A local newspaper in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, identified several county officials, including the sheriff and a county commissioner, who were caught on tape discussing killing journalists and lynching Black people.
With its clean rivers and lakes, these forested foothills of the Ouchita Mountains have become dotted with luxury cabins, and a tourism boom over the last two decades has fueled a renaissance in the region. Jobs are no longer limited to the timber industry or the chicken processing plant, and parents are more optimistic that their children won’t have to leave the community to find work.
For its part, the sheriff’s office has only released one formal statement since the McCurtain Gazette-News broke the story last weekend in which the sheriff’s office didn’t address the remarks, but claimed the recording was illegally obtained. While many county residents say the racist remarks are a throwback to a bygone era, they still worry about the negative repercussions the incident will have on the community’s reputation.
“What didn’t help was the grand imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan came down to the Idabel courthouse and made his appearance,” Sivard said. “That didn’t help matters at all, as you can imagine.” Still, McCurtain County has worked hard to shed its reputation for lawlessness and racial strife, aided in large part by the construction of Broken Bow Lake in the heart of the county in the late 1960s. Fed by the Mountain Fork River, the clear lake surrounded by forested hills has been a huge tourism draw that continues to this day.
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