Where have ALL the African-Americans who once led City of Garland departments gone? Just coincidence? And why no black councilmembers to represent this big segment of our population?

Black History Month 2019 in Garland finds the city without an African-American city councilmember or plan commissioner and with three prominent African-Americans recently gone from city department leadership.

Quietly over the past few months Garland has been losing its top department heads who are African-American.

This fact was duly noted to the membership at a recent meeting of the Garland chapter of the NAACP.

The most recent departure was that of Lonnie Banks, head of Garland's Environmental Waste Department, whose retirement party was held on January 30 after 29 years of exemplary service to Garland and 10 years of combined service in Longview and Marshall.

Lonnie Banks' retirement party was January 30. He headed Garland's Environmental Waste Department.

Priscilla Wilson, senior managing director of human resources, retired in December with little attention after 15 years and 7 months of service to the city. Kristen Smith, director of human resources/civil services, says she knows of no plans to fill Priscilla's position. 

Jermel Stevenson, Managing Director of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Arts, whose 3-year tenure here was marred by the fight over dog and skate parks, suddenly stopped showing up in the middle of the bond-committee meetings.

One had to listen very carefully to the bond-committee's videotapes to realize what had happened—that suddenly new faces were on the screen representing the Parks Department and that the central personality was not there.

Former Garland Parks director Jermel Stevenson visited with my wife, Kay, during a Garland event last fall. He is one of three African-American city department heads suddenly gone.

I tried to contact both Priscilla and Jermel by email to discuss their departures but neither replied.

All this has occurred while the city has no sitting city councilmember who is African-American. B.J. Williams, the most recent African-American on city council, became ineligible for reelection last spring after six years representing District 4. No African-Americans appear to be in the wings in any council district either. The few who might be look at city politics and shake their heads. Nor are there any members of the Garland Plan Commission who are non-white—in a city where the majority of the citizens are affiliated with one of three minority racial groups!

A sad commentary to be occurring at this particular time of the year, which is Black History Month.

Anglos/whites are no longer the majority group now. They've been eclipsed by the growing 39-40 percent who are Hispanic and overshadowed by all the other minority groups lumped together. About 13 percent of Garland's population of 234,000 is African-American. The fourth biggest people group here is the 10 percent who are Asians (not just Vietnamese, which some of our politicos seem to mistakenly believe).

In case you are doing the math, these are the important numbers: (13 percent blacks + 10 percent Asians + 39 percent Hispanics = percent, leaving 38 percent for whites and other minority groups.)

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not big into quotas, but something is seriously wrong with this picture.

At the same time, this month the city's leadership will choose our new police chief. One out of the four finalists is African-American. He is Captain Charles Rene, an assistant chief, who has been with the Garland Police Department since July 1989.

If Garland Police Assistant Chief Charles Rene isn't chosen from the list of four finalists for Garland police chief, he is likely to become one of the most sought-after candidates for police chief in other cities across the U.S.

As I told Charles personally face-to-face recently, if he is not chosen, which is possible since he is up against highly skilled and well-mentored Garland Police Assistant Chief Jeff Bryant, an Anglo. he will then become one of the most sought after police-chief candidates in the country. Given the national controversy over the recent shootings by police of African-American individuals and also Garland's reputation as having an excellent but tough police force, many cities across the United States will likely pay Rene big bucks to come their way. Garland will then lose the highest-ranking and second-longest-tenured African-American in its police department.

The saga and its complexity go on and on!

Perhaps the brightest rising star in the African-American community in Garland right now is Garland ISD trustee Robert Selders Jr., whose business is in downtown Garland. Unfortunately he lives in Rowlett. This enables him to run for election in GISD but not in the Garland municipality. Wherever he lives, I'm sure he will have an extremely bright future there. But that doesn't help the City of Garland very much!

So, whither Garland's African-American community that has worked so steadfastly and so diligently for so many years to find its role in the political structure in this city?

Identifying and grooming new leaders and potential candidates who are African-American must become a major thrust in our community not only for the African-Americans but for ALL of us. Otherwise, we risk turning back the clock several decades to a time in Garland and the United States that is embarrassing even to recall.

As too many in Garland and this country seem to have forgotten: We ALL rise or fall together! 

Martin Luther King Jr. said, in his final speech in Memphis the night before he was assassinated, that ". . . we as a people will get to the promised land." With the backward steps Garland seems to have taken in the last year, one can't help wondering whether we as a city are still heading in the direction of that honored individual's great dream.