[News] A Racist Coup in a Northern Louisiana Town

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Did a White Sheriff and District Attorney 
Orchestrate a Race-Based Coup in a Northern Louisiana Town?

3/26/10
By Jordan Flaherty
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/did-a-white-sheriff-and-d_b_514707.html>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/did-a-white-sheriff-and-d_b_514707.html

In the small northeast Louisiana town of 
Waterproof, the African-American mayor and police 
chief assert that they have been forced from 
office and arrested as part of an illegal coup 
carried out by the region's white political power 
structure. In a lawsuit filed last week, Police 
Chief Miles Jenkins describes a wide-ranging 
conspiracy led by the area’s district attorney 
and parish sheriff. These charges come at a time 
of widespread and high-profile racist attacks 
against the US President and Black members of 
Congress nationwide, and in a state where white 
political corruption and violence have been and 
continue to be used as tools to suppress Black political representation.

About 800 people live in Waterproof, a rural 
community in Tensas Parish that is 88% African 
American. Tensas has just over 6,000 residents, 
making it both the smallest parish in the state, 
and the parish with the state’s fastest declining 
population. The area schools remain mostly 
segregated, with nearly all the Black students 
attending public schools, and nearly all the 
white students attending private schools. With a 
median household income of $10,250, Waterproof is 
also one of the poorest communities in the US. 
The only jobs for Black people in town involve 
working for white farmers, according to Chief 
Jenkins. “Unless you go out of town to work,” he 
says, “You’re going to ride the white man’s tractor. That's it.”

Bobby Higginbotham was elected mayor of 
Waterproof in September of 2006. The next year, 
he appointed Miles Jenkins as chief of police. 
Jenkins, who served in the US military for 30 
years and earned a master’s degree in public 
administration from Troy University in Alabama, 
immediately began the work of professionalizing a 
small town police department that had previously 
been mostly inactive. “You called the Waterproof 
police for help before,” says Chief Jenkins, “He 
would say, wait ‘til tomorrow, it’s too hot to 
come out today.” The new mayor also sought to 
reform the town’s financial practices, which 
Chief Jenkins says were in disorder and consumed by debt.

Ms. Annie Watson, a Black school board member in 
her 60s who was born and raised in Waterproof, 
worked as a volunteer for the mayor. She says 
that the mayor and chief, who had both lived in 
New Orleans, brought a new attitude that Parish 
officials didn’t like. “The Mayor and the Chief 
said you can’t treat people this way, and the 
Sheriff and DA said you got to know your place. 
If you're educated and intelligent and know your 
rights in this parish, you are in trouble,” she 
says. “They are determined to let you know you 
have a place and if you don't jump when they say jump you are in trouble.”

Ms. Watson explains that Parish Sheriff Rickey 
Jones and District Attorney James Paxton were 
threatened by Chief Jenkins’ efforts to 
professionalize the town’s police force. Aside 
from representing a challenge to Sheriff Jones’ 
political power, this also took away a source of 
his funding. “Before Mayor Higginbotham, all 
traffic tickets went to St. Joseph,” she says, 
referring to the Parish seat, where Sheriff Jones 
is based. “So he cut their income by having a police department.”

Jack McMillan, an African American deputy sheriff 
who works with Sheriff Jones, says he tried to 
warn Chief Jenkins to back down. “You’ve got to 
adapt to your environment,” he says. “You can't 
come to a small town and do things the same way 
you might in a big city. Like the song says, you 
got to know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.”

Chief Jenkins asserts that the white-led 
political infrastructure, led by the Sheriff 
Jones and DA Paxton, were threatened by their 
actions. This group immediately sought to 
orchestrate a coup against the two Black men, 
including clandestine meetings, false arrests, 
harassment, and even physical violence. Court 
documents describe how Paxton, Jones, and their 
allies formed an alliance “designed to harass 
intimidate, arrest, imprison, prosecute, 
illegally remove plaintiff from his position of 
police chief, prevent plaintiff from performing 
his law duties as police chief and/or force 
plaintiff to leave the town of Waterproof.”

Tensas Parish

Prior to the registration of 15 voters in 1964, 
there was not a single Black voter registered in 
Tensas, despite having more than 7,000 African 
American residents (and about 4,000 white 
residents), making it the last parish in 
Louisiana to allow African Americans to register. 
Tensas and the nearby parishes of Madison and 
East Carroll all share the sixth judicial 
district – currently represented by District 
Attorney Paxton. It is a small but influential 
district - Buddy Caldwell, DA for the sixth 
judicial district from 1979 to 2008, is now 
Attorney General for the state of Louisiana. The 
sixth district parishes all have majority Black 
populations and mostly white elected officials, 
which Chief Jenkins and Ms. Watson attribute to 
political corruption and disenfranchisement of Black voters.

