A10 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 3 , 2020
son was saying over on Martin
Luther King Jr. Ave., where the
mood was cautiously hopeful.
“How many you got on the
other side of town, Duke?” said
Sonia Simmons, one of several
volunteers under his tent.
“It’s about like this,” said Duke,
who had volunteers working sev-
eral precincts he considered
promising in the county. His cell-
phone rang.
“What? Why?” he said to a
volunteer explaining that she was
being asked to move away from a
polling place. “There’s a s ign right
there — you’re not past that sign,
right? Then you shouldn’t move.
Don’t move. Who told you to
move?”
He and his campaign team had
been knocking on doors since the
start of the year, registering vot-
ers at the Walmart, and after the
pandemic hit, making calls and
tapping networks of family,
friends and churches. His case for
the job was his 24 years of experi-
ence as a resource officer for the
county schools and, more recent-
ly, as a Cairo police officer. He had
coached football and basketball
and felt he had the trust of Black
and White parents across the
county.
“When it all boils down, the
question is, will they vote for a
Black candidate?” Duke said, re-
ferring to White voters. “I just feel
they will. I just think Harry’s
burned his bridges. There is no
trust there.”
He sat under the tent with his
volunteers, all of whom were
Black, all of whom had stories
about Harry.
“He sure fooled me,” said Sonia,
whose son had driven Harry in
the Martin Luther King Jr. Day
parade during his first election. “I
supported him. I handed out can-
dy. I stood down there just like I’m
doing right now, campaigning for
Harry Young. He gave my son a
big donation for graduation. He’d
hang out and treated us like he
was okay with us. I wanted to
respond, but I didn’t,” she said,
referring to Harry’s Facebook
post. “Ain’t no telling what I’d say.”
“Well, I told him,” said another
volunteer, Sondra Williams,
whom everyone called Queen. “I
said, ‘Really, Harry? This is not
acceptable. You cannot show this
kind of bias.’ But he does it. He
does it so much. I do not feel safe
with him. Not with that attitude.”
“Well, he had to be this way
always to be this way now,” said
Sonia.
“I tell my son, if it’s dark and
you don’t feel safe, drive to a
lighted area” rather than call the
sheriff, said Montez Palmer, who
lives in a rural part of the county
and said the few times she had
called 911, it took an hour or
longer for a deputy to respond.
“For all they know, I’m dead in an
hour. They don’t care.”
“There’s a m eth epidemic and
they hardly touch it,” Duke said.
“But people see a Black guy going
to jail for marijuana and they
think the sheriff’s working.”
“That’s why they keep him in
there,” said Queen. “Because of
the good ol’ boy system in the
South.”
As the afternoon went on, they
discussed their concerns about
Harry’s drinking, and rumors of
improprieties they’d heard over
the years that never got investi-
gated.
“Brunswick, Georgia, is what
we are living with here in Grady
County,” said Queen, referring to
the town where more than two
months passed before three
White men were charged with
murdering a Black jogger named
Ahmaud Arbery. “That’s exactly
what we are dealing with.”
“We are lucky nothing like
that’s happened yet,” said Duke,
and after a while, a man named
Odell Jolly walked over to the
tent. He was 78 years old and had
dealt with all of this before when
he had tried to become the first
African American sheriff in GradyHe had been thinking about the
apocalypse. “The Bible says
there’ll be rioting in the streets,
people trying to destroy the gov-
ernment,” he said.
It was late afternoon when he
arrived back at headquarters. No
protest had materialized; no one
had tried to burn down the jail. It
was quiet, and when Election Day
arrived a few days later, it was still
quiet as people voted across Gra-
dy County. Harry sat under his
white tent and waved as voters
drove by, and now one of them
pulled over and parked. A man
got out and walked over with a
vigor that pierced the afternoon
lethargy.
“Mr. Harry, I w ant you to know
I voted for you,” the man said,
shaking Harry’s hand as Harry
tried to place his face. “I’m Dave. I
worked up at the Piggly Wiggly?
Just wanted to let you know.”
“Appreciate that, my friend,”
said Harry.
“I don’t understand what’s go-
ing on in the world right now,”
Dave continued. “I watch Tucker
Carlson a lot, and last night it was
about the Black Lives Matter
movement. And it’s nothing
about Black lives. It’s about trying
to change the whole country over
to Marxism.”
“Well, we don’t want to let it
slip,” Harry said.
“No,” Dave said.
“We just have to lean on God,”
Harry said.
“It’s brotherly love that’s going
to heal this nation, and now we
got this movement to abolish po-
lice?” Dave continued. “And they
want to get rid of conservatives
and put in all leftists.”
“You let ’em turn loose, they’re
going to realize they made a big
mistake,” Harry said.
“I’m not racist if I want to
protect my family,” Dave said.
“Right,” Harry said.
“Anyway, just wanted you to
know I voted for you,” Dave said
again.
“Appreciate you,” Harry said,
and with four hours to go before
the polls closed, he watched Dave
walk back to his truck and drive
away.“T
hey said the turnout at
the airport is pretty
steady,” Duke Donald-He said none of it was true and
blamed the stories on his political
enemies.
