BRATTLEBORO — The recent emergence of a group of Brattleboro Union High School students calling themselves the Nigger Hanging Redneck Association has brought longstanding racial tensions to the surface of a community struggling to understand how to respond appropriately and completely to such overt expressions of hate.
Amid community efforts to come together and roundly condemn racial hatred - and the assertions of some citizens of color that official responses to racist tensions from the school and the police have been insufficient - racial tensions have spilled beyond the halls of the school into the community at large.
A 17-year-old Guilford youth, named in court documents as a member of the NHRA, faces criminal charges as an adult for a June 18 confrontation wherein he allegedly threatened a group of minors with a gun.
A bicyclist discovered plywood signs spray-painted with racial epithets near nine plastic milk jugs filled with urine on a remote dirt road in Vernon.
And Curtiss Reed Jr., executive director of the ALANA Community Organization, said that the NHRA has “put the word out twice,” challenging students of color through the rumor mill to meet at specified places and times to fight.
“We're trying to avert an all-out war,” said Reed, whose organization consults on issues of diversity training and awareness, and advocates for citizens of color in discrimination issues.
Uncovering the racism
According to David V. Dunn, Brattleboro representative and chair of BUHS District #6 School Board, three students identified as the ringleaders of the NHRA have been disciplined, and the district is cooperating fully with the Brattleboro Police Department in a criminal investigation.
“It was actually a passing comment that occurred off school grounds,” that, once reported to a teacher, triggered an investigation into the existence of the NHRA, Dunn said.
The school learned the NHRA acronym had been seen "on a notebook, on myspace.com, on Facebook, on sneakers, and even on a student's knuckles,” BUHS Principal James T. Day later told the school community.
Because the students identified themselves as belonging to the NHRA on the social networking Web sites Facebook and My Space, the school district carefully weighed legal considerations involving first-amendment rights, which “compounded difficulty in the investigation,” Dunn observed.
While early reports of the issue counted as many as 40 students affiliated with the NHRA, Dunn said the school's investigation yielded students associated on the social networking sites as “friends” who clearly had no knowledge of the NHRA.
Reed said ALANA has identified what the organization considers a core group of “seven or eight” students who have actively associated themselves with NHRA.
When pressed, “some students who said they were followers” didn't know what the acronym stood for, said Dunn, who deferred comment about the nature of the punishments to Day. Disciplinary procedures began “almost immediately after the administration became aware of the students' activities,” he confirmed.
On June 10, Day, who did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, spoke to the BUHS community via the school's television system. His message was broadcast over one of Brattleboro Community Television's cable access channels, and the school sent the text to parents two days later.
“Can people harbor these feelings in their hearts?” Day asked. “Yes, that certainly is an individual freedom in this country. Can young people say they are members of the NHRA? Yes, First Amendment rights would let them do that.”
“Can people post those symbols and use the N word in their speech?” the principal continued. “No. You can't use speech and other symbols that are so offensive to people that it creates a hostile environment for anyone in a school, classroom, and in other segments of our society.”
'Minimizing' the situation?
Noting that some students “are trying to distance themselves from [the NHRA acronym] even as I speak,” Day reminded students to keep an open mind even toward the perpetrators of the racist expression. “Students are young and are entitled to make mistakes,” he said.
In a cover letter to parents, Day insisted the school did not attempt to withhold information. A “thorough” investigation took a few days, the principal explained.
“From the board's perspective, we were advised by the administration and supported the administration. The administration acted quickly,” Dunn said in praising Day's handling of the situation.
Both Reed and his colleague, ALANA Social Justice Advocate Shela Linton, deeply criticized Day's response, each separately calling the principal's attitude “minimizing.”
“For Mr. Day to say 'First Amendment,' 'freedom of speech,' 'kids make mistakes,' when [the NHRA was] actively cultivating individuals and creating Web sites - that's not a mistake, it's very well-crafted ignorance, in my opinion,” Linton said.
“Everyone is entitled to due process,” Dunn said, noting that two of the three NHRA members underwent a restorative justice program, which provides an offender with an alternative to the criminal justice system by emphasizing community restitution and engagement with the victims of the perpetrator's offense.
“I am not sure what happened to the third student,” Dunn said.
“I do not know, nor should the board know, what specific discipline was given, only that the discipline given was within the policy and procedures in place,” the school board chair added. “This is done because of the possibility of an appeal by the student(s) would require an objective board who would hear all the facts at once.”
Reed particularly took issue with some of the school's disciplinary choices, including offering the NHRA members the restorative justice option. The confidential nature of the program protected the perpetrators at the expense of providing information to the victims, he said, and also from a punishment that reflected the seriousness of the civil rights violations involved.
“We know one 18-year-old involved whose name should be made public,” Reed said. “Every parent who has called [ALANA] has said, 'This is unacceptable.' This is a hate crime. He should be behind bars.”