Waterproof is “Reminiscent of the bygone days of 
southern politics,” with a white power structure 
maintaining political power over a Black 
majority, according to veteran civil rights 
attorney Ron Wilson, who is representing Jenkins 
in his civil rights lawsuit. “At any and all 
costs, even jeopardizing the life and freedom of 
my client, they will ruin him to maintain power. 
This case is ultimately about whether an 
African-American can be guaranteed the rights 
that are assured to him in the constitution.” 
According to court papers, this Jim Crow alliance 
dominates elected power in the area, and "even on 
the local level, where the office holders tend to 
be African American, they are powerless to 
control their own destiny.” According to Chief 
Jenkins, the District Attorney once boasted that 
he controlled the votes of Waterproof’s Black aldermen.

Chief Jenkins says he faced an immediate campaign 
of harassment. “They just wanted this town to be 
white-controlled,” explained Chief Jenkins. The 
police chief described being arrested multiple 
times under the order of DA Paxton and Sheriff 
Jones. The charges, says Jenkins, range from 
charges of theft for a pay raise he received from 
the town’s board of Aldermen to criminal trespass 
for going to the home of a citizen who had been 
stopped for speeding without a valid driver’s 
license, to disturbing the peace for an incident 
where individuals threatened the police chief 
with violence for issuing traffic citations. Ms. 
Watson says the charges were invented out of thin 
air. “It was a sad case of lies,” she says, 
adding that, “The majority of the town of 
Waterproof supports the chief and supports the mayor.”

Chief Jenkins says he was arrested and declared a 
flight risk by District Attorney Paxton, despite 
living and owning property in the Parish. “In all 
my years,” says attorney Ron Wilson, “I've never 
seen a police officer, and certainly not a police 
chief, charged for something like this.” Chief 
Jenkins alleges he was attacked and choked by a 
deputy sheriff, who he says shouted, "Shut 
up...We are in charge
We are the sheriff and the 
sheriff controls Tensas Parish. The sooner you 
all learn this the better off you will be," an 
action that Ms. Watson says she also witnessed.

Chief Jenkins says his police car was shoved in a 
ditch, and when he arrested the people who had 
committed the act, the DA refused to press 
charges. In fact, he says the DA refused almost 
all charges he presented and released anyone he 
arrested. The chief was even charged with 
kidnapping for one incident in which he arrested 
the former town clerk for illegal entry. “That’s 
the most ludicrous notion I've ever come across,” 
says Wilson. “That a police chief can be arrested 
for kidnapping, because he placed someone under 
arrest who was breaking the law.”

A grand jury has returned indictments of Chief 
Jenkins and Mayor Higginbotham, and 
Higginbotham’s trial is scheduled to begin this 
Monday. The mayor faces 44 charges, including 
multiple counts of malfeasance in office and 
felony theft. The charges appear to be based on 
the results of a state audit of Waterproof that 
found irregularities in the town’s record keeping 
going back to before the election of Higginbotham 
– irregularities that the mayor and police chief say they had repaired.

Patterns of Violence

Mayor Higginbotham was elected at the same time 
as two other Black mayors of small Louisiana 
towns, both of whom also received threats based 
on race. In December of 2006, shortly after 
Higginbotham was elected mayor of Waterproof, 
Gerald Washington was shot and killed three days 
before he was to become the first Black mayor of 
the small southwest Louisiana town of Westlake. 
An official investigation called his death a 
suicide, but family members call it an 
assassination. Less than two weeks after that, 
shots were fired into the house of Earnest 
Lampkins, the first Black mayor of the northwest 
Louisiana town of Greenwood. Lampkins reported 
that he continued to receive threats throughout 
his term, including a “for sale” sign that someone planted outside his house.

Waterproof was Klan country from the 
reconstruction era until well into the 20th 
century, and racist violence was common in the 
region. Eight Black men in Madison Parish were 
lynched over a period of three days in 1894 for 
the charge of “insurrection,” apparently because 
one man refused to follow an order from a 
sheriff. “The Klan was very active here,” says 
Ms. Watson, recalling her childhood in 
Waterproof. “We had crosses burned on people’s 
lawns. The school principal had a cross burned on 
his lawn. A man named Sun Turner was shot and 
killed on the streets by the Klan.”

Waterproof is an hour south of Tallulah, the site 
of a notoriously abusive youth prison, and a 
little more than hour east of Jena, where 
accusations of systemic racism brought 50,000 
people from around the country, including many 
civil rights leaders, to a 2007 march. Like Jena, 
Waterproof is also home to a prison that 
contracts to hold federal immigration prisoners.

