{"id":14804,"date":"2011-07-09T05:10:46","date_gmt":"2011-07-09T05:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14804"},"modified":"2013-08-16T01:51:27","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T01:51:27","slug":"fbi-investigating-racist-threat-in-polk-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14804","title":{"rendered":"FBI investigating racist threat in Polk County"},"content":{"rendered":"

FBI investigating racist threat in Polk County<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chattanooga Times Free Press<\/a>
\nChattanooga, Tennessee
\nSunday, 2011-06-26<\/p>\n

Beth Burger<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ducktown, Tenn<\/a>.\u2014More than a week after part of a cinderblock was thrown through a trailer window with a threatening racist message attached, an interracial Polk County<\/a> couple continue to have sleepless nights.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to get out of there,\u201d said Ellis Weatherspoon, 45, who lives in Turtletown with his common-law wife, Jennifer, and their 3-year-old son. Weatherspoon, who is black, and Jennifer, 28, who is white, have been together for seven years.<\/p>\n

While the Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office categorized the crime as a simple vandalism case with no apparent motive, the Chattanooga<\/a> FBI<\/a> office now is investigating the incident, according to Sheriff Bill Davis.<\/p>\n

And things have gotten worse for the couple. On Thursday, the couple found their 6-month-old pit bull\/German shepherd mix, Gilbert, dead at the trailer, a rope tied around its neck several times and its body propped against its doghouse…<\/p>\n

…Ugly past<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historically, there were consequences for having an interracial relationship in Tennessee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dating back to the 1800s, Tennessee law forbade whites from cohabitating or marrying people who were more than one-eighth black, said Daniel Sharfstein<\/a>, an associate law professor at Vanderbilt University.<\/p>\n

A violation was a felony and people could do time in prison, he said. But sometimes mobs took the law into their own hands and lynched the illicit lovers.<\/p>\n

Despite the law, interracial relationships were accepted in some rural mountain areas throughout the South, said Sharfstein, who is the author of \u201cThe Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe struggles of everyday life were often more important than something as meaningless as race,\u201d he said. \u201cSo when I read about the Weatherspoons, to go out of your way to attack an interracial couple \u2014 it\u2019s not just disgraceful, it also goes against a most cherished tradition of life in the mountains where people lived the life they chose to live, free of outside meddling and interference.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FBI investigating racist threat in Polk County Chattanooga Times Free Press Chattanooga, Tennessee Sunday, 2011-06-26 Beth Burger Ducktown, Tenn.\u2014More than a week after part of a cinderblock was thrown through a trailer window with a threatening racist message attached, an interracial Polk County couple continue to have sleepless nights. \u201cI just want to get out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1467,8,20],"tags":[6799,6800,2766,2767,878],"class_list":["post-14804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-law","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-beth-burger","tag-chattanooga-times-free-press","tag-daniel-j-sharfstein","tag-daniel-sharfstein","tag-tennessee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}