United States senator,” he said. “He’s been there two years. He has a book out. Is this an opportunity for him to sell a whole bunch of books, to lay a stake on his claim to be a United States senator from Illinois for whenever he wants to quit [the race]? But I didn’t see that he may be our president. I just thought it was calculated on his part to put himself in a position where he wouldn’t have any serious challengers for his position in the future.”

Watkins’ detractors-some of these people are attorneys within his own office, folks still loyal to the man Watkins defeated, Toby Shook-say much the same thing about him. They claim that he lucked into a high-profile issue, the exonerations, and now he is using it for his own political gain. That he is not serious about being the district attorney. That he is not campaigning for justice but for another office. Off the record, they say he spends more time out politicking than inside the DA’s office working. On the record, people like Shook say that he is a good headline with no story.

“My frustration is, the majority of those exonerations were done under Bill Hill, and the first few that he did were already being worked on by Bill Hill,” Shook says. “The way that’s been played-it’s not only Craig’s fault. I think the media has jumped on that. But I think he’s obviously, being a politician, he’s gained from that. He plays that up.”

Shook, of course, expected to be sitting where Watkins is and says he’s “not sure” whether he’ll run against Watkins next year. But he worked at the DA’s office too long not to retain a handle on the situation inside Frank Crowley.

“The way it’s played up, I think it really hurt the morale of his office, and the prosecutors there,” he says. He points out that most of the exoneration cases came from the 1970s and ’80s. “Because it’s been played up almost to the extent of, ‘All these [prosecutors] are bad actors.’ They weren’t even born, or they were 5 years old when those cases were going on.”

Shook won’t say much more. “I’ve got to be kind of careful here, because practicing criminal law-he’s kind of sensitive to criticism.”

Watkins’ evolution has affected the way he interacts with his own staff. When he took office, there were people who still had portraits of Henry Wade hanging in their offices. Watkins was an outsider, someone who had just defeated a man they had worked with for years, someone they liked and supported. “At that point,” he says, “you have to look at it from the standpoint of: I can go in there and try to make these people like me. But is that a good use of my time?”

Instead of trying to make friends with the attorneys working for him, he has tried to win their respect. And he has gotten it, he says, because now they see. They see the change in the jury pools, now filled with people that trust and believe in the system. They see that the conviction integrity unit hasn’t put their jobs in danger; it’s made their jobs easier. Conviction rates have actually gotten higher. He points to the day at the courthouse when James Woodard was exonerated after spending 27 years in jail.

In a court across the hall, one of Watkins’ prosecutors was picking a jury panel. The prospective jurors were outside when Woodard walked out of his hearing and into a jubilant crowd. There was a commotion in the hall.

“After the exoneration, everybody comes up, raises Woodard’s hands, praises everybody: ‘We just freed an innocent man,’ ” Watkins says. “This prosecutor across the hall is thinking, ‘God, maybe I need to get rid of this jury panel because they may be swayed by what they just saw. It would be hard for me to convince this jury to convict this guilty person.’ That’s what he’s thinking, but he went through with it. He said the jury took five minutes to come back with a conviction. It’s because credibility has been restored. People are starting to see it. They’re starting to get it.”
It’s November 6. Watkins is onstage again, this time in a small auditorium on the third floor of SMU’s Dallas Hall. He is on a panel to discuss writer Michael Hall’s story “The Exonerated,” as part of the university-sponsored Texas Monthly Live series. Next to him on the dais are Hall; The Innocence Project of Texas’ Michelle Moore; James Waller, one of the 19 wrongly convicted men set free in Dallas County since 2001; and Rick Halperin and Tony Pederson from SMU. Behind them, projected on a giant screen, is a group photo of most of the men who have been released from Texas prisons thanks to DNA evidence.

Watkins could use this as a victory lap; it’s partially what it is intended to be. Instead, he uses it as a reminder, to the audience and to himself, not to get too caught up in the headlines, in the successes so far. DNA tests can fix past mistakes, but they can’t prevent ones in the future. He points out that most of the DNA results come back positive. He talks about the downside of exonerations: you find the guy who actually did it, you can prove it, and there is nothing that can be done because of statutes of limitations. And you come face-to-face with the reality that the person who wasn’t arrested in the first place went on to commit more crimes.

Most notably, he takes a more measured tone when referring to previous administrations. He’s no longer the guy who came on the scene throwing bombs at Henry Wade and his followers. If anything, he sympathizes with him.

