Well, she tried. The new editor of a tiny Alabama newspaper that made headlines after publishing an op-ed celebrating the Ku Klux Klan has stepped down, after little more than three weeks in the position. In an interview with the New York Times, Elecia R. Dexter explained Friday that the author of the infamously racist op-ed (and myriad others like it), owner-publisher and former editor, Goodloe Sutton, never quite let go.
Her departure this week, which she attributed to continuing interference from the editor she was meant to replace, complicates the future of the weekly newspaper, which was once hailed for its journalism, and reflects the thorny reality that healing from racially hurtful acts is rarely a once-and-done process.
“I would have liked it to turn out a different way, but it didn’t,” Ms. Dexter, 46, said in an interview Friday. “This is a hard one because it’s sad — so much good could have come out of this.”
Dexter had pledged in February to bring the Marengo County newspaper, the Democrat-Reporter, into an era more reflective of the community it serves, which is 59% white and 41% black. As reported last month, the notorious Valentine’s Day op-ed was just the latest in a decades-long string of offensive content written by Sutton, then 79, who inherited the paper from his father in the 1950s.
As Chip Brownlee, who first surfaced the story on Twitter, wrote for the Alabama Political Reporter, the depth of racist content in the paper’s archives seem to be “more the racist ramblings of a single man rather than the thought-out opinion pieces that normally grace the columns of newspaper editorial pages.”
Racism is not the only content that has made its way into the Democrat-Reporter over the years, Sutton has called for public hangings and bombing Muslims, written anti-Semitic tropes and advocated for a return to the times when women weren’t allowed to speak in church.
The Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser confirmed Brownlee’s analysis of the paper’s bigoted history.
A review of archived print editions reveal headlines such as "Homosexuals take black spotlight" and an editorial which stated "Slavery was a good lesson for Jews."
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The paper also regularly republishes what appear to be old editorials from the 1930s and 1940s, which include multiple instances of racist slurs.
Justin Coleman, a 38-year-old who calls the Linden and Demopolis area home, said the Democrat-Reporter has "called for violence against minorities for years."
The Advertiser’s interview with Sutton last month confirmed that the legacy publisher was just as unpleasant in person.
"If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we'd all been better off," Sutton said.
Asked to elaborate what he meant by "cleaning up D.C.," Sutton suggested lynching.
"We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them," Sutton said.
When asked if he felt it was appropriate for the publisher of a newspaper to call for the lynching of Americans, Sutton doubled down on his position.
"... It's not calling for the lynchings of Americans. These are socialist-communists we're talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?" Sutton said.
Sutton’s mindsets weren’t anything new—it was the response that changed. The tiny paper, with a print-only circulation of about 3,000, was suddenly widely condemned, by politicians, local residents, and journalism associations.
The University of Southern Mississippi and Auburn University both rescinded honors they’d previously bestowed upon Sutton for his investigative reporting in the 1990s. The Alabama Press Association censured Sutton and suspended the paper’s membership. Alabama elected officials from both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Doug Jones, demanded Sutton’s resignation.
Not much information was available about Sutton’s replacement at the time, beyond the fact that Dexter was much younger, a black woman, and a local to the community near the Mississippi border. The New York Times interview offers a startling revelation: Dexter was an office clerk at the weekly paper at the time, with no journalism experience. Still, she tried—only to be undercut by Sutton, now 80.
(Dexter) said (Sutton) emailed an altered version of the Feb. 28 issue of the paper to local news outlets and advertisers. She shared copies of both versions of the front page with The New York Times, which showed that an article about his retirement had been replaced with one defending the editorial and criticizing The Advertiser for its coverage.
The subject line of one of the emails, which were sent from a work account and which Ms. Dexter shared with The Times, read: “fake news hurts little paper.”
Mr. Sutton also interfered with Thursday’s issue of the paper, Ms. Dexter said in a news release, saying that the issue “does not reflect the views or thoughts” of the new editor. Ms. Dexter said she was stepping down to maintain her “integrity and well-being.”
Dexter’s assertions of interference and undermining by Sutton was confirmed by Charles Moore, mayor of Linden, the small town where the Democrat-Reporter is headquartered, in an interview with AL.com. He also voiced some strong suggestions for the little paper, which is also for sale.
“He never left the building,” said Moore about Sutton.
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“I would like to see them fade out, I mean, really, he’s been in the position over the years that he could’ve done a lot of good stuff here in Marengo County,” said Moore, who accuses Sutton of tearing down the county and writing racially-insensitive articles that have upset black residents in a county that is a majority black.
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Moore said that Sutton has been three years behind on paying his annual business license. He described the Democrat-Reporter’s office as an operation inside a “one-room shanty.”
Dexter also voiced concern for Sutton’s well-being, but encourages those fighting bigotry—especially the normalization of it in media—to shift their focus beyond Sutton.
In the end, she said, her decision to step down was complicated by her concerns over Mr. Sutton’s cognitive well-being. She said that his recent behavior was illogical and “more extreme” than it had been in the past.
“You can be mad at him, but we can’t keep making this about him,” she said. “People like him will exist. That’s just the reality of life.”
“The point,” she said, “is not to give those people all the energy.”
Calls to the paper’s office went unanswered on Saturday, AL.com reports; the Times was unable to make contact with Sutton on Friday. Dexter, meanwhile, isn’t bitter about her fleeting weeks as the Democrat-Reporter’s top brass, even if she’s unsure what comes next in her career. If anything, her short term reminded us all how much representation matters.
For Ms. Dexter, the whirlwind experience plunged her into a national debate about racism and entitlement — and briefly depicted her as a symbol for change. She recalled how she received a message from a man letting her know that his biracial daughter was inspired by her role at the paper.
“It is things like that that give me peace,” Dexter declared.