He rode around for another
hour or so, nodding as he saw his
signs on barns, in farm fields and
lawns, and soon he was back in
Cairo.
He turned into the west side of
town.
It was the mostly African
American side, and during Har-
ry’s first election, when he ran as a
Democrat, he rode in the Martin
Luther King Jr. Day parade. Since
he switched to Republican, he
hardly ever campaigned on the
west side anymore.
“I don’t bother — they know I
love ’em,” Harry said.
He drove slowly into an enclave
of narrower streets of shotgun
houses where his deputies served
warrants and his drug unit some-
times conducted marijuana
busts.
“This is the Hotbed,” he said,
referring to the nickname of the
neighborhood where people once
grew peppers. “They don’t like
law enforcement. I keep my eyes
moving when I’m through here.”
He pointed: “Big raid on that
street.”
He was sure that his biggest gift
was what he called his “instinct,”
which he’d first noticed when he
was 12 years old, and his father
would arrive home drunk.
“I could feel something in my
stomach when he’d come in the
door,” Harry said. “I knew some-
thing was going to happen, and
sure enough, he’d jump on my
mother. I remember my stomach
would get nervous. I was always
right.”
Back when he patrolled, he’d
get the feeling when he was driv-
ing through the Hotbed, or when
he pulled someone over for speed-
ing.
“Sure enough, you could see
they were nervous,” Harry said.
“You could see their eyes dilated.
You could tell they were on mari-
juana or something.”
He hadn’t gotten the feeling in
the longest time until the Face-
book situation happened.
“I got it then,” Harry said. “I had
the feeling it was all going to blow
up, and then it did.”
He’d been waking up at 3 a .m.
ever since, tossing and turning.town Cairo, where there had also
been a peace vigil that Harry him-
self had attended, sitting off to the
side in a lawn chair as pastors led
prayers. At least he could agree
with that. When he had first run
for office, he said, God had visited
him in a dream with a detailed
plan: “He said, ‘Son, you will be
deputy sheriff for 2.5 years, and
you’ll be sheriff until you’re old
and gray,’” and now here he was,
white hair, white mustache and a
cellphone with what he estimated
to be more than 2,000 numbers of
people he called “my friends.”
He passed a convenience store
called Susie Q.
“They’re my friends — they give
us all free coffee, free drinks,”
Harry said, lifting his hand off the
steering wheel to wave.
He passed the white-columned
banks of North Broad Street.
“All the bankers — they’re all
friends of mine,” he said.
He passed a Baptist church —
“the pastor’s my friend,” Harry
said — and the Cairo Messenger
newspaper, where a crowd tradi-
tionally gathered on election
night to see the returns posted on
the storefront window.
“The editor, he and his wife,
both of them are friends of mine,”
Harry said.
The school: “My friends.”
The courthouse: “All the judg-
es, all the lawyers.”
The hospital: “All the doctors, I
consider all of them my friends —
except one,” he said, referring to
the doctor whose wife had drawn
attention to his Facebook post.
“Well, I guess we’re friends, but I
never thought they’d do what
they did to me.”
He rode past the brick ranch
houses and green lawns on the
east side of town.
“All these,” he said, sweeping
his hand toward yards with Harry
Young signs.
He knew not everyone was a
fan. Besides critics of his Face-
book page, he knew there were
people who believed his deputies
arrested more Black people for
marijuana offenses than White
people for dealing meth and other
drugs. He knew people thought
he did favors for his friends. He
knew that there was talk around
town that he sometimes had one
too many drinks in the evenings.To his way of thinking, the
killing of George Floyd was the
result of a rogue officer rather
than a systemic failure; the riot-
ing was a plot by liberal billion-
aire George Soros; the protests
sweeping the nation were creat-
ing a moment of peril, not hope,
views he had often poured forth
onto his Facebook page late in the
evening, including the nights he
let loose about hanging traitors.
“Some of us were talking about
it the other night, that every 50
years we go through this all over
again,” he said, sitting in an office
decorated with certificates of ap-
preciation from local sports
teams and clubs. “It just goes in a
circle. Things are going great, and
then something happens to mess
it up. Like Floyd. It’s just brought
a whole ’nother cycle. If they have
their way, it’ll be the downfall of
America — we’ll be communist
socialists.”
He just hoped there were
enough like-minded people to
keep him in charge of the
$2.4 million budget, the 21 depu-
ties, the four investigators, the
three-person drug unit, the jail,
the jail guards, the double-aught
shotgun in his truck, the .22-cali-
ber Kel-Tec Magnum on his belt
and the walkie-talkie now beep-
ing on his desk.
“Go ahead, buddy,” the sheriff
said, heading out to his truck.
It was a deputy calling to ask
how he should handle a Black
Lives Matter protest rumored for
that afternoon.
“I just don’t want no trouble,”
Harry told him. “I heard they
were going to march here. If they
do it, fine. As long as it’s peaceful.”
