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.”
Maybe some racist group did kill him. Nobody denies that some violently racist white people still exist.
ReplyDeleteBut 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.
ReplyDeleteEven 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.
ReplyDelete