Here is what we did.

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

"Vidor was known as a "sundown town," where African Americans are not allowed after sunset. It was long considered a haven for the Ku Klux Klan. In 1993, after the U.S. federal government attempted to bring African Americans into Vidor's public housing, the Klan from Cleveland Texas held a march in the community. The city of Vidor churches banded together and made them leave."
Vidor, Texas - Wikipedia

 

[Borillar]

Made who leave? The KKK or the Blacks?

 

[emilynghiem]

Dear Bootney Lee Farnsworth
From what I read about the community of Vidor, they made every effort to represent their REAL community
after the Byrd dragging death and criminal proceedings painted them in such a negative, racist light.

The people there banded together for outreach to HEAL the wounds and DEMONSTRATE
that their community could not simply be "branded" collectively by the actions of the men responsible.

Do you think it is fair to the rest of the community that is NOT racist
to condemn their ENTIRE town and image as if that's how they are?

The people of Vidor did NOT want to be remembered or thought of this way.
That's NOT what defines their community which is VERY DIVERSE.

I tried to find the article where the community members were
doing outreach trying to defend their image in the media from
blaming everyone for being racist when their community is bigger than that.

Yes, there is history of racist segregation, but that's not everyone.
It's not fair to the rest of the community.

About - The Byrd Foundation

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Meanwhile blacks at colleges around the Country are demanding segregated dorms and study spaces.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

"we"?

You were involved?

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

Dear Bootney Lee Farnsworth
From what I read about the community of Vidor, they made every effort to represent their REAL community
after the Byrd dragging death and criminal proceedings painted them in such a negative, racist light.

The people there banded together for outreach to HEAL the wounds and DEMONSTRATE
that their community could not simply be "branded" collectively by the actions of the men responsible.

Do you think it is fair to the rest of the community that is NOT racist
to condemn their ENTIRE town and image as if that's how they are?

The people of Vidor did NOT want to be remembered or thought of this way.
That's NOT what defines their community which is VERY DIVERSE.

I tried to find the article where the community members were
doing outreach trying to defend their image in the media from
blaming everyone for being racist when their community is bigger than that.

Yes, there is history of racist segregation, but that's not everyone.
It's not fair to the rest of the community.

About - The Byrd Foundation

We kicked the fucking klan out several years before those Jasper racist, now-dead, executed motherfuckers murdered killed James Byrd. (1993 v. 1998) Jasper is 50 to 60 miles to the north, but I assume that the same fucking klan influence caused those now-dead, executed motherfuckers to be the murdering pieces of shit they became (may they NOT rest in peace).

To this day, (26 years later) the Vidor community still has to defend its image from the fucking klan stigma.

That IMPORTED klan stigma was the most aggravating thing about being from Vidor (or the Vidor area), and it has hung over Vidor since the time my great great grandmother was around (she died in 1933). The town remained a "sundown town" despite the entire community trying to work against it for the better part of a century. My grandmother was one of the first students to graduate from the first Vidor school (it was one school of K-12 before Vidor became an independent school district). She would tell me about community efforts to remove the outside influence of the fucking clan when she was young . My mother graduated from Vidor High School in 1964, and the community had been trying to desegregate for decades prior.

My mother and father purchased my great great grandmother's plot of land from my great aunt, and we lived in the same rural community in the piney woods north of the incorporated city limits of Vidor, near hundreds of my relatives until 1987, when my family moved away for my father's work. But, as a Vidor Independent School District student, I remember going to track meets and band competitions in the area where we Vidor students would go out of our way to speak to and interact with black kids from other schools from Beaumont and the surrounding area. It was almost like we all felt the need to overcompensate for the fucking klan's fake bullshit outside influence. Many in the community tried our best to remove the stigma and encourage desegregation, but those efforts would get fucked up by the fucking klan constantly demonstrating, marching, and driving around in their stupid klan school bus painted red and black, hanging their klan flags and the rebel battle flag out the windows along side the Texas and U.S. flags (as if they belong together).

Vidor was one of the fucking klan's last pieces of segregation, and they intended to keep it at all costs. This is why I KNOW that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was nowhere NEAR the end of the struggle for equality for black folks. It took us until 1993 (almost 30 fucking years) to finally get Vidor desegregated.


It's important to understand the make-up of "Vidor" which is way more than just the incorporated city limits. "Vidor" also includes unincorporated communities of Rose City and my ancestral community of Pine Forest. See Google Maps satalite image from earlier this year:

In fact, the Vidor Independent School District covers the largest area of any in Texas.

All the efforts to end their influence had fallen short because the separate, individual communities that make up "Vidor" are so spread out, disorganized, separated by large tracks of uninhabited pinewood forests, and the big one, young people often moved away for college and job opportunities instead of staying and continuing to fight the influence.

Hundreds of my cousins and I--all college aged or early 30s who had grown up in Pine Forest--decided that we would not leave the problem to the next generation, like so many had before. It wasn't just the churches who organized. We came back in 1993 to stop the fucking klan. One of my cousins came all the way from California.

WE did it.

Where government was its usual, ineffective self, THE PEOPLE made the change.

So, no, it is NOT fair to the Vidor community to be labeled as racists. It was the 180 opposite.

It's another example of the actions of a few assholes fucking up everything up for everybody else. And GOVERNMENT being par for the course.


