Weatherford protest turns violent as hundreds show up to defend Confederate statue
Protesters demanding the removal of a Confederate statue from the Parker County Courthouse in Weatherford were met by hundreds of counter-protesters Saturday and at least two of the protesters were attacked, according to protest leaders and videos posted on social media.
One man punched a protest leader, another slapped a girl and pulled a knife and another barreled into a line of protesters, according to the videos and the protest leaders. The videos capture police arresting at least one man, but no details were available.
Weatherford police did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.
The Fort Worth organization Enough is Enough and the group Parker County Progressives coordinated Saturday’s rally to demand the removal of a Confederate statue. The groups had planned to march from a city park to the courthouse to hold a rally from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
But when about 75 protesters arrived at the courthouse, hundreds of people were waiting for them.
Some in the crowd carried Confederate flags, yelled racial slurs and threw water bottles, organizer Tony Crawford said. On Sunday, Karen Smith, who has lived in the city for eight years, described the crowd as “an armed militia.”
“The level of hatred I saw yesterday was something I hadn’t experienced before,” said Crawford, who is originally from Weatherford. “It was unprecedented.”
Participants posted videos and photos on social media, and at one point Saturday evening, Weatherford, a city of about 34,000, was trending nationally on Twitter.
“We started to march, and you could hear the roar of the crowd downtown,” Smith said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I live here, and I have never seen a display of hate. It was overwhelming.”
For months, community members have called for removal of the statue, but the process has been slowed by confusion over who owns the statue and who has the rights to remove it.
Crawford has been leading protests for weeks in Weatherford, and said his group — the Parker County Progressives — does not want the statue damaged. The group posted that they did not intend to touch the statue during the protest.
“The other side knew we weren’t going to touch the statue, but they put out a call that we were attacking it,” Crawford said. “And then history stepped in.”
One video of the protest shows a group of people in black shirts lined up and chanting “Black Lives Matter.” A man in a green T-shirt suddenly shoves someone into the group and a skirmish erupts. The video pans to show another man fighting with protesters. The man in the green shirt is later shown being handcuffed and escorted away by police.
In another video, a man in a yellow shirt lunges forward and punches a protester in the face.
Crawford said he did not realize someone pulled a knife on him until he watched another video from the protest. Crawford said a man hit a woman, and he stepped forward. In the video, the man is holding a knife by his side.
‘It reminded me of Charlottesville’
Photos and videos show that some protesters and counter-protesters carried guns. At one point, an armed counter-protester is heard yelling, “I’m going to blow a hole in your (expletive).”
Crawford and Smith said police did not seem to know what to do and failed to protect the protesters.
Smith has protested in Weatherford many times, and said her group usually gets yelled at or confronted by one or two people. But on Saturday, she said she saw a level of violence she had never seen.
“We talk about the KKK rallies that used to be here, and it felt like that,” she said. “It reminded me of Charlottesville.”
After about 45 minutes, Weatherford police announced that the gathering was an unlawful assembly. Protesters decided to pull back for their safety, said a member of the group’s security team who asked to be identified only as Jeff because he fears retaliation.
“I did not see anyone from (Black Lives Matter) try to fight or incite any riots,” he said. “I was legitimately scared. I was in fear for others’ lives based on what was happening.”
Crawford said he was aware of three local groups that participated in the counter-protest.
Jim Webster, a Weatherford business owner and former Parker County commissioner, was among the counter-protesters. He towed a mock jail mounted on a trailer with figures of Bill and Hillary Clinton in prison stripes on one side and Barack Obama on the other. The words “All Lives Matter” and “Deep State Demon Rats” were written below.
Webster said that no groups organized the counter-protest and that everyone showed up on their own to defend the statue. He accused the protesters of commenting on social media that they were going to tear it down.
“Weatherford citizens stood up to people who came to take down our statue, to tell us how to run our lives and, overall, be bullies,” he said.
He said that there were about 500 people counter-protesting and about 50 protesters and that both sides were armed. He said nothing major happened in terms of violence, “but it could have been explosive.”
“But the thing is, they came to us. We didn’t go to them. We didn’t start anything. They came over here starting stuff,” he said. “And the citizens of Weatherford won’t put up with being bullied.”
He said there was no racist intent behind defending the statue.
“They consider everybody who tried to protect the statue racist,” he said. “You know if everybody is a racist, then nobody is a racist.”
Crawford said he and the Parker County Progressives do not plan to stop protesting.
This story was originally published July 26, 2020 at 6:51 PM.