“Prosecutors 20 years ago weren’t bad people,” he says. “I don’t think Henry Wade was a bad man.” The Innocence Project’s Moore looks fairly incredulous at that, but Watkins presses on. No, he says, Wade had good intentions; he just “got lost.” Watkins is afraid of believing his own hype because he believes that’s what happened to Wade. “You always have to check yourself.”

It’s a new side of Watkins, less rebellious. More evolved. Here is a man who has stopped struggling with himself, who has an answer to his own question, “Am I gonna stoop to that level or am I gonna stay aboveboard and do what’s necessary to make all this right?” The answer is clear in his statesman-like demeanor tonight, and in the glimpses I’ve seen on a more regular basis over these past few months. The answer was always there; it was just hidden. It’s not about his ego, or any personal slight, real or perceived. It’s not about Craig Watkins at all. It’s about James Waller’s face when he walked out of jail as a free man. “It looked like he was seeing light for the first time,” he says. Every sling and arrow is worth that.

Two weeks later, Watkins calls me out of the blue. He has something on his mind, and he wasn’t sure if I caught it from the audience at SMU.

“When we were first talking, I can remember back then, I was really venting,” he says. “I was venting. I look back on that now and I kind of question my mentality, because I was dealing with a lot of anger I think.”

He’ll deal with more as long as he stays in politics-especially as he enters the next phase of his political maturation, Royce West says, and learns “the legislative process, and to impact the laws that he is duty-bound to enforce.” It’s unavoidable. The difference is, now he welcomes it. Criticism, he finally sees, isn’t standing in the way of where he wants to go. No, it’s what is keeping him on his path. He doesn’t look forward to it, of course, but without that periodic reality check, there might be an upstart district attorney 30 years from now piling the ruins of a broken system at his feet. Wade could have used more critics.

Watkins welcomes the criticism because he never wants to forget who he is. He’s a black district attorney who, though he has faced long odds and is often underestimated, strives for a significant change in The Way Things Are Done. He is, according to the Dallas Morning News, the 2008 Texan of the Year, someone who “has elevated the debate about the quality of justice and has altered our view of the job that district attorneys everywhere should do.” But he’s also just a man-a guy from South Dallas with a wife, three kids, and a mortgage.

“We make mistakes,” he says. “We do things that are wrong. But I think if you’re doing it with a good heart and good intentions and you make a mistake, people are more willing to forgive you and keep you in office and do things for you, as opposed to when you try to cover it up and to hide it. To try to make you out to be this person that needs to be put on this pedestal and be better than God-I think that’s what we had in the past with politicians locally. Admit your mistakes. Admit the problems that you had. And go on, because everybody has them.”

Thanks to Friends of Justice board member, Tory Pegram for this excellent update on the Angola 3.  Since leaving the Louisiana ACLU, Tory has been working as the A3 Campaign manager and has lately spent a great deal of time in the company of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. 

At a March 3 hearing, attorneys representing Albert Woodfox argued that their client should be granted a new trial while the State of Louisiana argued that he shouldn’t.  Links to NPR and Mother Jones coverage appear in the bottom section of this action alert.  I was in New Orleans over the weekend speaking at a National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers meeting and my wife Nancy and I enjoyed a wonderful evening with Tory.  Her commitment to justice continues to inspire.

Alan Bean.

