Waterloo rallies to combat violence, racial divides

WATERLOO, Ia. – The latest turning point in this city's long march to feel whole — and the proud, defiant struggle for what is perhaps Iowa's most distinct African-American community — arrived April 2.

It struck with a single, horrible shot.

Marshon Glover Jr., 4, stood in his living room on the northeast side of Waterloo, where his mom and aunt shared a rental home. Marshon was with his great-grandmother, Myrtle Godfrey, who had just begun to doze on the couch.

The sound of the bullet startled her awake. She smelled gunpowder.

The shot was fired diagonally from a parking lot across the intersection of Mulberry and Vinton streets. It easily pierced the home's thin vinyl siding.

The bullet had been aimed at another house just around the corner. But instead it hit Marshon in the gut.

A day of innocent play became a bloody nightmare. This little African-American boy was thrust into the middle of a debate over violence and Waterloo's century of racial divide.

RELATED COLUMN:We seek to see through the eyes of our neighbors

The story of Waterloo's black community is both hopeful and disheartening, seen in middle-class families who moved up and out, and inner-city neighborhoods that became poorer and more violent.

It's also a window into the challenges faced by black Iowans overall. The post-civil rights era has produced a small cadre of black lawyers, principals and business executives, but in general blacks are poorer than Iowans of other racial and ethnic groups, less likely to climb the economic ladder and more likely to be incarcerated, state data show.

And by some measures, such as incarceration rates, the disparities between the fortunes of blacks and whites in Iowa are among the worst in the nation.

Child's shooting spurs flurry of activity

Marshon had been standing near the coffee table, watching TV.

"If he had been sitting down, I'm thinking it would've been a head shot," Godfrey said.

The boy lost 6 inches of his intestines, but survived. Today, he scampers around like any normal kid. He loves Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, SpongeBob SquarePants and basketball.

But Marshon and his family moved out of their rental home. They no longer felt safe. The boy kept staring at the hole in the wall.

Last month, Marshon stared for a happier reason: He marveled at all the people lining the streets of Waterloo who smiled at him and applauded. He served as co-grand marshal of the annual My Waterloo Days parade alongside the police detective assigned to his case.

Marshon's shooter hasn't been arrested. Police profess to know who pulled the trigger but lack evidence to make an arrest.

A history of tension

Waterloo has weathered a century of racial tensions and has churned with occasional anti-violence outcries in recent years.

Four years ago, I marched among mourners after the beating death of 19-year-old Marcellus Andrews, a captain for a church drill team. Black ministers led the somber, candlelit walk through the city's east side, the center of Iowa's most concentrated African-American community.

The city also has wrangled with its own case of a black suspect killed by a white police officer — in November 2012, years before the national furor sparked by flashpoints from Ferguson, Mo., to Staten Island, N.Y.

Derrick Ambrose Jr., 22, fled on foot down a dark street and already had tossed his gun when the officer fired twice, believing his life was in danger, according to testimony. A grand jury exonerated the officer. But last year, Ambrose's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city that has yet to play out in federal court.

The city recently granted the officer an exemption to move out of city limits. He said that he and his family have received threats.

But it has been the shooting of Marshon — a poster child for innocence, shot at random in broad daylight in the presumed safety of his own home — that has forced an entirely new, broader conversation here and a search for ways to take constructive steps forward.

After the frustratingly slow progress against inequality that dominated the 20th century, there seems to be a growing awareness — or at least a reawakened one — that the city's historic segregation is still being dismantled.

Waterloo is Iowa's most predominantly black city. African-Americans make up 15.6 percent of its 68,000 residents. Black Hawk County also leads all Iowa counties, with 8.9 percent of its population African-American.

By comparison, blacks represent 3.3 percent of Iowa's 3.1 million people and 13.2 percent of the population nationally.

Waterloo's African-American community didn't exist until about 1910, when families from rural Mississippi were enticed north to replace striking white railroad workers.

By the 1950s, Waterloo was home to perhaps 6,000 African-Americans. Now, there are about 10,650.

The demographics provide a backdrop to this spring and summer, when both local residents and far-flung Waterloo natives have rallied like never before. Religious and secular groups alike have spurred activity in schools and churches and on the streets. Some examples:

• A Taking Back Waterloo Facebook group has attracted more than 9,300 members.

