Hot tempers on a hot day
SHERIDAN — About two dozen protesters converged on the Sheridan courthouse square Saturday for a Black Lives Matter protest, the second in the city, this time under a cloud of tension after organizers said they received threats of violence if the protest went on as scheduled.
The situation grew heated about two hours in. For several minutes, protesters and onlookers stood toeto-toe shouting and talking over one another. Police from Sheridan and Grant County converged around the group, and after a few minutes the tension abated.
Initially, at the 2 p.m. start time, fewer than 10 people congregated on the courthouse steps along West Center Street, outnumbered by more than a dozen police officers and at least a dozen local people gathered across the street.
Three pickups emblazoned with various flags, including the Gadsden flag and the American flag, and Trump 2020 banners circled the square. Other vehicles with Confederate battle flags and variations of the American flag also passed in front of the courthouse at various times.
At one point, a woman in a pickup passed the courthouse yelling “Blue lives matter” and making obscene hand gestures.
A few cars and trucks drove past, with drivers honking and raising hands in support, eliciting cheers and waves from the protesters.
Things grew heated as several observers crossed the street and began talking to the protesters. At one point, the protesters and their critics stood less than a foot apart, shouting at one another.
Dustin Spruill, the protest organizer, stood with a microphone and loudspeaker, trying unsuccessfully for several minutes to defuse the situation.
“Everyone here matters,” Spruill said. “But none of us are going to matter if we don’t come together. Until we can talk to one another and not scream at each other, none of us are going to matter.”
The May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man, during his arrest by four white police officers in Minneapolis, sparked worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, some of which have turned violent and destructive.
Early in Saturday’s protest, Robert Tallman and Sheryl Selby, both of Grapevine, sat across the street from the courthouse watching.
Tallman said he was there to keep an eye on things and make sure things stayed peaceful.
“This is our community,” he said. “We live here. We shop here. We go to church here, and we’re here to protect our community, to make sure everything stays peaceful.”
Selby nodded in agreement.
“I believe peaceful protest is one thing, but there’s always one who wants to make more of it,” she said. “There’s always one idiot, usually on the other side. Then there’s the redneck side — that’s what they call us — and we won’t back down.”
Brenda Griffin of Sheridan, standing near the courthouse square with several police officers, said she didn’t understand why the protesters had come to Sheridan.
“This is a peaceful town where everybody gets along,” she said. “I’ve lived here for 38 years, and I’ve never had an unpeaceful word with anybody here. When I heard they were doing a protest here, I thought, oh my God, why here?”
Spruill disagreed, saying the traffic light at the intersection next to where Griffin stood had a history that was anything but peaceful.
“Years ago,” Spruill said, “Black people who would stop at that light would get a brick tossed through their windshield. There’s a lot of good people in this town, but there’s some bad ones too.”
Spruill said he was targeted early last week, probably because of his activism.
“Four days ago I was mowing my yard and someone tossed a beer bottle at me and hit me on the leg,” he said. And they shouted a racist epithet, he said.
Tyler Crouse of Poyen, one of the protesters, said there had been threats directed toward Saturday’s protest, which put some on edge and prompted some to back out.
“Some people have said they are going to show up with guns,” Crouse said.
Grant Smith of Little Rock, one of the organizers, said he received a text message warning of possible trouble.
“I was told a group of older white men were planning to show up with guns,” Smith said. “Anything to it? I don’t know. We’re not here for trouble. We’re here for a peaceful protest.”
Tanya James, a protester from Little Rock, said she had heard rumors that some people in Sheridan were planning to disrupt the protest if Kip Brown participated. Brown, a Black activist who was released from prison after serving time for driving a getaway car in a double murder in Little Rock in April 1990, was at the June 15 protest in Sheridan.
She pointed to several pickups parked around the courthouse with people sitting in them, their engines idling.
“A lot of these gentlemen sitting in their trucks, I was told they are armed and they are waiting for Kip to show up,” James said. “I was told they are ready to fill up the jail. I called Kip and told him what’s going on and begged him not to come. It’s not worth it.”
Richard Calloway, one of the protesters from Sheridan, said he was there to help protect the participants if something did get out of hand.
“I know this town’s history with racism,” he said. “This used to be a sundown town. I swore an oath to protect and defend the people’s right to protest, and that oath doesn’t have an expiration date. If I have to give my life to defend these people’s right to protest, that’s what I have to do.”
Sundown towns had reputations for violence directed toward any Black people who happened to be within the city limits after sundown.
A Marine combat veteran who served in Iraq, Calloway said he fought for people’s freedom to protest injustice.
“Injustice is injustice,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily have a color, but Black Americans experience more injustice at the hands of the police than any other group of people. If you’re going to say that all lives matter, I think you have to agree that Black lives matter, too.”
Spruill said Saturday’s confrontation began as he was talking with some local people about changing things in the area without a pervasive threat of violence.
He said an onlooker asked if Brown would be at the protest, and two of Brown’s nieces took offense at the question. “They got mad and started screaming at him,” Spruill said, and things rapidly began to get out of hand.
“There were some people who came over here to talk politely, and some of the folks from Little Rock took it on themselves to start screaming at them.”
He said the encounter had discouraged him and that Saturday’s protest would be his last in Sheridan.
“I’m not about the violence. When things get like this, that’s when the vandalism starts, and I’m not putting up with that.
“I’m not saying this movement is going to bring about world peace, but we don’t want it to bring about world destruction.”