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Ocala Residents Discount Snipes' Worries Of Racism
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Published: January 11, 2008
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OCALA - Over the past decade or two, the sprawling horse farms that once buffered downtown Ocala from the chaotic bustle of Interstate 75 have given way to progress.
Now, out-of-town travelers seeking respite in the natural beauty of the Ocala National Forest or heading to meetings at downtown offices pass by scores of convenience stores, chain restaurants and strip malls.
Despite the changes, Ocala has remained a truly Southern town. Like much of the South, Ocala faces continuing questions — from residents and outsiders — about race relations.
More than 40 years ago, the colored-only restrooms disappeared. The rules prohibiting blacks from looking whites in the eye remain only in the memories of elders. Still, the prevailing idea that one race is more important than another deteriorates at a slower pace than many would like.
This week, residents sitting on front stoops, on river banks and in public gathering places continued a frank discussion about the area's racial identity.
The conversations came as foreshadowing to Monday morning, when the hot lights of media cameras will arrive, documenting once-sleepy Ocala for the national stage.
At the federal courthouse here, movie actor Wesley Snipes will stand before jurors selected from Marion, Lake, Citrus and Sumter counties. Snipes and two other men are charged with conspiracy and presenting false claims for nearly $12 million in tax returns. Snipes also is charged with failing to file tax returns from 1999 through 2004.
Snipes' attorneys have tried, so far unsuccessfully, to move the trial to much larger venues such as Orlando or New York. Ocala, they have argued, is much too racist for Snipes, who is black, to expect a fair trial.
Specifically, Snipes argued in a court document: "While many Ocala jurors may be fair, substantial pockets of prejudice persist in the Ocala area."
The document also says Ocala is a "hotbed" of activity for the Ku Klux Klan.
Sweet Home Ocala
On Wednesday afternoon, Realtor Jeff Hoop sat on the sandy shore of the Oklawaha River casting a fishing line baited with a small chunk of hot dog. He wasn't having much luck with the fish, only pulling in a tiny bluegill, but he said he was having more fun than he would have at work.
With the downturn in the real estate market, Hoop, 45, said he managed to play hooky for a few hours without losing any business.
Hoop, who is white, said he had read a newspaper article or two about Snipes, the pending trial and the actor's comments about Ocala.
"I've lived here since 1974," Hoop said. "I've never seen a demonstration or anything else having to do with the KKK."
Mostly, he said, Ocala is known for thoroughbred racing. Hoop said the people he knows in Ocala like the country atmosphere and think of the city as a good place to raise a family.
"Maybe he knows something about Ocala that I don't know," Hoop said with a chuckle.
Across town in west Ocala, an area prominently black since long before the Civil War, Gloria and Essie Weems sat on the front porch of their home with their mother, Irene Kendrick.
The trio waved at passing friends, read through the Ocala Star-Banner newspaper and talked about local events.
"He makes some good movies," Gloria Weems, 49, said of Snipes. "He needs to make some movies so he can pay some taxes."
She said she works hard at a local fast-food restaurant and pays her taxes. Just because Snipes makes movies doesn't exempt him from paying his fair share.
Her sister, Essie, 55, shrugged at the allegation that the Klan comes to Ocala.
"I don't know how he came up with the KKK thing," she said. "I don't see it."
Both sisters said they remember a time when they had to walk in the back doors of restaurants.
"Back then, yeah," Essie Weems said. "It would have been hard to get a fair trial. But it has changed a whole heap. There used to be real prejudice here, but it has come a long way here in Ocala."
As the conversation continued, the sisters started to waver on their contention that the days of racism are over in Ocala
There still are racist parts, Gloria Weems said.
Her sister seconded the idea. Some of the outlying areas of Marion County remain solely white and potentially dangerous for blacks, they said. Hog Valley, in the north county, and Lake Weir, in the south, along with the Ocala National Forest itself are not places for minorities, both sisters said.
"You don't want to get caught in the forest at night," Essie Weems said.
"Not a black person," Gloria Weems added.
On a hot afternoon last week, along the southern edge of the county, three young women and a man in his 40s drank bottled beer in the sand lot of a wooden bar near Lake Weir.
When approached by a reporter and photographer, the man said he did not want to give his name or appear on camera. The women walked away. When asked about Snipes, the man used a racial epithet and said Snipes deserves prison. The women laughed.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which documents hate group activity, mentions a "Klanstore" in Ocala.
A Web site for Klanstore.com provided an Ocala post office box along with an e-mail and phone number from Pennsylvania.
A message sent to the address was returned by someone who wrote that he had nothing to do with the Klanstore and was not from Ocala. He said he was part Jewish and thought someone attached his information to the store out of spite or a bad joke.
By the time the message was returned, the man's information was removed from the site.
The Young And The Old
On the front stoop of the Boulevard Motel, a rooming house that offers low-cost weekly and monthly rentals to those in need of shelter, David Ray Wheat banged away at a severely out-of-tune acoustic guitar.
In between songs by The Charlie Daniels Band and Hank Williams Jr., Wheat, who is white, described himself as "country to the core."
He and a few friends passed each other cold cans of Budweiser and generic cigarettes while they contemplated racism in Ocala.
"I am a racist!" red-headed and pale-skinned Thomas James Byrne Jr. yelled across the parking lot.