.

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

Here is more about Vidor's fight to keep out the klan outsiders after we kicked them out in 1993:

FindLaw's United States Fifth Circuit case and opinions.

The klan was still trying to intimidate, by participating in the "Adopt a Highway" program, where a section of road would contain signs that it was adopted by the KKK.

The public housing project in Vidor is under a continuing order requiring desegregation of the project.   See Young v. Pierce, 685 F.Supp. 986 (E.D.Tex.1988).   The summary judgment record shows that efforts to desegregate the housing project have encountered strong opposition from the Klan.   Residents of the housing project and Vidor public officials have reported numerous threats and acts of intimidation by the Klan.   Black residents who moved into the project received harassing phone calls and persons tried to break into their apartment.   The mayor of Vidor reported receiving a warning that the Klan intended to hang her in “black effigy.”   In a state court proceeding against the Klan, a witness testified that a Klan member declared at a rally that “[t]here's going to be blood in the streets of Vidor.”   As a result of the attempts by the Klan to deter desegregation of the project, a Texas district court deemed it necessary to enter an injunction against the Klan prohibiting the Klan from intimidating residents, from demonstrating at the project entrance and from impeding access to or egress from the project.   Hale v. Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, No. 93-074143 (261st Dist.Ct., Travis County, Tex., Feb. 3, 1994).

On January 18, 1994, before taking any action on the Klan's application to participate in the Program, the State filed suit in federal district court seeking a declaratory judgment that rejection of the Klan's application to adopt two miles of highway near the Vidor housing project would not violate the First Amendment.   The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the State, and the Klan appeals.

DISCUSSION

We hold that the State will not violate the First Amendment by rejecting the Klan's application to adopt a portion of highway near the housing project in Vidor, Texas.   Assuming that the Klan's participation in the Program would constitute speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment,1 the Program is a nonpublic forum and the Klan's exclusion from the Program is reasonable and viewpoint-neutral.

The public housing project in Vidor is under a continuing order requiring desegregation of the project.   See Young v. Pierce, 685 F.Supp. 986 (E.D.Tex.1988).   The summary judgment record shows that efforts to desegregate the housing project have encountered strong opposition from the Klan.   Residents of the housing project and Vidor public officials have reported numerous threats and acts of intimidation by the Klan.   Black residents who moved into the project received harassing phone calls and persons tried to break into their apartment.   The mayor of Vidor reported receiving a warning that the Klan intended to hang her in “black effigy.”   In a state court proceeding against the Klan, a witness testified that a Klan member declared at a rally that “[t]here's going to be blood in the streets of Vidor.”   As a result of the attempts by the Klan to deter desegregation of the project, a Texas district court deemed it necessary to enter an injunction against the Klan prohibiting the Klan from intimidating residents, from demonstrating at the project entrance and from impeding access to or egress from the project.   Hale v. Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, No. 93-074143 (261st Dist.Ct., Travis County, Tex., Feb. 3, 1994).

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

I remember this klan march in 1985:

I was a teen when that happened. They were marching right up main street (which is highway 105).

There was another one where the klan showed up in their stupid school bus and demonstrated when some Pakistani immigrants were selling rugs and other items/wares on the corner of 105 and I-10. They were CLEARLY trying to intimidate the Pakistani immigrants, and it worked. I watched those immigrants pack their shit like refugees fleeing a storm. It happened so fast that nobody had time to do anything about it, but the owners of the Phillips 66 across the street ALLOWED THE FUCKERS TO DEMONSTRATE ON THEIR PROPERTY. I don't know who owned the Phillips station, but it was likely another outsider asshole trying to keep Vidor segregated.

I have, to this day, never had such an overwhelming desire to commit arson.

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

This is an old entry by my great grandmother in her memoirs and personal history about her great grandfather (my great great great grandfather), who settled the "Vidor" area in the late 1860s (written in the 1960s or 70s). (I made a couple notations in blue)

_____________________________
The Williamson Settlement (which is Pine Forest, north of the City of Vidor on highway 105) began in 1867 when Louisiana native, William Williamson (August 15, 1829-November 27, 1900) and his wife Joissine Desmarais (March 26, 1838-March 5, 1912) bought homestead rights and a log house in Orange, County, Texas. They later legally identified this 160-acre tract of land as the William Williamson Survey.

After the close of the Civil War, at age 36, William moved his family by wagon from Louisiana to the Northern most part of Orange County in Southeast Texas, just south of the Jasper County line near the present State Highway 105. This little community, nestled in the pine trees of upper north Orange County and extreme lower south Jasper County, subsequently became known as the Williamson Settlement (officially called Pine Forest at the southern end of the survey).
________________________

This area is fairly removed from the Vidor City Limits as you can see in the satellite photo posted above, and would not otherwise be considered "Vidor" but the fucking klan policed the area, even that far north of Vidor, and make sure no non-whites could move in and the schools remained segregated until 1993. Granted, it wasn't hard to keep non-whites from moving to that area, because nobody other than the descendants of Williamson would have reason to move there. We're all white.


This is why I believe it us unfair to label and blame poor white folks for nonsense conducted by seemingly powerful and well-financed outsiders in the KKK. The segregation continued long after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and it was not our doing.

We got roped into that nonsense and our community is more than 10 miles north of Vidor.

.