"You see the little kid got shot — it's a reality check that makes you appreciate all that you do have," said Kris Jones, an African-American father of three who has become a local administrator for the grass-roots organization. "It makes you want — if not before — it makes you want to step up and stand up."

• A 25-year-old filmmaker from Cedar Falls moved back for a month and rented an apartment in downtown Waterloo to document the city's turmoil and transformation.

• Will Overstreet, who teaches at the Dr. Walter Cunningham School for Excellence in Waterloo, organized about a dozen of his fellow art teachers and their students to help create hundreds of colorful peace signs to hang on utility poles around the city.

• A handful of new neighborhood associations have sprung up in recent years. There are 34 recognized associations, with another on the way.

• Stiffer federal gun charges were leveled against seven shooting suspects in May as an extra deterrent amid a spate of gun violence. Shootings last year in Waterloo surged to 97 incidents, compared with 70 in 2013, according to police records. The first six months of 2015 already have seen 55 shootings, ahead of last year's pace.

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VIDEO: Kris Jones, a Waterloo father, talks with his youngest son about whether he feels that he is treated differently because he's black. Go to DesMoinesRegister.com/BlackIowaConversations

River marks divisions of poverty, violence

Waterloo's gun violence left a 3-inch vertical scar down the middle of Marshon's belly.

The boy's scar reminds me of the Cedar River, which slices through the center of Waterloo, from its northwest to its southeast corner.

The river also forms the dividing line for the city's racial segregation, blacks on the east and whites on the west.

The same racial pattern divides Waterloo and the much whiter Cedar Falls next door.

"We still kind of feel a lot of residential segregation," said the Rev. Abraham Funchess Jr., executive director of Waterloo's Human Rights Commission. "The river unfortunately still divides the community."

A new socioeconomic analysis of Iowa census tracts by the Child & Family Policy Center reveals 32 tracts in the state where more than 30 percent of the population live in poverty. Six of those 32 tracts are in Black Hawk County — either east of or along the Cedar River in Waterloo. Only the much more populous Polk County claims more tracts on the list, with seven.

Scholars have long documented the close association between poverty and crime.

In Waterloo, the river also divides the city's crime statistics: 13 of 14 gun murders from 2010 through 2014 happened on the east side. And nine of the victims, or about two-thirds, were black.

Sad traumas have piled up here.

Less than a week after Marshon was shot, police responded to three separate shootings and a stabbing, all within a few hours on the same day.

In May, 15-year-old Jykeria Coffer was shot and killed with a stolen gun. Her younger brother, Diyrun Coffer, then 14, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in what police believe was an accident.

Anecdotally, in talking to scores of residents, I heard a variation on a theme: The violence has gotten worse; this isn't the Waterloo I remember.

Crime statistics compiled by the FBI support that sentiment, to a point. They show a fluctuating Waterloo crime rate in the past 30 years that peaked in the early 1990s but has edged up again in recent years.

Waterloo's police chief and director of safety, Dan Trelka, however, also cites the most recent comparative data, from 2013, that show four other Iowa cities — Council Bluffs, Davenport, Sioux City and Des Moines — with a worse overall crime rate than Waterloo.

Trelka said that perhaps fewer than 50 members of local, disorganized gangs are behind the rise in shootings in Waterloo. About 20 suspects in recent months have been arrested and taken into custody, he said.

Trelka, who is white, has been praised for working in novel ways with the black community.

One of his recent moves is to feed the names of a dozen of the most frequent offenders to local church leaders in the Eastside Ministerial Alliance, to enlist their help with peaceful, pre-emptive intervention.

Trelka and his wife also are adoptive parents to a 3-year-old black son from Waterloo.

But the chief faces a challenge of perception with his force: Only two of his 121 officers are black.

Black leaders take activism to streets

Waterloo's African-American community ha

s responded to this year's violence with a familiar tactic: the old-fashioned shoe-leather street activism of civil rights-era marches.

Concerned residents trod a different path each Sunday evening in what was an unprecedented series of at least eight weekly "Jericho Walks," led primarily by African-American preachers.

