Did a White Sheriff and DA Orchestrate a Race-Based Coup in a Northern Louisiana Town?

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AlterNet / By Jordan Flaherty

Did a White Sheriff and District Attorney Orchestrate a Race-Based Coup in a Northern Louisiana Town?
African American mayor and police chief assert that they have been forced from office and arrested as part of an coup carried out by white politicians and their followers.

March 26, 2010 |


In Waterproof, a small northern Louisiana town near Natchez, Mississippi, the African American mayor and police chief assert that they have been forced from office and arrested as part of an illegal coup carried out by an alliance of white politicians and their followers. In a lawsuit filed last week, Police Chief Miles Jenkins asserts a wide-ranging conspiracy involving the area's district attorney and parish sheriff, along with several other members of the region's entrenched political power structure. These events come at a time of widespread and high-profile racist attacks against the US President and Black members of Congress nationwide, and in a state where white political corruption and violence have been and continue to be used as tools to suppress Black political representation.

Chief Miles Jenkins

About 800 people live in Waterproof, a rural community in Tensas Parish. Tensas has just over 6,000 residents, making it both the smallest parish in the state, and the parish with the state's fastest declining population. The regional schools remain mostly segregated, with nearly all the Black students attending public schools, and nearly all the white students attending private schools. With a median household income of $10,250, Waterproof is also one of the poorest communities in the US. The only jobs for Black people in town involve working for white farmers, according to Chief Jenkins. "Unless you go out of town to work," he says, "You're going to ride the white man's tractor. That's it."

Bobby Higginbotham was elected mayor of Waterproof in September of 2006. The next year, he appointed Miles Jenkins as chief of police. Jenkins, who served in the US military for 30 years and earned a master's degree in public administration from Troy University in Alabama, immediately began the work of professionalizing a small town police department that had previously been mostly inactive. "You called the Waterproof police for help before," says Chief Jenkins, "He would say, wait 'til tomorrow, it's too hot to come out today." The new mayor also sought to reform the town's financial practices, which Chief Jenkins says were in disorder and consumed by debt. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/146192/did_a_white_sheriff_and_district_attorney_orchestrate_a_race-based_coup_in_a_northern_louisiana_town