TOWN STILL DEEP IN RACIAL DIVIDE

Days Of Harmony In Tulia Gone Since '99 Drug Arrests Of 43 Blacks

TULIA, Texas - Driving in from the interstate, Tulia is a bump on the
horizon, dwarfed by a landscape hard and flat as a skillet. Even at a
distance, it's clear that this small Texas Panhandle town has seen better days.

The only movie house is closed. The Dairy Queen shut down for lack of
business. Tulia's faded neighborhoods and empty storefronts on the town
square aren't the only sign of the bad times bedeviling Tulia.

The racial divide, nearly three years after a controversial drug raid, has
widened. Neighbors in this town of 5,100 who once talked to each other now
nurse racial wounds and parse out blame. Tulia, the little town proud to be
one of the first towns in Texas to integrate its schools 50 years ago,
can't figure out why it is in the crosshairs of racism.

Black residents' anger bubbles up over lengthy prison sentences resulting
from the 1999 drug busts that ensnared nearly 10 percent of the town's
small black community of about 430. Particularly galling, some black
residents say, is that all arrests stemmed from the uncorroborated word of
one white free-lance police officer.

CHERYL DIAZ MEYER / DMN

Tulia, a small Panhandle town, was one of the first Texas towns to
integrate its schools. But some blacks are still upset over the drug
arrests, while some whites wonder what the fuss is about. Hispanics raised
their voices in May, saying they, too, were singled out by authorities
after a raid for under-aged drinking at a high school graduation party in a
private residence.

For longtime resident Thelma Johnson, the one certainty in Tulia is that
skin color is just too convenient a target.

"I can't say what happened came as a surprise," said Ms. Johnson, whose
nephew was caught in the drug raid. "You could see it coming. ... The jury
just decided that if it was black people, they had to be dealing drugs."

Meanwhile, whites express perplexed concern, wondering what the fuss is all
about. They insist with almost painful sincerity that outsiders have
unfairly besmirched their town's image.

There is no ghetto, no barrio in Tulia. Anglos, blacks and Hispanics live
next door to one another, work together and get along generally peacefully,
they say. The ugliness of racial discord has, however, shattered the
coziness of small-town unity, raising uncomfortable questions.

This place has changed, and people don't like it.

"When problems arise, this community takes care of each other. It has
nothing to do with race or color or religion. But nobody outside sees
that," said Bob Colson, a local businessman and elder in the Central Church
of Christ. "We'd just like the news media to go away and leave us alone.
We're just trying to heal."

The trouble began July 23, 1999, when drug raids netted 46 people in Tulia,
purportedly as cocaine dealers, including 43 blacks. The other three - two
Anglos and one Hispanic - were closely associated with Tulia's black
community. The protests spawned by the arrests and trials put Tulia in the
national spotlight.

All the arrests followed drug buys made by Tom Coleman, an itinerant
undercover agent brought in by Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart to
clean up the town. There were no surveillance videotapes, no audio
recordings and no other police testimony. Just Mr. Coleman's recollections
from notes he said he wrote on his leg after drug buys.

During the last session of the Legislature, partially in response to the
uproar in Tulia, lawmakers enacted new limitations, halting prosecutions
based on the uncorroborated testimony of a single peace officer.

Mr. Coleman, who has left law enforcement, lives in Waxahachie. He could
not be reached for comment.

The Tulia case raised uncomfortable comparisons in Dallas this year when
the district attorney's office dismissed dozens of drug cases against
predominantly Hispanic suspects. Most of the arrests were made based on the
word of undercover Dallas police informants. In more than two dozen cases,
the purported drugs turned out to be chalk or gypsum, an ingredient used in
Sheetrock.

Swisher County Sheriff Stewart declined to discuss the Tulia investigations
or the resulting controversy, citing continuing criminal trials, a Justice
Department civil rights investigation and pending actions brought by the
NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union.

CHERYL DIAZ MEYER / DMN

Freddie Brookins, with his wife, Pattie, and grandson Coy Sutton, says the
20-year sentence levied against his son, who was caught during the raid,
was unfair. "People know my son didn't use no drugs and never was in
trouble," he said. Black residents, however, are not hesitant to speak.
They are particularly angry that the arrests appear to have singled out
many young black men and women with minor or no criminal records and no
history of drug use.

For Freddie Brookins Sr., the 20-year sentence levied against his son,
Freddie Brookins Jr., 24, was more about the consequences of flouting
community standards than criminal activity.

"People know my son didn't use no drugs and never was in trouble. But he
had a child by a white woman, and the people in power didn't like that,"
Mr. Brookins said. "They made an example of the white people for mixing
with blacks and the blacks for mixing with whites."

Blacks in Tulia talk about the stares that mixed-race couples get when they
walk down the street. Many whites cite the prevalence of mixed-race couples
as evidence of the town's racial tolerance.

Ms. Johnson, the aunt of one those arrested, said there are a number of
whites in Tulia who voice support. They just didn't make themselves too
visible.

"I had a number of white people come up, pat me on the back and say, 'You
go, girl' but they didn't say it too loud," Ms. Johnson said. "If a white
person speaks up for a black in Tulia, he's going to lose his white ticket."

Hispanic discontent bubbled up in May when Texas Alcoholic Beverage
Commission officers, accompanied by Tulia police, raided the graduation
party in a Hispanic neighborhood. Some of the Anglo kids were released,
residents said, while about two dozen Hispanic youths were cited for
underage drinking.

