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THE VOICE OF ELSIE FAYE

Can J.B. Jackson take a drink of water while the Councilwoman speaks?
By Rowland Stiteler |

If the honorable Dallas City Councilmember Elsie Faye Heggins is the star of tonight’s drama, then J.B. Jackson is the director. His interruptions sound much like those of a filmmaker who periodically yells, “Cut,” stops the action and walks onto the set to explain to the actors the significance of their dialogue.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Heggins,” he says as he walks into a crowded room at the Martin Luther King Community Center in South Dallas where the black Councilwoman is holding a weekly meeting to discuss the next day’s City Council agenda with her constituents. “I think the committee [on police brutality] is ready to give its report now.”

Jackson begins to tell some people standing in the hallways to bring in more chairs. “Y’all move on in here,” he says. “There’s plenty of room in here, and we won’t keep you much longer, but it’s very important that you hear this. Excuse me, Mrs. Heggins; go ahead.”

With that, Heggins calls on the chairman of a committee she has appointed to investigate the death of Michael Frost, a 20-year-old black East Dallas resident who was fatally shot November 7, 1983, by a white police officer, M.D. Cozby. The committee chairman reports that his group is gathering evidence from witnesses at the shooting and that it doesn’t want Heggins to support a City Council plan to have the Dallas Citizen/Police Relations Board investigate the shooting. The members of Heggins’ committee think that the other committee’s work will be a whitewash.

“Lorenzo Brown and Dr. Charles Hunter [the two black members of the City Council-appointed committee] like to be liked by white folk,” Jackson interjects. “They’ve already said that they don’t see anything wrong with the way things are done [in the police department].”

Jackson begins distributing photocopies of the newspaper coverage of the Frost killing and asks various members of the group to read the clippings aloud. When a quotation from Hunter is read, Jackson interrupts again.

“He’s already stated that he doesn’t see anything wrong with what’s going on, but now that there is some pressure from the community, the white folks say, ’Run, puppet,’ and he’s ready to start raising hell [over the shooting]. We are tired of black people selling out black people,” Jackson says.

The crowd roars its approval.

“We need to stop being chumps. The only reason we are getting anything done is because of this woman here,” he says, pointing to Heggins. “She doesn’t mind them [the members of the City Council] kicking her, treating her like a dog; she hangs on like a snapping turtle, and she gets things done.”

The reading of the clippings resumes, only to be interrupted by Jackson once again: “They’re not shooting any white folk; they are shooting all black folk. You can bet that if a black policeman shot a white man, there would have been a major investigation by now.

“Excuse me,” Jackson then says to the woman reading the clippings. “Go ahead now.”

The reading continues, only to be interrupted yet again. “The white police officers go out on the street right now, and they sense that they are judge, jury and executioner,” Jackson says. “. . . If she [Heggins] hadn’t said anything, they’d still be killing niggers.”

By now, Jackson is leading a litany, with members of the crowd following each of his statements with “That’s right!” and “Right on!”

An elderly man in the crowd rises to speak and begins to read from a clipping of his own: a Dallas Times Herald account of the Frost shooting, including Heggins’ reaction to it. The man seizes on a statement by Mice Chief Billy Prince that Heggins is stirring up anti-police anger and is going to “end up creating another Watts in South Dallas.”

“Why did he have to say ’Watts?’” the old man asks the crowd. “They are just trying to provoke us so they can shoot some more of us.”

Jackson offers his own analysis of the situation:

“As long as they know we’ve got our own committee [the one Heggins appointed among her constituents] looking into this thing and trying to get to the bottom of it, then we’ve got an edge. We can’t be concerned with what some whitewash committee that the City Council appoints is going to do. We’ve got to do our own thing and get the facts and try to get them before the grand jury.”

The group resolves that Heggins should vote against having a multiracial, Council-appointed committee look into the shootings on the grounds that the committee doesn’t have subpoena power, can’t get to the bottom of the facts and will probably be white-controlled, anyway. Instead, Heggins’ all-black committee-which doesn’t have subpoena power, either-will conduct its own investigation.

After discussing a few other agenda items, then joining hands and singing two choruses of We Shall Overcome, the group adjourns.

“What this is all about is energy,” Jackson says after the meeting. “That is the only thing we’ve got.”

That may be true, but it’s difficult not to be impressed with just how skillful J.B. Jackson is at harnessing that energy.



TO SAY THAT J.B. Jackson has a fundamental distrust of white people in general and of the leaders of the Dallas Establishment in particular is to say that it snowed in Duluth this winter or that it was hard to find a parking space at NorthPark on Christmas Eve.