A3 Update 3 March 2009 International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 A3 Supporters Brave the Cold to Speak Out Angola 3 Action Hosts Another Classy and Creative A3 Event   About 3 dozen supporters gathered early on this unseasonably frigid morning wearing all black A3 T-shirts while a newly outfitted mobile billboard proclaiming “36 Years of Solitary, 36 Years of Innocence” circled the courthouse.  The protest was peaceful, respectful, and well-matched to the formal tone of the hearing soon to begin.    A big thanks to Angola 3 Action for organizing the event: http://angola3action.org/; and to Loyola Law School for providing legal observers.  I’ll send out pictures later this week 😉 Was Albert Wrongfully Convicted?  A Short Summary of this A3 Day in Court   By the time many of us made it up to the courtroom, it was packed with ample representation from supporters of both camps.  Two lines of spectators stood against the back wall for the duration of the hearing since all available seats were quickly filled.  Many of the main characters from the State’s team were present:  Burl Cain, the Miller family, several Angola guards and residents (although none in uniform as in previous hearings), and of course Buddy Caldwell.    As advertised, the hearing was short and to the point.  Both sides argued clearly and reasonably.  None of the three judges shied away from questions–I counted almost 20 in the short 50 min proceeding.  In fact the panel voluntarily allotted an additional 5 min to each side to account for how inquisitive they were.  It was clear to anyone listening that the judges were all very well informed about the most minute details of the case; and reassuring that despite their intense questioning, there was nothing they asked that Albert’s attorneys were not anticipating.    Since inadequate defense counsel is at the heart of Judge Brady’s ruling, there was lively debate throughout as to whether it was even possible to discern in more than a purely speculative way whether the performance of Albert’s 1998 legal team was “inadequate” or simply “unsuccessful.”  Nuances about the very definitions of legal concepts and precedents like “Brady” and “Strickland,” as well as inconsistencies surrounding central pieces of evidence like the bloody fingerprint and eye-witnesses, were discussed in depth; but the the judges also took time to ask for clarification about less crucial points like the alibi witnesses in Albert’s first trial.    Despite diligent, thoughtful, and tough questioning of both sides, the judges used words like “oversights,” “mistakes,” and “governmental mischief” when questioning the State about their case.  Judge King was sure to remind the State when they directed her to read a certain page of the Magistrate’s report that the judges were better prepared than the State seemed to think:  “Oh, we have read it…” she said emphatically.   Now it is simply a waiting game.  We expect the court to rule in 1-6 months, and are hopeful it will be sooner than later since they themselves “expedited” the process during the bail proceedings.    As a quick review, if the 5th Circuit agrees with Albert’s attorneys and upholds Judge Brady’s ruling, then the State has 120 days to either retry or release Albert.  They have already vowed to retry him.  If the 5th Circuit agrees with the State, then the conviction is reinstated and Albert would have to start the appeals process all over again with a different claim if he wants to try to gain his freedom.  There are several other possible scenarios that could play out but those are the two most likely outcomes.  Media Coverage  NPR, AP, Times Picayune, & Mother Jones   Please take a moment when time allows to review some of the media coverage of today’s events.   NPR‘s Laura Sullivan did another excellent piece, as did the always welcome AP and Times Picayune reporters.    The evening before the hearing Mother Jones posted a new investigative background piece on the case you might also want to check out.    Will update everyone as soon as anything new develops, and as always, thanks so much for all your support.  Without it, Albert likely would have never made it this close to walking out of Angola a free man.   soonest,   Tory Pegram A3 Campaign Coordinator odsllc@gmail.com 504.338.2631 www.angola3.org Albert & Herman August 2008

The contours of the emerging debate in Paris, Texas are painfully typical.  The problem is as broad as America and as old as recorded history.

 Below, I have posted an editorial from Mary Madewell, managing editor of the Paris News followed by a Dallas Morning News article by Richard Abshire.  Since Madewell makes repeated reference to Abshire’s piece I thought it would be helpful to place them side-by-side.

Few would deny that Paris, Texas has a tragic history of racial violence.   More than most southern towns, Paris has been associated with Jim Crow era lynchings. 

But does this history have any relevance in 2009?

Racial tensions in Paris rose when a student was sentenced to up to seven years in juvenile prison for pushing a teachers aid.  Many considered the sentence disproportionate to the alleged crime and the story drew coverage from Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune.  (more…)

Howard Witt’s story on the open display of hangman’s nooses and confederate flags at a prominent workplace in Paris, Texas stirs memories of the proliferation of noose incidents following on the heels of Jena 6 publicity. 

Perhaps it is just a coincidence.  Racist bigotry in the workplace is far more common than most people think.  Where it is tolerated it prospers. 

But the explosion of racist symbols sparked by Jena suggests a direct connection between the incidents described in Witt’s story and two years of adverse publicity linking Paris, Texas to racism.

In some weak minds, public disapproval of crude sexual vocabulary feeds an overwhelming desire to scrawl the offending words on bathroom walls.  My guess is that racist displays in public workplaces and college campuses fill a similar need.  It’s as if the noose-and-flag-boys are hollering, “Hell yeah we’re racists!  What ya gonna do about it?”

All of this comes as a deep embarrassment to public officials struggling to refute allegations that this northeast Texas community is riddled with Old South racism.   No has denied that Paris has its fair share of unreconstructed, old school bigots; but does this latest skirmish in the Paris race war signify a deeper problem?

It isn’t surprising that a bigoted publicity hound would display offensive symbols in the workplace.  But if these acts were tolerated, even condoned, by management (as Witt’s article suggests) we aren’t just talking about one isolated misfit–we’re talking about institutionalized racism.

Still, is it fair to extrapolate from a few bigoted managers to the entire white population of Paris, Texas?

