Vidor, Texas is a small town near Beaumont, Texas (where I am currently living). It’s population is not much more than 10,000. Despite it’s small size, it’s regional reputation however is far greater than the US census would lead you to believe. Vidor, Texas has a reputation for racism.
Back in the 70s it was a base for regional KKK meetings (I think it was the city the real estate agent was referring to that I mentioned in my entry Preconceptions in Texas). As I have found, it has not been able to escape this reputation. Many of the southeast Texas residents I have talked all have had the same opinion about Vidor. It’s a racist town, they killed a black guy a few years ago, the Ku Klux Klan is there. I even heard someone tell me that the welcome sign to Vidor had an implicitly racist slogan on it. I don’t remember the exact words that were quoted to me, nor could I find a picture of the sign, so it’s really just hearsay.
Following several assurances of Vidor’s racist, or at least past racist identity, and I found the following CNN Article. The article says the town has been trying to change its image. There is now a billboard posted by the school districts showing a black girl going to school. The city provided shelter to displaced black families during Hurricane Katrina. City officials have repeatedly asserted that the vast majority of residents are not racist. But for all their efforts, the 2000 census reported that only 0.07% of the population was black (read the wikipedia article).
As recently as 1993 the Klan marched on Vidor when the federal government brought some black families into the area and put them in public housing. The government’s efforts failed when most of the families moved out a few months later. The thing that really grabbed me from the article (and grabbed the author of the article as well) was the following quote:
“I don’t mind being friends with them, talking and stuff like that, but as far as mingling and eating with them, all that kind of stuff, that’s where I draw the line.” – Peggy Fruge
I found a second tidbit on Vidor, this one a blog post. While not quite the professional piece that the CNN article was, it more or less says the same thing. However, I found the author’s description of Fruge to itself be full of prejudice.
Lastly, I found an entire forum discussion about Vidor. It’s more of the same accusatory tone as the other pieces. Some comments are hearsay, others are backed by people’s first hand experiences. My favorite comment by far however was the following:
“That part of Interstate 10, east of Houston, is creepy. Thick woods line the road, and there are three kinds of buildings visible: holy roller churches, liquor stores, and trailer dealers”
Yeah, that’s the part of Texas where I live. While Beaumont isn’t too bad, I definitely see what he’s saying. Of course, being adventurous and curious, I will now make a point of visiting VIdor to see what all the fuss is really about. I am sure a day trip won’t do much, but it could be interesting to see a place where “being Black after dark is hazardous to your health.”
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February 10th, 2009 - 7:32 pm
….. that’s hella messed up.
February 11th, 2009 - 12:23 am
Just be careful not to let them find out you are Jewish!
February 15th, 2009 - 1:38 am
And the cats out of the bag.
I will actually claim I am Buddhist, which should be marginally safer.
February 21st, 2009 - 5:06 pm
Well, what to say. I was born in Beaumont but we moved to Vidor when I was in the first grade. I graduated from Vidor High lets just say a few years back. Most of the older residents were members of one faction or another of the KKK. I recall there being three separate groups at one time. I think being Jewish would be better than being Buddhist as I am. My kin all believe that when I die, I will go straight to hell. BTW, I left in the mid sixties and haven’t been back but once since the mid nineties.
March 18th, 2009 - 5:39 pm
I live in Vidor and I am proud of it. I grew up in Beaumont and I would not move back there if you paid me. There is more prejudice in Beaumont than in Vidor….it is just in reverse. The blacks do not want the whites. My daughter moved in public housing in Beaumont that was predominately black. She and her husband were threatened, their apartment was broken into….all because they were white. When they called the police, they were told that there was nothing they could do unless they could catch the perpetrator during the crime. My daughter and her husband were finally forced to move for their own protection. There was such a big deal about moving blacks into Vidor because it was an “all white” town. But…..Lumberton, TX is all white and Ames, TX is all black. The only difference is there is no public housing for the government to force the issue. And because of all the hoopla in Vidor about blacks, there never will be public housing in these towns. And there are others, not just these two. Yes, there is still some prejudice in Vidor, but not like it once was. All I can say is if you don’t like living in Vidor…..move out. Most of us love it.