Jackson has been fighting the Establishment for the better part of his 55 years. He can quote you chapter and verse on civil-rights struggles that occurred before many of us were even born. He vividly remembers riding in the back of Dallas city buses and drinking from water fountains labeled “Col-oreds Only” and is very quick to tell you that all the racial changes that have taken place in Dallas during the past four decades don’t amount to nearly enough, thank you.

“Dallas is two different worlds,” he says one night outside the Martin Luther King Center. “You’ve got God-only-knows how many white people in North Dallas and Garland and Piano and all those places, and the people in neither world [North Dallas and South Dallas] really know that the other world even exists.”

What makes J.B. Jackson significant to both worlds is that he is becoming increasingly powerful in one of them. Friends and enemies alike agree that Jackson is a peerless ghetto politician who just may be on the verge of coming into his own. This year, Jackson-an anathema to the Establishment for lo these many decades-could become, as one of his adversaries observes, “the most powerful politician that nobody ever elected.” (He’s run for Congress and was defeated.) But the key to his political ascent is out of the hands of the Dallas Establishment; it lies, instead, with his chosen constituency: lower-income blacks. Dallas City Councilmember Elsie Faye Heggins, a 49-year-old daughter of an East Texas sharecropper, is his vehicle.

Most people concede that Jackson is the power behind Heggins’ throne-the single biggest influence over the woman who has become a black political legend with her unyielding, uncompromising style; a woman who could well become Dallas’ first black County Commissioner. Put more bluntly, a lot of Heggins’ critics say she is Jackson’s puppet, doing what he tells her to do, saying what he instructs her to say.

Because of this, Jackson’s adversaries see him as a black Rasputin, a mysterious man, accountable only to himself, wielding the power of a City Council seat to which he was never elected. He became famous at City Hall overnight during Heggins’ first term as the man who constantly handed notes to her during Council meetings.

“The old joke,” says one veteran journalist, “was that we’d like to see Mrs. Heggins talk while J.B. Jackson drank a glass of water-the old ventriloquist trick. Even-money had it that they couldn’t do it.”

When Heggins first joined the Council two terms ago, her fellow Councilmembers often found Jackson’s close political tutelage disquieting. Two years ago, when Jackson tried to participate in a Councilmembers-only discussion of Council redistricting plans, then-Mayor Jack Evans abruptly called the meeting to a close and walked out of the room.

Jackson, consistent with his political style, said, “President Reagan has advisors; why can’t Mrs. Heggins? Every white member of this Council is a racist.” Even though Jackson and Heggins have a close personal relationship (they’re rarely seen at meetings unless they’re together; they even have the same phone number), they always refer to each other publicly as “Mrs. Heg-gins” and “Mr. Jackson.” During the past few years, however, Heggins’ Council peers have come to accept her political relationship with Jackson as an established fact.

“I had lots of people pass me notes when I was on the City Council,” says Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) board member Lee Simpson, “and I was glad to get any well-informed advice I could get.”

“Mayor Starke Taylor has [political consultant] Judy Bonner Amps, and Elsie Faye Heggins has J.B. Jackson. What’s such a big deal about having a political advisor?” says Dallas attorney Roger Albright, who served on the interim DART board with Jackson.

Nevertheless, Jackson’s strident criticism of the Council and of much of what it stands for have, in the past, caused him to be less than heartily welcomed among the cogs of city government. When Heggins nominated him as her appointee to the Dallas Civil Service Board in 1981, the Council rejected the nomination. When Heggins nominated Jackson to the DART board of directors last September, The Dallas Morning News ran an editorial asking, “Why should J.B. Jackson be named to another term when he worked for DART’s defeat [during the DART election campaign]?”

But the Council ignored the Morning News and confirmed Jackson (who had served on the interim board that put DART together) to a term on the new board. When Jackson was recently asked, “Why should someone who is opposed to the DART system as it now stands serve on the DART board of directors?” he responded: “Why should I not use every avenue available to me to work for a system that’s fair to the black community? Public transportation is very important to the black community. Why shouldn’t I take every shot available to me to help my people?”

Roger Albright’s analysis of the situation seems most accurate: “J.B. Jackson is working within the system, but he’s banging on the walls with a sledgehammer from the inside.”

Jackson’s often abrasive political style and unrelenting insistence that the Dallas power structure is categorically racist sometimes makes it difficult for white liberals to be his allies. After the interim DART board assembled a route system to put before the voters, Jackson addressed the City Council and urged its members to vote down the system before it got to the electorate on the grounds that the route system was racist.

