The McCurtain Gazette-News in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, reported recently that the county sheriff, his investigator, two county commissioners, and a jail administrator discussed how to assassinate two Gazette-News reporters and spoke longingly of the days when Black people could be lynched. This took place on March 6 behind closed doors after the county board of commissioners meeting.
How did the Gazette-News know about this outrageous discussion? The newspaper's owner and editor Bruce Willingham, suspecting the county officials were continuing to meet in secret—a violation of the law—left a voice-activated recorder in the room as he was leaving the public meeting. The headline of the article in the paper reporting on this read: “County officials discuss killing, burying Gazette reporters.”1 When the Gazette-News began releasing portions of the recording itself, it sent shockwaves far beyond the county and the state of Oklahoma.
McCurtain is a rural county in the southeast corner of Oklahoma, bordering Arkansas and Texas. It's known as Little Dixie because of the white Southerners who migrated there after the Civil War.
At one point during the closed-door meeting on March 6, the talk turned to people running for local office, and there was this exchange (the text is from the transcript of the recording made and released by Gazette-News):
Commissioner Jennings: They don’t have a goddamn clue what they’re getting into. Not this day and age. I’m gonna tell you something. If it was back in the day, when that Alan Marston [a county sheriff in the 1980s] would take a damn black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell? I’d run for fucking sheriff. Yeah.
Sheriff Clardy: Well, It’s not like that no more.
Commissioner Jennings: I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.
“They’re selling postcards of the hanging,” clip from Revolution, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian
In the recording, there is also this exchange where these officials are discussing killing and burying Gazette-News reporters Bruce and Chris Willingham:
Commissioner Jennings: I know where two deep holes are here if you ever need them.
Sheriff Clardy: I’ve got an excavator…
Commissioner Jennings: Well, these are already pre-dug…. I’ve known two or three hit men, they’re very quiet guys….
Sheriff investigator Manning: Yeah?
Commissioner Jennings: And would cut no fucking mercy.
For a year, the Gazette-News reporters had endured intimidation, slander and harassment from the county because of their coverage and exposure of the sheriff's office, including the murder of a member of the Choctaw Nation2 who died in the hospital after being brutalized and shot four times with stun guns by deputies.
Decent people in the county and far beyond are outraged by the ugly racism and fascist thuggery of these officials. More than 100 people gathered outside the county courthouse in Idabel, the county seat, on April 17, demanding the sheriff and other officials resign. The editor of the Black Wall Street Times said it made him think about the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, when a white mob murdered over 300 Black people and destroyed what had been a vibrant Black community.3, 4
Republi-fascist politicians, including Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt moved to disassociate themselves from their own county-level enforcers, calling on the officials to resign. So far, only one of those on the recording has resigned, Commissioner Jennings. At the same time, the sheriff's office publicly threatened felony charges against the reporter who made the recording, claiming it was done illegally and that it was altered.5
Reporter Chris Willingham and his father, Bruce Willingham, have been advised to temporarily leave town.
April 17, 2023: Protesters confront racist McCurtain County officials who threatened lynching, beating Black people, attacks on reporters. Photo: AP
In relation to these developments, a supporter of Revcom.us in Oklahoma remarked: “Fascism is a growing threat in Oklahoma, as well as across the country. It must be fought vigorously on multiple fronts. Officials won't do anything of substance to combat the growing threat. Stitt [the governor] doesn't fundamentally disagree with these scumbags, but only distanced himself, after the fact, to save face.”
What's been brought to light in this corner of Oklahoma, and what has really jolted many people, is that this is a glimpse of what is there, just below the surface if not out there openly, in many parts of this country. Hearing about these officials—dripping with white supremacist hatred and puffed up with fascist venom—reminded me of the part in the Bob Avakian (BA) Interviews where BA brings up a routine Richard Pryor used to do in the 1970s about Nazis. BA describes Pryor talking about how they’ve got all these Nazis chained up down in the basement, and you don’t want to see them off their chains and out of the basement, because they’re going to come after you and all you hold dear. Well, like BA says in the Interviews, all these Nazis and fascists are off the chains and out of the basement now… and they have no intention of going back.
