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  “How do you know for sure that he overdosed?” I asked Chief Straub.

  He said the toxicology report would confirm it.

  “When will that be completed?”

  He admitted it could take several weeks.

  The other people in the room, who’d been mostly silent up to this point, began asking questions of their own. The chief impatiently answered a few of them before ending the meeting and asking us to keep the information he’d shared confidential until after he’d discussed the incident with Lorenzo’s family. I later learned that while we were sitting in that meeting getting debriefed, Lorenzo’s family didn’t even know that he’d died. The police had returned to his house, forced his family to stand outside in the rain while they searched it, and towed Lorenzo’s car without telling any of them what had happened. It wasn’t until that evening that they finally learned that Lorenzo was gone.

  Admittedly, I was in an awkward position, being both the OPOC chair and having access to confidential information, and being the local NAACP president and having a duty to serve the needs of the community when civil rights issues were involved. As NAACP president, I reached out to Lorenzo’s family and asked them if I could assist them in any way. Did they want help dealing with the media? Did they want to do a protest march or a memorial rally? Did they need legal advice? Lorenzo’s sister told me her concerns. She was upset that the local media was portraying her brother as a drug dealer. She told me how unfair his being falsely described as a criminal was to his children. She asked me to be a liaison and spokesperson to the media and expressed her hope that I could do something about the smearing of her brother’s reputation.

  She wasn’t the only one bothered by the bias of the local media, which depicted the white world as normal and the Black one as other. Sandra Williams moved with her family to Spokane when she was twelve, graduated from nearby Cheney High School, and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Washington State University. Except for a six-year hiatus working on the all-Black TV show City of Angels while living in Los Angeles, Sandy, as I would come to know her, had spent most of her adult life in Spokane working for social service nonprofit organizations such as the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, the Odyssey Youth Center, and, most recently, EWU’s Pride Center. As she was watching the local news on television one day, it struck her how much different—and how much more accurate—some of the stories would have been if they’d been told by a Black journalist. She was tired of seeing the media depicting people of color only as criminals, entertainers, or athletes, highlighting negative aspects about them, and supporting existing stereotypes. In January 2015, she did her part to rectify the situation when she produced the first issue of The Black Lens: News from a Different Perspective, a monthly publication that focuses on the news, events, people, and issues that affect Spokane’s Black community.

  I first met Sandy at an NAACP meeting in Spokane back when I was still living in Coeur d’Alene, but I got to know her much better at EWU’s annual Drag Show when she was the head of the Pride Center. I was dating Dr. Kim Stansbury, a sociology professor at EWU, at the time, and Sandy was a lesbian, so we bonded over the difficulty of having to balance our Black identities with our LGBT identities in terms of knowing where and when it was okay to be “out” and when it would be more strategic to put our sexual orientation on the back burner. NAACP meetings and Black churches weren’t always LGBT-friendly, and even when they were, there was an understanding that this issue shouldn’t be brought up or flaunted out of respect for the older churchgoing folk.

  As I got to know her better, Sandy asked me if I’d like to write a column for The Black Lens, and I agreed to do at least one piece per month, relaying news from the NAACP to the local Black community. The opportunity to write with an unapologetically Black voice without having to filter myself for a white audience more than made up for the fact that, once again, I’d taken on work that produced no pay. Having come to trust Sandy’s vision, I went to her first when Lorenzo Hayes’ sister asked me to speak to the media on her family’s behalf. “There is a similar pattern that we have seen over and over again, with the death of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and others,” she quoted me as saying in the article she wrote about Lorenzo’s death. “The first thing that happens is that the Black male is criminalized. They are implicated in their own death. And there is a loss of humanity, both for that individual and for an entire population of people.”

  The Hayeses also asked me to help them get in touch with a lawyer and told me they wanted to do a memorial rally for Lorenzo. I recommended an attorney at the Center for Justice and helped organize a march and candlelight vigil. On the march, we carried signs, flowers, and photos of Lorenzo to the jail where he’d died. There Lorenzo’s children released thirty-seven blue helium balloons—commemorating his age and his favorite color—I’d purchased from a party supply store. His family members and friends shared memories of him, gave tributes to him, and spoke lovingly about him. I held back tears as a preschool-age child picked up the bullhorn that was being passed around and quietly said, “I love you, Daddy.” Lorenzo’s family also expressed the need for an honest investigation and answers about his death. If the investigation was done thoroughly and effectively, I was certain that one or more of the police officers would be convicted of homicide.

  In the days that followed, I continued to ask Chief Straub many tough questions about the handling of the investigation. He responded by canceling our regularly scheduled monthly meeting. By this point, my relationship with him and his department could most charitably be described as strained.