City Councilmember Jerry Rucker, a frequent Jackson adversary, pressed the point: “Do you mean that Adlene Harrison [the DART board chairwoman] and Lee Simpson and Roger Albright are racists?”

“Yes,” replied Jackson, who has often been called a racist himself.

“That stung a little,” says Albright, who has worked for such liberal-oriented causes as Dallas Legal Services and Dallas ACORN. “I can’t believe that anybody would be calling Adlene Harrison-who’s probably done as much for the minority community as anyone in this city-a racist. I can’t believe that anybody would be calling me a racist. But I guess he got backed against a wall and-typical J.B. Jackson-he refused to bend.

“You stick with him because he’s sincere and because he doesn’t seem to be in this for personal gain and because he is a legitimate leader of the black community. But sometimes he makes it very hard to stick with him. Sometimes you just want to say, ’J.B., why can’t you ever learn when to back off?’”

“There’s kind of an overture that ’I am down here to represent my people, and anyone who wants to come along with my position can do so if he pleases,’” Lee Simpson says. “It’s biblical, really. It’s as if J.B. and Mrs. Heggins view themselves as being in the classic, eternal struggle of good against evil. And if you view yourself that way, it’s certainly not worth shaving a few points off your position so some dumb white liberal can say, ’We took a stand together for what is right.’”

Jackson’s position on the DART board is unique: He is the only board member actively working to dissolve the organization for which he serves as a director. Jackson and Heggins are the driving forces behind a campaign to gather 82,000 signatures on a petition that would force an election to decide whether Dallas should withdraw from the DART system.

Does it bother Jackson that more than $1 million was spent on the election campaign last summer to create DART? Not in the slightest.

The DART route system, according to Jackson, is a racist plan that provides an inordinate number of fixed rail miles in North Dallas and the suburbs. “The DART system will greatly increase the value of the property in North Dallas, where the rail lines and stops are going to be located. It does so at the expense of the minority community, which is inadequately served by the system.”

Proponents of the DART system point out that the first phase of the fixed rail system provides 30 miles of rail line for the southern half of the city, while the northern half of the city-which is more populous-will get 33.8 miles of rail line. But Jackson doesn’t agree with that analysis.

“Racism is basically an economic proposition,” he says. “When push comes to shove, you look out for your own interest, and that’s what the white majority on the interim DART board did when the route plan was drawn up.”

The idea that Jackson might conclude that any plan drawn up by a majority white board is racist would not surprise veteran observers of the Dallas political process. What did surprise some was the way he did it.

“He voted for the individual components of the plan, and then when we put it all together, he voted against the package as a whole,” Albright says. (Jackson adamantly denies that he voted for every part of the plan.) “When we were putting together the South Dallas route plan, he owned some land on the route, so he couldn’t vote, but he advised on which route would best serve the South Dallas community. We certainly thought we had his cooperation and support, and then when we voted on the whole system, he voted against it.”

When the current DART plan was voted upon by the interim DART board, the two blacks on the board (Jackson and former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Fred Blair) cast the only votes against it. Blair later worked in favor of the DART proposal and debated Heggins before a South Dallas community meeting about whether the plan was racist.

“I’d like to be the first to say that I’d like to have a line running into my front door,” Blair said, “but with 300,000 blacks in Dallas, there can’t be a line to every front door.”

Blair also chided the black residents for not taking a bigger part in the original planning process: “When we had a public meeting at Bishop College, fewer than 50 people came. When there were meetings in the black community, we notified all the precinct chairmen and asked them to get people out, and they didn’t come. Those people up there [in North Dallas] got out and told their representatives what they wanted.”

If there is a Dallas tradition of public servants who lose one side of a debate banding together with the winning side and supporting a given issue when it is put to the electorate, it is certainly not a tradition that Jackson considers binding. “All we are trying to do is get a system that is fair to everyone,” he says. “We’re not going to give up on that. If we are able to get another election on this, they [the Dallas power structure] will know that they have to listen to us, and then we’ll get a new system put together that we can all be proud of. That’s all we are after.”



ASK J.B. JACKSON to enumerate the inequities in Dallas, and he immediately reaches for a chalkboard and starts diagramming the city in the form of a pie-as in, “We’re not getting our fair share of it.” “Nobody is ever going to give you anything,” he says. “They may give you a little slice of the pie that’s not worth much, in order to get you to be quiet, but they are not going to give you a good slice of the pie.”