School resistant to race issues?
Reed described a pattern of chronic racial tension in the community where white youths harass their peers in the minority community, taking care to do so alone, in the dark, or in the presence of like-minded adults.
“Do that enough times, and the target gets fed up and lashes out, and 90 percent of the time, the target gets caught,” Reed said.
At a June 26 community meeting, a “circle of understanding” sponsored by the high school and moderated by two faculty members, Junie Pereira and Mike Szostak, a number of parents of past and current BUHS students of color spoke about overt racism that they described as endemic in the school community. (See Voices, pages 16–17.)
“One of the things that's being said is this keeps cropping up every couple of years,” said Ricky Davidson, program director of the Boys & Girls Club at 17 Flat St. “For the young woman who was threatened with being lynched by a bunch of white boys less than a year ago, it wasn't a couple of years.”
“This is happening all the time in our community,” Davidson said. “That can be missed really quickly if people aren't paying attention. Things that are being said and done, and the violent acts, aren't new.”
Reed charges that the school district is engaged in “litigation avoidance strategy” by complying with the letter of civil rights laws completely out of the context of protecting the educational needs and safety of students of color.
The ALANA director strongly believes in the merits of in-service training to school personnel to equip them to handle racial issues before they come to a head, and he claims the district's policy makes such training optional.
“As long as it's negotiable, people can negotiate not to do it,” Reed said.
“I replay in my head six, seven years of conversations about the need to have the kind of training that a dozen people in this room spoke to tonight, and how I could have been more effective in communicating that,” Reed said at the June 26 circle of understanding.
In the final moments of that public meeting, Superintendent of Schools Ron Stahley went head to head with Reed over the issue of staff training.
Stahley accused Reed of “misrepresenting the idea that it's up to individual staff to get trained - that's not the case.”
The superintendent spoke of “our commitment for continuing, ongoing training - we do an awful lot in this district for all staff, pre-K to 12, anti-harassment, anti-bullying,” said Stahley. “Right now we're looking at expanding those opportunities."
Stahley did not return phone calls seeking clarification on the school's training policies.
Racial confrontation
A number of people at the circle of understanding pointed out that the school's problems are the community's problems, and vice-versa.
Racial confrontations on the streets of Brattleboro provide some harrowing examples of that premise, with Davidson describing the simmering effect of the racist acts on “the majority of the kids of color in the community” who come into the Boys & Girls Club.
“A large number of kids of color were in my building mad as hell, and I don't blame them, but they were ready to do things that none of them normally would have done,” Davidson said. “These are kids who are really great, outstanding members of our community who go out of their way to help people every day. And they were ready to commit violence.”
Reed said ALANA has received “multiple reports” of incidents in the Brattleboro area where young people of color have recently faced “the threat of physical violence mixed with racial epithets.”
One mother reported that her young son was threatened in a restaurant by members of the NHRA in her presence. “This group is targeting middle-school age kids and smaller,” she said.
And Reed and Linton have found themselves continually advising young people of color to avoid being pressured into violent confrontations and to report incidents of harassment or violence to the police, despite the perception among many youth of color that the police aren't sympathetic to their concerns.
Reed said at least three parents have contacted ALANA about the incidents, claiming they have tried to report incidents to the police but have been discouraged from doing so.
Reed says the tension “begs the question” of what sort of training in racial sensitivity and diversity is required of police officers.
Despite the tension, Brattleboro Police Chief Eugene Wrinn said his department has been working with other county law enforcement agencies, including the sheriff's department, the Vermont State Police, and the Vernon Police Department, to actively investigate all leads relating to the NHRA incidents.
Wrinn underscored the need for citizens to report any incidents to the police directly and immediately.
“It's nice when people report things secondhand,” Wrinn said, “and we'll work hand in hand with ALANA. But it's so much more efficient and speedy [when such events are] reported immediately.”
Not doing so, Wrinn said, “muddies the waters” and “slows response time.”
Hate crime arrest
Wrinn pointed out that a number of youths did just that in reporting an incident at the Brattleboro Transportation Center immediately to Officer Chad Emery, which he said led to law enforcement swiftly charging Larry C. Pratt Jr., 17, of 3634 Bonnyvale Rd., Guilford.
According to affidavits filed by Emery and Lieutenant Jeremy Evans, as Pratt and three passengers drove down Flat Street in Pratt's mother's yellow Jeep, they shouted out to youths on the street, calling them “niggers” and threatening to shoot Betty Tinkham, 18, in the face.
Pratt allegedly drove to the top of the parking garage and exchanged words with the youths below, and one 16-year-old intercepted the Jeep at the third level and spit on the vehicle's window.
