The growing optimism of an Oklahoma county's future took a gut punch when a local newspaper identified several county officials who were caught on tape discussing killing journalists and lynching Black people.
So many residents of northern Texas cross the border into McCurtain County in far southeast Oklahoma each week that the area has earned the nickname of the “Dallas-Fort Worth Hamptons.”
“Just hearing it on audio and coming from our elected officials’ mouths in a meeting, it made my stomach turn,” said Lonnie Watson, a lifelong county resident and 7th grade teacher and coach who is Black. “It was shocking. It was sad. It was hurtful. Just to hear the hate ... was just gut-wrenching.”
“As I understand it, Sheriff Clardy has, at the least, willfully failed or neglected to diligently and faithfully ‘keep and preserve the peace’ of McCurtain County,” according to the letter signed by Stitt. “Should you find that there is reasonable cause for such complaint, I urge you to institute proceedings to oust Sheriff Clardy from office.”“The Office of Attorney General is investigating this matter.
Like many communities across the country, particularly in the South, the towns in McCurtain County were historically segregated, but have become more integrated since the 1960s. Idabel, the county seat, was the site of racial violence in 1980 when a riot erupted after a local Black teenager was fatally shot outside an all-white club. Tensions grew so high that martial law was declared and the governor called in the National Guard, said Kenny Sivard, a local historian.
With its clean rivers and remote locations, the area also became a haven for moonshiners who set up stills in the heavily forested hills. That reputation for operating outside the law continued into the later part of the 20th century when the methamphetamine epidemic swept through the area.
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