After three terms on the city council of your small town (Westlake, Louisiana; population 4,700 or so) you just won the office of mayor with 69% of the vote. You will be the town’s first new mayor in 24 years, and you will be the first black mayor in a town that is 80% white.
Most people would view this as a cause for celebration, not a reason to commit suicide, but officials in Calcasieu Parish want us to believe that Gerald Washington killed himself on Dec. 30 outside an old elementary school with a single self-inflicted gunshot to the chest.
What???
The family doesn’t buy it either.
“Calcasieu Parish is known to be racist,” Geroski Washington, Gerald Washington’s son, said in a telephone interview. “There were lots of folks who didn’t want my father to become the mayor.”
3 comments:
Maybe some racist group did kill him. Nobody denies that some violently racist white people still exist.
But in a town that "is known to be racist" and is "80% white", it elected this black man to city council three times running, and then handed him 70% of their votes for mayor.
I was thinking he same thing too Paul. I can't say for sure racism didn't have play in the murder,but I don't think the town can be branded racist due to the possible actions of one person.
Even a few racist murderers, and a few weirdo supporters. As with many articles presented to "prove" the existence of widespread anti-black racism in today's US, this one demonstrates the opposite.
Post a Comment