Much depends on how the white establishment in Paris reacts to this latest incident.  A few questions need to be answered.  Was there official tolerance for racist hate symbols in the workplace at Turner Industries?  If so, will this tolerance be tolerated by public officials in Paris, Texas or will the whole mess be swept under carpet?

Do symbolic references to lynching and white supremacy suggest that white Parisians have been unaffected by the civil rights revolution?

Some have suggested as much, but this argument can only be sustained if a healthy dollop of nuance is added to the mix.  Paris, Texas lies at the western extremity of the Old South.  This helps explain the appearance of Old South symbols; the sort of thing we never saw in the West Texas town of Tulia.  The Texas Panhandle wasn’t populated until the latter part of the 19th century and has the ethos of the Old West.

I have argued extensively that systemic or structural racism is no more apparent in towns like Paris and Jena than in places like Chicago or Cleveland.  But the ghosts of the South’s peculiar institution persist and the torches of the Jim Crow lynch mob have never been entirely extinguished.  Vestiges of Old South racism are crude, obvious and desperate–the dying gasp of a once proud tradition. 

Here’s the problem: white Southerns have never had a chance to formally renounce slavery and Jim Crow.  The closest we have ever come, strange as it may sound to some, is the Southern Baptists’ apology in the mid-1990s and Coach Bill McCartney’s insistence that racial reconciliation be front-and-center in the Promise Keepers movement.

Southern evangelicals are so firmly wedded to Republican orthodoxy that they have a hard time seeing any connection between Jim Crow segregation (for example) and the mass incarceration of young black males. 

For most black evangelicals the connection is obvious.  They don’t make excuses for dysfunctional and illegal behavior, but they understand that, as one black evangelical friend put it to me the other day, “it takes a whole lot of people to put a young man in prison; he can’t do it all by himself.”

As Hillary Clinton might say, it takes a village to fill a prison. 

The man who wrangles a bonus while his firm is hurtling toward bankruptcy is subjected to public outrage–but he keeps his bonus.  The kid slinging dope on the corner lands in prison. 

The kid on the street and the man in the boardroom are driven by the same dark impulses, and both are shaped by the moral ethos that surrounds them.  Both individuals can be seen as individual transgressors and as symptoms of a deeper social malaise.

The difference is that the kid on the corner is trying to compensate for his lack of social, cultural and economic capital while the guy in the boardroom is cashing in on the womb-to-tomb advantages he inherited as a birthright. 

Which form of behavior is the most detestable?

So long as white southerns refuse to see the big picture the ghostly shadows of Jim Crow injustice will remain.  Crude nooses and stars-and-bars displays detract us from the species of systemic racism that stalks the land from Maine to Mississippi. 

The incarceration of a single street hustler requires the combined efforts of hundreds of people; it is a corporate accomplishment. 

The elevation of a single individual to the Bank of America boardroom also requires hundreds of people working in concert.  

No one in America is self-made. 

Is it especially difficult for southern whites to understand that?  If so, this failure constitutes the South’s real “race problem”. 

I suspect that the pathetic individuals who hung the nooses and displayed the flags at Turner Industries were motivated more by 21st century white resentment than by Old South notions of white supremacy.   Whatever their motivation, these actions must be denounced and renounced.  

But we can’t stop there.  Civil rights activists must find compelling and convincing ways to talk to white conservative evangelicals about structural injustice.  If we can’t do that no real progress will be made. 

Flags and nooses, as offensive as they are, must not deflect us from this purpose.   An overwhelming majority of white Americans (Paris, Texas included) will condemn crude, Mississippi Burning racism; but that doesn’t touch the real problem.

Alan Bean

Friends of Justice

Racism bedevils Texas town

Allegations of discrimination in plant are latest flare-up in Paris

By Howard Witt | Tribune correspondent
February 25, 2009

HOUSTON – Only a few weeks ago, race relations had reached such a low point in the troubled east Texas town of Paris that federal Justice Department mediators were called in to try to bring together black and white citizens, but the public meeting quickly dissolved into rancor.

Now fresh racial tensions are erupting inside one of the town’s biggest employers, the Turner Industries pipe fabrication plant, where black employees charge that hangman’s nooses, Confederate flags and racist graffiti have been appearing throughout the workplace for months.

One worker, Karl Mitchell, took pictures of the offensive symbols in early February and filed a formal complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week. Other African-American employees assert that they’ve repeatedly complained about the racist symbols to their bosses, only to be ignored or told to keep quiet.

“Somebody had to step forward,” said Mitchell, who also alleges a pattern of wage and promotion discrimination at the plant stretching back nearly two years. “They are so wide-open with [the racist displays] and so certain that African-Americans aren’t going to say anything about it.”

