South Pittsburg resident Jackie Walker and others complaining to the South Pittsburg City Commission on Tuesday about the events on April 29 during the National Cornbread Festival. SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. - Some residents of South Pittsburg are furious because they say race was the sole reason a state patrol "strike team" was called to disperse a large crowd at the National Cornbread Festival in late April.
And this week they expressed that anger to the South Pittsburg City Commission.
For the last two years, the predominantly black neighborhood around Moore Park along First Street has organized a gathering at the park with free food and music during the annual festival.
"Never once has there been an unkind word to anybody that came to that park," resident Jackie Walker said. "We have not been a problem."
But on the night of April 29, a large crowd formed between the park and the festival just blocks away on Cedar Avenue, making First Street impassable.
Officials said when South Pittsburg police ordered people to move off the road, many refused and some began yelling obscenities at the officers.
The city called the state patrol for help, and the state sent in a rapid deployment group known as a "strike team" to back up South Pittsburg's outmanned officers.
"I look out and see something that reminded me of Martin Luther King's march in Selma, Alabama," Walker said. "I see about 50 policemen marching up the road and a paddy wagon behind them."
She said the city's actions made its officials "look like fools."
Videos of the confrontation between police and the crowd surfaced on social media.
Walter Officer, another South Pittsburg resident, said he'd never seen anything like the "troops" that were called in to disperse the crowd.
He said rumors surfaced that gang members were at the Moore Park party and that's why police were called, but he questioned how any city officials would know who is or is not a gang member.
"As far as I'm concerned, you could all be sitting there [as] Klansmen," Officer told the members of the all-white city commission. "Nobody was doing anything. It was a peaceful event."
Nothing was found afterward except "trash bags and a clean park," he said.
"You're sitting on a powder keg, and it's about to explode," Officer warned the commission. "Then you'll sit back and wonder why this went on."
Officials said the city's focus was to disperse the crowd between Cedar Avenue and Laurel Avenue along First Street since all city parks close at 10 p.m. and the event at Moore Park was about to end anyway.
"This took South Pittsburg back years," Walker told commissioners. "You think that the blacks aren't upset? They're very upset about that."
Mayor Virgil Holder said he was called at home by black and white citizens alike complaining that they couldn't access First Street, and that they did not feel safe there that night.
"I did support what took place," he said. "Nobody was arrested. Nobody got hurt. If we had set back and not done anything, someone would've gotten hurt."
Raven Robinson was at the Moore Park event that night and said she loves her hometown, but "hates what's going on."
"The African-American section was targeted when there wasn't much going on, and it was peaceful," she said. "That doesn't send a good message."
Robinson said the issues raised by the incident shouldn't just be discussed at a city meeting so that residents go home and brood about them until they bring them up at the next meeting.
"We have to all work together to help solve these problems," she said.
Ryan Lewis is based in Marion County. Contact him at ryanlewis34@gmail.com.