By Ashley Moss
Staff Writer
Days after a local NAACP branch scrambled to find a platform to broadcast its annual MLK observances after members said Facebook suspended the group’s account, the civil rights organization suffered another blow: A caller left the group a hate-filled voice message.
On Monday [January 18th], NAACP leaders told Texas Metro News that a caller left a voicemail message on the branch’s business telephone line sometime Saturday afternoon referring to Dr. Martin Luther King by the N-word and making light of the slain civil rights leader’s death.
“MLK is a good [N-word], but that’s because he’s a dead [N-word],” the caller said in the eight-second recording left on the civil rights organization’s voicemail.
“Needless to say, I was taken back when I heard it,” said Gwendolyn Daniels, an NAACP member who manages the branch’s corporate sponsorships and organizes its annual MLK parade and other public observances.
Daniels said she immediately told her family and other NAACP members.
The organization reported the incident Monday morning to Garland police. Daniels waited until after Monday’s Martin Luther King federal holiday to report the incident because she wanted to be sure the city’s police chief would be on duty.
Garland Police Chief Jeff Bryan said Tuesday in an email to Daniels that he was “absolutely disgusted by this phone message.”
“A call of this nature constitutes a criminal offense and merits an immediate investigation,” the chief wrote in the email. A copy of the email was shared exclusively with Texas Metro News.
Garland Police Lt. Pedro Barineau said the department’s criminal investigative unit would act swiftly to investigate the incident.
“This is one thing we take very seriously,” he said. “If there is any kind of hate crime portrayed to anyone in our city, we investigate it,” Barineau said the caller could face criminal charges, including harassment.
Meanwhile, the Rev. Ronald E. Jones, who was elected Garland’s first African American mayor and who is a life member of the NAACP, called the phone message “intimidating, insulting and intolerable.”
“This is despicable that anyone would call and leave such a message,” said Jones, who served three terms in office “We can’t operate in fear because someone else acted in hatred.”
The Garland NAACP uses a telephone answering service which sends notification alerts with voice recordings attached after a caller has left a message. The service typically identifies the caller by the name in which their phone line is listed and by the caller’s telephone number.
“When messages are left on our NAACP line, it automatically triggers an email to alert the individual whose box has received a message,” Daniels said. She received a notification alerting her of the message left in her voicemail box on Saturday afternoon.
“But it was Sunday morning before I saw that email and opened it,” she said.
Jones said the branch is fortunate to have the caller identification system.
“I’m glad there was a system in place to identify the number that placed the call,” he said. “If there were any violations or laws broken they should consider pressing charges.”
The call to the branch comes days after Facebook suspended its account, which leaders had used to broadcast live events and to alert the public of its programming. According to branch members, Facebook said only that the branch had violated the social media platform’s community rules.
Branch members, however, deny that claim. Daniels said community residents frequently compliment the branch on its educational and other informative programs.
“Once our MLK virtual program aired, we were all getting texts, emails and voicemails,” praising the content of the programm, Daniels said.
The Garland incident is the latest in a series of similar events across the nation.
In September, Tabitha Moore, director of the Rutland Area branch of NAACP in Vermont, announced she was selling her home over after she and her children were harassed when she spoke out in favor of the Black LIves Matter movement.
The harassment included defacing of a BLM sign. Her school-aged daughter was harassed after she successfully persuaded her local school district to allow a BLM flag to be flown on her campus, according to reporters by the CBS-affiliated New England Cable News in Needham, Mass.