He’d heard that someone had
threatened to burn down the jail,
too, but for now it was quiet. He
pulled onto a two-lane road, head-
ing out on one of the loops he
sometimes drove around the
county. H is cellphone rang.
“Hey, buddy,” Harry said.
“Hey, Sheriff,” a man said. “Just
calling to check on you. Just want-
ed to wish you luck. Hope you stay
in the driver’s seat.”
“I think we’ll be all right,” Har-
ry said.
He drove past the Valero gas
station, where there had already
been a small Black Lives Matter
protest, and turned toward down-The immediate reason for the
uncertainty was a Facebook
meme that the sheriff had posted
on May 8, before the killing of
George Floyd in police custody:
“Can we get back to the tradition
of hanging traitors?” it had read
over a drawing of a prisoner being
led to the gallows. He said he had
posted it in response to House
Democrats who voted to impeach
President Trump, but as nation-
wide protests and riots broke out
over Floyd’s killing, a local wom-
an had called attention to the
post, writing on her own Face-
book page that she was “com-
pletely disgusted” by it, and the
sheriff had doubled down. He
re-shared the post with the meme,
writing: “If you like destroying
hard working people’s property
because of one officer’s horrible
decision then you are the prob-
lem!!!”
Now the election was becom-
ing a referendum not just on an-
other four-year term for Harry
Young but on all he had come to
represent in a county that was
66 percent White, 29 percent
Black and where the face of law
enforcement had always been
White and male.
“Hey, Harry, we’re going for
another four years?” a woman
yelled out of her car window.
“Sure are, sugar!” said the sher-
iff, who had three primary chal-
lengers, one of whom was Duke
Donaldson, who was a mile away
under his own tent on Martin
Luther King Jr. Ave.
“You know I got you!” a young
man yelled out to Duke as he
headed to vote.
“All right!” yelled Duke, a 54-
year-old police officer in the coun-
ty seat of Cairo trying to become
the county’s first African Ameri-
can sheriff. Even though he con-
sidered himself a Democrat, he
was running on the Republican
ticket to reassure the White voters
he would need to win, including
some who had quietly pulled him
aside to say that they felt the
Harry situation was an embar-
rassment.
“If we want change, then this is
one of the steps,” Duke said to one
of his volunteers.
“Harry’s got to go ,” she said,
waving her sign at the traffic.
“Duke!” yelled another young
man driving by.
“You voted?” Duke asked, and
over at the agriculture center,
Harry was wiping the sweat off
his forehead and swatting gnats
hovering above the grass.
“Oh boy,” he sighed. “I’ll be glad
when this day is over.”T
here are two versions of law
enforcement in America,
the police departments led
by hired chiefs who are account-
able to mayors and city adminis-
trators, and the relatively less-
scrutinized system of sheriffs —
elected officials who have few
professional requirements and
are accountable only to the voters
who put them in office.
While sheriffs preside over
thousands of rural and suburban
counties across the country, they
are especially powerful figures in
the South, where in the decades
before and during the civil rights
era of the 1950s and ’60s, they
were relied upon to protect local
White power structures, whether
that meant enforcing segregation
codes or enabling mob violence
against African Americans per-
ceived as threatening that order.
In more recent years, aspects of
the old culture have lingered in
the list of sheriffs and deputies
accused of racial profiling, exces-
sive use of force, coercing confes-
sions, siphoning money meant for
prison food and other violations,
though there are also examples of
change. Departments have un-
dertaken professional reforms,
and in some of the South’s most
populous counties, African Amer-
ican candidates have ousted
White sheriffs in power for de-
cades. Other sheriff’s depart-
ments exist in somewhat murkier
territory, and this was the case in
Grady County, some 400 square
miles of farms, small towns and
trailer parks in the southwestern
corner of Georgia. No great scan-
dals had come to light in recent
years, and though there were now
Black deputies on staff, no great
reforms had been deemed neces-
sary either, a status quo that left
Harry Young feeling entitled to
another term as the county’s chief
constitutional officer.
“Afternoon, Harry,” a deputy
said as the sheriff arrived at head-
quarters a few days before the
election.
“Hey, bud,” said Harry, who was
part of a constellation of long-
serving sheriffs in southern Geor-
gia. To the west was Wiley Griffin,
with 20 years. To the north was
W.E. Bozeman, with 27. To the
east, R. Carlton Powell had been
in of fice since 1976.
Harry considered them all
friends, and lately, they had been
calling to check in more than
usual, which was reassuring yet
also underlined his sense that
their world was off-kilter.
“We’ll be fine,” Harry would
say.SHERIFF FROM ABetween the ballot lines
PHOTOS BY MARK WALLHEISER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Republican candidate Duke Donaldson greets supporters while vying to become his Georgia county’s first African American sherif f.
Though he considered himself a Democrat, he was running as a R epublican to reassure the White voters he would need to win.CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Randy Wind, editor and publisher of the Cairo Messenger, pores
over election results with Tamila Best before posting them on the window. Residents await election
returns outside the newspaper’s building. The numbers from four precincts begin to tell the tale.