Then, he reached behind the rotting wooden door of one of the motel rooms and came back pulling a large black man by the arm. Despite racism, Byrne said, this man is his friend. He gave the black man a big hug, smiled broadly and let out a laugh. Later, Byrne said he was only joking about being a racist.
Wheat, 42, said he tries not to read the newspaper much, and he skips the television news. The media, he said, only want to show the bad stuff, and he can't bear to watch.
"I'd be so depressed I wouldn't be able to get up and go to work in the morning," Wheat said.
Byrne piped in: "You don't work anyway, man."
Wheat said his family has Southern roots and once owned slaves. Still, he said, he has a half-black stepson and feels no personal prejudices toward any race.
Like many of the men drinking beer and smoking that afternoon, he said he has had run-ins with the law, including at least one trespassing citation. The Ocala courts, he said, continue to work within a broken system. They don't work for the people, white or black, forced to deal with that system.
A few doors down, Allen Brown walked from a room. Brown, a 32-year-old black man with pale blue eyes, said he agrees with Snipes that it would be more difficult for a black man to get a fair trial in Ocala. But he doesn't agree with Snipes' reasoning.
There might not be more racists here than elsewhere, he said, but there is an abundance of older people. The younger generations seem to intermix among races more than the old. Wheat and Byrne concurred.
Brown said he has a friend with a dog that spent most of its life around black people. Even now, he said, that dog gets nervous when it sees a white man.
"Some people can be racist just because of the way they were born," Brown said.
Several miles east on Highway 40, closer to downtown Ocala, Sharon Dion works in the main branch of the Marion County library. Dion, a white third-generation Ocala resident, said the civil rights era came somewhat easily to Ocala.
In the 1960s, she said, she remembers staying home for a few days when the schools shut down. Forced integration brought some threats. Still, she said, Ocala ultimately accepted integration without riots or the violence.
Asked about Snipes' contention that he can't get a fair trial here, Dion shook her head.
"I think he will get a fair trial," she said. "He might not think so, but I do."
Dion, 57, complained about traffic and the modern shopping centers that replaced wide-open horse farms, but she said Ocala remains true to the ideal place where she grew up, when she could swim for free in a park called Silver Springs.
In a small renovated schoolhouse a few miles away, Brenda Vereen also remembers swimming in the springs as a younger woman — but for Vereen, the main park was off-limits.
"During my senior year, we still couldn't go to Silver Springs," Vereen said. "We had to go to Paradise Park."
Vereen, the archivist at the Black History Museum of Marion County, stood near a framed black-and-white photograph. Several young black women in bathing suits posed on an entrance sign.
"Paradise Park for colored people," the sign read. "Glass bottom boats, swimming."
Vereen agreed that the civil rights movement came easy for Ocala. She points to reference items in the museum that show Marion County was predominantly black until after the civil war.
Now, the area surrounding Ocala is home to fewer black residents than the Florida average. Census figures from 2006 show that Marion County is 11.4 percent black, compared with the state at 15.4 percent black. Lake County is 8.6 percent black, and Citrus County is 2.9 percent black. Figures were not available for Sumter County.
If Snipes' jury is white only, Vereen said, he might have a difficult time getting a fair trial. More than likely, however, the jury will be of mixed race, she said. Any prejudice against Snipes from a diverse jury would probably be because of his words, not because of his skin.
"Snipes hurt himself when he played the race card," Vereen said, adding that people don't like it when others cry racism.
People Don't Like The IRS
Ben Daniel Jr. has practiced law in Marion County since 1960 and knows a few things about juries.
"Every person has certain prejudices that influence their thinking," he said.
A judge and lawyers will question all potential jurors in the Snipes case. They will try to weed out anyone who will not be able to make a decision about guilt based solely on the facts.
"That's kind of a dream," he admitted. "You can't get rid of people's personal prejudices. It just doesn't work that way."
Regardless, he said Snipes' attorneys might be a bit short-sighted in trying to move the trial to a larger city. The Internal Revenue Service, Daniel said, is not particularly well thought of in Ocala.
"If Snipes were smart, he'd go ahead with a jury and quit fooling around," Daniel said. "He's liable to get more people here opposed to the IRS than in a metropolitan area."
Daniel said the four-county area where the potential jurors live might be significantly more fair than Snipes thinks — regardless of any possible prejudices.
In the 1960s in Lake County, Daniel said, he represented a black man accused of killing a white man. The state didn't have much of a case, but Daniel's client wanted to plead guilty. He was afraid that if he did not, he would get the death penalty.
On the sixth day of trial, Daniel said, the black client finally demanded to plead guilty.
Afterward, a large white man who had watched the whole trial approached Daniel. Daniel said he was scared the man was ready to pounce.
"He had on overalls," Daniel said. "He was a redneck with tobacco in his pocket."
The man called Daniel's client by a racial epithet — then asked why Daniel would let him plead guilty.
"That man was framed," Daniel said, quoting the large white man.
Despite the man's appearance and obvious racism, he listened to the facts, Daniel said. That was more than 40 years ago.
"Lake County has come a long way since then," he said.
Reporter Thomas W. Krause can be reached at (813) 259-7698 or tkrause@tampatrib.com.
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