I’m gonna tell you something. If it was back in the day, when that when Alan Marshton would take a damn black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell? I’d run for fucking sheriff.
Yeah. Well, It’s not like that no more.
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.
This is part of a conversation between McCurtain County, Oklahoma Commissioner Mark Jennings (who resigned) and McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy (who has not) that happened after a Board of Commissioners meeting in early March.
Bruce Willingham, the publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News – a small local paper with no online presence – originally recorded the audio in secret. Willingham told the AP that he placed the recorder because he suspected that the county commissioners were discussing county business in violation of the state’s open meetings law, which requires that the public must be notified and able to attend whenever multiple county officials discuss county business. What Willingham recorded was a litany of horrors: a grotesque discussion of how a body that was burned in a fire looks like BBQ; reminisces about lynching; and a proposal to hire a hitman to kill Willingham and his son, reporter Chris Willingham.
The discussion about one-time sheriff Alan Marshton (who served in the 1980s) refers to the county’s past as an outpost for the Ku Klux Klan as well as Marshton’s reputation for being racist. In 1980, a 15-year-old Black teenager named Henry Lee Johnson was murdered by a white man in the parking lot of the Black Hat Club, a white-only establishment in Idabel, a city in McClaren County. Black residents rose up in protest, and the police cracked down.
According to the McCurtain Historical Society, the Klan came to town shortly after the rebellion and used the opportunity to recruit new members. In an interview, Johnny Lee Clary, the one-time Imperial Wizard of the KKK in Oklahoma, explains “We would go to places where there was trouble like Idabel, and get to talking to white people about joining the Klan.”
“We were pretty much all over the state…we were in the police force, the firemen, and schools,” another Klan member says.
Part of the bad blood between the McCurtain County Sheriff and the Willinghams stems from another incident of racial violence. In 2022, a 45-year-old citizen of the Choctaw Nation, Bobby Barrick, was detained and hog-tied by residents after being suspected of breaking into a local corner store. (It’s not clear what happened, but it seems as though Barrick fought with contractors working at the back of the store, which was closed.) When the sheriff’s deputy arrived, he tazed Barrick while he was still restrained. Barrick died in the hospital.
The deputy involved, Matt Kasbaum, had killed before – shooting a civilian to death the year prior. He was still under investigation when he killed Barrick. A month after the 2022 incident, Kasbaum left the force. (According to the McCurtain Gazette, Kasbaum and his wife got commemorative tattoos to mark his murder.)
Reporters for the McCurtain Gazette sought bodycam video and other reports related to the killing of Barrick. The sheriff’s office was stonewalling, so the reporters hired attorneys and sued in March 2023.
On April 20, Barbara Barricks, Bobby Barricks’ window, announced that she was filing a lawsuit against the sheriff, the county, and individual deputies for her husband’s death. In her announcement, Barbara Barricks credited the McCurtain Gazette for continuing to push for information on her husband’s death.
There is still a great deal of mystery surrounding Bobby Barricks’ death – body cams were turned off, footage has mysteriously disappeared, and no one seems to know exactly what happened. The Barricks’ lawyer described it as part of a “pattern and practice” of racial discrimination, violence, and mistreatment at the hands of the sheriff’s office.
Unlike the misdeeds of many rural sheriffs, this one has gone viral, and the community has used the moment to push for change. This week, around 100 community members went to the county commissioners’ meeting. They sought the resignation of all of the officials involved. So far, only the county commissioner has done so.
The sheriff doesn’t have to resign and no one can make him leave office, unless and until he is found to have committed a crime or violated his oath of office. The sheriff maintains he did nothing wrong, and posted a Facebook screed claiming that the records were “illegally obtained” and, possibly, faked.
There’s a confluence of issues here. The difficulty of getting accountability when the sheriff refuses to turn over relevant documentation and maintains a habit of secrecy. Embedded white supremacy. The dangers of being a local journalist standing up to power.
But I want to just point out that the residents of McCurtain County have a right to be concerned that their sheriff is making the community less safe. As one state legislator told an Oklahoma publication: “I wouldn’t feel safe in McCurtain County…I wouldn’t feel safe with my child going to McCurtain County…Those comments, those attitudes, … they pose a risk to public safety.”
It is refreshing to read of a local newspaper that investigates the activities of powerful people and organisations to hold them to public account. How many other newspapers have ever done so, and how few even attempt it now? I call out my own local daily here in north-east England, the Northern Echo which, since its founding in 1870, has resolutely refused to pursue investigative journalism of any kind. Instead, this rag publishes photos of local, working-class offenders in order to divide us and to delude us that the ruling class and business are trustworthy.
Bruce Willingham and the McCurtain Gazette-News are to be highly commended.