COLONY, Ala. – Colony’s mayor and town council, the county’s only currently-serving black elected officials, have a distinct perspective on recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd, the protests and riots that followed and life in Cullman County. The Tribune sat down with Mayor Donnis Leeth and council members Ethel Alexander and Samuel Ashford recently to talk about their thoughts, feelings and fears.
Recounting the death of George Floyd
Alexander talked about the first time she saw the video showing former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd:
“When I looked at (Chauvin’s) face on TV- and I’m screaming at the TV, ‘Get off! Stop it! Stop!’ I’m at home in Alabama and I’m screaming at the TV, ‘Leave him alone! Get up, he can’t breathe!’
“It’s showing he’s talking at the time I’m looking, and it was like the Spirit of God said, ‘Look at his face, look at his eyes.’ The things that I seen in that man’s eyes, I started crying because I knew; his eyes are saying, ‘I’m killing him. I’m going to kill him.’ And that’s what he did. I didn’t know how many minutes went by and all of that, but I know when that guy said, ‘Mama,’ I could hear my boys in my mind saying, ‘Mama,’ because they call me ‘Mama.’ It was like they’re saying ‘Mama’ to me.
“And I’m thinking you could have picked me up off the floor, then, because I’m bawling like a baby. Why? Why? Why did you do that to him? What did he do? Then when it comes out he was already handcuffed- I believe he was already in a police car; I don’t how he got on the ground- but however, the thing is, did it take all that for $20, a counterfeit 20-dollar bill that he did not make? Senseless. It was horrible.”
About the recent protests and riots around the country
Ashford said, “I’m all about a peaceful protest, but this, what they do, you know, the people that want to do a peaceful demonstration, then you’ve got the thugs on the other side. They implement the dirty work, you know; they throw the first brick . . . They take it from what it’s really supposed to be about: people trying to get something done, instead of creating more problems than what it is.
“I done been around a long time, from Chicago to Timbuktu, and it’s the same thing. You know, it starts off peaceful, supposedly, and then you get the other fellows. They come in and they turn it out to a brawl, and more people get hurt; innocent people get hurt. The store owners ain’t did nothing to nobody; they get hurt. They know when they left them closed up, a building full of stuff; come back and there ain’t no windows and nothing there. And insurance don’t want to give you what it’s really worth, you know, and everybody take a loss, which could have been prevented if they had a peaceful sit-down instead of outrageousness.”
For Ashford, the police’s treatment of Floyd was clearly wrong, but he said the evil act of one person or group does not justify more evil.
Said Ashford, “They ain’t right; ain’t nothing right. Two wrongs don’t make no right. You know what I mean?”
For Ashford, communication between the opposing sides is the key to making positive change; he said, “You’ve got to sit there and talk, not fight.”
Living with fear
While Alexander agreed on the value of nonviolent movements, she expressed frustration with the notion of simply talking, saying, “Because we’ve been talking for 400 years. We’ve been in this country for 401 years, and I remember- and I know you do; I grew up in the 60s- and I (remember) very well the inhumane treatment that has been dealt to my people, to black people, because I remember my father- he’s from Alabama- and he had told stories about him seeing a lynching down in McKenzie, Alabama. And my mother, she went there to become a school teacher in McKenzie, Alabama. But when he got out of the service, they married and went north to have their family. That’s why I’m a northerner, because they were fearful to raise children in a place where it would not be safe for their children.
“Also, even though he spent the years that he did, and did get wounded in World War II, when he came back to Alabama, he was not able to participate, I mean go to restaurants, you know they still had the ‘back of the bus’ thing going on. He was a second-class citizen, even though he put his life on the line. Not just him: my father, my grandfather and my uncles all went to World War II.
“We fought wars in this country, been in this country. I’m a genealogist; I’ve traced my relatives back at least 250 years that I can actually pinpoint. And in those years, all the way up to 1865, they were enslaved, and they had received a lot of mistreatment.
“And then, after ‘65, we still didn’t do any better. There was lynchings going on, there was a lot of discrimination, a lot of racism. And then, when I grew up to be a young woman, I didn’t see that. And then, as my kids came, it was back again: the lynchings, the strange way of policing black communities. It’s unreal.
“I have four sons, and I worry when I get a call at 3 o’clock in the morning. You know, will I see them killed and no one cares?
“And what’s really scary: just this year, in 2020, we have seen nationally three or four deaths that are horrific, where children have been killed or young adults have been killed for just sleeping, jogging, driving a car. It’s just been a very horrific time for me, and I just wish our country could just, OK, let’s just deal with this situation, thinking that we as a people are- that we terrorize you or you be threatened. I’m not a fearful person, but it’s not in the cards that that could not happen to me, you know.”
Aftermath of the death of George Floyd
Alexander continued, “So what has happened now, I think, is that this murder of George Floyd was, I think, the straw that broke the camel’s back. And now, it’s all over the world. They’re seeing America the way it sees it, and that’s the way it is. And now, we’re going to have to build our confidence among our communities, among our standing in the world. How can we go to a country that we’re trying to better, and tell them how to treat their people, and we’re putting babies in cages on the border, we’re killing black men in the street or a young black woman in the bed sleeping- ‘Oh, I’m sorry; I went into the wrong house,’ you know, and she received eight bullets.”
