The Dark Secrets of Woodruff County

By Kent Handy

This is the story of a black family that was living in poverty in the Deep South. Despite their circumstances their home was filled with love, unity, and respect.

It is the story about how some race haters and the alleged Ku Klux Klan including; Police Officers, Pathologist, the Fire Marshall, and the County Coroner conspired to cover up t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors Press
• Release date: Aug 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781643143965

Kent Handy

This is the autobiography of Kent Handy, who was born in Little Rock Arkansas in 1960. Kent lived there for five years until his family moved to Augusta, which was 90 miles away from Little Rock. He attended the Augusta School System until he was the midpoint of his senior year then he moved back to Little Rock. At that time he resided with his father where he was able to return to school and graduated with the class of 1981 from Little Rock Hall High School. In the 1982 Kent joined the Arkansas National Guard and served 6 years, at which time he was able to ETS in August of 1988. Four years would pass before Kent would leave Arkansas and move to Rochester, NY. Around the year of 1998 Kent obtained a job position with the company Xerox. He maintained his employment there until the work in his department was sent overseas in 2001. That is when he began to have the vision of owning his own company. In the year 2005 Kent's vision came to life and he became the CEO of his own record label known as, Authority Records. Although Authority Records only had one artist, Tieara Da Nu Era, Kent was able to take her and build his label traveling across the country. They had performances in places like New York, Atlanta and Miami just to name a few. Kent had the opportunity to expose his artist to legendary artists like Omarion and Reginald Lavert, and he also arranged an event that brought Bobby Jones Gospel of BET to Rochester, NY. Despite the success that he was experiencing there was a pull on Kent's heart he could not ignore, and he decided to leave the music business. It was during this time he knew he had to write his book entitled, "The Dark Secrets of Woodruff County," after he had been searching the country for 30 years for justice. This true story is about the tragic deaths of his family caused by the Ku Klux Klan in March of 1984 while they lived in Augusta, Arkansas.

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Copyright © 2020 by Kent Handy

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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California, USA

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Contents

This is a True Story

Family

Home to Home

Injustice

Nostalgia

The Way It Was

Keep on Swimming

Relentless Struggle

The Incident

The Cover-Up

Aftermath

This is a True Story

This is about five innocent kids who were murdered by race-haters and the alleged Ku Klux Klan in Woodruff County, Arkansas. Over the years, fourteen other black bodies have been found murdered by race-haters, and no one has spent a single night in jail for any of it.

If I had a dollar for every time that I wanted to write this book then I could have retired by now. Over the years, I have had all kinds of people telling me that they were going to help me write this book but didn’t, so at the end of the day, I found myself by myself. And yet the story must be told, at least that is what I believe.

I wrote this book in honor of my family. To the five children who lost their lives at the hands of some race-haters, including the alleged Ku Klux Klan. To my grandmother Isdee Valentine and to my grandfather Shawnee Valentine (who passed away before I finished this book). To my aunt Nellie who lost her only son. I would like to give a special thanks to Mr. Wendell Teal for being a wonderful mentor. To my own dear mother, Mrs. Paula Jean Armstrong, whom I have found to be one of the strongest black woman I have ever known. To each and every family member who has gone through any difficult experience in this lifetime. Lastly, I would also like to dedicate this book to my wife and kids, for their patience, understanding, support, and love. Above all, I would like to thank God for having his hand in my life.

So please allow me to take you on a journey that could be described as a complicated yet highly appreciated life. My name is Kent Lemont Handy, and I was born to Mr. William Handy and Ms. May West Valentine on October 22, 1960, in Little Rock, Arkansas. My mother would later change her name to what everybody had come to know her by—Paula Jean Armstrong. I am the second oldest child out of twelve children, and the only child that my mother had by my father. Most of the names of the characters have been changed to protect my family and myself. However, the names that you are about to read of my family are real.