  While Lorenzo’s death was barely covered in the local news, Freddie Gray’s death remained national news a month later. Knowing I wanted to go to Baltimore to support the Justice for Freddie Gray protests, Albert bought me a plane ticket for Mother’s Day. On May 19, I flew to Baltimore to meet with Freddie Gray’s friends and family, talk with members of grassroots organizations such as Baltimore United for Change and Baltimore Bloc, share stories about what was going on in the social justice front in Spokane, meet with the NAACP’s Washington Bureau Director and Senior Vice President of Advocacy Hillary Shelton, and hear from the BLM protestors on the ground how the NAACP was helping them. As invigorated as I was talking to those from the Black Lives Matter movement, I was dismayed and disillusioned to hear that the NAACP hadn’t shown up to support their efforts, even though its national headquarters was located right there in Baltimore.

  Refusing to let this affect my determination to participate in the protests as much as I could while in Baltimore, I marched in a #BlackWomenMatter rally that started at the iconic Billie Holiday statue on Pennsylvania Avenue. When I got back to my hotel room, I took a shot in the dark and emailed Baltimore’s state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby, the youngest chief prosecutor of any major city in the country and a courageous Black woman who’d given Baltimore’s Fraternal Order of Police a slap in the face when she held six officers accountable for Freddie Gray’s death. I asked her if I could meet her while I was in town, and after I’d given her secretary my credentials Mosby graciously fit me into her schedule. When I asked her how she was faring being the center of a media firestorm after her indictment of the police, she shared with me some wisdom imparted to her by her grandma: “People will always talk, so give ’em something to talk about!” I’d recently won the bid to host a regional NAACP conference in Spokane in September, and as our meeting was coming to an end I invited her to speak at it. She agreed, although, thanks to what was about to transpire in my life, she never made it to Spokane.

  While I was in Baltimore, a reporter from the Coeur d’Alene Press called to tell me that he was working on a story about me being born white and that all the harassment directed at me and my family weren’t actually hate crimes. I had to be Black for them to be hate crimes, he said, ignoring the fact that KCTFHR’s president Bill Wassmuth and others like him who had been attacked by hate groups in
North Idaho had been white. He also informed me that he’d been talking to my parents and my ex-husband. At first, I thought the call was a prank, an idea supported by Kevin’s assertion, after I called to discuss it with him, that he hadn’t talked to anyone about me. Knowing how private Kevin is about his personal affairs, I believed him.

  I knew that at some point in my life I would have to reconcile my self-identification with the various notions people have about race, particularly the idea that it’s biological. I was aware that my view wasn’t embraced by the mainstream. I was also conscious of the fact that my being born to white parents but identifying as Black would at first glance sound crazy to some people and be downright offensive to others. Not wanting to offend anyone, and not believing that an interview with a reporter in North Idaho would adequately contribute anything toward educating the masses about the origins and evolution of the idea of race and our common human ancestry in Africa, I opted to say nothing. I guess I was being optimistic when, after three weeks had passed, I felt certain nothing would come of the reporter’s call.

  Much of my reluctance to talk about the admittedly rare way I identified myself came from a desire to shield my sons from the possibility of receiving undue negative attention. I didn’t want them to be put in a position where they would have to constantly explain my situation to other people. I hoped (once again, optimistically) that someday, after my sons had graduated from college and were living on their own, I’d be able to write a memoir that gave my unique racial identity (and the notion of race in general) the serious and measured consideration it deserved. Until that day arrived I wanted to live my life the way that felt most comfortable to me without having to answer a million questions about it. I wanted to focus my energy on more important issues like the work that needed to be done to create a more just society.

  And there was so much to do! In May, I started hosting a weekly panel discussion on justice issues called Moral Mondays Northwest at Spokane’s Community Building. It borrowed its title from the grassroots movement the Reverend William Barber started in 2013 in response to Republicans taking control of the North Carolina state legislature the year before and attempting to, in his words, “crucify voting rights.” As president of the state chapter of the NAACP, Barber called for protests in the form of civil disobedience. Our version of the movement he started was essentially a talk show designed to create a discussion about the NAACP’s five Game Changer issues and deliver a weekly call to action in seeking justice in the Northwest. We filmed local citizens airing their grievances and allowed the local officials who were responsible for each issue to say what was being done about it, and we aired the resulting discussion afterward on YouTube.

  For the June 8 show, I had a bunch of guests talking about education reform, including several retired Black school teachers, a young Black man who’d been pushed out of school via the standard school-to-prison pipeline and ended up on the streets despite having been a straight-A student, the assistant principal of his former high school, and the school superintendent. The discussion grew contentious at times, and I looked forward to having an equally powerful one when we covered public safety and criminal justice, including police brutality, in the next segment of the Moral Monday Northwest series on June 15. But I’d never get the chance.

  On June 9, I was interviewed by the international news organization Al Jazeera. During the interview, I was very critical of the Spokane Police Department and the city administration, wondering aloud how much accountability they really wanted local law enforcement to have. I aired my frustrations about ongoing resistance to the OPOC’s efforts toward greater transparency and the limitations of our ability to reform policing, while explaining all that I’d done, including initiating monthly meetings with the Department of Justice. I said I wasn’t confident that justice would be served in the Lorenzo Hayes case. I also added that I wasn’t too happy with Chief Straub after he’d canceled our monthly meeting three months in a row. I stuck my neck out in that interview. I was real and raw and honest. I did the interview on a Tuesday and it was scheduled to air that Friday, but thanks to the uproar that ensued in the days between, it never made it on the air.