"Jericho" is a nod to the Biblical tale in which city walls were toppled not by brute force but by sheer faith, heralded by blaring trumpets.

These walks have seen rows of residents, hand in hand, march in somber silence to the drum cadence of a church drill team. A police car typically leads the way. Marchers file past families on their front stoops and porches — households that have lost loved ones to the violence, or where a bleeding victim collapsed on a random doorstep.

A classic image of bridging the racial divide, black and white hands clasped, has come to symbolize these marches.

A Jericho Walk last month began and ended at Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in the "church row" neighborhood just west of downtown. A century after the birth of Waterloo's black community, the march wound past a complex tapestry of ethnic enclaves, where Latinos, Burmese and other recent immigrants have settled.

"The church should be the light of the community," the Rev. P.F. Thomas of Christian Fellowship said as marchers gathered in his parking lot.

But Waterloo's youth were noticeably absent among the predominantly older crowd. Speeches veered between blaming and defending younger residents who have been at the heart of recent violence.

As the community rallies, familiar tensions remain: How do city administrators, a new-fangled Facebook group, black Christian churches and other factions best collaborate? Waterloo's calendar in recent months has been so full of forums and other community events that sometimes the panelists outnumber the audience.

Michael Muhammad, a local Nation of Islam activist and founder of radio station KBOL, is "not a big marcher," he said. He's also searching for an ecumenical solution, which can be difficult in a community where black Christian churches for so long have provided a social backbone.

To that end, Muhammad helped produce a video with local hip-hop artists, "Hands Up," as a way to connect events in Waterloo with neighborhoods nationwide.

"We have to be able to speak a universal language," Muhammad said.

Social media expand movement nationally

Concern for Waterloo has spread across social media faster than marching feet ever could.

The fledgling Facebook group Taking Back Waterloo was the brainchild of native Ty Hunter, who now lives in Chattanooga, Tenn.

"I didn't like that the city had eroded," said Hunter, 37, who is white. "It's not the city that I grew up in."

What often gets labeled as an anti-violence movement has embraced a broader mission, encouraging monthly meetings, cleanup days and other basic neighborhood infrastructure.

An administrator for the group, David McCullough, a Drake University Law School graduate studying for the bar exam while back in his hometown of Waterloo, calls it a "platform where ideas can kind of incubate, and then we can translate those ideas into action out in the community."

McCullough, 37, realizes that the scattered, viral nature of the group has invited skepticism.

The implicit question he often faces: Is Taking Back Waterloo "a bunch of white guys behind a computer trying to tell us what we need to do to fix our neighborhoods?"

But in a sense, this is just the latest form of community debate on local crises. KBBG took to the airwaves on July 26, 1978, as a nonprofit radio voice for the African-American community. It was founded by Jimmie Porter, a local union leader and black civil rights activist who died eight years ago.

That station has since been joined by KBOL, a mix of hip-hop and talk founded by Muhammad, who has become one of the most passionate, recognized speakers in the city. He stood alongside Marshon's family April 7 for a news conference to decry the boy's shooting.

Jones, the African-American father of three who is an administrator for Taking Back Waterloo, was drawn to the group because of the vulnerability he feels for his children.

Jones, 47, grew up in the heart of Waterloo's east side but has since moved his family to the city's far southwest corner. He's raising three sons, ages 18, 16 and 12.

He also served as a combat Marine during Operation Desert Storm. He likens his motivations for local activism to his joining the military to fight overseas.

"I fought for others that I didn't really know," Jones said. "I'm going to fight for them and people I do know. I'm going to stand up for those guys."

Future of small steps, focus on violence

What next for Waterloo and its African-American community?

Leaders point to small, hopeful steps in this city's long march: Habitat for Humanity, pending city approval, plans to build 14 houses on the former site of an elementary school just west of the river. Funchess, director of the city's Human Rights Commission, sees the prospect of new homes for working-poor families as a modest way his city's split worlds can become a bit more whole.

Meanwhile, Marshon's mother, Essence Stinson, has coped with her son's shooting by leaning on the support of her mother and other family members.

What would Stinson say to her son's shooter?

"I'll forgive him," she said. "Pray for him."

The trickier question facing Waterloo: When will residents feel like they've taken their city back?