The pie that most immediately concerns Jackson is the Dallas City Council map, which he drew for me one evening on a meeting room blackboard. “You’ve got five City Councilmembers who live in these two districts here,” he said, pointing to two Northwest Dallas districts. “You’ve got the two district members, the two at-large members and the mayor. That gives them five members of the 11-member City Council to start with. When there are only two black districts, even though there are 300,000 blacks out of around 900,000 people in the City of Dallas, we don’t have a chance.”

Jackson is acutely aware that the Dallas County Commissioner’s precinct “pie” is drawn somewhat differently. The county is essentially divided into four quarters, with four commissioners and a county judge (elected at large) governing the county. Commissioner’s District 3, which is to be vacated by Jim Tyson, is now a majority black district. It’s also a district, as Morning News political columnist Carolyn Barta has pointed out, in which fewer than 10 percent of the precincts voted in favor of the DART system. Combine that with the fact that Heggins was the most vocal black community figure who opposed the DART plan, and you have an instant campaign issue that could well carry the Councilwoman into higher office.

A county commissioner’s district is more than just a bigger slice of the pie. City Coun-cilmembers function like board members of a holding company, with no real administrative power over their districts. But county commissioners are the administrators of their districts, with vast appointive powers and considerable discretion over how money is spent within their districts. The holder of the office would become not only the first black county commissioner in Dallas history, he or she would become the most powerful black political figure in Dallas, if not Texas.

That line of thinking has not escaped J.B. Jackson.

“I’d be lying to you if I said we were not looking at it,” he says. “But, of course, a lot of other black politicians are looking at it, too. It’s quite an important position. At the moment, what Mrs. Heggins is concerned about is fulfilling the duties of the Council position to the best of her abilities.” (Those wishing to file for the county race will have to make their decision by February 6.)

It will surprise no one, of course, if Heggins-along with Blair and a host of other black candidates-files for the seat. And although Jackson states adamantly that the anti-DART campaign is not motivated as a plan to boost Heggins’ election chances, it will certainly make an interesting campaign issue. It doesn’t hurt matters that Heggins and Jackson are waging an active voter registration drive to secure the necessary signatures for the DART petition. Add to that the fact that Blair has identified himself as pro-DART, and you have a major campaign issue that has dropped itself in Heggins’ lap.

Heggins’ strength in the black community has always been that she has steadfastly, consistently and loudly opposed the best-laid plans of the white Council majority. She has gained a reputation as a black City Councilmember whom the Establishment can’t control-something that’s worth a lot of points in the black community these days. It doesn’t take a political visionary to guess what Heggins’ supporters will be saying about Blair if a campaign between the two materializes.



J.B. JACKSON was born in Dallas in 1928 and grew up learning Dallas traditions like everyone else. He can talk about the John Stemmonses and the R.L. Thorntons and the other men who built Dallas. But J.B. Jackson learned Dallas from a different perspective than most long-term students of Dallas politics. His father was a porter-a janitor-at the Mercantile National Bank.

“Dallas has always been a city that could accept change without really changing,” Jackson says. “They absorbed all the Northerners and the blacks from East Texas and everyone else, but the power structure never really gave up any of the power.”

It’s clear that J.B. Jackson has made his life’s work trying to change that. He pursues his goal with religious fervor. He spends 80 to 90 hours a week in various public meetings. A graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta and a former member of the school’s award-winning debate team (Dr. Martin Luther King was one of his teammates), he uses his oratory abilities as one of the mainstays of his political arsenal.

“He is like a black Southern preacher,” says one of his political followers. “When he starts talking, I just can’t help but be moved.”

A perhaps ironic aspect of Jackson’s political involvement is that he has time to fight the system because he has mastered it to some degree. As a successful real estate broker, he acquired enough South Dallas rental property that he doesn’t have to work for a salary. “Dallas is a city where anyone with some ambition and intelligence can accumulate wealth,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that anyone can attain power.”

His involvement in minority issues reads like a history of Dallas minority issues itself. He was one of the co-plaintiffs in the suit that brought single-member council districts to Dallas. “The suit was styled Lipscomb vs. [Mayor Wes] Wise,” says black activist Al Lipscomb, “but I must admit that J.B. Jackson was heavily involved in the strategy. I wind up getting a lot of the credit for things that he was the brains behind.”