 Officials at Turner Industries’ headquarters in Baton Rouge, La., say they only learned of the discrimination allegations last week, when photographs of the racist symbols began circulating on the Internet. They say a noose and other inflammatory depictions and graffiti have been removed and a company investigation has been launched.

“All of us in management find all of that offensive,” said John Fenner, the company’s corporate general counsel. “We do not condone any displays of this type. I can promise you that in the event we uncover that any of our people participated in the display of any of those matters, they may very well lose their jobs.”

Fenner also denied that blacks, who make up 11 percent of the Paris plant’s 660 employees, are discriminated against in either pay or promotions.

The racial flare-up at Turner Industries comes just as Paris leaders were hoping to finally fall out of the spotlight after several troubling racial incidents focused national attention on the town of about 26,000.

“Obviously, this isn’t going to play well,” lamented Pete Kampfer, president of the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce, who said he e-mailed the troubling photographs to Turner officials in Baton Rouge last week as soon as he was alerted to them. “We’ve had a lot of recent racial discussions in Paris, and you better get a heads-up if you see another storm working.”

Paris first drew national scrutiny in 2007, the year after a 14-year-old African-American girl, Shaquanda Cotton, was sentenced by a local judge to up to 7 years in a youth prison for shoving a hall monitor at Paris High School.

Three months earlier, the same judge had sentenced a 14-year-old white girl to probation for the more serious crime of arson.

Less than a month after a Tribune story contrasting the two cases triggered national civil rights protests and petition drives, Texas authorities ordered Shaquanda’s early release from prison.

Then last year, a 24-year-old African-American man, Brandon McClelland, was slain, allegedly at the hands of two white men who authorities charge dragged him beneath a pickup truck until his body was nearly dismembered.

The accused men are awaiting trial for murder, but McClelland’s family and civil rights leaders have pressed prosecutors to add hate-crime charges as well.

hwitt@tribune.com

Folks in Tulia, Texas breathed a collective sigh of relief when the trophy for “most racist town in America” passed to Jena, Louisiana. 

The hardware is back in Texas.

Paris, a community of 25,000 in Deep East Texas, now bears the distinction of being America’s most racist municipality.

No organization has sponsored the award, of course, and there has been no formal awards ceremony.  Paris gets the trophy because reporters from prominent media outlets are raising embarrassing questions.  When this happens, folks on mainstreet slam down their coffee mugs and scream, “#%*!!!+$$# it all anyway, why is everybody saying we’re the most racist town in America?”

When that happens, you get the trophy.  These days, it’s happening a lot in Paris, Texas.

Does the shoe fit? (more…)

This important essay appears in the current issue of Sojourners magazine.  Lydia Bean is my daughter.  She is also about to graduate with a PhD in sociology from Harvard University.  Most significantly, Lydia is on the board of Friends of Justice and has done a terrific job of helping us understand our work.  In recent years, Lydia has donated months of her precious time to the work of Friends of Justice.  The insights below are an interplay between her scholarly work, her adventures in congregational life, and her justice advocacy. 

Bridging the Great Divide

What does it look like to proclaim the gospel and invite people to follow Jesus in a way that leads to the work of justice?

I’ve always believed that the gospel is good news to the poor. My parents are both Baptist ministers who preached a lot about the “kingdom of God.” They didn’t mean just a spiritual reality-going to a disembodied heaven when you die-they meant building a more just society on earth. After all, Jesus taught us to pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But I also grew up in a moderately evangelical subculture that encouraged us to make a personal decision for Christ and share our faith with others.

As I grew older, I realized there was a “Great Divide” in Protestantism between the people who did evangelism and the people who did social justice. Christians who worked for justice talked a lot about the “social gospel.” Christians who did evangelism often dismissed social activism, saying things like, “we believe in preaching the gospel, not the ‘social gospel.'” I felt pressured to choose sides, so I sided with justice. I figured that if it wasn’t good news to the poor, then it wasn’t the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When I was in college, I got involved with a movement called “Friends of Justice,” which overturned a corrupt drug sting in my hometown that targeted African Americans. I organized a youth group to empower children of incarcerated parents to be change agents in the community. At a summer camp, I talked to a group of street-wise youth about Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence. The kids were intrigued, but skeptical. “If I turn the other cheek, everyone’s going to say that I’m a punk!” objected Anthony. His friend quipped, “I know which cheek I’m going to turn!”-and showed us how he would moon his imaginary aggressor. (more…)