At that point, Pratt allegedly drew a wooden-handled .410-gauge shotgun resting between the two front seats and showed it to the 16-year-old before driving away.
Pratt, who in the course of the police investigation admitted to fabricating the names of passengers and assigning blame to the fictitious friends, was arraigned June 20 and pleaded innocent to stalking with a deadly weapon, disorderly conduct, giving false information to a police officer, and reckless endangerment.
A 17-year-old passenger, wanting to disassociate himself from the incident, went to the police with his father and identified Pratt.
Because Pratt's conduct was “maliciously motivated by the victim's actual or perceived race or color,” Vermont's hate-motivated crimes statute adds both jail time and fines to the underlying charges.
Windham District Court Presiding Judge Karen R. Carroll released Pratt on personal recognizance into the custody of his mother, Susan Mayotte. Other than travel to the courthouse, meeting with his attorney, Margot L. Stone, or medical appointments, Pratt must remain at his Guilford home or on adjoining property.
Pratt will spend several months in Guilford, as the first step in his judicial journey is set to take place Monday, Sept. 8. He will face a status conference not only for the four charges relating to the parking garage incident but also for an earlier charge of disorderly conduct relating to a seven-person fight near the Whetstone Brook footbridge March 14.
In the meantime, Pratt is prohibited from any interactions “in person, in writing, by telephone, by e-mail or through a third person” with Tinkham and the four other minors involved in the parking garage incident.
He must not be charged with or have probable cause found for any new offenses while the case is open, nor may he “buy, have, or use any firearms or dangerous/deadly weapons,” according to his Condition of Release.
Windham County State's Attorney Tracy K. Shriver explained that when the state requests conditions on release, they take into account “not only a criminal record and the failure to appear, but the nature of the charges.”
If convicted, Pratt faces a maximum sentence of nine years in jail, a maximum of $9,000 in fines, or both. If he violates the conditions of his release, he faces six months of jail time, a $1,000 fine, or both.
Signs under investigation
Meanwhile, in Vernon near the Guilford town line, a man riding his bicycle along Broad Brook Road found two boxes at the side of the road.
The man, who spoke with The Commons on condition of anonymity and provided photos of the scene, said when he stopped to investigate, he “noticed boards on the ground set back from the road,” perched at the edge of the brook that runs adjacent to the one-lane dirt road.
The first of the two spray-painted wooden signs said, “Nigger hanging since 1800.” The second, larger sign - estimated at 3 x 4½ feet by the man who discovered it - read “N.H.R.A.” and “K.K.K.” on one side, “Nigger Hating [sic] Redneck Association” on the reverse.
He also discovered that the boxes at the side of the road contained nine milk jugs filled with urine.
On the morning of June 17, the man rapped at the window of ALANA's Main Street office and informed Reed of his discovery.
Reed said “there's no doubt” that the jugs of urine and the signs are “correlated.”
In a June 24 press release, Vernon Police Chief Kevin D. Turnley described “possible racist-motivated material,” presumably the jugs of urine.
Turnley removed the signs from the site the same morning they were reported for further investigation, still ongoing as of June 27. “I have them in my hot little hands,” he said.
The chief said his department is working cooperatively with the Brattleboro Police Department because of the NHRA connection. “We've been processing evidence and interviewing some people from Brattleboro,” he said.
“It looks like it's the same group; it looks like it's connected,” he said, “but we can't rule out someone copying what they're doing.”
Turnley asks anyone with information regarding the incident to contact him at (802) 257-2638.
The town responds
In his chairman's remarks at the opening of the June 17 Selectboard meeting, Dick DeGray - who said he, Wrinn, and Town Manager Barbara Sondag have actively attended recent community meetings called by ALANA - publicly addressed the racial issues.
DeGray called on Brattleboro citizens to view racism as “an everyday issue” that doesn't disappear once the school “suspends a few students.”
“Issues of race, racism, bigotry, taunting - whatever they are - we as a community cannot tolerate that, and we all have a responsibility in policing our community,” DeGray said.
“We're better than that, or we'd like to think that we are,” DeGray said. “As a community we need to pull together and make sure we nip this issue in the bud.”
Reed views the incidents as a symptom that as a community, “we're asleep at the wheel.”
The events, he said, demand a “fundamental examination of how we treat each other” regarding issues of “population diversity, inclusion, and equity.”
In the meantime, Pereira and Szostak plan to draw on volunteers who expressed interest at the circle of understanding to form a task force to explore the issues.
“I'm concerned about the summer. I'm concerned about downtown: the parking garage, the Harmony parking lot,” Assistant Principal Jahmal Mosely said.
Reed has enlisted a number of teens in a text-messaging campaign, to spread the word through young people's communications medium of choice “to avoid the group, to resist the temptation to respond violently to their provocation.”
“We're trying to avoid some sort of altercation or confrontation,” Reed said.