Racially, Dallas has come a long, long way since Jackson, as a teen-ager during the Forties, started gathering signatures for a petition to get the city to hire black policemen. But don’t look for any signs of satisfaction from Jackson. “I can’t speak for how far Dallas has come compared to other cities,” he says when asked about Dallas’ racial progress compared to Houston or Atlanta. “All I can tell you is that Dallas hasn’t come far enough. There are still a lot of inequities in Dallas. I know that much.”

Critics of Jackson and Heggins contend that the two depend on minority dissatisfaction to further their political goals. When a representative of the Dallas Police Officers Association came before the City Council recently to offer a rather bellicose response to media statements about the investigation of police shootings of civilians, Council-member Jerry Rucker offered the analysis that the crisis was essentially the creation of “elected public officials” who fan the flames of discontent to “further their own political careers.” The Morning News used similar phraseology in reference to Heggins’ position.

Jackson dismisses those arguments like so much water off a duck’s back. “I don’t think we are creating community tension,” he says. “I think we are creating community awareness of what’s going on in the police department. And they don’t want that.”

It isn’t necessarily in the cards that Elsie Faye Heggins will be the next District 3 county commissioner and that J.B. Jackson’s political star will rise accordingly. It’s equally possible that she could be defeated, that Jackson could lose his City Council support and be dumped from the DART board. She may not run at all.

Jackson has been around a long, long time. He has thrived on political conflict. And whether Heggins is elected to the higher office or not, it is clear that Jackson will be a ubiquitous political figure-as he puts it, “for the rest of my life, if I want to.”

CITY HALL SCENARIO

What goes on between J.B. and Elsie Faye



WHEN ELSIE FAYE Heggins talks, people listen. And often-quite often-the words they hear are J.B. Jackson’s. But just how great a part does Jackson play? For some hint as to who is playing understudy to whom, we focused our attention on the pair during a typical Council meeting. Sketches of the day-long scene follow.



Wednesday, 9 a.m.

Councilmembers gather in the Council briefing room to review with city staff members the issues to be discussed in the official meeting that afternoon. Heggins arrives with Jackson by her side. She sits at the Council table; he settles into one of the chairs available for the press and interested parties. Jackson is a very interested party. He never misses a meeting.

In front of each Councilmember is a large stack of papers: the contents of a contract between the City of Dallas and the DART board. Jackson has a copy in his hands, too, and he reviews the contract item by item with the Council.

Heggins remains fairly silent until the discussion approaches an article referring to affirmative action (the policy of enforcing equal job opportunities for minorities). She then stands and takes a note that Jackson hands to her. She leaves the room for a few moments, then returns to the table and begins a very long, angry oration on affirmative action.

Later, Jackson leaves the meeting and talks to another black community activist in the hallway. He returns to the briefing room and hands Heggins another note. She then recites what is written on the note to the Council; more strong words on affirmative action. Jackson takes his seat again and concentrates on the remainder of the contract while other coun-cilmembers speak. When Heggins speaks, he looks up from the contract and listens carefully until she is finished.



Noon.

The Council breaks for lunch. Heggins and Jackson talk briefly, then she and the Council go to lunch in a private room at City Hall open only to Councilmembers, staff members and press. Jackson eats in the city employees’ cafeteria, where he and another black activist shuffle through numerous documents spread on a small table.



1 p.m.

The Councilmembers take their designated places at the head of the Council chamber. Jackson, too, is seated in the auditorium in his unofficial “usual” seat: on the left side of the chamber about six rows back, catty-cornered to Heggins. They can easily see each other.

At the open-microphone period at the beginning of the meeting, several people have signed up to speak on the recent police shootings of several blacks. Jackson quietly talks to a young man in the chamber, who is reviewing a pad of notes. The man then approaches the microphone and begins a speech on the shootings. Jackson nods and leads the audience (filled with supporters from Heggins’ district) in applause. He stands, and those applauding do the same. Heggins then speaks-loudly, angrily. Jackson nods.



2:50 p.m.

Jackson walks to the back of the chamber. Heggins leaves her seat and meets him behind a wall. About three minutes later, they both return to their seats and she addresses the council on affirmative action. It looks and sounds as though she is reading from a piece of paper on her lap.



3 p.m.

Heggins speaks again. This time, she’s giving facts and figures. She is furious that-among other things-$5 million went to non-minority contracts for a particular city-related construction job. Almost instantly and instinctively, Jackson corrects her from the audience. “Fifty million,” he shouts. “Fifty million,” she repeats, as if no one else has heard Jackson’s prompting.

As the Council meeting stretches into the evening, the chambers empty of spectators and the Councilmembers continue their discussion. Jackson stays put.

After the meeting, he and Heggins leave together.

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