A “modern-day lynching”
“This here is wearing on me, because I have a love for people,” said Alexander. “If it was a white young woman or a white young man, I just would not want to see anyone have that happen. And to see a lynching on TV in the 21st century, I’m just sick. (Referring to the death of Floyd) It’s a modern form of lynching to me, because I study black history, and I even went to the lynching museum in Montgomery- which I think that every American, every school, everybody needs to go to Montgomery to see this, because this is one of our heaviest sins in this country, and to learn about the lynching.
“What was lynching? You know, it was a thing to put fear in black people so they, so called, ‘stay in their place.’ And what is our place? The place is ‘don’t ask questions.’ We just want to keep that fear.
“This is a tremendous time. I’ve been through the 60s, and I went through the 80s with the drugs in the large cities- because I am from a large city. And now, seeing this, where it’s just in every city, every city. I’m just amazed. I’m from Tacoma, Washington, and the young man they showed: he was killed and a police officer put a knee on his neck. He died. Why? Why? It’s hard for me. It’s just a hard situation for me, just hard.”
Leeth began by recounting his childhood in Colony: “I was raised in this area in Cullman County, went to Hanceville High School in 1967- got integrated first in ‘64; I didn’t go till ‘67. Went to Hanceville, didn’t have a problem. Somebody might have called us the N-word, but that was it, you know. You get in a little fight, and it’s all over. Wasn’t nobody taking up sides, the police force, the principals, or no one like that. You get in a little fight and it’s over. They’d say, ‘It’s over. Don’t do it again.’
“My grandparents raised me. They said, ‘You go to school to learn. You didn’t go to school to fight, act up in school.’
“Now, about the blacks getting killed and stuff like this, it’s a shame, a very shame to see someone get killed like that, a knee on his neck, a couple more of his police buddies just standing there watching. That’s bad. That’s terrible.
“I’m going to say this: when people get on a knee, I think they’re fixing to pray. But this guy, he did pray, now. He prayed to kill George Floyd . . . You know, you’re praying to yourself, ‘I want to kill this N;’ that’s what he did. They can’t turn that no other way but murder.
“This guy that killed George Floyd, he should go to prison, be in there with all the bad inmates. Then you’ll see how bad he is. But that ain’t going to happen, because they’re going to put him somewhere like in lockdown, by himself. But still, they can get to him.
“The thing is, stop that before it gets bad. It’s getting bad, getting worse. Four hundred years; I think it’s 400 years in about six days it’s been slavery. And now, it’s turning back to torture. Really, he tortured that man. ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’ Then he talk about his mother; he still didn’t stop. They still didn’t intervene. That is murder, any way you want to look at it.”
Leeth expressed frustration at the amount of money law enforcement associations and police unions will spend to defend officers like Chauvin, and the predominantly- or all-white juries whooften hear cases against police officers, as well as the unwritten “blue code” that often prevents law enforcement officers from exposing wrongful actions of other officers.
Said Leeth, “The law ain’t like that. You’re supposed to tell somebody, grab that guy by the back of his neck- the cop doing it or the sheriff doing it- pull him off, handcuff him, put him in the car; ‘Now you’re arrested.’”
A challenge to elected officials and voters
Alexander laid at least part of the blame for the current atmosphere of unrest on the administration of President Donald Trump, saying, “This has happened; this man was killed- nationally known- we all know it was murder. This is the point where your politicians, like you were saying, and they’re going to have to say something. It’s going to fall- starts at the head. Now, somebody put this man in office and he’s up there. He cannot soothe the country; he will not come out to even make sense of what’s going on. It’s because maybe he doesn’t know how to make sense of what’s going on.
“And so, here you have a group of people: a man, some congressmen- Republican congressmen- that will not get on TV and say, ‘This was brutal.’ They don’t want to talk about it. There was two Republican congresspeople that were able to say they were offended. What is it about discussing the anti-lynching bill? What is it that you have to talk about? What is that? Why can’t that just be unanimous? It can’t be unanimous because of the Republicans that won’t agree. And I’m thinking, at this point, everybody should agree.
“This country is in a very bad place in history. It’s not going to bring George back; it’s not going to bring the young lady- Breona Taylor- and the young man (Ahmaud Arbery) that was killed by the three white men that thought he was some criminal. They’re not coming back, but we’re here. We have to live here. What does it take for us to say, ‘Okay, time out?’
“This has been going on- Emmett Till died in 1951, I think it was, beat, lynched, everything. OK, that was scary when we seen his picture in the Jet magazine. Was that enough? Was that not enough? But it wasn’t enough. Is George Floyd going to be enough? This is a scary time. When we have people and powers that be that can’t come to the realization that black people are not going backwards, we’re not ignorant, and we do have elements just like any other group of people have- people doing wrong. But that don’t give anybody the power to just go up and just shoot you, and say, ‘Oh, I thought you had a gun,’ and all you had was a water gun. Twelve-year-old boy: water gun. (Tamir Rice, who actually had an airsoft pistol, still considered a toy) Then we just walk away from it.
