An anonymous flier purporting to endorse a number of candidates in Tuesday’s election is drawing widespread condemnation for its tone and racist caricatures.
The four-page flier appeared in some mailboxes and driveways during the weekend in east Macon and the Greenbriar area west of downtown, said Al Tillman, founder of Unity-N-Community and former president of the Macon-Bibb County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He denounced the flier at a Monday news conference, which a number of City Council members and candidates attended.
“We don’t know who put this out,” Tillman said. But he suggested one clue might come from the places and times it was distributed.
“I don’t believe that white people have walked at two and three and four o’clock in the morning and placed these,” Tillman said.
The flier urges people to vote against incumbent Mayor Robert Reichert, incumbent council members Lauren Benedict, Mike Cranford, Tom Ellington, Charles Jones and Larry Schlesinger; council challengers Chris Horne and Ron Lemon; and Senate District 26 candidate Miriam Paris. Of those, all are white except for Jones and Paris.
Another page voices support for mayoral candidates Robert Brown and C. Jack Ellis; council incumbents Henry Ficklin and Elaine Lucas; challengers Stanley Brown, Gerald Harvey, Sarah Hunt, Henry Gibson and Danny Glover; House District 139 candidates James Beverly and Anissa Jones; and Senate District 26 candidate David Lucas. All of the endorsed candidates are black.
Another page denounces The Telegraph with a crude, racist cartoon, while the final page contains blurbs on propaganda techniques.
Read the complete story at macon.com