By Ashley Moss
Staff Writer
A White Garland resident apologized this week to members of the NAACP after the organization received a threatening, race-tinged message about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the weekend of the holiday celebrating the civil rights leader.
“I’m so sorry for that one phone call,” Garland resident Lee Lutz, who is white, told members of the organization on Tuesday night.
“I feel like I should apologize for everybody,” she said. “I think that’s ugly and I hope he gets prosecuted.”
The apology garnered nods of approval among the nearly two dozen Garland residents and NAACP members who gathered virtually for the group’s regular membership meeting Tuesday night.
The meeting Tuesday came one week after the branch filed a complaint with Garland Police that a caller had left the organization’s members a voice message on its business phone line referring to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by the N-word and making light of his assassination.
Members have said they believe the intent of the message – and its timing over the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday – was to be threatening.
Last week, Garland Police said they identified and interviewed the suspected caller and would seek charges of harassment against him.
Police Lieutenant Pedro Barineau said that the department had referred the case to the Dallas County District Attorney’s office for consideration by a grand jury. A grand jury will determine whether sufficient evidence exists to bring an indictment of harassment against the accused suspect.
Neither the District Attorney’s office, the grand jury intake coordinator, nor the public information officer’s office returned phone calls left for them on Tuesday.
Later Tuesday evening, NAACP Interim Branch President Annie Dickson gave an update to members and community residents on the case.
“One of the things I’m proud of is that it was reported,” Dickson said to the group. “When you don’t report things, it gives permission to say ‘It’s OK’.”
“Whether or not they do anything, it was reported and it was addressed,” she said, “and I’m pleased with that.”
Dickson told those gathered for the meeting that the suspected caller was a white man “of age.”
“He left a voicemail saying some very derogatory things about Dr. King,” Dickson said. “A detective in the Criminal Investigations Unit spoke to the man, who expressed that to this day he has the same opinion that he had when he left the voicemail.”
Dickson said the case had sparked conversation beyond just members of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights group.
“I talked to my daughters and granddaughters, who’ve never seen the things we’ve seen or (who have never) experienced what we’ve experienced,” she said. “ They can’t believe that we went through that.”
Branch Secretary Chonda Williams said, despite the caller’s intent to harass or scare members of the group, the caller’s action would do neither.
“We are not going to give in to intimidation or prejudice or fear, that’s not going to happen,” she said.
In other business matters, branch members said they hoped to increase awareness of the organization’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics, or ACT-SO. The yearlong program provides enrichment and scholarships in the arts, sciences, humanities and business for high school students.