  Only later would I find out just how upset Chief Straub was at me. For the past two months, he’d had a private investigator following me and looking into my “integrity issues.” Because I wasn’t hiding anything and didn’t have a criminal history, there wasn’t much to dig up about me other than standard background information such as where I’d grown up. The investigator’s search led him to Larry and Ruthanne’s house in Montana. Most parents would have told the investigator to mind his own business, but of course Larry and Ruthanne weren’t like most parents. They were still furious at Esther for pressing charges against Josh and at me for supporting her.

  Esther’s case against Josh was proceeding as so many in our justice system do, which is to say glacially. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for June 15, 2015, but the actual jury trial wouldn’t be taking place until August 11. When Esther asked me if I would testify in support of her, I assured her I would be there for her in any way she needed. The trial promised to be a he-said, she-said affair, with the exception of my testimony, which could possibly break the tie. The district attorney’s office seemed to believe the same, sending me a letter dated June 9, 2015, informing me that my testimony was going to be critical. It would almost take a miracle for Josh to wriggle out of the trap he’d created for himself with his disgusting behavior years before.

  That miracle arrived in the form of the private investigator Chief Straub had assigned to look into my past. When he arrived at Larry and Ruthanne’s door asking about me, they saw an opportunity to discredit me before Josh’s trial got underway. Instead of telling the investigator to get lost, they invited the man inside to have a little talk.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ambushed by Reporter

  CHIEF STRAUB WASN’T THE ONLY ONE who had hired a private investigator to dig into my past. Josh’s legal team had one of their own, and he was responsible for telling Shawn Vestal, a columnist for The Spokesman-Review, during the first week of June that I wasn’t born Black and that Larry and Ruthanne could confirm it. With this knowledge, Vestal, who had been writing about the spree of hate crimes directed at me and my sons, had been handed the scoop of a lifetime, but, as he later claimed, he’d had no interest in doing any “racial vetting.” The dubious honor of dissecting my life story in print went to Jeff Selle and Maureen Dolan of the Coeur d’Alene Press, who, after getting tipped off about my background, called Larry and Ruthanne to ask if I was Black. Their article “Black Like Me?” was available to read online and in print the morning of June 11.

  Selle and Dolan’s story remained mostly a local phenomenon until video was attached to it later that day. Having heard through the area’s media grapevine about the imminent publication of “Black Like Me?” Melissa Luck, the executive producer at the local television station KXLY, had sent senior reporter Jeff Humphrey to interview me on June 10. He’d come to my house while I was proctoring final exams at EWU and left his business card with Izaiah, who was home from college. When I got home from work that afternoon, Izaiah told me about the reporter, and I called the number on the card. Humphrey informed me that the Spokane Police Department had completed its investigation into the packages sent by War Pig as well as the other incidents for which I’d filed a police report and that they’d found no suspects. He asked me if I would discuss it on camera. One of my duties as the local NAACP president was to comment on such things, so I agreed. He offered to come to my house. I had plans to meet Esther that afternoon at the Starbucks on the downtown mall to discuss the upcoming hearing in her case against Josh, so I told Humphrey it would be better if we met near that location.

  When it came to his career in journalism, Humphrey had some big shoes to fill. His father was Don Harris, the award-winning NBC News correspondent who was killed on November 18, 1978, during the notorious Jonestown Massac
re. One of the stories that helped solidify Harris’ reputation as a hard-nosed journalist concerned airport security—in 1972, he filmed two people carrying guns through the security checkpoint at Dallas’ Love Field Airport and did a piece about it that attracted a lot of attention. As an eighteen-year-old college intern a decade later, his son Jeff tried to one-up his father by filming people smuggling explosives through security at the Fort Myers Airport in Florida but only succeeded in getting his photographer fired and himself barred from the state by the FBI. Now middle-aged with gray hair and hanging jowls, he’d settled into a career at KXLY covering crime and safety.

  In Eastern Washington, the press generally skewed right-wing conservative, so its coverage of human rights issues was never as thorough as I would have hoped, but I was surprised at just how unsympathetic Humphrey’s line of questioning during the interview was. From the outset, his body language and attitude indicated he was unmoved by my plight, and he only grew more insensitive the deeper into the interview we got. First, he told me the noose my sons had found on our property when we were living in Idaho was actually a rope meant for hanging a deer carcass. He made this implausible scenario—that someone would butcher a deer on someone else’s property using what was clearly a noose—sound perfectly normal. Then he suggested that a “key holder”—presumably someone who had a key to the NAACP’s P.O. box—had planted the first package sent by War Pig, a notion I found equally absurd. Then he took it a step too far, albeit in a very passive-aggressive way.