Politics Of Race In Dubuque -- Residents Rally To City's Plan To Recruit Minorities

DUBUQUE, Iowa - Few dark-skinned faces are visible in this blue-collar river town of weathered homes and hard memories of recessions past. The African-American community is so small - 331 out of 58,000 - that half of those on the NAACP's local executive committee are white.

But the politics of race holds center stage here. It couldn't be otherwise after a spate of cross-burnings, support by several young men for David Duke's National Association for the Advancement of White People, and a city plan to increase ethnic diversity by recruiting minority families.

The result has been a national spotlight and a struggle for the moral high ground by civic leaders who have decided that Dubuque is too racially isolated for its own good.

"They get their ideas about minorities from watching TV shows," said Mayor James Brady, referring to the NAAWP boosters, four of whom have been convicted since 1989 of cross-burning. "They're a product of a society that's been closed for so long that they don't see any light."

The worst of the cross-burnings came last week at the home rented by Alice Scott, 31, and her three children, who recently moved from Milwaukee. A window was smashed by a rock, and a cross was left smoldering on the lawn.

Though there have been eight cross-burnings since July, it was the only one aimed directly at an African-American family - and a felony under the state of Iowa's hate-crimes law. Most of the other incidents occurred on public property.

"This touches the very core value of who we are as a people in this community," City Councilman Dirk Voetberg said last Wednesday in announcing a $10,000 reward for the arrest of the cross burners.

Residents of Dubuque have rallied in response. Hundreds of citizens wear small black-and-white ribbons, and dozens of companies have run full-page newspaper ads, all in support of a city plan to recruit 100 minority families by 1995.

"Dubuque is no better or worse than other towns," Mayor Brady said. "But we've faced up to a problem. We've had the courage to do that, and it has caused us lots of embarrassment and brought out the bigots. But it's the right thing to do."

Two of the NAAWP boosters, Michael Lightfoot Jr., 19, and Bill McDermott, 21, appeared on the Phil Donahue show last week, gaining a national audience for the group's ideas. In the process, they demonstrated virtually no knowledge of the long civil-rights struggle by African Americans.

But the two struck a resonant note with some among Dubuque's heavily unionized population when they talked of competition for jobs and preferential treatment for minority applicants.

"I can't get a job, and now I want someone else to come in and compete against me? Let's take care of those already here," said Milt Boyes, 54, an unemployed firefighter.

The cross-burnings that began in July followed the appearance of racial graffiti, some alluding to "the New KKK."

Lightfoot, one of two NAAWP supporters convicted for one of three burnings he admitted to, says he is not a racist and the acts were committed in response to the minority-recruitment plan.

"It was nothing against the blacks. It was the city we were mad at and the plan itself. That's why we lit them on city property," Lightfoot said.

"Baloney," Brady said. He sees too many coincidences in the timing of the cross-burnings and Louisiana gubernatorial campaign of Duke, who founded the NAAWP in the early 1980s.

But Lightfoot and McDermott say they have no formal ties to the NAAWP and have never talked with the organization's leaders.

Lightfoot disavows the cross-burning at Scott's house as a terrorist act. McDermott, a laid-off construction worker who has not been charged in any of the cross-burnings, is more open about his opposition to an increased African-American presence in Dubuque.

"We don't believe we're ready to mingle or mix. I don't feel that I want my town to be turned over to gangland," he said.

Lightfoot and Russell Thomas, 18, were convicted of third-degree arson and sentenced to 50 hours of community service, participation in panel discussions on racial awareness and told to write a research paper on Martin Luther King's letter from the Birmingham jail.

Lightfoot served 62 days in jail and lost his $8.45 an hour job in a meat packing plant; Thomas spent 30 days in jail.