The whole meaning of what it means to be an American has been disgraced by the blatantly racist railroading of the black community in Tulia, Texas. This is god-damned serious. Racism in its crudest, most vicious form is alive and well in this country. The so-called War on Drugs is nothing but a transparent excuse for trampling the people’s civil liberties — beginning with the “niggers,” as this case referred to them.
On 23rd July, 1999, police rounded up and arrested on drug charges 40 black people from a shanty area of Tulia known locally by whites as “Niggertown.” The local newspaper reported the incident the next day with the headline “Tulia’s Streets Cleared of Garbage.” The UK Independent reports that, “police found no money, no weapons and no trace of illicit drugs of any kind at their houses. There were no fingerprints on the drugs that had been seized. The authorities subsequently failed to produce any photographs, tape-recordings or other concrete evidence that the alleged drug trades had taken place at all.” So why were the vast majority of those arrested convicted (by all-white juries), and are now serving sentences, some for up to 434 years in prison? The answer lies in a clue given by Tom Coleman, the dimwitted officer responsible for all the convictions, (whom coworkers have referred to as “a compulsive liar”). In an interview, Coleman admitted to freely using the word “nigger” because he didn’t think it was “as profane” as it used to be.
“It was a mass lynching that day,” says Randy Credico of the New York-based William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. “Taking down 50 per cent of the male black adult population like that, it’s outrageous. It’s like being accused of raping someone in Indiana in the 1930s. You didn’t do it, but it doesn’t matter because a bunch of Klansmen on the jury are going to string you up anyway.”
Look forward to
Support Jeff Blackburn in his legal fight to exonerate the Tulia 41.
the grim spectre of red death (I’m determined not to abbreviate any Doper’s name even if it kills me)—
There are 14 still imprisoned, who need to be freed, so if I were a proper '60s radical I would be shouting “Free the Tulia 14!”—but there were 41 convictions and they all need to be overturned. This includes freeing the 14 still in prison.
My family is from Swisher county, mostly around Tulia and Kress. I spent alot of time there in my childhood and still go there several times a year, so I don’t consider myself a “visitor.”
Everything I have read and heard about this case just sickens me. I used to hear occasional racial comments (mostly among the older people), but I never thought of Tulia as a backwards, racist, redneck slum. Now I’m not so sure.
Every single one of the convictions should be overturned. No physical evidence, uncorroborated stories and overall shoddy police work. It doesn’t look like even one of the convictions had any basis in fact. This makes me sick.
I’ve followed this story for the last two years, I’ve even posted a link here a year or so ago. It happened. Try visiting DRCNET.org, if I remember correctly they’ve set up a legal defense fund.
Call me cynical, but I would have to question the validity of the results. And then:
You have got to be kidding me. A case was brought against someone who looked nothing like the description and no questions were asked.
How on earth did this guy get to be a narcotics officer? How on earth did anyone beleive his bullshit story?
I don’t fucking beleive this. That’s to say, I beleive it happened, I just can’t imagine how.
I agree that all convictions should be over turned, everyone who is in prison should be set free (and it would not surprise me if some lawsuits followed) and Tom Coleman should be thrown in prison for a very long time.
I’m sorry, but I am tired of being angry about this travesty. What I am angry about is that it has been three years, there are still people in jail. and the press hasn’t reacted to this the way the way a fire reacts to gasoline.
I read about the Tulia raids over two years ago in my local weekly rag (Austin Chronicle.) It took almost a year before I saw a sidebar piece in the local daily (Austin American-Statesman) and pieces are thrown in from time to time in papers around the world. These pieces prompt a few moments of outrage, but they do nothing to speed up the process of gaining justice for the people of this town.
Will somebody please wake up the journalists? By now everybody in the free world should know what sort of shit passes for justice in Tulia. Outcry in the press usually translates into public outcry, and had this story received the coverage it deserves these people would have long been free and every official in Tulia who had anything to do with that raid would be defending themselves in their own personal civil rights trial. Yes, this is a small town in the middle of nowhere, but the lack of coverage is unconscionable.
I find it totally believable. I see shit like that all the time being done by the cops, and you know what… I don’t feel like Texas is a safe place to be critical of the police.
This case is frickin’ insane. It’s astounding that anyone’s still in jail over this. I hope they let 'em go soon, and pay them some serious restitution money to boot.
And then Tom Coleman ought to be given life without parole for this. Ditto the prosecutor who brought all these cases on the basis of nothing but Coleman’s word. They tried, and nearly got away with, taking these people’s entire lives away from them. People who abuse police powers so flagrantly should never again walk the earth as free men, IMO.