There's probably not a single statistic that could represent a clear finish line. Nor can the ideal of equal opportunity be easily measured. But an ebb in shootings and violence remains a common goal.

Said LaToya Godfrey, Marshon's grandmother: "You would think that with children being shot and killed, that would change things."

This story was corrected July 13 to reflect that Ty Hunter lives in Chattanooga, Tenn., with no children.

The map of black Waterloo began a century ago with 20 square blocks on the city's northeast side.

This is where black workers — strike-breakers for the railroad, primarily from Mississippi — were allowed to live after they had been enticed north.

"It wasn't on good terms," said Quentin Hart, the sole black member on Waterloo's City Council.

Waterloo native Tracy Shirey, who now works with AmeriCorps in Washington, D.C., last year published a senior honors project about her hometown, "Common Patterns in an Uncommon Place: The Civil Rights Movement and Persistence of Racial Inequality in Waterloo, Iowa."

Shirey, who is white, was a biology major at Bowdoin College in Maine who veered into Africana studies thanks to a freshman class that studied racial conflict in America.

"It just kind of shocked me the huge cities we were talking about looked and sounded like Waterloo," she said.

Shirey's deep historical analysis helps to frame some of Waterloo's recent struggle.

The city's black population nearly doubled from 1960 to 2000. Many middle-class blacks moved out of the traditional core neighborhood on the east side. But lower-income families were left behind in neighborhoods riddled with the impact of both black and white flight.

Shirey also scrutinized one census tract (No. 18) in the heart of the east side that was home to the most black families. The economic fortunes of its residents slid in 40 years of data (1960 to 2000), with an ever-greater share of households packed into lower-income brackets.

The average income of black households also continued to lag throughout Waterloo — representing 65 percent of the overall household average income in 1970 and making a tiny bump up to 67.7 percent by 2000.

Shirey couldn't help but be struck by the "vastness of the pattern that we've all created over the centuries that African-Americans have been in the country."

Shirey's 162-page paper echoes an earlier scholarly analysis of her hometown: "Negro-White Relations in the Waterloo Metropolitan Area," published in 1955 by the founder of the sociology department at Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa) and his graduate assistant.

Sixty years ago, concern had already taken root about the decline of Waterloo's historic black neighborhood: "Although many Negro families have desired and attempted to move out of the deteriorated area, very few have been successful."

The 1955 paper also shows how subdivisions in Cedar Falls and neighborhoods in the suburb of Evansdale continued to discourage blacks from moving in: "Although the U.S. Supreme Court decreed in 1948 that such 'restrictive covenants' cannot be enforced in the courts, it did not forbid the making of such covenants."

Yet the civil rights struggle for Waterloo's African-Americans trudged on.

The Waterloo City Council in June 1963 approved a six-man biracial committee.

That same year, William Parker became perhaps the first black judge in Iowa, elected to the municipal court bench in Waterloo.

There was a March for Freedom from East High School to city hall in 1964. Sympathetic college students marched in Cedar Falls.

Shirey's research also has been personal: Her grandfather, Dave Dutton, was Black Hawk county attorney from 1969 to 1975. He and Shirey's grandmother, Mary, were among a cluster of white residents who moved from Waterloo's west side into neighborhoods across the river in an effort to be more active and symbolic advocates of civil rights.

This is when the former Rath Packing Co., which closed in 1985, was a major employer for local blacks. Of the 6,500 workers at the Rath plant, nearly 1,000 were black and worked primarily in the slaughterhouse. The local packinghouse workers union became a key ally.

On June 4, 1966, about 200 African-Americans marched on City Hall with a list of a dozen grievances. A Register photo from that day shows signs that read "Defacto segregation must go," "We shall overcome" and "First class citizenship now!"

The Waterloo Human Rights Commission was formed that July.

Riots broke out in September 1968, triggered by a struggle between police officers and a young black man at an East High School football game. More than 300 Iowa National Guardsmen swept into the streets to help quell the violence.

Waterloo's schools implemented desegregation in the early 1970s — which resulted mostly in the busing of black students to new neighborhoods.

But East High saw Iowa's first black high school principal in 1975, when Walt Cunningham was hired. He's the late namesake for the Dr. Walt Cunningham School of Excellence, the elementary school where an art teacher this spring led students around the city in creating peace signs.