March 18th, 2009 - 9:09 pm
Thanks for the feedback TxYellowRose. I have been critical of Texas so far and it’s important to have the other side of the coin represented. Thanks for commenting and keeping me in line!
March 23rd, 2009 - 4:28 am
I lived for a time in Vidor and went to both the junior high school and the high school. There were some pretty bad kids there then and their folks weren’t much better. But you know there were more good kids (as well as their families)that way out numbered the bad. I still have family and friends that live there that try to live right and treat others right.
I remember the sign that was on the old highway coming out of Beaumont, it was a terrible cross for many to have to carry. But there were some pretty ugly people with too much clout that thought nothing of telling others how things were going to be. You paid dearly if you tried to cross them. Just a shame it took so long for that sign to come down, would loved to have been there to see it removed.
Your digging around in old trash and yes some Vidor residents have hate towards blacks but if you take the time to look for the good folks there I think you will find more of them then the bad. In every town and city you will find people that don’t like others different from them, it wasn’t all just in Vidor.
If you wanted to dig around in any town I think you could find the trash, just funny how folks would rather look for the trash instead of the good. What a waste of precious time.
April 20th, 2009 - 11:21 pm
I love to hear and read about how bad Vidor is and especially love to hear that “OMG, they killed a black person there, have signs saying keep out and the KKK has secret meetings out in the cow fields where they drink babies’ blood and dance naked to Sweet Home Alabama!”
What’s amazing about all these “accounts” are how similar they are to each other… makes sense since it’s a fabrication that has been propagated throughout time by word of mouth. With the popularity and availability of the internet both increasing over the last 20 years it’s also made it easier for people to search out “news” (read: some body’s inaccurate misrepresentation) and duplicate it on their site, furthering the demonizing of a town based off of what happened a generation or two ago and not off of its current population.
First off, there is no active KKK in Vidor, hasn’t been one in almost 40 years. Look back to 1993 when HUD forced Vidor to integrate their public housing, there were two clan groups holding rallies and protesting integration. Did anyone happen to research those groups? One was from Waco,TX (Knights of the KKK) and the other from Cleveland, TX (White Camelia Knights.) Neither one was from Vidor. I’ll admit that they were able to recruit a few members from the population of Vidor (of the same mindset of Peggy Fruge) that do not represent Vidor as a whole. What you had were two highly polarizing individuals who saw an opportunity to come into a town, into a situation and spew their hatred and racist rhetoric to furhter their own doctrine, completely disregarding the fact that the local citizens didn’t want them there in the first place.
Yes there was a racist slogan on the welcome sign, but once again that was more than a generation ago and it is no longer there. Sure Johnson may have been harassed buy a racist police officer, but that was more than 40 years ago. There may have been racist cops in Vidor, but *gasp* there are racist cops everywhere, from small southern towns to your more progressive towns like Los Angeles, New York, Boston, San Franciso, etc. Yea, Vidor has a monopoly on racist law enforcement officers.
Finally, peopel like Peggy Fruge are racist. I agree. The statement she made is inexcusable and not to be tolerated, although it is her right to have those views. But what the world needs to realise is that it is not going to be good for ratings if Donahue has typical residents of Vidor on his show that aren’t racist and don’t mind integrating. Paula Zahn won’t be getting a big bonus check for inciting rage at a sleepy little SE Texas town if she were to do a true sampling of Vidor’s residents and how they feel. They will interview 100 people to find the one racist and then give them the air time… all because it’s good for ratings. You know this, the country knows this, but nobody seems to care.
What I love the most, what is most ironic about all of this is how hypocritical people are. They are lambasting Vidor for being a backwards racist town, when they (the authors labeling Vidor as racist) are being prejudice themselves and labeling an entire town based off the actions of a very few. They are choosing to broadcast to the world, incorrectly, that everyone in a town of 11,000 are racists who hate black people simply because a few do.
