West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
For the past three years, the Us & Them team has tracked the case of James Means, the 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed by 62-year-old William Pulliam on the East End of Charleston, W.Va.
The case got national attention partly because Pulliam is white and Means was black. This week, the story came to a sad unexpected conclusion.
Lacie Pierson, Courts Reporter for the Charleston Gazette Mail contributed to this report.
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How old were you when you first learned that police may think of you as a threat?
You’ve never been told that?
Chances are you’re not African American. In this episode, Trey Kay examines “The Black Talk,” which is the sober conversation that many black families have with their teenage kids – particularly teenage boys – about how they should conduct themselves when stopped by the police.
Spoiler alert: Black parents, like any parent, want their kids to come home alive.
We’ll also learn from a chapter of Charleston, West Virginia’s Civil Rights legacy from a minister mentored by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Officers with the Charleston Police Department are set to undergo a two-week training course in race relations.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that the training, which began Monday, is part of an initiative by the Call to Action for Racial Equality coalition and Charleston police to improve race relations in the city. Over the next two weeks, organizers plan to train every member of the Charleston PD.
Kenyatta Grant has led similar trainings for other police agencies and is leading the effort. She says trainers will discuss how to rebuild trust in communities of color, how to be more sensitive to cultural differences and other objectives.
Grant says the trainers are also learning about the challenges of being a police officer.
In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen communities across the country continue to react to the deaths of two black men killed by police officers. Grand juries in both Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, decided not to indict two white officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, sparking protests and riots in not just those communities, but many others.
In West Virginia, protests have been small and peaceful, but that doesn’t mean law enforcement officers aren’t taking seriously the possibility of a similar situation happening in the state.
This week members of the Charleston Police Department held forums with local clergy members in hopes of keeping the lines of communication open and racial tensions in check.
“We will not tolerate dishonesty. We will not tolerate sadistic behavior. We will not tolerate racism,” Charleston Police Chief Brent Webster said as he addressed the dozens gathers at the Charleston Civic Center for a community forum Monday.
The event was organized by the Black Ministerial Alliance and the Charleston Area Religious Leaders Association in conjunction with the City of Charleston. Those invited included prominent clergy members from around the Kanawha Valley and ranking members of the police department.
Webster participated in the small group conversations that lasted most of the day, but his mid-morning address to the group focused on the police perspective.
“When the question is asked of me, what can we do to tell our sons and daughters to avoid conflict with the officer during an interaction? The best way to put that is to understand that the officer is in charge at that moment,” he said.
“He or she is in charge at that moment for everyone’s safety and compliance is the best policy.”
In a state where just less than 4 percent of the population is a minority, Charleston ranks as one of the most racially diverse. Fifteen and a half percent of the city’s population is African American, but Webster said, like Ferguson, his police force doesn’t necessarily reflect that diversity.
While CPD has had successful recruitment programs in the past, Webster said the number of black officers is dwindling and they’re having trouble getting people to sign up.
“We really need a strategic plan for that and we know we’ve gotten in wrong in the past,” Webster told the group.
Recruiting more black officers is one thing Webster said can help community relations. Another: more transparency. That’s why his department is researching the purchase of more than 130 officer vest cameras to tape every on-the-job interaction they have.
But from the non-policing perspective, it’s dialogue, it’s being visible in the community some believe will be the most help.
“We as clergy have direct relationships with many of the citizens of the city,” Pastor Rodney Valentine said. He’s the pastor of the Berea Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Charleston and the Shiloh Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Huntington.
“If the police department wants to communicate something to the community, they can use us to be their voice and we can also be the voice of the community to the police department.”
Both Valentine and Webster said this meeting was just the first step, a first step that was eye opening and constructive.
It’s a preventative measure, Valentine said, and he’s happy to see his community being proactive rather than reactive.
Sixty years ago this week, two Marion County Schools – Dunbar High School and Fairmont Senior High School – met for the first – and last – time on the football field. Local historians say it was the first gridiron meeting in West Virginia of an all-black school and an all-white school. It came amid the tensions surrounding that year’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on school segregation.
It’s been sixty years since the game, but local historian D. D. Meighen says the event continues to resonate and offer lessons for today. He and a group of others rediscovered the story of the game a few years ago while researching how to handle an uptick in racial tension.
“This football game in 1954 seemed to be the answer,” says Meighen. “Where in the midst of a week full of very high tension where parents were protesting the integration of schools, a school outside of Fairmont – that this first football game between a black and a white school was being played. We were interested as to how that worked out.”
THE GAME
The game was played on September 30th 1954…just a few months after the Supreme Court told schools in America they would have to integrate. The court granted schools time to comply. Dunbar and Fairmont Senior High Schools were to be integrated the following year. The two school principals agreed that, although they had never played each other before, they would compete in this final year before the two schools went together.
But just days before the game, tensions in the county were running high. The Marion County Board of Education had started the integration process that fall – a move that was met with protests, pickets, boycotts and threats at one small school.
A local judge denounced the actions as “rebellion against the government” and issued an injunction against protestors.
With that as a backdrop, the two teams prepared to meet for the first – and last – time. Local law enforcement was on high alert and out in force.
But Meighen says the event ran smoothly. And he credits the fact that, although they attended different schools, the players all knew each other.
“The surprising thing was, and people didn’t realize, was that these young men had played against each other in sandlot ball and even lived next to each other,” says Meighen. “And so there was absolutely no violence and no trouble that evening and there were only three penalties called.”
Meighen says that familiarity, and an ability to enjoy friendly competition, were the keys then…and are the keys now…to easing racial tensions and fostering healthy communities. As America refocuses on these tensions in light of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere, Meighen believes a football game, played sixty years ago, offers lessons and hope.
Lesson number one: opportunities to live, work and play together are key.
“And I think a secondary lesson is that we need to utilize sports in a better way,” says Meighen. “When people talk about this game sixty years ago, they don’t talk about really who won… or who lost. The score was incidental except to the players and they still debate as to how they could have won and you know what could have happened that would have made the game different. But it was a great game – 7-6 was the final score by the way. But I think we need to fashion sports in a way in which we don’t have such a high level of competition but a lot of you know cooperation. “
Q: But that seems the opposite of where we’ve headed with sports.
“ Yeah, it seems to be and with the high salaries and everything and the premium placed on children competing at a high level and getting involved in intensive training even as early as pre-school – it kind of takes the joy out of just sharing the athleticism on the field or wherever it may be.”
Q: So – 7 to 6, who won?
“ Uh you’ll have to ask them…(laughter) Fairmont Senior won…but the person from Dunbar, who represents Dunbar, said they could have won if they had run the play that he wanted to run. “
The Dunbar/Fairmont Senior football game of 1954 is now firmly back in the community’s shared memory – and commemorated with a special plaque at East-West Stadium where it was played sixty years ago.
The plaque commemorating the Dunbar versus Fairmont Senior game of 1954 will be dedicated Friday, September 26, 2014 during a pre-game ceremony at East-West Stadium in Fairmont.