By multiple accounts, school desegregation has been one of the more successful ways in which Waterloo has improved the fortunes of its African-American community.

Shirey noted that a rise in education levels was an uncharacteristic bright spot in analyzing census tract 18.

A new technical high school is in the planning phase to provide Waterloo families with more options.

ABOUT WATERLOO

Waterloo's population has stabilized since the 1980s farm crisis hammered its agribusiness economy.

The 1980 census counted nearly 76,000 people in Waterloo, but the count stood at about 66,500 in 1990. Rath Packing Co. closed in 1985, and John Deere laid off thousands. The city's population has hovered around 68,000 since 2000.

Agribusiness icon Deere remains the city's single largest employer, with about 5,500 workers. Tyson Foods' Waterloo pork plant has a staff of 2,400; its employees speak more than a dozen primary languages.

Manufacturing remains the Cedar Valley Region's top overall sector, representing 13.3 percent of the economy, according to data from the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance and Chamber. Government (11.8 percent) and health care (10.9 percent) also employ thousands.

The city's median household income of $40,498 trails the median in Des Moines by more than $5,000 and the state's by more than $11,000.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

This is the first story in an occasional series. The "Black Iowa: Still Unequal?" project seeks to examine the realities of the black experience in Iowa, to offer a platform for discussion and to engage Iowans in working toward making our state a place of inclusion, justice and prosperity for all.

Conversations video series

Conversations among friends and family — advice we give our children, discussion about life's hard lessons — are sometimes much different than those we have with outsiders.

Register visual journalists Michael Zamora and Zach Boyden-Holmes will bring you glimpses of such authentic conversations related to Iowa's black experience.

Watch today as Kris Jones, a Waterloo father, talks with his youngest son about race and growing up. Go to DesMoinesRegister.com/BlackIowaConversations. If you'd like to take part in our Conversations series, in which two people share perspectives or a personal story, contact multimedia strategist Kelli Brown at kkbrown@dmreg.com, 515-284-8123, or on Twitter, @kellikaybrown.

More ways to participate

WRITE: We invite Iowans from all walks of life to submit columns sharing their personal experiences or perspectives on the black experience in Iowa. Contact Lynn Hicks, opinion/lead engagement editor, if you're interested in writing a column: lhicks@dmreg.com, 515-284-8290, or on Twitter, @LynnHicks.

DISCUSS: Share your comments about the project in the comments section with each story online. Or come to a forum to discuss these issues with experts and your neighbors. You'll hear more about the forums as the project unfolds.

Follow the Black Iowa project series at DesMoinesRegister.com/BlackIowa

What's next

Installments in this series will publish every few weeks. Up next: Public safety reporter Kathy Bolten will examine racial profiling. She will also explore other aspects of criminal justice, including disparities in juvenile referrals to the court system and incarceration rates. Contact Kathy with suggestions or comments at kbolten@dmreg.com, 515-284-8283, or on Twitter, @kbolten.

Other journalists participating in the project include:

Carol Hunter, news director, who is coordinating the project. Please contact Carol with your story ideas and comments at chunter@dmreg.com, 515-284-8545, or on Twitter, @carolhunter.

Mackenzie Ryan, who covers education statewide. She'll examine such issues as test scores, disciplinary actions and graduation rates. Contact Mackenzie at maryan@dmreg.com, 515-284-8543, or on Twitter, @Mackenzie_Ryan.

Kevin Hardy, who covers economic trends. He'll look at employment and income. Contact Kevin at kmhardy@dmreg.com, 515-284-8541, or on Twitter, @kevinmhardy.

Michael Morain, who covers the arts. He'll explore cultural issues. Contact Michael at mmorain@dmreg.com, 515-286-2559, or on Twitter, @MichaelMorain.

Bryon Houlgrave, photojournalist. Contact Bryon at bhoulgrave@dmreg.com, 515-803-0135, or on Twitter, @bryonhoulgrave.

Michael Zamora, photojournalist. Contact Michael at mzamora@dmreg.com, 515-284-8344, or on Twitter, @mzamoraphoto.

Follow the Black Iowa project series at DesMoinesRegister.com/BlackIowa