Noose, notes lead to FBI investigation
UNION CITY — Rodney Amos said he used to feel perfectly comfortable with his white co-workers — until he found a racist threat scribbled on his desk.
Now he keeps looking over his shoulder.
“I don’t know who did it, and that person could still be around,” said Amos, a production worker at a Goodyear plant in Union City. “It just caught me completely off guard. I had never had any conflict with anybody.”
That scrawled threat of “all niggers must die,” a hangman’s noose left at another black employee’s work station and other incidents have prompted an FBI investigation.
“You can’t concentrate on your job when people are making threats like that,” Amos said. “The place where I work is so loud and you’re so busy most of the time you don’t see somebody until they’re right there on you.”
The message was written across the inside of a desk drawer a few days after plant employee Marshall Brown reported finding a piece of rope tied into what looked like a hangman’s noose at his work station.
Along with the noose was a threatening note similar to the one Amos said he found.
The FBI is investigating both incidents as possible hate crimes while also looking into racist graffiti scribbled across the wall of a toilet maintained by a black janitor.
“Whether or not this is a hate crime has not been determined,” said Kenneth Moore, the agent in charge of the FBI office in nearby Jackson. He declined further comment.
The Goodyear plant, with 2,700 employees, is by far the largest and best-paying employer for miles around in this rural part of northwest Tennessee, even drawing workers from Kentucky and southeast Missouri.
Obion County Sheriff Jerry Vastbinder described the Goodyear plant, which has 52 acres under roof, as “a city in itself.” His office also is working on the investigation.
Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear refused to talk about the incidents, but said the plant does not tolerate intimidation or harassment of employees.
Gloria Sweet-Love of the Tennessee office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said the plant has worked with her organization to help ensure equal treatment for its workers. She also noted that Goodyear went to authorities with the allegations at the center of the FBI probe.
“They’ve done all the right kinds of things,” she said.
But apparently racist incidents, such as a “colored only” sign on a water cooler or hangmen’s nooses, are nothing new at the plant, said Goodyear retiree Terry Smith, a former leader of the NAACP’s local chapter.
“A lot of people are jealous of one another, and they’re living back in the ’50s and ’60s,” said Smith, who is Amos’ father-in-law and Brown’s uncle.
Smith said he first saw a noose hanging from a support beam at the plant in the late 1980s.
“I asked the shift foreman to remove it,” Smith said. “He said he didn’t put it up so he wasn’t going to take it down.”
Vastbinder said ropes are used throughout the plant, but there would be no legitimate need for a noose.
Goodyear employee Rodney Bass said he and other black workers associate nooses with the racial lynchings in America’s past and don’t see anything humorous about them.
“You’ve got people out there who have that kind of mentality. It’s not everybody, but you’ve got some people who think that way,” Bass said.
Maurice Taylor, a former plant employee who lost his job in a layoff two years ago, said he has talked with the FBI about finding a noose at his work station in 2000.
Taylor said he and a white co-worker both complained about the noose, and a supervisor discovered who had made it.
“But he said the person who did it said it wasn’t anything racial. He was just doing it for fun or something like that,” Taylor said. “I knew nothing was going to happen. I just left it alone.”
With its importance to the local economy, the Goodyear plant is often a topic of conversation in this county of 32,500 people, about 10 percent of whom are black.
Amos said he was surprised when the FBI told him that rumors were going around town that the black workers had made up the allegations to stir up trouble.
“Why would I do such a thing?” he said, adding that he freely gave the FBI a sample of his handwriting.
Amos said he wants the investigation wrapped up so he doesn’t have to be suspicious of his co-workers.
“That’s not really fair to them. I don’t want to be feeling this way,” he said. “These are people I talk to everyday about their kids, my kids, going to ball games and stuff like that.”
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On the Net:
http://www.goodyear.com/