When asked for comment on Chief Jenkins’ lawsuit, 
Tensas Parish Sheriff Jones denied that race was 
a factor, claiming that Jenkins had abused his 
office and that many of the local citizens who 
filed complaints against him were Black. “I'm not 
going to support any type of corruption,” said 
Jones. “Certainly not from him.” District 
Attorney Paxton, also named as a defendant in the 
lawsuit, disputed all accusations from Jenkins, 
suggesting that he had tried to help Jenkins when 
he was first elected. “A lot of this will become 
clear when the case against Mayor Higginbotham 
goes to trial on Monday,” he added.

Flood Caldwell, one of the town’s aldermen, is 
currently serving as the town’s mayor. Jenkins 
points to Caldwell’s appointment as further 
evidence of a coup, saying that the town 
aldermen, under the direction of DA Paxton, 
illegally voted to remove Mayor Higginbotham. “No 
one recognizes Caldwell as mayor except the DA 
and his friends,” says Chief Jenkins. The office 
of the Louisiana Secretary of State confirms that 
they still have Higginbotham listed as mayor, 
adding that they cannot comment further because of pending litigation.

Wilson says this case is ultimately about the 
repression of Black political and civil rights. 
“I think this has been going on in Tensas for a 
while,” he says. “I think they’ve gone too far in 
this case, and someone finally has come along and 
says they won’t go along.” Wilson hopes this 
lawsuit will bring federal attention. “We hope 
the justice department will look into this and 
bring some much-needed reform to this part of the world,” he says.

Chief Jenkins says he took the Sheriff’s job to 
serve the community, “You’ve given this country 
the best years of your life and you get treated 
like an unwanted stepchild,” he says. “I didn't 
realize there was so much politics to just doing your job.”

Ms. Watson believes that this is a struggle for 
self-determination and basic civil rights. “I was 
born in 1948,” she says. “Ever since I was born, 
Blacks never had a say in this parish, until 
Chief Jenkins and Mayor Higginbotham. They spoke 
up, and tried to change things. That’s why the parish is going after them.”

Jacques Morial of the Louisiana Justice Institute contributed to this story.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of 
Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the 
Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first 
writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a 
national audience and audiences around the world 
have seen the television reports he’s produced 
for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, Press-TV, GritTV, and 
Democracy Now, as well as his appearances on 
Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, and 
several other programs. His post-Katrina 
reporting for ColorLines shared an award from New 
America Media for best Katrina-related reporting 
in ethnic press. Haymarket Press will release his 
new book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance 
from Katrina to the Jena Six, in 2010. He can be 
reached at <mailto:neworleans at leftturn.org>neworleans at leftturn.org.

-------------------------------------------------
Links to Resources Mentioned in Story:
Lawsuit Filed by Chief Jenkins:
<http://www.nolapublicrecords.org/sites/default/files/docs/Complaint3.pdf>http://www.nolapublicrecords.org/sites/default/files/docs/Complaint3.pdf
Louisiana Audit of Waterproof Finances, and Mayor's Response:
<http://www.lla.state.la.us/about/divisions/advisoryservices/2008/>http://www.lla.state.la.us/about/divisions/advisoryservices/2008/

Professors: Please assign FLOODLINES: Community 
and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six in 
your classes for Fall of 2010. The book has 
already been added to the curriculum for courses 
at Xavier University and University of New Orleans.

Pre-Order on Amazon: 
<http://www.amazon.com/Floodlines-Community-Resistance-Katrina-Jena/dp/1608460657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269623271&sr=8-1>http://www.amazon.com/Floodlines-Community-Resistance-Katrina-Jena/dp/1608460657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269623271&sr=8-1

Bring Jordan Flaherty and other activists, 
organizers and journalists to your town for the 
Fall 2010 Community and Resistance Tour! Email 
<mailto:neworleans at leftturn.org>neworleans at leftturn.org.

Recent Reporting by Jordan Flaherty:
James Perry's Run for Mayor of New Orleans: 
<http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=680>http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=680
New Orleans' Heart is in Haiti:
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/new-orleans-heart-is-in-h_b_427108.html>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/new-orleans-heart-is-in-h_b_427108.html
Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans: 
<http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=673>http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=673
Discriminatory Housing Lockouts Amid Post-Katrina 
Rebuilding: 
<http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=617>http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=617
Homeless and Struggling in New Orleans: 
<http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=591>http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=591

Other Resources:
Louisiana Justice Institute: 
<http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org/>http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org
Justice Roars: 
<http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/>http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com
Project Transparency: 
<http://www.nolapublicrecords.org/>http://www.nolapublicrecords.org
Left Turn Magazine: <http://www.leftturn.org/>http://www.leftturn.org
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