The city of Douglas is a rural town in South Georgia which is two hours southeast of Macon, and ninety minutes northeast of Valdosta.
Douglas is the home of the re-opened Pilgrim Pride chicken processing plant, but also where Dixiecrat politics and Jim Crow culture is alive and well in which some city officials feel comfortable re-enacting lynching scenes with a noose without fear of reprecussion or consequence.
Some attempt to portray the incident(s) as a joke, but it speaks to a much larger socio-political problem in rural South Georgia in 2011--nearly fifty years after the Voting and Civil Rights Acts..
State NAACP officials traveled to the city of Douglas in Coffee County, Georgia in an effort to support the protest of alleged racist incidents involving city employees.
The State NAACP are prepared to call the Justice Department and report this as a hate crime. Additionally, local African-Americans expressed that their speaking out may cause a backlash from local Dixiecrats.
It isn't just one lone incident, but a couple of incidents which requires more scrutiny.
In September 2010 at a training exercise for Douglas City Police officers.--according to the Douglas Enterprise newspaper-- it is alleged that Rodger Goddard took a noose that was tied by another officer (said to be Bart McCulloch), held it up in the air, and told African American officer Tony Ward “This is for you.”
Officer Ward didn't see it as a joke, and was offended.
The City of Douglas Police Department Detective Rodger Goddard--who is white-- was disciplined and eventually terminated by the Douglas City Manager Terrell Jacobs in October 2011 .
However, one month later in mid-November, the Douglas City Commission, consisting of six members were deadlocked at 3-3 in regard to reinstating Goodard.
Olivia Pearson, a city commissioner who is African-American , had stated during the mid-November meeting: “My position is whoever was involved, let the investigation find that out and everybody can be dealt with. There could be additional repercussions involving others.
The mayor's vote to reinstate a police detective who was taunting a fellow officer with a noose should be inexcusable and warrant a severe discipline, but the outgoing mayor's vote showed a lack of .sensitivity in the majority-minority city of Douglas.
Johnnie Lee Roper then stated, “I have been a witness to a lynching. It was 1944. I watched it; they made all of us watch. My thing is, this is poor judgment for a police officer. It is not a pleasant sight to watch a man dangle from the end of a rope.”
Mayor Jackie Wilson, who is white, stated, “I don’t believe the remark that was made was racially motivated; I think there is racism in the minds of the people around it.”
Goodard was reassigned and rewarded with a law enforcement position within the City of Douglas Code Enforcement Department.
With Goodard back at work, is this over? Many in the Douglas' community along with members of the State NAACP--led by Edward Dubose-- says this isn't the end of this and should not be tolerated in this community in 2011.
The city of Douglas, according to the 2010 Census, is 52 percent African-American and has a growing Latino population of six percent. So this city of approximately 12,000 people has a minority population of close to 60 percent.
The behavior of the police officer shouldn't be tolerated and unfortunately the Dixiecrat culture which had a stronghold over many rural southern communities need to be challenged.
For the outgoing mayor to bring back Goodard and summarily dismiss the noose incident is a bad sign, but it should be a wake up call for everybody-- including members of the African-American and Latino communities in Douglas and Coffee County.
The ballot box is one way of providing a remedy for this type of behavior. The city commissioners who voted to support Goodard and this behavior should be held accountable.
Goodard had a history of reprimands and City Attorney Jerome Adams started the November hearing and outlined Goddard’s past work history which included being “on probation” for a separate incident and provided a foundation for him to be fired.
Will James Dennis, the new Douglas mayor, follow in the same Dixiecrat footsteps of his predecessor, Jackie Wilson?
Dennis won on November 8th mayoral election over longtime City Commissioner Johnny Lee Roper by 534 votes in a city that has a majority-minority population.
According to the Coffee County Elections Office, there were 2,470 votes cast for mayor. Overall, there are 5,139 active registered voters in the City of Douglas.
Overall, Dennis won with 1,491 votes to Roper's 957.
Dixiecrat politics is still alive and well in rural south Georgia, but every election cycle, African-Americans and open-minded progressive whites have an opportunity to do something about it at the ballot box-- starting in 2012.
