Ten days into a new American era, 100 white and black citizens of this
polarized east Texas town tried their hand at the kind of racial
reconciliation heralded by the inauguration of President Obama,
gathering for a frank community talk on the long-taboo topic of race.Things didn't go so well.The black speakers at last week's meeting, led
by two conciliation specialists from the Justice Department, mostly
talked about incidents of discrimination, prejudice and unfairness they
said they routinely suffered in Paris.Their white listeners mostly glared back, their arms crossed.The
four-hour session ended with some participants screaming about the
presence of three police cars outside the meeting hall and who had
ordered them and why."We are not going to end on a note like that!"
said Carmelita Pope-Freeman, the regional director of the Justice
Department's community relations service. "I'm getting tired of it!"
Yet
the mayor of the town, which became a national focus after the Chicago
Tribune revealed several cases of alleged racial injustice in recent
years, pronounced himself optimistic.At least, he said, black and white citizens were talking to each other -- something that rarely happened before."Every
city should have a dialogue like this," said Mayor Jesse James Freelen,
whose town of 26,000 is 68% white and 22% black. "We didn't like all
the negative publicity about our town. . . . But if the end result is
that our community grows together, then it will all have been worth it."First,
the community had to vent, which was the purpose of the meeting. It was
an early stage of a mediation program that the Justice Department has
offered to other troubled towns -- in an echo of South Africa's Truth
and Reconciliation Commission -- to help close deep racial fissures."I'm
here to talk about racism. I don't see any sense in playing games,
pretending it doesn't exist," said Brenda Cherry, the African American
leader of a local civil rights group. "When you go in the schools and
see mostly black kids sitting in detention, it's racism. In court, we
get high bonds, we get longer sentences. If that's not racism, what is
it?"Jason Rogers, the youth pastor of a local black church,
reminded the audience of the monument honoring fallen Confederate
soldiers that sits on the front lawn of the county courthouse."When
I take my 5-year-old son up to the courthouse and he says, 'Daddy,
what's that?' the history I'm going to tell him is that those people
fought to keep me a slave," Rogers said, as black members of the
audience nodded in agreement. "It bothers my family that there's a
large Confederate soldier outside the courthouse. I don't see the
difference between a Confederate soldier and a Nazi soldier."Paris'
bloody racial history hung over the meeting like a toxic cloud. The
gathering was held in a hall at the Paris Fairgrounds, the precise spot
where, a century ago, thousands of white citizens gathered to cheer the
ritualized lynchings of blacks, chaining them to a flagpole or lashing
them to a scaffold before tearing them to pieces and setting them on
fire.But memories of more recent black victims also filled the
room as Paris resident Jacqueline McClelland approached the microphone. CONTINUE READING...
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