April 22nd, 2009 - 3:04 am
Roger, thank you for taking the time to write out such a detailed and informative response to my entry. It’s good to have the other side represented because as you say, the media is interested in what furthers their interests in most situations. I invite you to look at my other entries and to please provide counter arguements to anything else I have here on my blog.
May 5th, 2009 - 11:10 pm
Well when you drive down I-10 from beaumont to Vidor you see a couple of churches in rose city, yeah. And there are way too many churches here. But there aren’t any liquor stores in Vidor. Vidor is a dry town it’s illegal to buy or sell alcohol in the vidor city limits… BUT being born and raised here I Know about the racism. and it’s true alot of people here are racist, I’m not luckily, and neither is my grandparents who raised me untill I was 16, then I moved to new york, orange county new york. Personally I dislike vidor, and most of the people that live here. there’s nothing here it’s a shithole town full of backwards rednecks. Sure there are a -few- people here that are ok. BUT the majority of the people here are idiots. And being proud to be from vidor is absurd. I can’t see or find anything in this town to be proud of. But on the lighter side the racism is dying off, the older assholes who were driving the racism into their kids are dying which is a good thing. But it’s not quite as bad as it used to be, but it’s still here and will be here awhile before it finally dies down. It’s alot like conroe, it’s growing up just taking a bit longer than most places.
June 18th, 2009 - 5:30 am
You know just a couple of weeks ago a “friend of a friend” of mine bought a house and moved into Lumberton and supposedly within the first month of the move-in a rock was hurled into the window with a message taped to it that had the time and meeting place of the next KKK meeting in Lumberton and proclaimed something along the lines of “if you don’t show up you’ll be marked” or some crap like that …. hahaha obviously i’m very skeptical of this story but it was a little entertaining to hear after the good stories were all finished for the night
June 22nd, 2009 - 4:21 am
Kayla: Any chance of getting a scanned copy of that note?
June 22nd, 2009 - 5:37 am
no wayy! but I personally wanted a copy of the note when i heard the story so I know there isn’t one
August 22nd, 2009 - 12:34 am
I am white and I lived in Vidor for the first few years of my life, and then moved further South on the Texas coast. There was not a hospital in Vidor so I was born in Beaumont. When asked, I have always told people I was born in Beaumont and didn’t mention Vidor because I knew what they would assume about me. Beaumont was the lesser of evils.
I visited family in Vidor throughout my childhood and my Dad and brother currently live in Beaumont. The racism is there. If you have ever spent time there and claim you didn’t hear it, see it, feel it, then I very simply don’t believe you. You can’t shut your eyes to it. You can’t close your ears in public. Racism is unavoidable in Beaumont and the surrounding cities mentioned above.
Recently my sister-in-law threw my niece a party for her 4th birthday and invited her daycare friends and several of the white parents were upset and left when they saw black families there. By the time we cut the cake, her only friends left were her three innocent black friends and our families. The children seemed mostly unaware, and I feared the day they would understand what is happening.
Twelve years ago when I was in high school I went to visit my cousin in Buna for Halloween, and his friends all met up at his house. There was around twelve of us, and three were black. We hung out for a while and then drove into Beaumont to go to a haunted house. We were all intermingled inside the house and having a great time, but when we left the three black guys took a separate car and said they would meet us there. It was said very nonchalantly, but it piqued my curiosity. I asked my cousin and they were taking a longer route to Beaumont to avoid driving through Vidor at night. We all met up in Beaumont and went on without a mention of it, like it was just a common thing.
Even though it was just another night to my cousin and his friends in Buna and they probably don’t even remember it, a sadness came over me that night that has stayed with me all these years. My dad said things have improved since he was a kid. I’m sure they have. But I still feel awful listening to people talk when they are “around their own.” Believe me, it will hurt your faith in humanity.
August 22nd, 2009 - 4:10 am
great comment. thank you April!