Family

Coming up in the south in those days, almost everybody had a nickname. Part of the Southern culture is embracing nicknames given to you by family members and friends. For instance, my name is Kent, but my grandfather nicknamed me Kellogg, and sometimes my family would call me Dob Milan. Dob Milan was the man who used to babysit me along with his wife while my mother worked. The oldest child from my mother was named Joseph, but his nickname was Bishop. Being recently married to Curtis Armstrong, Warnell was the first child to be born to that union whose nickname was Roy. When Mama would leave, she would put me in charge and then she would lay down her rules of things to do and have done by the time that she got back and things what not to do. But as soon as Mama would leave, Warnell would make it his business to do the thing that Mama said don’t do, so he and I would sometimes fight because I knew that as soon as Mama got back, I was going to be the one to get a whipping simply because I was who she left in charge. Then there was Gina, whose nickname was Bull, but she would later be called Arthur Jones after a man who later came into my mother’s life; she never managed to get rid of her nickname. Then there was Vanessa, whose nickname was Collier. Then there was Dwayne who was known as Pressure. He got his hands on a retired judge’s law books, and studied them, so whenever someone in the family had a question about the law, they would ask Dwayne. There was Shelia, who was called Tom. Unlike most other Southerners, there was Tracy who didn’t have a nickname. There was Ryan who was called Tag, and Little Curtis who was called Booly. Kizzie, who was called Roe, was named after the lady that played the character Kizzie in Alex Haley’s movie Roots . Little did she know, this nickname would one day carry a symbolic meaning and play an important role in her life. Finally, there was Bryan who occasionally was called Eddie Giddy, simply because he looked so much like his father Eddie. Eddie was the last man to come into my mother’s life; he also was the father of Kizzie.

While these nicknames might fool you to think we just didn’t bother to learn each other’s names, we sincerely loved each other. My brother, Ryan, used to tell me that his nose looked similar to mine. Yet, like most sisters and brothers of larger family, we’ve had our share of disagreements as well. We would argue over the little things like who told you to put on my shoes or shirt without asking me? Then there were times when we shared our deepest fears and secrets. Ryan used to come home and tell me how scared he was of a man from Augusta born with polio. He told me the man walked with a limp, and one of his arms was shorter than the other. One day, Warnell held Ryan and told the man to come and touch Ryan with his shortest arm. When the man walked over to Ryan, I saw my brother’s eyes filled up with fear. I could tell his heart was galloping faster than a racehorse.

Ryan became so afraid that he fainted.

Little Curtis was quiet and shy. Tracy was somewhat quiet and mild-tempered, but you would miss her when she was not around. Bryan was one of those kids who was seven going on seventeen. He was what the old folks down south used to call too smart for his age. When I, or anyone else, talked with Bryan, you could easily forget that he was only seven years old. And because we were such a large family, sometimes we would hang out in pairs. There was Shelia and Tracy, Gina and Vanessa, Ryan and Curtis, and because I was the second oldest, I could hang out with Joe, who was the oldest, or Warnell, who was younger. But no matter what age group you fell in, Mama made sure that we all knew that we were a family.

From the time that I was between the age of one and five years old, I lived with Mr. Dob Milan and his wife Mrs. Dmitry Milan.

My mother was working as a nurse, and because she worked all the time, she didn’t have a lot of time to spend with me. She would come and see me and bring me things, but I thought that Mr. Dob and his wife were my parents because they had a direct role in my upbringing as a child. Dob worked as a lumberjack, and his wife stayed at home with me. Sometimes he let me ride with him in his work truck. The ride was usually loud from the truck especially when he changed the gears and clutched. Some nights, I would sleep right between the two of them. I remember using Dob’s arm as a pillow. One night while I was sleeping with them, I had a dream that I had a cake, and I wanted some of it, but they wouldn’t not give me a piece, so I woke up in the middle of the night whining, saying, Give me my cake, and they responded, What cake? You don’t have a cake, so go back to sleep. But I kept crying until I got a spanking and came back to reality and realized that it was only a dream. Dob took me to a bar once, and he put me on a stage and asked me to dance. People were throwing money at me. Then someone came up to Dob and said, The boy’s mother is outside. Once I heard the person’s remark, I jumped down off the stage and ran out of the bar onto the sidewalk. I saw my mother running toward me, I remember her hair bouncing as she was running to pick me up to hug and kiss me full of excitement. Needless to say, I missed my mother.

After I got the chance to visit my mom, I went back home with Dob, but it wasn’t too long after that, when one day, my mother and her uncle who was named Uncle Golden, who lived in Kansas City, Missouri, came to Dob’s house to pick me up.

Only this time, it was for good. My mother had decided to move back from Little Rock to the little small town where her parents lived in—Woodruff County. Dob and his wife were begging my mother not to take me. They began to cry as my mother tried to take me away. In my head, I was already home, I didn’t need to be anywhere else. Plus, my father William Handy Sr. and my grandmother Mrs. Evil Handy lived just across town. I didn’t want to get in the car, but Uncle Golden spanked me and put me in the car. That was the beginning of a whole new life.