“Black people are so desensitized to murder, because we’ve seen it for so long. Where do we go? I mean, the question is ‘Why?’ I’m reaching out to some of my Republican friends to ask why. ‘Why would you put this man in office or want to put him back when he won’t address our issues?’
“It’s OK to be Republican; I don’t mind that. You know, that’s OK. We’re all Americans before you’re that, before you’re independent, before you’re a Democrat. You’re American. I’m an American. I’ve been here, I know, at least 300 years- my bloodline.
“So what does it take? Because I don’t see any other nationality receiving that abuse. And when I see those children put in cages, that just brought those stories I’ve heard about African Americans: their children could be just taken away and sold down to Mississippi, taken away and sold to South Carolina. They sold slaves here from the Colony. Where does it end?
“We have to be truthful about our history so we can get along or get on and make this country great, for real make it great. It will not be great by saying, ‘Make it great again.’ That’s just words. We have to put these things into action.”
In a county dominated by Republicans, Colony’s officials are open about their commitment to the Democratic Party, as well as their dissatisfaction with Trump (and more him, specifically, than his party or administration). They said they could understand a Republican being unable to vote for Joe Biden, but requested that voters consider writing in another name besides Trump. Alexander suggested “Mickey Mouse.”
Do you feel safe living in Cullman County and going to the city of Cullman?
Leeth said, “I feel safe,” and later added, “I was born and raised here, joined the military, stayed (away in the service) 21 years. But I’ve been some places way more prejudiced than Cullman is. Cullman’s like a little underdog to places I’ve been in, in the United States, prejudiced.
“Cullman is a place I would raise my kids. I did raise them here. I would raise them in Cullman, because I’ve been places where if you was black or in a minority, you couldn’t talk like this, because they wouldn’t let you talk; ‘You be quiet. Nobody wants to know what you got to say.’ But here in Cullman, you can talk; you can talk. You can talk to the news people, you can talk to the sheriff, the other people and all that stuff. They might be prejudiced, but you can talk to them, and nine times out of 10, when I go talk to somebody, I get results.”
According to Leeth, speaking to anyone with respect gets better results than making demands.
Alexander responded, “I do feel safe going to Cullman. I feel safe living in the Colony. I do know that Cullman has a terrible, terrible history.”
Alexander related the story of one of her sons who suffers from mental illness and has been known to call the sheriff’s office during the night in fear. According to Alexander, CCSO deputies have always treated him and her with courtesy and respect.
Said Alexander, “My experience of today, dealing with Cullman Sheriff (Matt) Gentry, the county police have been positive.”
She added that she has encountered occasional rude treatment while shopping in Cullman, but said, “The police here, I’m going to give them a good grade from me, my personal experience.”
Ashford shared, “I was born and raised in Chicago, you know, and if you can make it in Chicago, you can make it anywhere. Every job I done had in Alabama, in Cullman, I was the only black person. They respected me, because I respected them and I know my business. When I started working at Terri Pines Country Club, I went in as a sous chef. In three weeks, I was executive chef because I knew more than the white guy. He graduated with a 2.0 across the board; I graduated with a 4.0 across the board. Things he bought from Sysco, I made. You know, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. In order to get respect, you have to give it.”
Ashford, who admitted to having past run-ins with the law in Cullman County, said that law enforcement officers treated him well, even when he was on their bad side. He also added that, in those situations, he made a point not to provoke the officers who were doing their jobs.
Said Ashford, “I learned a long time ago: you’re going to jail. Don’t take no whoopin’ along with it!”
Alexander concluded, “Most policemen are nice, most of them, I think. It’s just that there’s a group that just don’t want change. They’ve been here for 400 years; they’re the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-great grandchildren of somebody that has instilled that brutality in them.
“The majority of the policemen I know- I’m talking about white police officers because that’s what we’re dealing with- but they’re pretty good. But you have an element that’s making everybody look bad. I think that that element needs to be out. They need to go, because if they don’t, all of us (and) all the good policemen are going to be in harm’s way.”
The final word
For a solution, Leeth offered, “Only way we can stop this junk from going on to the minority people, you got to register to vote and start from the White House down; if it’s the president, the governors of the states, the council members, the mayors, the sheriff, the police department . . . You go vote. You get them out of there.”
Alexander: “I wish, I hope and pray that we can develop a system that, if America really wants to be great again, it’s not about money, stocks and all of this; it’s about poor people, it’s about feeding our people, it’s about a lot of things that are hurting. Folks don’t make the money to be able to live decently; they got to work three jobs, four jobs to try to pay $800 a month rent. It’s ridiculous. Everything is way out of whack, and we’re sitting here, ‘Well, we’re going to pray,’ and that’s all we can do is really pray.
“The Lord let me know we can’t change the heart of man: ‘I’m the only one that can change the heart of man.’ You can put a law- every law- on the book, but if their heart’s going to be changed, it has to be done by God. But policies and things can come in to make those that don’t want to do right, do right. So that’s where we’re at, now.”
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