White racists will gather in East Texas next weekend. Yes, even more than on any other weekend. In a battle of the burning crosses, an extremist white neo-Nazi group and a Ku Klux Klan klavern plan competing rallies Saturday, campaigning for white members, money and media in the most conservative part of Texas. The Michigan-based neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement promises a “show of force” against illegal immigration, starting on the Rockwall County Courthouse steps (where city officials are choosing not to enforce permit rules), and then moving to a private ranch for a swastika-lighting.
During my 10+ years in Texas, I often had occasion to drive through various parts of East Texas. Though I can say that I never once saw an overt display of racism or racial discrimination, it didn’t take long to understand that those things were never far below the surface. I can still remember the air of malevolence I felt during a stop in Vidor, a town of 11,000 just outside Beaumont. Vidor, still haunted by it’s “sundown town” past, a place where blacks weren’t welcome after dark. As recently as 1993, the federal government tried to integrate Vidor’s public housing, and the Ku Klux Kln marched in protest. In East Texas, White still makes right.
Vidor’s malevolent racist past, as is true for most of East Texas, is no longer official policy…but history and perception are hard to change. Correct or not, Vidor still has a reputation for racism and ill intent toward African-Americans.
“We don’t have a Klan,” said [Orange County Commissioner Beamon] Minton. “We haven’t had a Klan in 30 years. We are trying to change our image, and we have changed, but I’m not sure we’ve convinced them [African-Americans] of that.”
True enough. That sort of history takes generations to erase, if it can be done at all. Whites may think that Vidor isn’t “that place” anymore, but just try convincing East Texas’ African-Americans of that.
It’s certainly not going to help matters when events like what’s due to transpire in Rockwall County and Nacogdoches. It’s seems that no matter how much or how hard East Texas tries to convince us that their racist past is behind them, something happens to rip the scab off the wound.
Still, dueling swastika and cross burnings? That’s something that would have been rare enough during the bad old days…but this coming weekend will feature competing rallies. Racist knuckle-draggers will have their choice of recreational activities.
The Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in neighboring Hunt County, are promoting a noon rally in Nacogdoches against all legal and illegal “mass” immigration, ending with a cross burning….
“You mean the Klan is doing a protest just like ours?” Schoep said by phone Friday from Detroit, sounding almost peeved….
The Texas Knights, formerly based in Waco, are the remnants of a prominent 1990s klavern that staged much- publicized rallies in Waco, Fort Worth and throughout Central and North Texas.
A Knights flier calls for “honorable native-born white American men and women” to “keep America American.”
Schoep’s reply: “Hmph! Well, they’re not anything like us. We’re both pro-white, but our politics are very different.”
Really?
“Our policy is that religion is something for home and church,” he said. ” We’re a political movement. We don’t have anything to do with religion.”
Bud Kennedy, a columnist for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, writes that he’s lived in Texas his entire life…and he’s never heard of dueling White supremacist rallies. While this has all the makings of a comedy gold mine, the message sent by both rallies is not what a local Chamber of Commerce would appreciate. That East Texas is still fertile ground for these sorts of rallies says a lot about the atmosphere and unchanged attitudes. If locals were to decide they didn’t want to tolerate such open displays of racism and xenophobia, they’d push back. That this probably won’t happen sends a very clear message that East Texas is far from being a tolerant, accepting place that would welcome African-Americans with open arms. A trip to Vidor today would only confirm that. No one came out and told me as much, but it was immediately clear to me upon pulling into town that Whites weren’t favorably disposed toward welcoming African-Americans with open arm.
Just 70 mile north of Vidor on US 96 is Jasper, where James Byrd, Jr., an African-American, was murdered in 1998. Three White men tied Byrd to the bumper of a pickup truck and dragged him until he died. Yes, that sort of brutality and barbarism is rare these days, but it’s by no means something that couldn’t happen today. Even in the 21st century, being African-American in East Texas means living with, and being surrounded by, a long and terrifying legacy of racism, hatred, and malevolence.
The more things change….
