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Before dawn on June 2, law enforcement officials here say, a white man shot and killed a black co-worker at close range. Then, he tied his body to the back of a truck and dragged it for nearly 11 miles before the rope broke, leaving the mangled corpse of the victim, Anthony Hill, on a bloody patch of road.
On Saturday, black-clad members of the national New Black Panther Party marched to the courthouse steps to demand that the case be classified as a hate crime.
All that seems fairly straightforward, even par for the course. But on close examination, this story unfolds like origami in reverse, saying less about racism in the South than about the fraught posturing of the summer’s raging national conversation on race.
“We keep finding these surrogates and calling them a racial dialogue, but instead it’s just drama without a substantive discussion,” said Susan M. Glisson, the director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation in Oxford, Miss. “It’s like that old saying, ‘You shed more heat than light.’ ”
In recent days, the New Black Panthers have been at the center of an unrelated furor over what conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin say is reverse racism in the Obama administration. And the New Black Panther Party is itself a hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even Bobby Seale, a leader of the original Black Panther Party of the 1960s, has called it “a black racist hate group” that is usurping the original Panther name.
Here in Newberry, a town better known for its college and its opera house in what was once the egg-and-dairy capital of South Carolina, the sight of beret-topped men with walkie-talkies and “black power” placards attracted curious spectators.
“It’s really interesting that there’s a hate group taking a position on calling something a hate crime,” said Rebecca Smith, a white retired auctioneer who sat with her husband on the sidewalk in front of their house, watching the march go by. “They kind of cancel each other out.”
The march and demonstration attracted several hundred of Newberry’s black residents, who pumped their fists in the air and agreed to support the group’s seven demands, including justice for Mr. Hill, reparations for slavery and “self-improvement in the black community.”
But several people, asked why they had come, did not bring up the killing. Instead, they talked about the need for better housing and programs for youth, the problem of gang violence and what they said was racial profiling by the police. Many exhorted the audience to become more involved in community activities and their children’s lives.
“We’re here to try to unify the community, especially black people,” said Tyrone Martin, a manager at a fiberglass plant.
Sheriff Lee Foster, one of a seemingly endless supply of law enforcement officers from a jumble of local and state agencies who were mustered to keep the Newberry peace, looked on unimpressed. “This is not about Anthony Hill,” he said. “This is something that they have hitched their wagon to, to allow them to advance their agenda.”
Indeed, the Hill case does not cry out as an example of racism or incompetence on the part of law enforcement officials. The man charged with his slaying, Gregory Collins, was smoked out of his mobile home with tear gas and arrested within hours of the body’s discovery. A broken piece of rope was still tied to his truck, the police said.
South Carolina has no hate crime statute, so the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in. Federal authorities must determine whether Mr. Collins will face an additional charge under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Actof 2009, named in part after a black man who in 1998 in Jasper, Tex., was dragged to death behind a pickup truck. A contingent of the New Black Panthers, armed with assault rifles and shotguns, protested in Jasper at the time.
If convicted of murder, Mr. Collins faces 30 years to life in prison. The prosecutor, Jerry Peace, said he did not yet know if the crime included the aggravating factors that would qualify it for the death penalty. Charles Grose, Mr. Collin’s appointed lawyer, declined to comment.
It is not clear if the Newberry killing was, in fact, racially motivated. Mr. Hill, 30, and Mr. Collins, 19, worked and lunched together at a local poultry plant and appeared to be friends. The day before the killing, Mr. Collins picked Mr. Hill up at home and they went to a shooting range, Sheriff Foster said. They rented movies at Wal-Mart and repaired to Mr. Collins’s house, the police said.
Rumors have swirled that the killing was actually a crime of passion involving a woman, but the police say they are still looking for a motive.
Rumors have also swirled, thanks largely to the Panthers’ leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a lawyer from Washington, that Mr. Collins had Confederate battle flags and white supremacist paraphernalia and tattoos.
“It’s obvious he’s got information we don’t have,” Sheriff Foster said of Mr. Shabazz. “We need to subpoena him to come before the grand jury to give evidence.” The police did find more than 20 guns in Mr. Collins’s home.
Mr. Shabazz said that if a black victim is tied with rope and dragged by a white man, it is a hate crime on its face.
The national attention on the New Panthers has centered on a 2008 video showing two members, one with a baton, at a polling station in Philadelphia. The Justice Department dropped a voter intimidation case against them last year after obtaining an injunction against one of the men, King Samir Shabazz, saying the evidence did not support prosecution.
In recent days, commentators like Rush Limbaugh have delighted in showing a video of King Samir Shabazz, who the group says was suspended for a year, saying, “I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota,” and suggesting the killing of white babies.
But there were no such calls to violence on Saturday. “I’m being totally, totally mischaracterized,” Malik Zulu Shabazz said. “I have a broad appeal.”
Tiffany Gibson, 25, a black graphic designer, said the New Black Panthers had helped her form a group called the Newberry Black Unity Coalition.