Home to Home

Years later, I realized that the Milans had gotten attached to me as if I were their own true biological son. The fact that they couldn’t have children of their own didn’t help either. However, my mother was only paying them as my babysitter. It was never her intention to give me away. Yet, I was only five years old at the time, and I was feeling like I had been taken from my parents and home.

Around dusk dark, we arrived in Augusta, Woodruff County. I found myself around a lot of people that I didn’t know. I noticed that everyone seemed to be very excited to see me. It seemed like forever since I had seen my family. It felt as though I was seeing them all for the first time. My last memories of them didn’t seem to match my reality. They had matured and aged with my time away. My mother had quit her job in Little Rock in order to relocate to a small town that would fit her small budget. During this time, I witnessed my mother struggle to maintain a comfortable life for herself and her children. She planned to depend on some of her family members to lend her a helping hand. Yet the problem was they didn’t have much for themselves. I can remember playing outside one day when I found a twenty- dollar bill, and one of my uncles saw me when I picked it up, then he started running after me so he could take it. I wanted that twenty-dollar bill so I sprinted faster and eventually made it to my mother to give it to her. I knew she didn’t have any money. As a child from poverty, I understand that when you’re dead broke, twenty dollars seem like all the riches in world, especially back in that day when twenty dollars got you a lot. Times were hard.

My mother eventually decided to leave our small town and move back to the city. But this time, it wasn’t going to be Little Rock. She wanted to move to an area that provided as much opportunity as possible so she could provide a stable home for her children. That place was the big city of Chicago. Yet once again, she reached out to her family to ask them to look after us while she moved to Chicago to find a job and home for all of us. Being that our family is so big, she already knew she would have a place to stay.

Meanwhile, we were going from one relative to another. Eventually, I ended up staying with my aunt Janie (my mother’s sister), her husband, and children. Her husband, Uncle Johnny ( Johnny Rat), was a farmer and worked on what was known at that time as the Cesar farm. Surprisingly enough, it was kind of cool to live on the farm. It wasn’t much to do, but we made the best of it. They owned a goat and named it Bomb, and we would ride it sometimes. We even took a can of white spray paint and painted the numbers sixty-six on its side. Now, the Cesars were so powerful and rich that the little town of Gregory was named in their honor. Uncle Johnny had worked for the Cesars all of his life; he had worked his way up to be the head farmer. And he had credit at what was known as the Gregory store, and it was owned by the Cesars as well. And by taking on the responsibility to feed extra mouths, he had to use his credit quite often.

During my time there, I experienced some new things. For one, it was the first time that I ever heard the word welfare and commodity. Although blacks were not getting welfare because the whites didn’t tell them about it—or that it even existed. But blacks were getting the commodity, which consisted of pork in a can, chicken in a can, a box of cheese, and a box of raisins. And let me tell you that they were glad to get that. A black man would be responsible for delivery of the commodity to the blacks especially to those that lived in the country. The commodity truck only ran once a month, but there was another truck that ran each month, and it was a white man driving it. It was a sweet ride because it was a candy truck. It amazes me when I go into a store today and see some of that same kind of candy that I used to see on that candy truck when I was just a little boy. Like the three- colored coconut bar, the peanut roll, and the yellow-and-white corn candy to name a few. This was a special time in my life.

During this time, I met my great-grandmother, Nellie McKnight, for the first time. Everybody called her Mama Nellie. At the time, she lived with her daughter, and they had just moved back to Arkansas from California. My great-aunt had ten children and raised them all by herself because their father stayed in California. She had little help raising her children. Her main source of assistance came from her elderly mom and dad, when they could. And I will be the first to say that she did a very fine job raising her children despite the little help she got from her family. They lived deep in the woods, and you know that nobody can watch ten kids at the same time. They were bad, and I mean bad. They were the original bebe kids, so we used to call them savages. Let’s use your imagination just for a little while, imagine you are walking down a narrow dirt road that’s deep in the woods.

It is very quiet, and the only sound that you hear is the yapping of some birds and you are saying to yourself just how peaceful and beautiful it is back here. Then unexpectedly your concentration is broken by someone jumping from behind a tree to slap you in the back of the head and then run their hand down from your forehead across your lips. All at the same time yelling out a word that you don’t