Letter evokes memories of Martinsville's racist reputation

MARTINSVILLE -- Joanne Stuttgen believes there is a legend about this city, a tale that it is a place where the modern-day spirit of racial tolerance is ignored.\nTrue or not -- and Stuttgen wants so much to believe it is not -- that legend has again grown with a letter, published in the local newspaper, in which the city's assistant chief of police chided non-Christians and lashed out at homosexuals, using the terms "Buddy Buddha," "Hadji Hindu" and "queers."\nFor those who have struggled to move this city of 14,000 people about 25 miles south of Indianapolis away from its reputation of fostering racism, the letter was a setback.\n"These legends tend to be cyclical," explained Stuttgen, a doctoral student in folklore at IU. "They lie low for a while, then they tend to rise up again."\nThey rose quickly after the publication of Assistant Police Chief Dennis E. Nail's letter in The Reporter-Times Oct. 27. An excerpt:\n"It offends me when I have to give up prayer in school. Once again because it might upset Hadji Hindu or Buddy Buddha. ... When I look around I see no Mosque, or fat, bald guys with bowls in their laps. I see churches. I'm offended when I turn on a television show and without fail a queer is in the plot just like it's a natural thing."\nNail, who is active in drug prevention and other school programs, is known for his strong views and willingness to express them.\n"I'm very conservative," Nail said from his office in city hall. "I'm not a Christian in word, I'm a Christian in deed. I believe in my heart. What I say I mean."\nAt the same time, Nail is adamant that he did not mean to hurt anyone's feelings. He says he is not a racist and, as a police officer, treats everyone the same.\nBut he is a public official and, most notably, a public official in a town with a history of racial problems.\nTwo incidents in the 1960s forged the stereotype -- a Ku Klux Klan march through the town square and the still unsolved murder of Carol Jenkins, a black woman who was selling encyclopedias door-to-door.\nThe bad memories were rekindled in 1998 when the Bloomington North High School basketball team stepped off a bus at Martinsville High School. Team members claim they were met by a crowd chanting "Here come the darkies."\nStudents and residents have always denied that happened. Regardless, the Indiana High School Athletic Association imposed sanctions on the school.\n"It's like we beat ourselves up to convince people that we're not this horrible, racist community," said resident Sarah Ashley. "And then you have letters like Mr. Nail's that suddenly appear in our newspaper."\nAshley responded to Nail with her own letter to the editor, questioning whether a man who has openly expressed such views should hold public office.\nAnother resident responded to Ashley's letter, writing: "I can only wonder whom she would choose to take his place, some homosexual?"\nNeither Mayor Shannon Buskirk nor Police Chief Frans Hollanders believe there is reason to reprimand Nail for his letter.\n"There's a lot of it that I agree with, but I figure maybe some of the language could have been toned down a bit," Hollanders said. "But I have heard more pros for him than negatives. And he did it on his own time."\nPrincipals at several elementary schools where Nail teaches drug prevention classes echoed that sentiment: The officer was guilty of a bad choice of words -- nothing more.\nChristy Wareham, a Presbyterian minister and member of a local group that promotes diversity, says this latest development -- the next chapter in the legend of Martinsville -- may just be a part of this maligned city's fate.\n"It's almost as if every now and then we have to go through this," he said. "And Dennis Nail was the one that got picked to create it, just by revealing his thoughts"