The killing, she said, was a galvanizing event that she hoped would lead to community improvements. But, she added, “Gregory Collins’s crime against Anthony Hill was murder. Gregory Collins’s crime against the city of Newberry and all of South Carolina is terrorism.”
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On Saturday, black-clad members of the national New Black Panther Party marched to the courthouse steps to demand that the case be classified as a hate crime.
All that seems fairly straightforward, even par for the course. But on close examination, this story unfolds like origami in reverse, saying less about racism in the South than about the fraught posturing of the summer’s raging national conversation on race.
“We keep finding these surrogates and calling them a racial dialogue, but instead it’s just drama without a substantive discussion,” said Susan M. Glisson, the director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation in Oxford, Miss. “It’s like that old saying, ‘You shed more heat than light.’ ”
In recent days, the New Black Panthers have been at the center of an unrelated furor over what conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin say is reverse racism in the Obama administration. And the New Black Panther Party is itself a hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even Bobby Seale, a leader of the original Black Panther Party of the 1960s, has called it “a black racist hate group” that is usurping the original Panther name.
Here in Newberry, a town better known for its college and its opera house in what was once the egg-and-dairy capital of South Carolina, the sight of beret-topped men with walkie-talkies and “black power” placards attracted curious spectators.
“It’s really interesting that there’s a hate group taking a position on calling something a hate crime,” said Rebecca Smith, a white retired auctioneer who sat with her husband on the sidewalk in front of their house, watching the march go by. “They kind of cancel each other out.”
The march and demonstration attracted several hundred of Newberry’s black residents, who pumped their fists in the air and agreed to support the group’s seven demands, including justice for Mr. Hill, reparations for slavery and “self-improvement in the black community.”
But several people, asked why they had come, did not bring up the killing. Instead, they talked about the need for better housing and programs for youth, the problem of gang violence and what they said was racial profiling by the police. Many exhorted the audience to become more involved in community activities and their children’s lives.
“We’re here to try to unify the community, especially black people,” said Tyrone Martin, a manager at a fiberglass plant.
Sheriff Lee Foster, one of a seemingly endless supply of law enforcement officers from a jumble of local and state agencies who were mustered to keep the Newberry peace, looked on unimpressed. “This is not about Anthony Hill,” he said. “This is something that they have hitched their wagon to, to allow them to advance their agenda.”
Indeed, the Hill case does not cry out as an example of racism or incompetence on the part of law enforcement officials. The man charged with his slaying, Gregory Collins, was smoked out of his mobile home with tear gas and arrested within hours of the body’s discovery. A broken piece of rope was still tied to his truck, the police said.
South Carolina has no hate crime statute, so the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in. Federal authorities must determine whether Mr. Collins will face an additional charge under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Actof 2009, named in part after a black man who in 1998 in Jasper, Tex., was dragged to death behind a pickup truck. A contingent of the New Black Panthers, armed with assault rifles and shotguns, protested in Jasper at the time.
If convicted of murder, Mr. Collins faces 30 years to life in prison. The prosecutor, Jerry Peace, said he did not yet know if the crime included the aggravating factors that would qualify it for the death penalty. Charles Grose, Mr. Collin’s appointed lawyer, declined to comment.
It is not clear if the Newberry killing was, in fact, racially motivated. Mr. Hill, 30, and Mr. Collins, 19, worked and lunched together at a local poultry plant and appeared to be friends. The day before the killing, Mr. Collins picked Mr. Hill up at home and they went to a shooting range, Sheriff Foster said. They rented movies at Wal-Mart and repaired to Mr. Collins’s house, the police said.
Rumors have swirled that the killing was actually a crime of passion involving a woman, but the police say they are still looking for a motive.
Rumors have also swirled, thanks largely to the Panthers’ leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a lawyer from Washington, that Mr. Collins had Confederate battle flags and white supremacist paraphernalia and tattoos.
“It’s obvious he’s got information we don’t have,” Sheriff Foster said of Mr. Shabazz. “We need to subpoena him to come before the grand jury to give evidence.” The police did find more than 20 guns in Mr. Collins’s home.
Mr. Shabazz said that if a black victim is tied with rope and dragged by a white man, it is a hate crime on its face.
The national attention on the New Panthers has centered on a 2008 video showing two members, one with a baton, at a polling station in Philadelphia. The Justice Department dropped a voter intimidation case against them last year after obtaining an injunction against one of the men, King Samir Shabazz, saying the evidence did not support prosecution.
In recent days, commentators like Rush Limbaugh have delighted in showing a video of King Samir Shabazz, who the group says was suspended for a year, saying, “I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota,” and suggesting the killing of white babies.
But there were no such calls to violence on Saturday. “I’m being totally, totally mischaracterized,” Malik Zulu Shabazz said. “I have a broad appeal.”
Tiffany Gibson, 25, a black graphic designer, said the New Black Panthers had helped her form a group called the Newberry Black Unity Coalition.
The killing, she said, was a galvanizing event that she hoped would lead to community improvements. But, she added, “Gregory Collins’s crime against Anthony Hill was murder. Gregory Collins’s crime against the city of Newberry and all of South Carolina is terrorism.”
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