Alleged North Texas racist attacks addressed at civil rights press conference

by Staff of Dallas Weekly

Community leaders are vowing to fight against a wave of racially-sensitive attacks and confrontations having taken place over recent months in North Texas. Such actions include the discovery of flyers distributed by the Ku Klux Klan allegedly to recruit new members near the town of Forney.

"We will not tolerate the Ku Klux Klan intimidating or harassing any African Americans or minority citizens here in the Dallas area," said Claudia Fowler, chair of the Political Action committee of the Dallas NAACP. Members of the Dallas chapter of the NAACP, Dallas Commons, Texas Alliance of the Formerly Incarcerated, the New Black Panther Party and other groups, held a press conference Monday at the Old Red Courthouse in downtown Dallas to address several incidents.

Present were Ernest Walker and his wife Debbie, both who said that the phrase "No Niggers" was spray painted on the front door of their home-based ministry last October in the far southern Dallas County town of Ovilla. The Walker's believe that part of it was in retaliation for being active in the 2008 general elections, which featured Barack Obama's bid to become the first Black president.

"We think it's just a handful of people who don't believe in the American way, that they're trying to oppress our families and stop our place of worship," Ernest Walker said. Debbie said that bananas have also been thrown at their home.

Pastor Cedric Malone of The Church in Grand Prairie spoke of how his church van was defaced earlier this month with the n-word, swastikas and other obscene graphics resembling human private parts, outside his home in Bedford.

"I come here today to profess love and the love of God because I believe that with the love of God, things can change. We're going to overcome this, regardless of what they throw at us."

Ronald Wright, Director of Special Assignments for Dallas Commons, a civil right social justice organization, said that his organization is working with groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center to investigate the incidents, professing that a negative racial climate still exists in some pockets of community.

"The only thing they've changed in some places is that they've changed their sheets for suits," Wright claimed. This is not only an insult to the African American community, but to White America. All or our children, Black, White and Hispanic are fighting our wars together overseas, but they all have to come home to hate crime and racism."

Fowler said the #66 chapter of the KKK was invited to the press conference, to state their side of the flyers being distributed in Forney. They declined the invitation.

The NAACP said they're challenging the city and county of Dallas to address the issues to determine if the actions should be designated as hate crimes.