Mario Rosales, who organized the party for his son and friends, disputed
TABC agent reports that teens were drinking illegally. "This wasn't a wild
party. It was a family thing," he said.

Anger in the Hispanic community compounded when agents forced pregnant
women and children as young as age 6 to kneel with hands above their heads
while officers checked IDs.

"We've never really had any problem in Tulia, not even with the cops. But
they came in the back yard that night like on TV, yelling and making
everyone kneel, even little kids. That's wrong," said Monica Montes, whose
son was detained by TABC officers. "It's like they went after the blacks.
And now, the Hispanics are next."

The raid was a "basic graduation party investigation," one of a many that
the commission conducts statewide each spring, Capt. Dell Drake said from
TABC headquarters in Austin. The complaints stemming from the incident, in
which 22 minors were cited for illegal possession of alcohol and three
people were jailed for disorderly conduct, is under investigation, he said.

Anglo residents bridle at the charges of racism. They recall that Tulia
voluntarily integrated its schools in the 1950s. They point with pride that
the chief deputy sheriff is Hispanic and that the Tulia Chamber of Commerce
named a black police sergeant from the seven-member police force as its Man
of the Year in 2000.

"Racism is a false trail. This was never a racial problem," said Chamber
Executive Director Lana Barnett, a lifelong Panhandle resident. "These are
problem kids and the truth is, they're guilty."

Such strongly divergent views demonstrate the rapid acceleration of social
and cultural change that swept Texas in the last quarter-century. It
greatly upset the community equilibrium in towns such as Tulia, said Peter
J. Petersen, who taught history for more than three decades at West Texas
A&M University in Canyon.

"This is a community overwhelmed by change and the uncertainty they've
experienced in recent years," Dr. Petersen said. "Everything they've held
onto is changing. They don't seem to be in control. They're scared of the
future."

CHERYL DIAZ MEYER / DMN

Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart hired the officer at the center of the
divisive busts. He declined to discuss the issue. Racial diversity came
slowly to Tulia. Like much of the Panhandle, whites were the dominant
population until World War I, when grain and cotton cultivation brought in
a handful of black workers. In the 1960s, Hispanic workers began moving in
to take jobs in the large feedlots and nearby packing plants.

Anglos now make up about 51 percent of the population, while Hispanics make
up 43 percent and black residents are about 6 percent, according to the
Panhandle Planning Commission.

Tulia faded amid a decline of agriculture and cattle business. In the
1980s, Interstate 27 bypassed Tulia. Traffic that once cruised through town
went elsewhere. Many residents commute to Amarillo for work.

Like many Panhandle communities, Tulia's small-town character was shaped by
the virtues of hard work and a hard-edged Protestantism.

While Tulia boasts nearly two dozen active churches, including Roman
Catholic and nondenominational evangelical congregations offering sermons
in Spanish, the Southern Baptist and Church of Christ churches of early
settlers still serve as Tulia's spiritual bedrock.

Alan Bean, an ordained minister from Canada, and his wife Nancy, a teacher
whose family has lived in Swisher County for generations, embraces a hope
for racial equity in Tulia. They helped form Friends of Justice, a
community advocacy group.

"In this community, 'drugs' is code for blacks and 'gangs' is code for
Hispanics. Race has become a wedge in the community," Mr. Bean said. "I
don't think the whites in Tulia hate blacks or Hispanics. They like them
fine as long as they act white. They don't want to change for anyone."

Mr. Colson, the church elder, disagrees.

"Change is inevitable. But it takes time. And it comes from within, not
forced on you," he said.

Jeff Blackburn, a city rights attorney in Amarillo for more than two
decades, has launched a long-term campaign, he says, to protect the
interests of the Tulia 46.

Twelve of those arrested faced jury trials, were convicted and received
sentences of 20 to 99 years. Thirty pleaded guilty as part of plea bargains
with prosecutors, mostly, they said, out of fear of what jurors would do.

"When the defendants started seeing those big sentences, they realized it
didn't matter what they had done," Ms. Johnson said. "Whether they had used
drugs or not, they were going to pay a price."

One suspect died of natural causes. Charges were dropped against the other
two after evidence emerged to show that they could not have been buying
drugs at the time Mr. Coleman, the informant, said they were. One
defendant's trial is pending.

Mr. Blackburn acknowledges that many of the people arrested were involved
in drug use - primarily crack cocaine.

"It didn't make sense. These people lived in hovels and couldn't afford a
decent car. In a town that size, who can believe there were 46 dealers?
Whom were they selling to?" Mr. Blackburn said.

For many Tulia residents, there is no doubt about the guilt of those
convicted. For them, attacking the scourge drugs is the highest good.

"We don't want drugs in our community. The jurors believed those people
were guilty, and I have to agree. I don't have any doubts," Mr. Colson, the
church elder, said. "Each of us in this town are doing what we know how to
do for the best of our children. All our children, whether black or brown
or white. It doesn't matter. They're all our kids."

Tulia has always prided itself on taking care of its own, Ms. Barnett of
the Chamber said. The annual Love Fund draws thousands of dollars and
hundreds of volunteer hours to provide Christmas gifts for about 300 of the
poorest residents. Those who don't help are noted.

"When I was a kid, people took pride in their home. They kept the yards
mowed and the fixed up their house," she said. "Now, there's a disregard
for community standards among younger blacks and Hispanics. They have their
own culture and their own ways of doing things. We'll never be the small
town we once were. And that's sad."