A judge and sheriff’s deputies in a north Georgia county have some explaining to do amid accusations that they used the “n-word” last month–in open court.
On March 19, Allen Duray Green came to the Fannin County Courthouse to testify at a bond hearing for his friend and boss, Robert Vivian. When Judge Roger Bradley was going over the list of witnesses, he asked who Green was. Several people waiting in the courtroom, including McCaysville police officer Michael Early and Vivian himself, told WAGA-TV in Atlanta that a sheriff’s lieutenant referred to Green as “N***r Ray.” Another deputy in the room also called Green “N***r Ray.” Later that day, according to these witnesses, Bradley got into the act by telling a story about an old black bootlegger in the area, “N***r Bob.” Watch WAGA’s story here.
Green was waiting in the lobby at the time. When he heard about this exchange, he was dumbfounded. He told WAGA’s Chris Shaw that “it still hurts right now” to have to put up with the kind of ignorance that his grandfather and great-grandfather had to put up with. However, Fannin County sheriff Dane Kirby thinks it’s a lot of fuss over nothing. He is adamant that “there was nothing inappropriate said in court that day.” He also said, as did a number of other Fannin County employees who were unwilling to go on camera, that “the context” of the whole conversation was perfectly fine. Supposedly, Green’s street name within his department is “N***r Ray.” When Vivian heard this, he said what any fair-minded person would say–“no one should be using that word at all,” regardless of the supposed context.
This discussion would end in a hot hurry if we got the chance to read the transcript and listen to the audio of the day’s proceedings. However, the county clerk says that they aren’t available at the moment. It’s likely the transcript and tapes will have to be coughed up at some point, though; the state Judicial Qualifications Commission is investigating the matter.
Fannin County is located on Georgia’s northern tip, straddling the borders with Tennessee and North Carolina; indeed, it’s so far north that it’s closer to Chattanooga than Atlanta. Like most of this part of Georgia, it’s congested red. It hasn’t gone for a Democratic presidential candidate not named Jimmy Carter in the last half-century, and since 1980, Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to have even won 40 percent of the vote here. In the last three presidential elections, the Republican has carried it with over 70 percent of the vote. It doesn’t say a whole lot about the climate in that area that a number of people on both sides of this dispute–including Early and Kirby–were unwilling to go on camera, and several county employees didn’t even want their names used.
Green is considering his legal options, and thinks the judge and deputies should be reprimanded. I’d go one step further. They need to be out of jobs, period. Even in a county as red as this one, this is not acceptable behavior for a judge or a law enforcement official, regardless of political shade. Period, full stop. And if Kirby thinks that something like this is acceptable depending on the “context,” he needs to be gone too.
